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THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 HISTORY OF LITERATURE 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 April to July 1838 
 
 NOW PRINTED FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 
 EDITED, WITH PREFACE AND NOTES, BY 
 
 -^-^==^- PROFESSOR J. REAY GREENE 
 OF TH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1892 
 
Copyright, 1892, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
(25 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Lectures on Literature by Thomas Car- 
 lyle, published for the first time in the i)resent 
 Yohime, were delivered at 17 Edward Street, 
 Portman Square, London, during- the second 
 quarter of the year 1838. Full reports of the 
 twelve lectures, excex^ting the ninth, were taken 
 by the late Mr. Thomas Chisholm Anstey, bar- 
 rister-at-law and subsequently member of Par- 
 liament for Youghal. Mr. Anstey must have 
 possessed considerable skill for the perform- 
 ance of his task. The reader will soon see for 
 himself how unmistakably many characteristics 
 of Carlyle's style are here rendered. 
 
 Mr. Anstey had copies of these reports made 
 by a few friends. Three such copies are known 
 to exist. One, the property of the iDublishers, 
 has been compared with a second copy kindlj' 
 l^laced at their disposal by Professor Dowden, 
 who has already noted samples of its contents 
 in the opening i)ages of his interesting* volume 
 entitled Transcripts and Studies. The two 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 MSS., although the work of different hands, 
 g-ive concordant renderings throughout. The 
 original MS. in Mr. Anstey's handwriting is 
 now the property of the Asiatic Society, Bom- 
 bay, who acquired it at his death. 
 
 To each lecture its date is here prefixed. As 
 few changes as possible have been made in the 
 way of correction. Slips concerning state- 
 ments capable of verification and obviously due 
 to momentary lapses of attention on the part of 
 the reporter have in various cases been rec- 
 tified. It must be remembered that Carlyle 
 appears in our pages not as a writer but as a 
 speaker. So, in estimating some doubtful locu- 
 tions, it seemed best to follow the safe guide of 
 analogy offered by the author's well-known 
 Lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship, deliv- 
 ered in the same place, only two years later 
 than the present course. 
 
 Why did not Carlyle issue these Lectures on 
 Literature in his life-time ? Doubtless he 
 shrank from the slow labor of preparing for 
 IDublication discourses which deal with topics 
 demanding careful treatment while almost 
 infinite in their extent and diversit}^ A 
 prophet announcing high truths, he may not 
 have felt himself so well fitted to do the work 
 
PREFACE Vll 
 
 of a commentator. Fond as he was of needful 
 repetitions, of variations on the same theme, 
 after the manner of most impressive preachers 
 and of some musicians, he had not the expan- 
 sive suavity of exposition which is so charming 
 in Malebranche. It may well have seemed to 
 him an irksome business to spoil perhaps his 
 own sentences, so effective when spoken, to 
 weaken their force by critical interpolations. 
 His natural impatience, his glowing produc- 
 tivity, urged him to other work. For in 1838 
 the genius of Carlyle may be said to have 
 reached its highest and most fervid epoch. 
 
 Carlyle's French Revolution, acknowledged to 
 be one of the best and most individual of his 
 books,- is not so much a history of that great 
 chain of events as an apt selection of striking 
 episodes, together with a running comment on 
 other histories and on the lessons v/hich revo- 
 lutions should teach. The same may be said 
 of the lectures before us. They do not consti- 
 tute a manual. They are the more welcome on 
 this account, for manuals of literature abound. 
 They cannot rightly be blamed because of their 
 omissions. They treat less of literature than of 
 the causes of literature, its course and its sig- 
 nificance. 
 
Vlll PEEFACE 
 
 We waive the oiDportunity here afforded us 
 of adding- one more to the multitude of essays 
 on Carlyle as himself a power in literature. 
 The reader perhax^s will thank us. Carlyle was 
 wont to say that in some golden age publishers 
 and the iDublic would see the wisdom of paying 
 authors for what they do not write. 
 
 During the weeks that followed Carlyle's 
 death and the appearance of the valuable bi- 
 ograiDhy by Mr. Froude the press teemed with 
 notices passing judgment on our author and 
 all things concerning him. Who now studies 
 these notices % Have they any permanent value ? 
 Are they not like the aesthetic criticisms on 
 Shakespeare, so little relished by the most de- 
 voted * of English Shakespeare-students ? The 
 good sense of many will turn from reviews of 
 Carlyle to Carlyle himself. He tells us in his 
 first loaragraph (page 2) that authors unlike 
 heroes need no illumination from without ; they 
 are self-luminous. Carlyle's own brightness 
 now makes him shine as a fixed star in our lit- 
 erary firmament. His radiance may be ob- 
 scured ; quenched it cannot be. His faults and 
 foibles are manifest, yet is he esteemed in spite 
 
 ^ The late Mr. Halliwell Pliillips. See his Memoranda on 
 the IVagechj of Ilainlet,, London, 1879, 
 
PREFACE IX 
 
 of them, and by too many because of them. 
 His prejudices are vexatious, at least occasion- 
 ally. So are those of De Quincey, at his best 
 the best English prose-writer of this century. 
 Amid all Carljde's prejudices, amid all his de- 
 nunciations of men and things to be condemned, 
 we see him capable of hope ; we feel he sym- 
 pathizes with his fellow-creatures. Beneath a 
 mask of ferocity love beams from his counte- 
 nance. Like Tasso's heroic prince — 
 
 Se'l miri fulminar fra Varme auvolto. 
 Marte lo stimi ; Amor se scopre il volto. 
 
 No healthy man can doubt Carlyle's sincerity. 
 We ought surely to greet with pleasure every 
 combination of sinceritj^, ability, and amiabilitj^ 
 We courteously, therefore, invite the reader to 
 enjoy the rich literary treat here set before him. 
 
 Our thanks are due to Professor Dowden for 
 his kindness in placing his transcript of these 
 Lectures at our disposal, and also to Mr. S. H. 
 Hodivala of Bombay for information he has 
 afforded us with respect to Mr. Anstey's orig- 
 inal manuscript. 
 
 J. Eeay Geeene. 
 
 Manor Lodge, 
 
 Tooting Graveney, London, S. W. 
 
 December, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PIKST PERIOD. 
 
 LECTUBE PAGE 
 
 I. — OF LITERATURE IN GENERAL — LANGUAGE, TRADI- 
 TION, RELIGIONS, RACES THE GREEKS : THEIR 
 
 CHARACTER IN HISTORY, THEIR FORTUNE, PER- 
 FORMANCE — MYTHOLOGIES — ORIGIN OF GODS . 1 
 
 IL — =HOMER : THE HEROIC AGES FROM ^SCHTLUS 
 
 TO SOCRATES — DECLINE OF THE GREEKS . . 16 
 
 III. THE ROMANS ! THEIR CHARACTER, THEIR FOR- 
 TUNE, WHAT THEY DID — FROM VIRGIL TO TAC- 
 ITUS END OF PAGANISM . . . .37 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 IV. — MIDDLE AGES — CHRISTIANITY ; FAITH — INVEN- 
 TIONS PIOUS FOUNDATIONS POPE HILDE- 
 
 BRAND CRUSADES TROUB.VDOURS — NIEBELUN- 
 
 GEN LIED . 61 
 
Xll CONTENTS 
 
 V. — DANTE — THE ITALIANS — CATHOLICISM — PURGA- 
 TORY 83 
 
 VL-7THE SPANIARDS CHIVALRY GREATNESS OF 
 
 THE SPANISH NATION — CERVANTES, HIS LIFE, 
 
 HIS BOOK — LOPE CALDERON — PROTESTANTISM 
 
 AND THE DUTCH WAR 102 
 
 VII. — THE GERMANS WHAT THEY HAVE DONE REF- 
 ORMATION LUTHER — ULRICH VON HUTTEN — 
 
 ERASMUS 124: 
 
 Vin. THE ENGLISH : THEIR ORIGIN, THEIR WORK 
 
 AND DESTINY — ELIZABETHAN ERA SHAKE- 
 SPEARE — JOHN KNOX — MILTON — BEGINNING OF 
 SCEPTICISM 146 
 
 THIED PERIOD. 
 
 IX. — VOLTAIRE THE FRENCH — SCEPTICISM FROM 
 
 RABELAIS TO ROUSSEAU. 
 
 [Of this Lecture no record exists.] 
 
 X. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND WHIT- 
 FIELD SWIFT STERNE — JOHNSON HUME . 169 
 
 XL — CONSUMMATION OF SCEPTICISM — ^^'ERTHERISM 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION .... 186 
 
CONTENTS XIU 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD. 
 
 LECTTTKE PAGE 
 
 XII. OF MODEKN GERMAN LITERATURE GOETHE AND 
 
 HIS WORKS 206 
 
 NOTES 227 
 

 LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ^pn7 21th 
 
 FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Op Literature in General — Language, Tradition, 
 Religions, Races— The Greeks : Their Character 
 IN History, Their Fortune, Performance — My- 
 thologies—Origin OF Gods. 
 
 It must surety be an interesting occupation to fol- 
 low the stream of mind from the periods at which 
 the first great spirits of our western world wrote 
 and flourished, down to these times. He who would 
 pursue the investigation, however, must commence 
 by inquiring what it was these men thought before 
 he inquires what they did ; for, after all, these were 
 solely remarkable for mind, thought, opinion — opin- 
 ion which clothed itself in action, and their opinions 
 have survived in their books. A book affords mat- 
 ter for deep meditation. Upon their shelves books 
 
3 LITERATURE IN GENERAL 
 
 seem queer, insignificant things, but in reality there 
 is nothing so important as a book is. It stirs up 
 the minds of men long after the author has sunk 
 into the grave, and continues to exert its corre- 
 sponding influence for ages. Authors unhke he- 
 roes, therefore, do not need to be illuminated by 
 others ; they are of themselves luminous. The 
 thought that was produced to-day, the pamphlet 
 that was published to-day, are only, as it were, re- 
 prints of thoughts that have circulated ever since 
 the world began. And we are interested in its his- 
 tory, for the thought is alive with us, and it lives 
 when we are dead. 
 
 There is a very great difficulty in reducing this 
 generation of thought to a perfect theory, as indeed 
 there is with everything else, except, perhaps, the 
 stars only, and even they are not reduced to theory ; 
 not perfectly, at least, for, although the solar sj's- 
 tem is quite established as such, it seems doubtful 
 whether it does not in its turn revolve round other 
 solar systems, and so any theory is, in fact, only 
 imperfect. This phenomenon, therefore, is not to 
 be theorized on ; something, however, is necessary 
 to be done in order to familiarize ourselves with it. 
 We shall see this great stream of thought, bearing 
 with it its strange phenomenon of literary produc- 
 tions, divide itself into regular periods ; and we will 
 commence with the facts to be discovered in the 
 history of the Greeks. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS 3 
 
 The Greek records go as far back as 1,800 years 
 before our era, that is, 3,600 years or so from the 
 present time. But they cannot be considered as 
 authentic at that antiquity. When we ask the ques- 
 tion, Who were the first inhabitants of Greece? 
 or. Were they the same as that modern nation by 
 some called Grseci, by others, Hellenes, and b}" us, 
 Greeks ? we can derive no clear account from any 
 source. They seem to have been called Pelasgi. 
 There is a controversy w^hether these Hellenes were 
 Pelasgi, or new settlers from the East. They were 
 probably Pelasgi, with whom thought had begun to 
 operate a progress in science and civilization ; and 
 these gave their local name Hellenes to the rest, 
 just as was the case with the Angles and the Sax- 
 ons. We have no good history of Greece. This is 
 not at all remarkable. Greek transactions had never 
 anything alive ; no result for us ; they were dead 
 entirely. The only points which serve to guide us 
 are a few ruined towns, a few masses of stone, and 
 some broken statuary. In this point of view we 
 can trace three epochs, not more, after the introduc- 
 tion of civilized arts into the country, and the for- 
 mation of societies. 
 
 1. The first is the siege of Troy, which happened 
 in the twelfth century, B.C., and was instituted by 
 the Achaioi, as they were then called, or Hellenes. 
 It seems that there is evidence that they were at 
 that time the same as Pelasgi. The* siege, as is well 
 
4 HOMERIC PERIOD 
 
 known, is said to have been occasioned by Paris 
 carrying off a Greek girl, the famous Helen, wife of 
 Menelaus. Herodotus speaks of many such cases — 
 lo, for example, and Europa. He remarks very 
 properly that it is really very foolish to go to war 
 for such a reason, as the lady is always sure to be as 
 much to blame herself as her seducer. Whatever, 
 however, was the reason, this was the first confed- 
 erate act of the Hellenes in their capacity of an 
 European people. The town was taken and de- 
 stroyed. The immediate cause which was assigned 
 may not have been true ; but, by the European Pe- 
 lasgi, it seems to have been chiefly ascribed to their 
 superiority over Asia ; this was the constant gesta of 
 the narrative. The eveut is also important in giving 
 rise to the first valuable work of antiquity after the 
 Bible, the Homeric Poems, comprising the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey. 
 
 Of the date of 600 years later we have the marble 
 chronicles now preserved in the University of Ox- 
 ford, which an Earl of Arundel brought out of 
 the East in the reign of James I, and which ar- 
 rived here about the year 1627. They sufl'ered 
 much during the civil wvars, and lay mutilated a 
 long time in the garden of Arundel House at 
 Lambeth. One of them even was built up by the 
 gardener into the garden wall. Among the most 
 remarkable was the marble called the Chronicle of 
 Paros, containing a record of some very memorable 
 
PERSIAN INVASION 
 
 events. It is uncertain why it was so called. Near 
 the spot where it was found a new colony was found- 
 ed 264 B.C., and, as it was the custom to erect these 
 records on such occasions, it is presumed that the 
 above was the date of its erection. Herodotus lived 
 in the fifth century b.c, but it was clean after that. 
 
 2. The second epoch was that of the Persian in- 
 vasion. Greece had then to support itself against 
 the innumerable hosts of the East poured out 
 against her. This is the great gesta of Herodotus' 
 history : the gallant resistance of a handful of 
 Greeks, for they were far from being unanimous. 
 Their fate trembled in the iron scale of destiny for 
 a while. At Thermopylse Leonidas repelled the 
 Persians during three days ; on the fourth, circum- 
 vented by treachery, he was overwhelmed with 
 numbers, and he and his troops were cut to pieces ; 
 not a man survived, they wouldn't give up the place. 
 One fancies that that monument must have had a 
 wonderful effect for ages after ; the marble lion with 
 the inscription, " O stranger ! tell the Lacedaemo- 
 nians that we lie here according to the laws." They 
 were ordered to remain, not to quit the post, and 
 there they lay forever. But Europe was ever after- 
 ward superior to Persia. The Grecian societies soon 
 afterward divided more and more until they became 
 a kind of federal republic, united only by common 
 habits, and mainly by their religion. It is a pity 
 that durinjy this time we have but little information 
 
6 GREEK COLONIZATION 
 
 as to the influence produced upon them by the 
 aspect of their beautiful country, its lofty mountains 
 and fertile valleys, the gigantic trees which clothed 
 the summits and sides of their craggy precipices, 
 and all too beautifully set off by the bright sky 
 which was shining upon them ; as well as the means 
 by which all this was rendered serviceable to them 
 in the ways of daily life. It is only battles that are 
 marked by historians, but subjects like these are 
 rarely noticed. 
 
 They spread themselves abroad in new colonies at 
 this time, but there were already Greek colonies 
 even before that. They had built towns and cities, 
 which still exist on the south coast of Italy, or 
 Magna Grsecia as it is generally called. Indeed, I 
 am told that the people in the mountains still speak 
 a kind of Greek up in the Abruzzi. They built 
 Marseilles in France before the Persian invasion. 
 Herodotus records the Phocean emigration. They 
 wandered a long time before they could find a con- 
 venient spot for their new settlement ; but, to ex- 
 tinguish all hope of return, their leader took a red- 
 hot ball of iron and plunged it into the sea, and 
 called the gods to witness that he and his followers 
 would never return to Phocea until that ball of iron 
 should float upon the surface. They afterward 
 landed at Marseilles, and founded a flourishing re- 
 public there. 
 
 3. The third great epoch, like the other two, has 
 
MACEDONIAN PEKIOD 7 
 
 also reference to the East. It was the flower time 
 of Greece — her history is as that of a tree from its 
 saphng state to its decline ; and at this period she 
 developed an efflorescence of genius such as no 
 other country ever beheld, but it speedily ended in 
 the shedding of her flowers and in her own decay. 
 From that time she has continued to fall, and 
 Greece has never again been such as she then was.- 
 About the year 330 e.g. she was subjected to the 
 king of a foreign state, Macedon. Alexander the 
 Great found little trouble in ruling Greece, en- 
 feebled already by the Peloponnesian war, a war of 
 which one cannot see the reason, except that each 
 contending party seems to have striven merely for its 
 own gain, while their country stood by to see which 
 side of the collision was to grind it down. Philip of 
 Macedon, a strong, active man, had already got it 
 united under him. Under Alexander occurred the 
 memorable invasion of Persia, when Greece ex- 
 ploded itself on Asia. He carried his arms to the 
 banks of the Indus, founded kingdoms, and left 
 them to his followers ; insomuch that they con- 
 tinued a remarkable set of people till long after- 
 ward. Nor was it till 1453 a.d. that they were 
 finally conquered in Constantinople. 
 
 This, then, is the history of Greece. The siege of 
 Troy, the first epoch, took place in the year 1184 
 B.C. The Battle of Marathon, 490 b.c. ; and 160 
 years later came the invasion of Persia. Europe was 
 
8 LIKENESS OF GEEEKS TO FRENCH 
 
 henceforth to develop herself on an independent 
 footing, and it had been so ordered that Greece was 
 to begin that. As to their peculiar physiognomy 
 among nations, they were in one respect an ex- 
 tremely interesting peoxDle ; but, in another, un- 
 amiable and weak entirely. It has been somewhere 
 remarked by persons learned in the speculation on 
 what is called the doctrine of races, that the Pelasgi 
 were of Celtic descent. However this may be, it is 
 certain that there is a remarkable similarity in char- 
 acter of the French to these Greeks. Their first 
 feature was what we may call the central feature of 
 all others existing, vekemence, not exactly streitgth, 
 for there was no permanent coherence in it as in 
 strength, but a sort of fiery impetuosity, a vehe- 
 mence never anywhere so remarkable as among the 
 Greeks, except among the French. And there are 
 instances of this both in its good and bad point of 
 view. As to the bad, there is the instance men- 
 tioned by Thucydides of the sedition in Corcyra, 
 which really does read like a chapter out of the 
 French Revolution, in which the actors seem to be 
 quite regardless of any moment but that which was 
 at hand. Here, too, the lower classes were at war 
 upon the higher or aristocrats, as the French would 
 have called them. They suspected a design on the 
 part of the aristocracy to carry them as slaves off to 
 Athens, and on their side it ended in the aristocracy 
 being all shut up in prison ; man after man they 
 
GREEK GENTUS 9 
 
 were brouglit out of the prison, and then with stabs 
 and pikes they were massacred one after another 
 (this is all told by Thucydides) until those within 
 the prison, finding what was going on, would not 
 come out when summoned, whereupon the mob 
 fired arrows upon them until they were all de- 
 stroyed. In short, the whole scene recalls to the 
 reader the events of September 1792. 
 
 Another instance, but more justifiable, was the 
 following : — When Xerxes first invaded Greece, an 
 Athenian, Lycidas, proposed to the citizens to sur- 
 render the city, as it was impossible to make head 
 against the Persians. The Athenians assembled, 
 jostled, struck, and trampled upon him till he died. 
 The women of the place, hearing this, went to his 
 house, attacked his wife and children, and stabbed 
 them to death. There was nothing ever like this 
 behavior or that at Corcyra known in other coun- 
 tries in ancient times ; as among the Eomans, 
 for example, during their dominant period. 
 
 But connected with all this savageness there was 
 an extraordinary delicacy of taste and genius in 
 them. They had a prompt dexterity in seizing the 
 true relations of objects, a beautiful and quick sense 
 in perceiving the places in which the things lay all 
 round the world which they had to work with, and 
 which, without being entirely admirable, was in their 
 own internal province highly useful. So the French, 
 with their undeniable barrenness of genius, have yet 
 
10 SPIRIT OF HARMONY 
 
 in a remarkable manner the faculty of expressing 
 themselves with precision and elegance to so singu- 
 lar a degree that no ideas or inventions can possibly 
 become popularized till they are presented to the 
 world by means of the French language^ 
 
 And this is true of history, and of all things now 
 in the world, of all philosophy, and of everything 
 else ; but in poetry, philosophy, and all things, the 
 Greek genius displays itself with as curious a felicity 
 as the French does in frivolous exercises. Singing 
 or music was the central principle of the Greeks, 
 not a subordinate one, and they were right. What 
 is not musical is rough and hard, and cannot be 
 harmonized. Harmony is the essence of art and 
 science. The mind moulds to itself the clay, and 
 makes it what it will. The Pelasgic architecture, 
 which still subsists in its huge walls of stone, 
 formed of immense bowlders piled one upon another, 
 presents, I am told, now at the distance of 3,000 
 years the evidence of most magnificent symmetry 
 and an eye to what is beautiful. Their poems 
 are equally admirable. Their statuary comprises 
 still the highest things that we have to show for 
 ourselves in that art. Phidias, for example, had 
 the same spirit of harmony, and the matter of his 
 art was obedient to him. His Jupiter of Elis must 
 have been a memorable work, it seems to me. Phi- 
 dias superintended the building of that thing, the 
 Parthenon, and, perhaps, the Elgin marbles received 
 
PHIDIAS 11 
 
 Lis correc.tions. When he projected, however, his 
 Jupiter of Elis his ideas were so confused and 
 bewildered as to give him great unrest, and he 
 wandered about perplexed that the shape he wished 
 would not disclose itself. But one night, after 
 struggling in pain with his thoughts as usual, and 
 meditating on his design, in a dream he saw a group 
 of Grecian maidens approach with pails of water on 
 their heads, who began a song in praise of Jupiter. 
 At that moment the sun of poetry stared upon him 
 and set free the image which he sought for, and it 
 crystallized as it were out of his mind into marble, 
 and became as symmetry itself. This spirit of har- 
 mony operated directly in him, informing all parts of 
 his mind, thence transferring itself into statuary, and 
 seen with the eye and filling the hearts of all people. 
 
 I shall now call your attention to the opinions 
 entertained by the Greeks on all things that con- 
 cerned this world, or what we call their religion. 
 Polytheism seems at first sight an inextricable mass 
 of confusions and delusions ; but there was, no 
 doubt, some meaning in it for the people. It may 
 be explained in one of two ways. The first is, that 
 the fable was only an allegory to explain the various 
 relations of natural facts (of spiritual facts and 
 material), and much learning has been expended on 
 this theory. Bacon himself wrote upon it in his 
 treatise "De Sapientia Veterum." 
 
 But I think there is little or nothin*? to be made 
 
12 MYTHOLOGY 
 
 out of that. To tell fabulous stories of tbat kind 
 does not seem a natural process in the diffusion of 
 science. No man in such a case would have sat 
 down to make out something which all the while he 
 knew to be a lie ; no serious man would do it. The 
 second opinion is, that their gods were simply their 
 kings and heroes, whom they afterward deified. 
 There is more probability in this theory, which is 
 called Euhemerism. Man is always venerable 
 to man ; great men are sure to attract worship 
 or reverence in all ages, and in ancient times 
 it is not wonderful that sometimes they were 
 accounted as gods ; for the most imaginative 
 of us can scarcely conceive the feelings with 
 which the earliest of the human species looked 
 abroad on the world around them. At first, doubt- 
 less, they regarded nothing but the gratification of 
 their wants, as, in fact, wild peoj^le do yet ; but the 
 man would soon begin to ask himself whence he 
 was, what were his flesh and blood, what he himself 
 was, who was not here a short time ago, who will 
 not be here much longer, but still existing a con- 
 scious individual in this immense universe. The 
 theories so formed would be extremely extravagant, 
 and little would suffice to shape the system into 
 Polytheism ; for it is reall}^ in my opinion, a blas- 
 phemy against human nature to attribute the whole 
 of the system to quackery and falsehood* 
 
 Divination, for instance, was the great nucleus 
 
DIVINATION 13 
 
 round which Polytheism formed itself — the consti- 
 tuted core of the whole matter. All people, pri- 
 vate men as well as states, used to consult the oracle 
 of Dodona or Delphi (which eventually became the 
 most celebrated of all) on all the concerns of life. 
 Modern travellers have discovered in those places 
 pipes and other secret contrivances, from which 
 they have concluded that these oracles w^ere con- 
 stituted on a principle of falsehood and delusion. 
 Cicero, too, said that he was certain two augurs 
 could not meet without laughing, and he was likely 
 to know, for he had once been an augur himself. 
 But I confess that on reading Herodotus there ap- 
 pears to me to have been very little quackery about 
 it. I can quite readily fancy that there was a great 
 deal of reason in the oracle. The seat of that at 
 Dodona was a deep, dark chasm, into which the 
 diviner entered when he sought the Deity. If he 
 was a man of devout frame of mind he must surely 
 have then been in the best state of feeling for fore- 
 seeing the future, and giving advice to others. No 
 matter how this was carried on, by divination or 
 otherwise, so long as the individual suffered him- 
 self to be wrapt in union with a higher being. I 
 like to believe better of Greece than that she 
 was completely at the mercy of fraud and falsehood 
 in these matters. So before the Battle of Marathon, 
 an Athenian, Philippides, set off to Lacedsemon for 
 supplies ; he ran nearly the whole way. As he was 
 
14 DESTINY 
 
 travelling among the mountains near Tegea he heard 
 the God Pan calling out to him, " Philippides, \Yhy 
 do the Athenians neglect me?" He obtained the 
 succors demanded, and returned to Athens to find 
 his citizens victorious, and on his relating the above 
 circumstance a temple was erected to Pan, and his 
 worship attended to. Now, when I consider the 
 frame of mind he must have been in, I have no 
 doubt that he really heard in his own mind that 
 voice of the God of Nature upon the wild mountain- 
 side, and that this was not done by quackery or 
 falsehood at all. To this sj^stem there was a deeper 
 basis than the mere plan of gods and goddesses, 
 such as Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, etc. Subordinate 
 functions only were assigned them. But, inde- 
 pendently of their idolatry, they discovered that 
 truth, which is in every man's heart, and to which 
 no thinking man can refuse his assent. They 
 recognized a destin}^ a great dumb black power, 
 ruling during time, which knew nobody for its 
 master, and in its decrees was as inflexible as 
 adamant, and everyone knew that it was there. 
 It was sometimes called Moipa, or "allotment," 
 " part," and sometimes " the Unchangeable." Their 
 gods were not always mentioned with reverence. 
 There is a strange document on the point, the 
 Prometheus of Jj^schylus. iEschylus wrote three 
 plays of Prometheus, but only one has survived to 
 our times. Prometheus had introduced fire into the 
 
PROMETHEUS . 15 
 
 world, and lie was punished for that. His design 
 was to make our race a little less wretched than it 
 was. Personally he seems to be a taciturn sort of 
 man, but what he does speak seems like a thunder- 
 bolt against Jupiter. These miserable men were 
 wandering about in ignorance of the arts of life, and 
 he taught them to them. It was right in him to do 
 it ! Jupiter may launch his thunderbolts, and do 
 what he will with him. A time is coming ; he 
 awaits his time ! Jupiter can hurl him to Tartarus, 
 his time is coming too ; he must come down ; it is 
 all written in the book of Destin3^ 
 
 This curious document really indicates the pri- 
 meval qualities of man. So Herodotus, who was a 
 clear-headed, candid man, tells us that a Scythian 
 nation, the Getse, when it thundered, or the sky was 
 long clouded, used to shoot arrows in the air against 
 the god, and defied him, and were excessively an- 
 gry with him. Another people, whom he mentions 
 with less credibility, made war on the south wind ; 
 probably it had blown on them till it made them 
 quite desperate. The}^ marched against it into the 
 desert, but were never heard of again. These are 
 things alien to our ways of thinking, but they may 
 serve to illustrate Greek life. 
 
 I must here conclude my remarks on the charac- 
 ter of the Greeks. In my next lecture I shall take 
 a survey of the history of their literature from Ho- 
 mer down to Socrates. 
 
LECTUEE 11. 
 
 May 4:th 
 
 FIRST T'Em.OT>—Co7iHnued 
 
 Homer: The Heroic Ages— From ^schylus to So- 
 crates—Decline OF THE Greeks. 
 
 We must now take a survey of Greek literature, 
 although our time does not afford us much scope for 
 diverging, as we must do, over a space of more than 
 five hundred j^ears. 
 
 The first works which we shall notice are the po- 
 ems of Homer. These treat of that event which, as 
 I mentioned in my last lecture, constitutes the first 
 great epoch of Grecian History, the Siege of Troy. 
 The Iliad, or Song of Ilion, consists of a series of 
 what I call ballad delineations of the various occur- 
 rences which took place then, rather than of a nar- 
 rative of the event itself ; for it begins in the mid- 
 dle of it, and, I might say, ends in the middle of it. 
 The Odyssey relates the adventures and voyages of 
 Odysseus or Ulysses on his return from Troy. Their 
 age, as indicated by the Arundel Marbles, and still 
 more by Herodotus, was 800 years b.c. At all 
 
HOMER 17 
 
 events, that was the age of the Iliad, or perhaps 
 900. Johannes von Miiller says of them that they 
 are the oldest books of importance after the Bible. 
 There are none older even among the Chinese, for, 
 in spite of what has been said about their works, 
 there is no evidence that any of them are any 
 older than the poems of Homer. Some there are 
 about the same age, but very insignificant, such 
 as romances or chronicles. Who this Homer was, 
 or who was the real author of these poems, is al- 
 most unknown to us. There is, indeed, a bust of 
 Homer in the museum presented by the Earl of 
 Arundel, and there are one or two other busts of 
 him elsewhere ; but we have not the slightest evi- 
 dence for believing that either of them is a por- 
 trait. It is not certain whether his poems were the 
 work of one or many, writers. There is a tradition, 
 indeed, of a singer, 'O/xT^po?, a beggar and blind 
 man, to whom they have been attributed ; and the 
 belief in his identity was common till 1780, when in 
 Germany, Wolff, who had been employed to write 
 a Prolegomena of a Glasgow edition of Homer, for 
 tbe first time started an opinion which has much 
 startled and confused the learned, that there was 
 no such man as Homer, and that the Iliad had 
 occupied a century or more in its comjDosition, and 
 that it was the work of various itinerant singers 
 or poets who came to seek a welcome in the courts 
 of different Grecian princes ; for there were at 
 2 
 
18 THE HOMERIC CONTROVERSY 
 
 that time thousands of songs about Troy circulated 
 throughout Greece. It was 300 years after their 
 date when the first edition of Homer's poems was 
 published by the sons of Pisistratus, Hippias and 
 Hipparchus. Tins was the first. Lycurgus, in- 
 deed, is said by Plutarch to have already made a 
 collection of them ; but what he says is extremely 
 vague and unsupported. The next edition was col- 
 lected by Alexander the Great, which, wdth some al- 
 terations, is our present edition. There aj^pears to 
 me to be a great improbability that any one would 
 compose an epic except in writing. Other poems 
 were intended for recital, but this was too long to be 
 repeated in one sitting ; and, on the other hand, they 
 would not have been written if, as was the case, there 
 were then no readers. It is also an established fact 
 that Homer could not write. He talks himself of 
 messages passing from one chief to another, when it 
 is clear from his own expressions that they made use, 
 not of letters at all, but of some kind of hiero- 
 glyphics. Indeed, the only argument in favor of 
 Homer being the real author is derived from the 
 common opinion on the point and from the unity of 
 the poem, of which it was once said that it was as 
 unlikely that it should be owing to an accidental 
 concurrence of distinct writers as that, by an acci- 
 dental arrangement of the types, it should have 
 printed itself. But I began myself some time ago 
 to read the IHad, which I had not looked at since 
 
LACK OF UNITY IN THE ILIAD 19 
 
 I left school, and I must confess that from reading 
 alone I became completely convinced that it was 
 not the work of one man. Knight himself, one of 
 the warmest adherents of the other side, conceded 
 that the Odyssey was written by a different hand, 
 and that the Iliad, as we have it, has been much 
 altered by transcribers. In short, he is not at all 
 strong for his own side. But by far the strongest 
 consideration for the opinion is produced by read- 
 ing the poem itself. As to its unit}', I confess that 
 it seems to me that one may cut out two or three 
 books without making any alteration in its unit}-. 
 Its value does not consist in an excellent sustaining 
 of characters. There is not at all the sort of style 
 in which Shakespeare draws his characters ; there 
 is simply the cunning man ; the great-headed, 
 coarse, stupid man ; the proud man ; but there is 
 nothing so remarkable but that any one else could 
 have drawn the same characters for the purpose of 
 piecing them into the Iliad. We all know the old 
 Italian comedy : their Harlequin, Doctor, and Col- 
 umbine. There are almost similar things in the 
 characters in the Iliad. Hence, if we may compare 
 great things with small, we have an analogous case 
 in this country's literature. We have collections of 
 songs about Kobin Hood, a character who lived as 
 an outlaw in Sherwood Forest, and was particularly 
 famous in Nottinghamshire and the north of Eng- 
 land. In the fourteenth century innumerable bal- 
 
20 CHARACTER OF HOMER* S POEMS 
 
 lads respectiiig Lim were current in this country, 
 and especially in the north, about bis disputes with 
 sheriffs, and great quantities of adventures of all 
 sorts, which w^ere sung, quite in an independent 
 character, by fiddlers and old blind men. It is only 
 fifty years since a bookseller of York published 
 those ballads in an uniform collection ; cut out parts 
 here and put in other parts there, and rendered the 
 whole to as consistent a poem as the Iliad. Now, 
 contrasting the melodious Greek mind with the 
 not very melodious English mind, the cithara with 
 the fiddle (between which, by the way, there is 
 strong resemblance), and having in remembrance 
 that those of the one class were suug in alehouses, 
 while the others were sung in kings' houses, it 
 really appears that Eobin Hood ballads have re- 
 ceived the very same arrangement as that which in 
 other times produced " the Tale of Troy divine." 
 
 With Johannes von Miiller, I should say that the 
 character of Homer's poems is the best among all 
 poems. For, in the first place, they are the delinea- 
 tion of something more ancient than themselves and 
 more simple, and therefore more interesting as be- 
 ing the impressions of a primeval mind, the pro- 
 ceedings of a set of men our spiritual progenitors. 
 The first things of importance in the world's history 
 are mentioned there. Secondly, they possess quali- 
 ties of the highest character of whatever age or 
 country. The Greek genius never exceeded what 
 
21 
 
 was done by the authors of those poems which are 
 known as the writings of Homer. Those quahties 
 may be reduced to these two heads : 
 
 First. Homer does not seem to believe his story 
 to be a fiction ; he has no doubt of its truth. Now, 
 if we only consider what a thing it is to believe, we 
 shall see that it must have been an immense circum- 
 stance in favor of Homer. I do not meaii to say 
 that Homer could have sworn to the truth of his 
 poems before a jury — far from it ; but that he re- 
 peated what had survived in tradition and records, 
 and expected his readers to believe them as he did. 
 With regard to that thing which we call machinery, 
 such as gods, visions, and the like, I must recall to ' 
 your minds what I said in my last lecture respect- 
 ing the belief which the Greeks had in their deities. 
 It is of no moment to our question that these stories 
 were altogether false, but Homer believed them to be 
 true. Throughout the whole of Grecian history we 
 find that any remarkable man, any man to whom 
 anything mysterious attached, was regarded as of 
 the supernatural. Their experience was narrow, 
 and men's hearts opened to the marvellous, not be- 
 ing yet shut up by scepticism. This disposition 
 was favorable to the plastic nature of Rumor, and 
 Rumor, in fact, became afterwards one of the gods, 
 and temples were raised to it. Thus Pindar men- 
 tions that Iloo-etSojv (Neptune) appeared on one occa- 
 sion at the Nemsean games. Here it is conceivable 
 
22 RHYTHM OF THE ILIAD 
 
 that if some aged indiYidual of venerable mien and 
 few words had, in fact, come thither, his appearance 
 would have attracted attention ; people would have 
 come to gaze upon him, and conjecture would have 
 been busy. It would be natural that a succeeding 
 generation should actually report that a god ap- 
 peared upon the earth. Therefore I am convindcl 
 that Homer believed his narratives to be strictly true. 
 Secondly. The poem of the Iliad was actually in- 
 tended to be sung. It sings itself ; not only the 
 cadence, but the whole thought of the poem sings 
 itself, as it were : there is a serious recitative in the 
 whole matter. Now, if we take these two things 
 and add them together, the combination makes up 
 the essence of the best poem that can be written. 
 In that pitch of enthusiasm in which the whole was 
 conceived the very words sing. In the strong high 
 emotion the very tones of the voice grow musical. 
 Homer throws in the expletives of some short sen- 
 tences. With these two qualities, music and be- 
 lief, he places his mind in a most beautiful brother- 
 hood, in a sincere contact with his own characters ; 
 there are no reticences. He allows himself to ex- 
 pand with most touching loveliness, and occasionally 
 it may be with an awkwardness that carries its own 
 apology, upon all the matters which come in view 
 of the subject of his work, and thus he affords the 
 most decisive impression of the truly poetic nature 
 of his s:enius. 
 
THE ODYSSEY 23 
 
 We can see it in bis very language, bis pbrase- 
 ology, and tbe most minute details of bis work. 
 Let us take, for instance, tbe epitbets wbicb be ap- 
 plies to tbe objects of nature : "tbe Divine sea" (tbe 
 beauty of tbat Divine sea was deep in tbe mind of 
 Homer), " tbe dark colored sea ; " or to tbe king's 
 bouses wbicb be admired, " tbe bigb wainscotted 
 bouse," *' tbe sounding bouse." For a very toucb- 
 ing instance, let us see Agamemnon wben be swears, 
 not merely by tbe gods, but by rivers and all ob- 
 jects, stars, etc., and calls on tbem to wdtness bis 
 oatb. He does not say w^bat tbey are, but be feels 
 tbat be bimself is a mysterious existence, standing 
 by tbe side of tbem, mysterious existences ! 
 
 Tbere is more of cbaracter in bis second poem, 
 supposed to bave been written a century later tban 
 tbe Iliad ; it treats of a- bigber state of civilization. 
 Tbere is an evident alteration, too, in tbe tbeology. 
 In tbe first poem Pallas is represented as mixing in 
 figbts. In tbe second poem sbe does not figbt at 
 all, but is Minerva, or ratber Atbena, tbe Goddess 
 of Wisdom. From tbe superior unity of it as a 
 poem, it is impossible tbat it could bave been writ- 
 ten by many different people. It makes a deeper 
 impression on one tban tbe Iliad, tbougb tbe genius 
 of it is not greater, perbaps not so great. Tbe beroes 
 are different. Ulysses does not make mucb figure 
 in tbe Iliad ; be is merely drawn an adroit, sbifty, 
 cunning man; but in tbe Odyssey be becomes of a 
 
24 ULYSSES 
 
 tragic significance. He is not there the man of 
 cunning and stratagem, but the "much enduring," 
 a most endearing epithet ! We have a touching ac- 
 count of all his experiences in misfortune. He 
 proves himself in the later poem more thoughtful of 
 those who have perished. What, for example, can 
 be more lovely than the scene when, after escaping 
 the man -devouring Laestrjgonians, the snares of 
 Circe, and other perils, he comes to the end of the 
 Old World, the pillars of Hercules, to consult Tire- 
 sias the prophet, and after performing different ob- 
 lations among the surrounding shades, he sees the 
 shade of his mother Anticlea, and poor Ulysses 
 stands there, and there is his mother, a pale, inef- 
 fectual shade, and he strives to clasp her in his arms, 
 and he finds nothing but air ! In all nations we 
 read and hear of such feelings as that ; we go for 
 them into the heart of human nature. The same 
 sentiment, for instance, we meet with in those beau- 
 tiful lines of the ''Queen's Marys." That, too, is 
 a beautiful burst of auger where Ulysses, concealed 
 in his own palace, beholds the shameful waste, the 
 wild revel and riot of his wife's unworthy suitors. 
 He is disguised as a beggar, and is known to no 
 one until his old nurse discovers him by a scar 
 in his leg, which she observes while washing his 
 feet. The suitors treated him with insult, and 
 flung bones and all sorts of things at him. Lastly, 
 they tried to bend Ulysses' bow ; but the old bow 
 
SIMILES OF HOMER 25 
 
 was too strong for them. The old beggar begged 
 hard for a trial ; he took the bow, and with a fiery 
 kindness and love for his old friend, examined it a 
 long time without saying a word, to see if it were 
 in the state in which he left it. Then he shook 
 his rags, and, as Homer says, "he strode mightily 
 across the threshold," and began to address the 
 suitors. "Ye dogs," he says, *'ye thought that I 
 should never return again from Troy, and ye gave 
 way to your wickedness, unmindful of gods above 
 and men below ; but now your time is come. The 
 extreme limits of death await you." Then his ar- 
 rows fell thick among them, and I believe there was 
 quick work made with the suitors on that occasion. 
 Numbers of traits like these have been collected by 
 Goethe. There is an immense number of similes in 
 Homer. Sometimes their simplicity makes us smile ; 
 but there is great kindness and veneration in the 
 smile. Thus, where he compares Ajax to an ass, 
 Homer does not mean anything like insult in the 
 comparison ; but he means to compare him, sur- 
 rounded as he is by an overwhelming force of Tro- 
 jans, to an ass getting into a field of corn, while all 
 the boys of the neighborhood are endeavoring by 
 blows and shouts to drive him away ; but the slow 
 ass, unheeding them, crops away at the quick- 
 growing corn, and will not leave off till he has had 
 his fill. So it is with Ajax and the Trojans. There 
 is a beautiful formula which he always uses when 
 
26 THE HOMERIC CIVILIZATION 
 
 he describes death. " He thumped down falliug, 
 and his arms jingled about him." Now, trivial as 
 this expression may at first appear, it does convey 
 a deep sight and feeling of that phenomenon. The 
 fall, as it were, of a sack of clay, and the jingle of 
 armor, the last sound he was ever to make through- 
 out time, who a minute or two before was alive 
 and vigoi'ous, and now falls a heavy dead mass ! 
 
 But we must quit Homer. There is one thing, 
 however, which I ought to mention about Ulysses, 
 that he is the very model of the type Greek, a per- 
 jfect image of the Greek genius, a shifty, nimble, 
 active man, involved in difficulties, but every now 
 and then bobbing up out of darkness and confu- 
 sion, victorious and intact. 
 
 But I must quit this discussion about Homer, and 
 I regret it much. I must omit altogether the in- 
 sight into heroic times which he affords us : that 
 farmer-grazier life ; the pillars of their halls covered 
 with smoke, as he describes them ; the stable-yard 
 at the principal portal to those kings' houses, high 
 sounding houses, which he so much admires, piled 
 up with sweepings of the stables, and other curious 
 delineations of manners ; I must leave all that. 
 Homer already betokens a high state of civilization ; 
 in fact, by tradition, and still more by express 
 records, we learn that the Greek genius had been 
 then for 1,000 years working. As Horace says of 
 their warriors, that " there were many brave men 
 
THE GREEK LANGUAGE 27 
 
 before Agamemnon," we may say of their authors, 
 that there were many beautiful and musical minds 
 before Homer, of whom we have no account. The 
 language, for example, was the best dialect, the 
 most complete language that was ever spoken. If, 
 from its precision and excellence, the French lan- 
 guage is best adapted to chat and to courts and 
 compliments, the Greek was no less suited to every 
 kind of composition, down to the pointed epigram. 
 Their theology, too ; their polity, both of war and 
 peace, presupposes a civilization of 1,000 years or 
 longer before Homer. After Homer, with the ex- 
 ception of some minstrels, whom I like to fancy 
 kindred to the Troubadours (on which point I shall 
 say more when I come to the Troubadours), we have 
 nothing in the way of literature for 400 or 500 
 years. It was an age of war, convulsions, and mi- 
 grations, about the Heraclidse and others. Greece 
 expanded itself in colonization, however, and other 
 enterprises of an important character. The Greek 
 mind at this epoch was rather philosophical than 
 poetical. Pythagoras and the Seven Wise Men were 
 of this time. 
 
 What we have of these philosophers is very vague. 
 One man speculated that the world was made out of 
 fire ; another attributed it to the operation of water. 
 There is something very enigmatic about Pythag- 
 oras, the greatest man among them. Some of his 
 precepts which are preserved, our want of in forma- 
 
28 PYTHAGORAS 
 
 tion makes us consider entirely absurd and ridicu- 
 lous. 
 
 We cannot, for instance, understand the reason 
 for his precept, abstain from beans — " faba abstine." 
 What will immortalize Pythagoras is his discovery 
 of the square of the hypothenuse. It seems that he 
 may rather be said not to have invented it, but to 
 have imported it, for I understand the Hindoos and 
 other people of the East have long known it. It was 
 a discovery, however, which in an advancing state of 
 science could not remain unguessed. But a great 
 part of the wisdom of our world was due to Pythag- 
 oras, who acquired it in travelling over the world 
 for information. It may have been talent, and it may 
 not be easy to indicate what precisely we owe to him ; 
 but it was not lost while men were to be found to 
 work and improve on what he had left them. We 
 may observe the like of many men. The print, then, 
 which Pythagoras has left of his genius is the forty- 
 seventh proposition of Euclid. There is also another 
 one we owe to the Greeks. Archimedes discovered 
 that the circumference of the sphere is three times 
 as great as a line drawn through the centre from the 
 opposite points of the circle which goes round it. 
 
 Passing from philosophy to history, we come to a 
 remarkable man, Herodotus. He was not exactly 
 the next writer in order of time, as ^schylns pre- 
 ceded him by a few years. His history is divided 
 by his admiring editors into nine books, which they 
 
HERODOTUS 29 
 
 named after the Nine Muses, or rather the division 
 was made by him, while the designation and admira- 
 tion were theirs. He was a native of Hahcarnassus, 
 and being early engaged in some of the troubles of 
 that place, he was obliged to leave it, and set out on 
 his travels. He attentively studied the histories of 
 the various countries he visited, from Egypt to the 
 Black Sea, and he put down everything he learned 
 in writing ; for there were no books then, and, as he 
 mentions, all the chronicles of importance were in- 
 scribed on tablets of brass. At the age of thirt^'-nine 
 he returned to Greece, and he read his work at the 
 Olympic Games, where it excited intense admiration. 
 It is, properly speaking, an encyclopaedia of the vari- 
 ous nations, and it displays in a striking manner the 
 innate spirit of harmony that was in the Greeks. It 
 begins with Croesus, king of Lydia. Upon some hint 
 or other, it suddenly goes off into a digression on 
 the Persians, and then, apropos of something else, 
 we have a disquisition on the Egyptians, and so on. 
 At first we feel somewhat impatient of being thus 
 carried away at the " sweet will"" of the author ; but 
 we soon find it to be the result of an instinctive spirit 
 of harmony, and we see all these various branches of 
 the tale come pouring down at last in the invasion of 
 Greece by the Persians. It is that spirit of order 
 which has constituted him the j3rose poet of his coun- 
 try. It is curious to see the world he made for him- 
 self. There is, in g-eneral, not a more veracious man, 
 
30 COMBINED HISTORY AND FABLE 
 
 a more intelligeut man, than Herodotus. We see, 
 as in a mirror, that what he writes from his own ob- 
 servation is quite true. But when he does not pro- 
 fess to know the truth of his narratives, it is curious 
 to see the sort of Arabian Tales which he collects to- 
 gether — of the nation of one-e^^ed men, of the Female 
 Eepublic, the Amazons, of the people who live under 
 an air always black with feathers, the Cimmerians ; 
 yet even here the man's natural shrewdness is often 
 evinced, as when he conjectures that the feathers may 
 have been only falling snow-flakes ; and thus dying 
 away gradually from authentic history into the fabu- 
 lous. He was a good-natured man, not at all against 
 the Persians ; but still there is an emphasis in the 
 way he reports things, where the war with Persia is 
 concerned, and in the speeches which he attributes 
 to his characters, that shows the Greek feeling he 
 had in him. He mentions with very little reproof 
 the Lacedaemonian irregularity ; how the people took 
 the Persian heralds who came to demand earth and 
 water in token of submission, and flung them into a 
 deep w^ell, and told tliem that they would find both 
 there in plenty. His account is the only one we have 
 of that war. It is mainly through him that we be- 
 come acquainted with Themistocles, that model of 
 the type Greek in prose as Ulysses was in song. He 
 lived, too, in that which I have called the Flower 
 Period of Greece, fifty years after the Persian in- 
 vasion, or 445 B.C., which, counting in the whole 100 
 
TIIEMISTOCLES 31 
 
 years, was the most brilliant period of Grecian history. 
 Themistocles was certainly one of the greatest men 
 in the world. Had it not been for him, the Persians 
 would have unquestionably conquered Greece. It is 
 curious to observe the vacillations of the Greeks at 
 this period. The Greeks wished to run and not to 
 fight at all. Even after Leonidas had so gallantly 
 perished, Themistocles had great difficulty in per- 
 suading them not to take to flight in their ships ; if 
 once they went to sea, he said, all was lost. And 
 then his reply to Eurybiades, which has been by 
 some censured, appears to me to have been one of 
 the grandest ever made by man. Eurybiades, in the 
 heat of dispute, shook his staff in a menacing manner 
 at him. "Strike, but hear," was the only return he 
 made. To have drawn forth the sword by his side, 
 and to have smote him dead for such an insult, would 
 have been no more than natural ; but anyone could 
 have done that. A poor drayman in a pothouse 
 might have done it ; but to forbear, to waive his own 
 redress in order to extinguish resentments, and keep 
 the troops united for his country's sake, this appears 
 to me truly great ! Like Ulysses, he displayed an 
 uncommon degree of dexterity on occasions. For 
 instance, when he was chased out of Greece he be- 
 took himself to his worst enemy, the king of the Per- 
 sians, whose armies he had destroyed, and who had 
 offered a price for his head, but who now had the 
 magnanimity to do him no wrong. At his first au- 
 
32 ^SCHYLUS 
 
 dience the king asked bim what he thought of Greece. 
 Themistocles, who felt that he knew nothing at all 
 that he could answer to such a question, replied 
 adroitly " that speech was like a Persian carpet rolled 
 up, which was full of beautiful colors and images, 
 but which required to be unrolled and spread out 
 before the colors or the figures would be seen and 
 aj)preciatecl. He therefore requested time to acquire 
 a sufficient knowledge of the Persian tongue to be 
 able to afford the king the information he sought in 
 one single view, and not in a detached, disjointed 
 fashion." The answer satisfied the king. 
 
 Contemporary with Themistocles, and a little 
 prior to Herodotus, Greek tragedy began. J^^schy- 
 lus I define to have been a truly gigantic man (I 
 mean by this much more than the mere trivial figure 
 of elocution usually expressed by the word gigan- 
 tic), one of the largest characters ever known, and 
 all whose movements are clumsy and huge, like 
 those of a son of Anak. In short, his character is 
 just that of Prometheus himself as he has described 
 him. I know no more pleasant thing than to study 
 -^schylus. You fancy that you hear the old dumb 
 rocks speaking to you of all things they had been 
 thinking of since the world began, in their wild, 
 savage utterances. His Agamemnon opens finely 
 with the w^atchman on the top of a high tower, 
 where he has been waiting a year, day and night, 
 for the expected telegraph of the success of his 
 
SOPHOCLES 33 
 
 countrymen. All at once, while he is yet speaking, 
 the fire begins blazing. It is a very grand scene ; 
 Clytemnestra afterward describes most graphically 
 that signal fire, consuming the dry heath on Mount 
 Ida, then prancing over the billows of the ocean, 
 reflected from mountain top to mountain top, and 
 lastly coming to Salamis. ^schylus had himself 
 borne arms, and he must have been a terrible fright, 
 quite a Nem?ean lion ; and one says to oneself, when 
 one reads his descriptions, " Heaven help the Per- 
 sians who had to deal with ^schylus." It is said 
 that when composing he had on a look of the 
 greatest fierceness. He has been accused of bombast. 
 From his obscurity he is often exceedingly difficult ; 
 but bombast is not the word at all. His words come 
 up from the great volcano of his heart, and often 
 he has no voice for it, and it copulates his words 
 together and tears his heart asunder. 
 
 The next great dramatist is Sophocles, ^schylus 
 had found Greek tragedy in a cart, under the charge 
 of Thespis, a man of great consideration in his day, 
 but of whom nothing remains to us, and he made it 
 into the regular drama. Sophocles completed the 
 work ; he was of a more cultivated and chastened 
 mind than ^schylus. He translated it into a choral 
 peal of melody, ^schylus only excels in his grand 
 bursts of feeling. The Antigone of Sophocles is the 
 finest thing of the kind ever sketched by man. 
 
 Euripides, the next great dramatist, who has 
 3 
 
34 EURIPIDES 
 
 sometimes been likened to Eacine, and sometimes 
 to Corneille (although I cannot see much resem- 
 blance to Corneille at least), carried his compositions 
 occasionally to the very verge of disease, and dis- 
 plays a distinct commencement of the age of specu- 
 lation and scepticism. He writes often for the 
 effect's sake, not as Homer or ^schylus, rapt away 
 in the train of action ; but how touching is effect 
 so produced. He was accused of impiety. In a 
 sceptical kind of man these two things go together 
 very often — impiety and desire of effect. There is a 
 decline in all kinds of literature when it ceases to 
 be poetical and becomes speculative. Socrates was 
 the emblem of the decline of the Greeks. His was 
 the mind of the Greeks in its transition state ; he 
 was the friend of Euripides. It seems strange to 
 call him so. I willingly admit that he was a man 
 of deep feeling and moralit}' ; bat I can well under- 
 stand the idea which Aristophanes had of him, that 
 he was a man going to destroy all Greece with his 
 innovations. To understand this, we have only to 
 go back to what I said in my last lecture on the pe- 
 culiar character of the Greek system of religion — 
 the crown of all their beliefs. The Greek system, 
 you will remember, was of a great significance and 
 value for the Greeks. Even the most absurd -look- 
 ing part of the whole, the Oracle, this too, was 
 shown to have been not a quackery, but the result 
 of a sincere belief on the part of the priests them- 
 
SOCRATES 35 
 
 selves. No matter what you call the process, if the 
 mail believed iu what he was about, and listened to 
 his faith in a higher power, surely by looking into 
 himself, apart from earthly feeling, he would be in 
 that frame of mind by far the best adapted for judg- 
 ing correctly and wisely of the f utui"fe. They saw 
 the most pious, intelligent, and reverend among 
 them join themselves to this system, and thus was 
 formed a sort of rude pagan church to the people. 
 There were also the Greek games, celebrated in hon- 
 or of the gods, and under the Divine sanction. We 
 shall find that the Greek religion, in short, did es- 
 sential service to the Greeks. The mind of the 
 whole nation by its means* obtained a strength and 
 coherence. If I may not be permitted to say that 
 through it all the nation became united to the Di- 
 vine Power, I may, at any rate, assert that the high- 
 est considerations and motives thus became familiar 
 to each person, and were put at the very top of his 
 mind ; but about Socrates' time this devotional 
 feeling had in a great measure given way. He him- 
 self was not more sceptical than the rest ; he shows 
 a lingering kind of awe and attachment for the old 
 religion of his country, and often we cannot make 
 out whether he believed in it or not. He must have 
 have had but a painful intellectual life — a painful 
 kind of life altogether, one would think. He was 
 the son of a statuary, and was originally brought up 
 in that art ; but he soon forsook it, and appeared to 
 
36 DECLINE OF GREEK GENIUS 
 
 give up all doings with tlie world excepting such as 
 would lead to its spiritual improvement. From 
 that time he devoted himself to the teaching of mo- 
 rality and virtue, and he spent his life in that hind 
 of mission. I cannot say that there was any evil in 
 this ; but it does seem to me to have been of a char- 
 acter entirely unprofitable. I have a great desire to 
 admire Socrates, but I confess that his writings 
 seem to be made up of a number of very wire- 
 drawn notions about virtue. There is no conclusion 
 in him ; there is no word of life in Socrates ! He 
 was, however, personally a coherent and firm man. 
 After him the nation became more and more sophis- 
 tical The Greek genius lost its originality ; it lost 
 its poetry, and gave way to the spirit of speculation. 
 Alexander the Great subdued them, and though 
 they fought well under him, and though manufact- 
 ures and so forth flourished for a long time after- 
 ward, not another man of genius of any very re- 
 markable quality appeared in Greece. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 May 1th 
 
 FIKST V'^mOD— Continued 
 
 The Romans: Their Character, Their Fortune, 
 What They Did — From Virgil to Tacitus — End 
 OP Paganism, 
 
 We have now been occupied some two days in 
 endeavoring to obtain a view of the practical, 
 spiritual way of life among the Greeks. I shall now 
 endeavor to draw this matter to a conclusion, the 
 survey of the most ancient period of this our West- 
 ern Europe. 
 
 We pass now to the Romans. We may say of 
 this nation that, as the Greeks may be called 
 the children of antiquity, from their naivete, and 
 gracefulness, while their whole history is an aurora, 
 the dawn of a higher culture and civilization ; so 
 the Romans were the men of antiquity, and their 
 history a glorious, warm, laborious day, less 
 beautiful and graceful, no doubt, than the Greeks, 
 but most essentially useful. 
 
 We have small time or space to enter largely 
 
38 EISE OF THE KOMANS 
 
 into the discussion of Roman ways of thinking ; but 
 it is a fortunate coincidence that the Romans, in 
 their special aspect, do not require much discussion. 
 The Roman Hfe and the Roman opinions are quite 
 a sequel to those of the Greeks — a second edition, 
 we may say, of the Pagan system of belief and 
 action. As authors or promulgators of books, 
 they will require comparatively little of our atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The first appearance of the Romans, their enter- 
 ing on the succession of the Greeks, is very pict- 
 uresque. The Tarentines did certainly send — 
 these, too, were Greeks, from of old inhabitants of 
 Magna Grsecia, of which I spoke in my first lecture 
 — the Tarentines sent certainly embassies to Pyr- 
 rhus, the king of Epirus, in the year 280 b.c. He 
 was an ambitious, martial prince, bent on conquer- 
 ing everybody, and therefore well suited for their 
 wishes ; they entreated him to come over and assist 
 them against a people called Romans — some bar- 
 barians of that name. Pyrrhus embarked, landed, 
 and gave battle to the Romans. According to Plu- 
 tarch, when he saw them forming themselves in 
 order of battle, he said, "Why, these barbarians do 
 not fight like barbarians ! " and he accordingly after- 
 ward found out to his cost that they did not fight 
 like barbarians at alL A few years later he was 
 worsted by the Romans, and again after that his 
 forces were comxDletely destroyed in another engage- 
 
THEIR HISTORIC MYTHS 39 
 
 ment. He himself said that, "with him for their 
 general and Komans for soldiers, he would conquer 
 the world." 
 
 One hundred years after this Greece itself was 
 completely subdued by the Romans ; in the year 
 before Christ 280, the war with Pyrrhus occurred. 
 The Greek life was shattered to pieces against the 
 harder, stronger life of the Eomans. Corinth was 
 taken and destroyed. Greece had degenerated ; 100 
 years before Alexander, when Socrates died, we saw 
 symptoms of not at all a healthy state of Greek 
 existence ; and now, as Corinth was taken and 
 burned, and even Egypt with her Ptolemies, and 
 Antioch with her Seleucidse, fell successively into 
 the power of the Romans, it was just as a beautiful 
 crystal jar becomes dashed to pieces upon the hard 
 rocks, so inexpressible was the force of the strong 
 Roman energy. According to their own account 
 they had already been established 280 years before 
 that event, or 750 e.g.; but nothing is certainly 
 known of them before that time. It is now pretty 
 well understood that their ancient historians were 
 all Greeks, who adopted the annals of those who 
 conquered them. Not long ago that which had 
 been already suspected by antiquarians and learned 
 men was made good to demonstration by a German 
 scholar, of whom you have no doubt all heard, 
 Niebuhr, that all that story in Livy of Romulus 
 and Remus, the two infants who were thrown into 
 
40 ITALIAN PEOPLES 
 
 the Tiber and stranded on its banks, it being then 
 the time of flood, and their being suckled by a she- 
 wolf, and also that story of the kings Tarquiu, are 
 nothing after all but a myth, or traditional tale, 
 with a few faint vestiges of meaning in it, but of no 
 significance for the historian ; at least, it refuses to 
 yield it up to him. As to Niebuhr himself, he has 
 accumulated a vast quantity of quotations and other 
 materials, and, in short, his book is altogether a 
 laborious thing ; but he affords, after all, very little 
 light on that early period. One does not find that 
 he makes any conclusion out except destruction ; 
 and, after a laborious perusal of his work, we are 
 forced to come to the conclusion that Niebuhr 
 knew no more of the history of that period than 
 I do. 
 
 No doubt some human individual built a house for 
 himself in the neighborhood of what must have then 
 been a desert, overgrown with trees and shrubs — 
 perhaps near to the old fountain, called afterward 
 the Fountain of Juturna, and probably even then in 
 existence— one of the old fountains of the earth ; but 
 who he was, or how the work went on, we do not 
 know, except that it became the most famous town 
 in the world except Jerusalem, and destined to 
 make the largest records of any town. Niebuhr has 
 shown that the Eomans evince the characters of two 
 distinct species of people. First, there are the Pe- 
 lasgi, a people inhabiting the lower part of Italy 
 
CHARACTER 41 
 
 from of old ; the same race as we have seen in 
 Greece, where they had akeady become Hellenes. 
 Secondly, there were the Etruscans or Tuscans, an 
 entirely different race. Johannes von Miiller sup- 
 poses them to be northern Teutonic or Gothic. 
 They are known by various remains of art, the terra 
 cotta, baked earth. Wiukelmanu describes these 
 remains to be of an Egyptian character from their 
 gloomy heaviness, austerity, and sullenness. To the 
 last moment the Etruscans continued to be the 
 Haruspices of the Romans. They themselves were 
 men of a gloomy character, very different from the 
 liveliness and gracefulness of the Greeks. In the 
 Romans we have the traces of these two races joined 
 together ; the one formed the noblesse, the other 
 the commonalty. The main feature, independently 
 of their works of art, which we observe in the old 
 Etruscans is that they were an agricultural people, 
 endowed with a sort of sullen energy, which is 
 shown by the way in which they drained out lakes 
 and marshes encumbering the soil, and these drains, 
 I am told, are to be traced still ; and in the Roman 
 agricultural writers, such as Cato, Varro, and Colu- 
 mella, we meet with many old precepts which seem 
 quite traditional. 
 
 We gather from these sources evidence of an in- 
 tensely industrious thrift, a kind of vigorous thrift 
 which was in that people. Thus, with respect to the 
 ploughing of the earth, they express it to be a kind 
 
42 RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 
 
 of blasphemy against Nature to leave a clod un- 
 brokeD, and I believe that it is considered still to be 
 good husbandry to pulverize the soil as much as 
 possible. Now this feeling was the fundamental 
 characteristic of the Roman people before they were 
 distinguished as conquerors. 
 
 Thrift is a quality held in no esteem, and is gen- 
 erally regarded as mean ; it is certainly mean 
 enough, and objectionable from its interfering with 
 all manner of intercourse between man and man. 
 But I say that thrift, well understood, includes in 
 itself the best virtues that a man can have in this 
 world ; it teaches him self-denial, to postpone the 
 present to the future, to calculate his means and to 
 regulate his actions accordingly. Thus understood, 
 it includes all that man can do in his vocation. 
 Even in its worst state it indicates a great people, I 
 think. The Dutch, for example (there is no stronger 
 people), the people of New England, the Scotch — all 
 great nations ! In short, it is the foundation of all 
 manner of virtue in a nation. Connected with this 
 principle, there was in the Roman character a great 
 seriousness and devoutness, and it was natural that 
 there should be. The Greek religion was light and 
 sportful compared to the Roman. The Roman dei- 
 ties were innumerable ; Varro enumerates 30,000 
 divinities. Their notion of fate, which we observed 
 was the central element of Paganism, was much more 
 productive of consequences than the Greek notion. 
 
METHOD OF THE ROMANS 43 
 
 and it depended entirely on the original character 
 which had been given to this people. Their notion 
 was that Kome was alwaj's meant to be the capital 
 of the whole world ; that right was on the side of 
 every man who was with Rome, and that therefore 
 it was their duty to do everything for Rome. This 
 belief tended very principally to produce its own 
 fulfilment ; nay, it was itself founded on fact. "Did 
 not Rome do so and so ? " they would reason. That 
 stubborn grinding down of the globe which their 
 ancestors practised — ploughing the ground fifteen 
 times to make it produce a better crop than if it 
 were ploughed fourteen times was afterward carried 
 on by the Romans in all the concerns of their ordi- 
 nary life, and by it they raised themselves above all 
 other people. 
 
 Method was their great principle, just as har-\ 
 mony was that of the Greeks. The method of the 
 Romans was a sort of harmony, but not that beau- 
 tiful, gi-aceful thing which was the Greek harmony. 
 Theirs was the harmonj^ of plans — an architectu- 
 ral harmony, which was displayed in the arranging 
 of practical antecedents and consequences. Their 
 whole genius was practical. Speculation with them 
 was nothing in the comparison. Their vocation 
 was not to teach the sciences — what sciences they 
 knew they had received from the Greeks — but to 
 teach practical wisdom ; to subdue people into 
 polity. Pliny declares that he cannot describe 
 
44 CIVILIZATION 
 
 Rome. " So great is it that it appears to make 
 heaven more illustrious, and to bring the whole 
 world into civilization and obedience under its au- 
 thority," This is what it did. It had gone on for 
 300 years, fighting obscurely with its neighbors, 
 and getting one state after another into its power, 
 when the defeat of Pyrrhus gave it all Italy, and 
 rendered that country entirely Eome. Some have 
 thought that the Romans had done nothing else 
 but fight to establish their dominion where they 
 had not the least claim of right, and that they 
 were a mere nest of robbers ; but this is evident- 
 ly a misapprehension. Historians have generally 
 managed to write down such facts as are apt to 
 strike the memory of the vulgar, while they omit 
 the circumstances which display the real character 
 of the Romans. The Romans were at first an agri- 
 cultural people. They b.uilt, it appears, their barns 
 within their walls for protection ; but they got 
 incidentally into quarrels wdth other neighboring 
 states, and it is not strange that they should have 
 taken the oj^portunity to compel them by force to 
 adopt their civilization, such as it was, in prefer- 
 ence to the mere foolish and savage method of their 
 own. I do not mean to say that the Roman was a 
 mild kind of discipline ; far from that. It was es- 
 tablished only by hard contests and fighting ; but it 
 was of all the most beneficial. In spite of all that 
 has been said and ought to be said about liberty, it 
 
PUNIC WARS 45 
 
 is true liberty to obey the best personal guidance, 
 either out of our own head or out of that of some 
 other. No one would wdsh to see some fool wan- 
 dering about at his own will, and without any re- 
 straint or direction ; we must admit it to be far bet- 
 ter for him if some wise man were to take charge of 
 him, even though by force, although that seems 
 but a coarse kind of operation. But fighting was 
 not at all the fundamental principle in their con- 
 quests ; it w^as their superior civilization which at- 
 tracted the surrounding nations to their centre. If 
 their course had been entirely unwise, all the world 
 would have risen in arms against the domineering 
 t3'rants forever claiming to be their rulers where 
 they had no right at all, and their power could not 
 have subsisted there as it did- 
 
 After they had conquered Pyrrhus, and before 
 their conflict, which took place a century after that, 
 with Greece, the event occurred which was the 
 crowning phenomenon of their history. They 
 found their way into the neighboring island of 
 Sicily, and there they met with the Carthaginians, 
 another ancient state, of great power and prosper- 
 ity, and, as far as probabilities went, more likely to 
 subject the whole world than Eome herself was. 
 But it was not so ordered. A collision ensued be- 
 tween them, w^hich lasted 120 years, and constituted 
 the three Punic Wars. It was the hardest struggle 
 Rome ever had — the hardest that ever was. The 
 
46 THE CAKTHAGINIANS 
 
 Carthaginians were as obstinate a people as the 
 Romans themselves. They were of the race called 
 Punic, Phoenic, or Phoenician, an Oriental people of 
 the family now called Semitic because descended 
 from Sem ; the same kind of people as the Jews, 
 and as distinguished as Jew^s for being a stiff- 
 necked people. I most sincerely rejoice that they 
 did not subdue the Romans, but that the Romans 
 got the better of them. We have indications which 
 show that, compared to the Romans, they were a 
 mean people, who thought of nothing but commerce, 
 would do anything for money, and w-ere exceedingly 
 cruel in their measures of aggrandizement, and in 
 all their measures. Their rites were of a kind per- 
 fectly horrid ; their religion was of that sort so 
 often denounced in the Bible, with which the Jews 
 were to have nothing to do. In the siege of Car- 
 thage the Romans relate that they offered their chil- 
 dren to Bel, who is the same as Moloch, " making 
 them to pass through the fire unto Moloch," in the 
 language of Scripture, for they had a statue of the 
 god in metal, which was heated red-hot, and they 
 flung these hapless wretches into his outspread 
 arms. Their injustice was proverbial ; the expres- 
 sion " Punic faith " was well justified by the facts. 
 This people, however, determined to exert their 
 whole strength against the Romans. 
 
 Hannibal, whom Napoleon conceived to be the 
 greatest captain, the greatest soldier of antiquity. 
 
HANNIBAL 47 
 
 was certainly a man of wonderful talent and tenac- 
 ity, maintaining himself for sixteen years in Italy 
 in spite of all the Roman power. He was scanda- 
 lously treated on his return by his own countrymen. 
 He was a most unfortunate man ; banished from 
 Carthage, and at last, to prevent his falling into the 
 hands of his enemies, the Romans, he had no re- 
 source but poisoning himself. Carthage, however, 
 was taken, and was burned for six days. It reminds 
 us of the destruction of Jerusalem ; for, as I have 
 observed, the Jews have always distinguished them- 
 selves with the same tenacity and obstinacy, cling- 
 ing to the same belief, probable or improbable, or 
 even impossible. How the Romans got on after that 
 we can see by the Commentaries which Julius Csesar 
 has left us of his own proceedings, how he spent ten 
 years of campaigns in Gaul cautiously planning all 
 his measures before he attempted to carry them into 
 effect. It is, indeed, a most interesting book, and 
 evinces the indomitable force of Roman energy. 
 The triumph of civil, methodic man over wild and 
 barbarous man ; of calm, patient discipline over 
 that valor which is without direction, which is 
 ready to die if necessary, but knows nothing further 
 than that. 
 
 Notwithstanding what writers have said, it is clear 
 that no one understands what the Roman Constitu- 
 tion actually was. Niebuhr has attempted it, but he 
 throws no light at all upon the subject, and I think 
 
48 THE EOMAW CONSTITUTIOX 
 
 that in the absence of information to draw any in- 
 ferences on one side or the other is extremely un- 
 wise. It appears to have been a very tumultuous 
 kind of polity, a continual struggle between the 
 Patricians and Plebeians, the latter of whom were 
 bent on having the lands of the State equally 
 divided between them and the upper orders. We 
 read of constant secessions to the Aventine, and 
 there was rough work very frequentl3% Therefore, 
 I cannot join in the lamentations made by some 
 over the downfall of the Republic when Csesar took 
 hold of it. It had been but a constant struggling 
 scramble for pre^', and it was well to end it, and to 
 see the wisest, cleanest, and most judicious man of 
 them place himself at the top of it. The Romans 
 under the empire attained to their complete gran- 
 deur, their dominion reached from the river Euphra- 
 tes away to Cadiz, from the border of the Arabian 
 desert to Severus' Wall up in the north of England. 
 And what an empire it was ! teaching mankind that 
 they should be tilling the ground, as they ought to 
 do, instead of fighting one another ! For that is the 
 real thing which every man is called on to do, to till 
 the ground, and not slay his poor brother man. 
 
 Coming now to their literature we find it to be 
 a copy of that of the Greeks, but there is a kind of 
 Roman worth in many of their books. Their lan- 
 guage, too, has a character belonging to Rome. 
 Etymologists have traced many words in it to the 
 
ROMAN LITERATURE 49 
 
 Pelasgic, and some have beeu followed out so far 
 as the Sanskrit, proving thus the existence in the 
 Romans of the two kinds of blood which I have in- 
 dicated. Its peculiarly distinguishing character, 
 however, is its imperative sound and structure, fine- 
 ly adapted to command. 
 
 So in their books, as, for instance, the poems of 
 Virgil and Horace, we see the Roman character of 
 a still strength. But their greatest work was writ- 
 ten on the face of the planet in which we live. 
 Their Cyclopean highways, extending from coun- 
 trv to country, their aqueducts, their Coliseums, 
 their whole polity ! And how spontaneous all these 
 thiugs were ! how little any Roman knew what 
 Rome was ! 
 
 There is a tendency in all historians to place a 
 plan in the head of everyone of their great charac- 
 ters, by which he regulated his actions, forgetting 
 that it is not possible for any man to have foreseen 
 events, and to have embraced at once the vast com- 
 plication of the circumstances that were to happen. 
 It is more reasonable to attribute national progress 
 to a great, deep instinct in every individual actor. 
 Who of us, for example, knows England, though he 
 may contribute to her prosperity ? Everyone here 
 follows his own object ; one goes to India, another 
 aspires to the army, and each after his own ends ; 
 but all thus co-operate together after all, one Eng- 
 lishman with another, in addinGf to the stren<?th and 
 4 
 
50 NATIONAL CHAEACTER 
 
 wealth of the whole nation. The wisest govern- 
 ment has only to direct this spirit into a proper 
 channel, but to believe that it can lay down a plan 
 for the creation of national enterprise is an entire 
 ioWy. These incidents form the deep foundation of 
 a national character ; when they fail the nation fails 
 too, just as when the roots of a tree fail and the sap 
 can mount the trunk and diffuse itself among the 
 leaves no longer, the tree stops too. 
 
 IDuring a healthy, sound, progressive period of 
 (national existence there is in general no literature 
 at all. 
 
 In a time of active exertion the nation will not 
 speak out its mind. It is not till a nation is ready 
 to decline that its literature makes itself remarkable, 
 and this is observable in all nations, for there are 
 many ways in which a man or a nation expresses it- 
 self besides books. J The point is not to be able to 
 rte a book, the point is to have the true mind for 
 Everything in that case which the nation does 
 will be equally significant of its mind. If any great 
 man among the Romans, Julius Csesar or Cato for 
 example, had never done anything but till the 
 ground they would have acquired equal excellence 
 in that way. They would have ploughed as they 
 conquered. Everything a great man does carries 
 the traces of a great man. Perhaps even there is 
 the most energetic virtue when there is no talk 
 about virtue at all. I wish my friends here to con- 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF GREATNESS 51 
 
 sider and keep this in view, that progress and civ- 
 iHzation may go on unknown to the people them- 
 selves, that there may be a primeval feeling of en- 
 ergy and virtue in the founders of a state whether 
 they can fathom it or not. This feehng gets nearer 
 every generation to be uttered, for though the son 
 learns only such things as his father has invented, 
 yet he will discover other things, and teach as well 
 his own as his father's inventions in his turn to his 
 children, and so it will go on working itself out till 
 it gets into conversation and speech. We shall ob- 
 serve precisely this when we come to the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. All great things in short, whether / 
 national or individual, are unconscious things ! I \ 
 cannot get room to insist on this here, but we shiall 
 see them as we go on, like seeds thrown out upon a 
 wide fertile field ; no man sees what they are, but 
 they grow up before us and become great. 
 
 What did that man when he built his house know 
 of Rome or of Julius Csesar that were to come? 
 They were the product of time ! Faust, of Mentz, 
 who invented printing, that subject of so much ad- 
 miration in our times, never thought of the results 
 that were to follow ; he found it a cheaper way of 
 publishing his Bibles, and he used it for no other 
 purpose than to undersell the other booksellers. 
 In short, from the Christian religion down to the 
 poorest genuine song there has been no conscious- 
 ness in the minds of the first authors of anything 
 
52 THE iENEID 
 
 of excelleDce. Shakespeare, too, never seemed to 
 imagine that he had any talent at all, his only ob- 
 ject seems to have been to gather a little money, 
 for he was very necessitous ; and when we do find 
 consciousness the thing done is sure to be not a 
 great thing at all ; it is a very suspicious circum- 
 stance when anything makes a great noise about it- 
 self ; it is like a drum, producing a great deal of 
 sound, but very like to be empty. 
 
 I shall here take a short survey of Roman books. 
 The poem of Virgil, the ^ueid, has long enjoyed, 
 and will continue to enjoy, a great reputation. It 
 ranks as an Epic poem, and one, too, of the same 
 sort of name as the Iliad of Homer. But I think 
 it entirely a different poem, and very inferior to 
 Homer. There is that fatal consciousness, that 
 knowledge that he is writing an epic, the plot, the 
 style, all is vitiated by that one fault ! The charac- 
 ters, too, are noue of them to be compared to the 
 healthy, whole-hearted, robust men of Homer, the 
 " much-enduring " Ulysses, or Achilles, or Agamem- 
 non. iEueas, the hero of the poem, is a lachrymose 
 sort of man altogether. He is introduced in the 
 middle of a storm, but instead of handling the 
 tackle and doing what he can for the ship he sits 
 still, groaning over his misfortunes ! *' Was ever 
 mortal," he asks, " so unfortunate as I am ? chased 
 from port to port by the persecuting Deities who 
 give me no respite ! " and so on. And then he tells 
 
VIRGIL 53 
 
 them how that he is the "pious iEneas,"in short, he 
 is just that sort of hichrymose man there is hardly 
 anything of a man iu the iuside of him. But Virgil 
 succeeded much better in his other poems. This 
 -3Eneid is not a fair sample of what he could do ; his 
 descriptions of natural scenery are very beautiful, 
 and he was a great poet when he did not observe 
 himself, and when he let himself alone. 
 
 His poetry is soft and sweet. In his women, too, 
 he succeeded wonderfully ; his Dido was unmatched 
 by anything that had gone before. He was a mild 
 and gentle man, born poor, and the son of a peas- 
 ant. He got his education from his father, and he 
 cultivated his paternal inheritance, but being dis- 
 possessed by some soldiers, as he himself tells us, 
 of his estate, he had to go to Rome about it ; this 
 was the begiuning of his fortune. He became 
 known to Mecsenas, and afterward to Augustus. 
 He was a man of mild deportment, insomuch that 
 the people of Naples, with whom he lived, used to 
 call him " the Maid." He was an amiable man, and 
 always in bad health, much subject to dyspepsia, 
 and to all kinds of maladies that afflict men of 
 genius ! The effect of his poetry is like that of 
 some laborious mosaic of many years in putting 
 together. There is also the Roman method, the 
 Roman amplitude and regularity, just as these 
 qualities were exhibited in the empire, but entirely 
 without that abandonment of self which Homer had. 
 
54 HORACE 
 
 His sentiments and descriptive sketches are often 
 borrowed out of Homer or Theocritus, but the style 
 and the poetry of the whole overspreading the work 
 with a beautiful enamel enable us to judge of what 
 he might have been had he less studied to produce 
 effect. We must, however, conclude that he was, 
 properly speaking, not an Epic poet. 
 
 Of Horace I can afford to say almost nothing. 
 He, too, was a sort of friend of Caesar. His was a 
 similar history to that of Virgil, and, like him, he 
 was not betrayed into perverseness by the posses- 
 sion of great wealth. There was in him the same 
 polish, " a curious felicit}^," as one person exj^resses 
 it. I cannot admire always his moral pliilosoph3\ 
 He is sometimes not at all edifying in his senti- 
 ments. He belonged to the Epicurean school of 
 philosophy, an unbelieving man, with no thought 
 for anything but how to make himself comfortable, 
 and to enjoy himself in this world; until a dark 
 melancholy comes over him, at which time his opin- 
 ions appear in their most respectable shape, and 
 then he sees the all-devouring death expecting him, 
 he knows well with what issues, and at last takes 
 refuge from the contemplation in Epicurean enjo}'- 
 ment ! In his writings he displays a worldly kind 
 of sagacity, but it is a great sagacity ! 
 
 It is remarkable how soon afterward Komau 
 literature had quite degenerated. Ovid, the next 
 celebrated poet, has an ever-present consciousness 
 
SENECA 55 
 
 of himself, and is very inferior to Horace cr Virgil. 
 From this time we get more and more into self-con- 
 sciousness and into scepticism, and not long after- 
 ward without being able to find any bottom at all 
 to it. I refer to Seneca and Lucan, his nej^hew, and 
 the whole family of Senecas. Seneca was originally 
 from Cordova in Spain ; he got into politics, and he 
 was Nero's master or tutor. 
 
 He has left some works on philosophy, and there 
 are some tragedies (twelve, I think) which go by his 
 name. Some of these are said to have been written 
 by his nephew, Lucan ; at all events, they were 
 written by one of Seneca's school, and fully imbued 
 with his philosophj'. Now, if we want an example 
 of a diseased self-consciousness, an exaggerated im- 
 agination, a mind blown up with all sorts of strange 
 conceits, the spasmodic state of intellect, in short, 
 of a man morally unable to speak the truth on any 
 subject, we have it in Seneca. He was led away by 
 this strange humor into all sorts of cant and insin- 
 cerity. He exaggerated the virtues, for instance, to 
 an extreme quite ridiculous, asserting that there is 
 no such thing as vice at all, that man is all power^l 
 and like to a god in this world, having it in his power 
 to triumph over evils and calamities of all kinds by 
 his mere will ; and all this while Seneca himself was 
 a mere pettifogging courtier, careful of nothing but 
 amassing money, and flattering Nero in all his ways. 
 Indeed, it is impossible to read such writings as he 
 
56 TACITUS 
 
 has left us without suspecting something. We can- 
 not help saying, " All is not right here." I willingly 
 admit that he had a strong desire to be sincere, and 
 that he endeavored to convince himself that he was 
 right; but even this, when in connection with the 
 rest, constitutes of itself a fault of a dangerous kind. 
 We may trace it all to that same spirit of self- 
 conceit, pride, and vanity, which is the ruin of all 
 things in this world, and always will be. The vices 
 of this kind of literature connect themselves in a 
 natural sequence with the decline of Roman virtue 
 altogether, when that people had once come to 
 disbelief in their own gods, and to put all their 
 confidence in their money, believing that with 
 their money they could always buy their money's 
 worth. 
 
 This order of things was closely succeeded by 
 moral abominations of the most dreadful kind, such 
 as were not known before nor ever since, the most 
 fearful abominations under the sun. But it is curious 
 to observe that such is the power of genius to make 
 itself heard and felt in all times that the most sig- 
 nificant and the greatest of Roman writers occurs 
 posterior to these times of Seneca — I mean Tacitus. 
 In those extraordinary circumstances of his times he 
 displays more of the Roman spirit, perhaps, than 
 any one before him. His mind was not hid under 
 all that black mass of blasphemy, covetousness, and 
 villainy. He shows it in his estimate of the Ger- 
 
TACITUS ON THE GERMANS 57 
 
 mans even, for it was something new for any Roman 
 to speak favorably of barbarians, or to hold any other 
 opinion of their fellow-men than that every man was 
 born to be a slave to Rome. In the Germans he 
 sees a kind of worth, and seems to contemplate with 
 a kind of shuddering anticipation the time when 
 these Germans were to come and sweep away his 
 corrupted country. " The Germans," he says, " wage 
 a continual war with one another ; may the gods 
 grant that it may always be so." In the middle of 
 all those facts in the literature of his country, which 
 correspond so well with what we know of the history 
 of Rome itself, in the middle of all that quackery 
 and puffery coming into play, when critics wrote 
 books to teach you how to hold out your arm and 
 your leg, in the middle of all this absurd and wicked 
 period, Tacitus was born, and was enabled to be a 
 Roman after all ! He stood like a Colossus at the 
 edge of a dark night, and he sees events of all kinds 
 hurrying past him and plunging he knows not where, 
 but evidently to no good, for falsehood and coward- 
 ice never yet ended anywhere but in destruction. 
 He sees all this and narrates it with grave calmness, 
 giving us quietly his notions of Tiberius and others, 
 and, as he goes on, he does not seem startled but 
 full of deep views, unable to account for it but con- 
 vinced that it will end well somehow or other, for he 
 has no belief but the old Roman belief, full of their 
 old feelings of goodness and honesty. He is greatly 
 
58 AGE OF SPECULATION 
 
 distinguislied from all of that time, greatly distin- 
 guished from Livy, who has collected together all 
 the soft and beautiful myths of the time and woven 
 them into a highly interesting history ; but, as a his- 
 torian, he was a far inferior man to Tacitus. 
 
 I shall now quit the subject of Pagan literature, 
 for after Tacitus all things went on sinking down 
 more and more into all kinds of disease and ruin. 
 After the survey which w^e have made, we come to 
 the conclusion that there is a strange coherence be- 
 tween the healthy belief and outward destiny of a 
 nation. Thus the Greeks went on with their wars 
 and everything else most prosperously till they be- 
 came conscious of their condition — till the man be- 
 came solicitous after other times. Socrates, we saw, 
 is a kind of starting-point, from which we trace 
 their fall into confusion and wreck of all sorts. So 
 it was with the Romans. Cato the Elder used to 
 tell them: "The instant you get the Greek litera- 
 ture among you there will be an end of the old Ro- 
 man sj^irit." He was not listened to ; the rage for 
 Greek speculation increased ; he himself found it im- 
 possible to keep back, although he was very angry 
 about it, and in his old age he learned the Greek 
 language and had it taught to his sons. It was too 
 late ; nobod}^ could believe any longer, and every- 
 one had set his mind upon being a man and think- 
 ing for himself. In the middle of all that the event 
 occurred, which I shall repeat in the language of 
 
TACITUS AND CHEISTIANITY 59 
 
 Tacitus, who, after mentioning that in the reign 
 of Nero Kome was set on fire, and, as was said, by 
 order of that prince, who did it most probably be- 
 cause he wished to build some new streets and dis- 
 liked to take the trouble of clearing away the old 
 houses in any other manner, and that he sat playing 
 his harp and watching the fire, whereupon a great 
 rumor became raised abroad, goes on to say, as I 
 have almost literally rendered it from the Ann. xv. 
 chap. 44 : 
 
 " So for the abolishing of that rumor he caused 
 to be indicted and afterward punished with exqui- 
 site pains a people hated for their wickedness (j^ei^ 
 flagUia invisos), whom the vulgar called Christians. 
 The author of that sect was one Christ (Christus 
 qiiidam), who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to 
 death by the procurator of Syria, Pontius Pilate, 
 for his hateful superstition {propter exitiale sitper- 
 stitlone), whereby being for a time suppressed, it 
 broke out again not only in Judaea, where it first 
 arose, but spread itself also unto other countries, 
 and finally unto Rome itself, where all things wicked 
 and horrible come at last to gather themselves to- 
 gether." 
 
 Tacitus lived eighty-eight years after the events 
 which he here describes. It was given to him to 
 see no deeper into the matter than appears from 
 the above account of it. But he and the great em- 
 pire were soon to pass away forever ! — and it was 
 
60 THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE 
 
 in this despised sect — this Ghridus quidam — it was 
 in this new character that all the future world lay 
 hid! 
 
 This will furnish us with the subject of our next 
 lecture. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 May 11th 
 
 SECOND PEKIOD 
 
 MiDDi.E Ages— Christianity ; Faith — Inventions — Pi- 
 ous Foundations— Pope Hildebrand— Crusades— 
 Troubadours— NiEBELUNGEN Lied. 
 
 We have now to direct our attention to a ruder 
 state of man, and we shall observe with what 
 shrewdness man will in this state lay hold of the 
 information and civilization afforded him. For we 
 have traced our subject through the Old World, 
 and now we come to the New ; we investigated, first 
 among the Greeks and next among the Romans, 
 the system of Polytheism and Paganism. We have 
 now an equal period of history to survey, that of 
 the modern era, for about 1800 years from the birth . 
 of Christ ; having already passed through as much 
 before that epoch as we are now from it. We shall, 
 therefore, commence with what 'we can call the 
 Transition Period, or period of the formation of this 
 present life of mau, that in which all our beliefs 
 and our general way of existence shape themselves. 
 
62 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The Middle Ages used to be called ages of darkness, 
 rudeness, and barbarit}^ " the Millennium of Dark- 
 ness," as one writer calls them ; but it is universally 
 apparent now that these ages are not to be so 
 called. The only writers in the early part of those 
 times — times of convulsions, cruel periods — were 
 Romans. The barbarians who rushed out into the 
 scene of conquest were not given to writing, and 
 accordingly these writers indulge in much abuse of 
 their invaders and wild lamentation, recounting the 
 fall of their empire with a dense shriek of horror 
 and indignation. With them, therefore, the name 
 of barbarian is a synonym for whatever is bad and 
 base ; to this day the name of "Goth" is so applied, 
 even with us, the descendants of those conquerors. 
 It was a great and fertile period, however — that in- 
 vasion of the barbarians and their settlement in the 
 Roman Empire. There is a sentence which I find 
 in Goethe, full of meaning in this regard. It must 
 be noted, he says, "that belief and unbelief are two 
 opposite principles in human nature. The theme 
 of all human history, so far as we are able to per- 
 ceive it, is the contest between these two principles." 
 "All periods," he goes on to say, "in wdiich belief 
 predominates, in which it is the main element, the 
 inspiring principle of action, are distinguished by 
 great, soul-stirring, fertile events, and worthy of 
 perpetual remembrance. And, on the other hand, 
 when unbelief gets the upper hand, that age is uu- 
 
BELIEF AND UNBELIEF 63 
 
 fertile, unproductive, and intrinsically mean ; in 
 which there is no pabulum for the spirit of man, 
 and no one can get nourishment for himself ! " 
 This passage is one of the most pregnant utterances 
 ever delivered, and we shall do well to keep it in 
 mind in these disquisitions on this period ; for in 
 tlie Middle Ages we see the great phenomenon of 
 belief gaining the victory over unbelief. And this 
 same remark is altogether true of all things what- 
 ever in this world, and it throws much light on the 
 history of the whole world, and that in two ways, 
 for belief serves both as a fact itself and the cause 
 of other facts. It appears only in a healthy mind, 
 and it is at once an indication of it and the cause 
 of it For though doubt may be necessary to a cer- 
 tain extent in order to prepare subject-matter for 
 reflection, it can be only after all a morbid condi- 
 tion of the intellect, and an intermediate one ; but 
 that speculation should end in doubt is wholly un- 
 reasonable. It is, as I have said, a morbid state ; it is 
 a state of mental paralysis — a highly painful state of 
 mind, one which the healthy man won't entertain 
 at all, but, if he can do nothing better with it, dis- 
 misses it altogether. There is no use in it that one 
 can understand except to give the mind something 
 to work on ! Belief, then, is the indication and the 
 cause of health, and when we see it in a whole 
 world we ma}' be sure that the world is able to say 
 and to do something. It is the heart rather than 
 
64 
 
 the intellect that Goethe has in mind in the passage 
 quoted. It is the heart after all that most influ- 
 ences. Our knowledge of physics, our whole circle 
 of scientific acquirements, depends on \vhat figure 
 each man will give it and shape to himself in his 
 own heart ! 
 
 Thus in the Middle Ages, being in contact with 
 fact and reality, in communion with truth and nat- 
 ure, not merely with hearsays and vain formulas, 
 but feeling the presence of truth in the heart, that 
 is the great fact of the time — belief ! And this is 
 independent of their dogmas. In the genuine Pa- 
 gan times, too, among much that is absurd and vep- 
 rehensible, w^e found a great good accomplished by 
 its means ; there w^as there also a belief, which was 
 accompanied by an adjustment of themselves toward 
 these opinions of theirs. They had discovered and 
 recognized in themselves, whether they expressed it 
 in words or not, the existence of a Supreme Ar- 
 rangement ; they had not discovered it without per- 
 ceiving the numerous inconsistencies and contradic- 
 tions of their religious system ; these had doubtless 
 struck them at first, but they had adjusted them- 
 selves to that ; but their way of religion and life 
 had this kind of belief in it— belief in one's self! 
 They did not fail to observe what a thing man is — 
 what a high, royal nature is given to him ! This 
 appears in particular in later times, when the old 
 religion had altogether passed away, and its intel- 
 
THE CYNIC PHILOSOPHERS Q5 
 
 lectual results only remaiued, in their philosophers, 
 for instance, and strikingly above all others in the 
 Stoics, a set extremely j^revalent in Rome ; in later 
 times all that the Romans had to adhere to in the 
 way of belief. 
 
 One sees in their opinions a gi-eat truth, but ex- 
 tremely exaggerated : that bold assertion, for ex- 
 ample, in the face of all reason and fact, that pain 
 and pleasure are the same thing ; that man is indif- 
 ferent to both ; that he is a king in this world ; that 
 nothing can conquer him ! Still more strikingly is 
 it displayed in a peculiar sort of Stoicism, the Cynic 
 set of philosophers. There have been few more 
 striking characters than that of Diogenes the Cynic, 
 adopting the Stoic principle and carrying it out 
 to its extreme development, and professing to set 
 himself above all accidental circumstances, such as 
 poverty or disgrace, atid taking them rather as a 
 sort of schooling, as a lesson he was to learn and in 
 the best manner he could. D'Alembert pronounces 
 him to have been one of the gi-eatest men of an- 
 tiquit}^ although there were in him several things 
 counter to D'Alembert's way of thinking ; decency, 
 for example, was of no significance for him. It is 
 strange to see that remarkable interview — the one 
 the conqueror of all the world, in his pride and 
 glory and splendor ; the other a poor needy man, 
 with nothing besides his skin save the soul that was 
 in him ! Alexander asked him in their interview 
 5 
 
66 CHEISTIANITY 
 
 (for Diogenes had a sharp, sour tongue in his head) 
 if he could give him anything ? " You can stand out 
 of the sun and give me light." That was all Alex- 
 ander could give Diogenes ! This was certaiulj a 
 great thing, and altogether worthy to be recog- 
 nized ; it Avas much for man. But if we look into 
 the Christian religion, that dignification of man's 
 life and nature, we shall find, indeed, this also in it 
 — to believe in one's self, that thing given to him 
 by the Creator. But then how unspeakably more 
 human is this belief, not held in proud scorn and 
 contempt of other men, in cynical disdain or indig- 
 nation at their paltrinesses, but received by extermi- 
 nating pride altogether from the mind, and held in 
 degradation and deep human sufferings. There is 
 darkness and afHiction in all things around it in its 
 origin. We saw what it appeared to Tacitus, the 
 greatest man of his time, some seventy years after 
 its origin. Its outward history was on a par with 
 its interior meaning ; its province was not to en- 
 courage pride, but to cut that down altogether. 
 There is a remarkable passage of Goethe, where he 
 calls it " the worship of Sorrow," its doctrine " the 
 sanctuary of Sorrow." It was, he continues (re- 
 garding it simply on its secular side, not in view of 
 any particular religious sect, but just as the Divinest 
 thing that could be looked at), the showing to man 
 for the first time that suffering and degradation, 
 the most hateful to the sensual regard, possessed a 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF ETERNITY 67 
 
 beauty "svliich surpassed all other beauty. It is not 
 our part to touch on sacred things, but we should 
 altogether fail to discover the meaning of this His- 
 torical Period if we did not lay deeply to heart the 
 meaning of Christianity. In another point of view 
 we may regard it as the revelation of eternity exist- 
 ing in the middle of time to man. He stands here 
 between the conflux of two elements, the Past and 
 the Future ; the thing that v/e are at this moment 
 speaking or doing comes to us from the beginning 
 of days. The word I am this moment speaking 
 came to me from Cadmus of Thebes, or some other 
 ancient member of the great family of Adam, and it 
 will go on to an endless future ! 
 
 Every man may with truth say that he waited for 
 a whole eternity to be born, and that he has now a 
 whole eternity waiting to see what he will do now 
 that he is born. It is this which gives to this little 
 period of life, so contemptible when weighed against 
 eternit}-, a significance it never had without it. It 
 is thus an infinite arena, where infinite interests are 
 played out ; not an action of man but will have its 
 truth realized and will go on forever. His most in- 
 significant action, for some are more so than others, 
 carries its print of this endless duration. 
 
 This truth, whatever may be the opinions we 
 hold on Christian doctrines, or whether we hold 
 upon them a sacred silence or not, we must recog- 
 nize in Christianity and its belief, independently of 
 
68 CONVEESION OF THE GERMANS 
 
 all theories, for it was not revealed till then, and it 
 is not possible to imagine results of a more signifi- 
 cant nature than those it produced. One can fancy 
 with what mute astonishment the invading barba- 
 rians must have paused when their wild barbarous 
 minds were first saluted with the tidings of that great 
 Eternity lying round the world, this earth now be- 
 come an intelligible thing to them ; how this wild 
 German people, heated with conquest and tumult, 
 paused and took it all in, this doctrine, without ar- 
 gument. I believe that argument was not at all 
 used ; it was done by the conviction of the men 
 themselves, who spoke into convincible minds ; and 
 herein is the great distinction of ancient from 
 modern Europe, nay, of modern Europe from all 
 the world besides. 
 
 It has been truly said by Goethe that this is a 
 progress that we are all capable of making and 
 destined to make, and from which, when made, we 
 can never retrograde. There may be all manner of 
 arguments and delusions, and true and false specu- 
 lations about it ; but we can well understand the 
 Divine doctrine of Eternity, manifesting itself in 
 time, and time drawing all its meaning from 
 eternity. It only requires a pure heart, and then 
 if all else were destroyed, if there were even no 
 Bible, and a mere tradition remaining of its having 
 once been, from the progress once made, we should 
 never go back. If to this sublime proceeding we 
 
LOYALTY 69 
 
 add the character of the northern people — the 
 German people, best suited of all others to receive 
 the faith and maintain it and develop it, being- 
 endowed with the largest nature, the deepest afifec- 
 tions ; if, I say, we add these together, we shall 
 have the two leading phenomena of the Middle 
 Ages, the possibility of great nations constructing 
 themselves, and of all good things coming out of 
 them. It is curious accordingly to see with what 
 facility the matter proceeds ; in two centuries after 
 the people of the North had begun to break in on 
 the South, from Alaric downward, how quietly do 
 all things settle down into arrangement, in one just 
 way, everything with a new character of its own, and 
 all disjDlaying that shrewdness which, to refer to the 
 text with which we set out, marks the intellectual 
 efforts of societies in their rude state. 
 
 There was that thing which we call loyalty. 
 That attachment of man to man, indeed, is as old 
 as the existence of man himself. The kings and 
 chiefs of early times had their dependents ; Achilles, 
 for example, had his Myrmidons. The feeling must 
 exist among men if they are to maintain themselves 
 in society. At the same time, it had never before 
 nor anywhere existed in such a shape as it has since 
 assumed among the modern nations of Europe, the 
 descendants of the Romans and Germans, men of 
 the deepest affections, and imbued with the sacred 
 principle of Christianity ; in them resulting in every- 
 
70 THE CHURCH 
 
 thing great and noble, and in this feeling of loyalty 
 among others. In these times loyalty is much kept 
 out of sight and little appreciated, and many minds 
 regard it as a sort of obsolete chimera, looking 
 more to independence or some such thing now re- 
 garded as a great virtue ; and this is very just, and 
 most suitable to this time of movement and pro- 
 gress. It must be granted at once that to exact 
 loyalty to things so bad as to be not worth being 
 loyal to is quite an insupportable thing, and one 
 that the world would spurn at once. This must be 
 conceded ; yet the better thinkers will see that loy- 
 alty is a principle perennial in human nature, the 
 highest that unfolds itself there in a temporal, secu- 
 lar point of view ; for there is no other kind of way 
 by which human society can be safely constructed 
 than that feeling of lo3^alty, whereby those who are 
 worthy are reverenced by those who are capable of 
 reverence. Thus, in the Middle Ages it was the 
 noblest phenomenon, the finest phase in society 
 anywhere. Loyalty was the foundation of the state. 
 Another great cardinal point, a hinge on which 
 all other things were suspended, was the Church, 
 the institution appointed to keep alive the sacred 
 light of religion. No doubt the men of that age 
 held many absurd doctrines, but we must remember 
 that it is not scientific doctrines that constitute 
 belief : it is the sincerity of heart which constitutes 
 the whole merit of belief. Many of their doctrines, 
 
PLINY' S LETTER TO TRAJAN 71 
 
 doubtless, were absurd and entirely incredible, but 
 we sliall blind ourselves to their significance if we 
 do not see into them independently of theology. 
 It is curious to trace the phenomena of the Christian 
 Church in early days, how it grows on in neglect 
 and indifference. Besides the remarkable passage 
 out of Tacitus, which I read in my last lecture, we 
 have another curious document probably a little 
 later, the celebrated letter of Pliny to the Emperor 
 Trajan respecting the Christians of Bithynia. It 
 was written prior to the year 100 a.d., but there is 
 no date to it. It is very striking to observe how, in 
 the middle of that black night which then over- 
 spread the earth, of that great darkness, a small 
 light begins to make itself seen ! But Pliny could 
 not see anything important in these people. He 
 writes that "certain people among them admit that 
 they are Christians, some say that they were two or 
 three years ago, but have since left them." But 
 some did admit that they were Christians. They 
 were far, he goes on to say, from being given to 
 lies and bad practices (flagitia, flagitious practices) ; 
 they told him that they met together and exhorted 
 one another on certain days (doubtless on the 
 Christian Sabbath) before sunrise, precisely to avoid 
 all that, and that after so exhorting themselves they 
 met together at a friendly repast (doubtless this was 
 the Communion). That they were quite fi-ee and 
 unspotted, however, from the vices with which the 
 
72 GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 
 
 world charged them, that world itself wholly im- 
 mersed in those very vices ! And he recommends 
 that they should be let alone, and should not be 
 persecuted, for he does not think that they will last 
 much longer ; they had agreed to give up meeting 
 together, and to avoid all that would give offence. 
 "What is a very remarkable fact, he goes on to say 
 that he thinks that they may go on with their opin- 
 ions without danger to the State religion, for that 
 he had been recently refitting the temples, and that 
 they were now more crowded than ever they were, 
 and, in short, that the old spirit was returning, and 
 that everything would revive. This was the char- 
 acter of the Church down to the end of the first 
 century. From that time churches began to spring 
 up everywhere, synods were established, and bishops 
 in every church ; there is no doubt, too, that the 
 seat of the main ecclesiastical power was at Eome, 
 the Bishop of which city had a pre-eminence among 
 the bishops. This became fully established under 
 Gregory the Great. 
 
 At that time the name of the chief Bishop was 
 not Pope but Primate. From Rome he sent his 
 commands to all parts of the Christian world. He 
 it was who sent the monk Augustine with a few 
 other monks to this country, who converted our 
 Saxon ancestors to Christianity. Like all other 
 matters there were contradictions and inconsistencies 
 without end, but it should be re^iarded in its ideal. 
 
HILDEBRAND 73 
 
 The greatest height to which it ever did attain in 
 the world was in the time of Pope Hildebrand, 
 about the year 1070, or soon after the conquest of 
 England by William the Conqueror. That was its 
 time of highest perfection. All Europe then was 
 firm and unshaken in the faith. It abounded in 
 churches, and monks, and convents, founded for 
 meditation and silent study ; that was the ideal of 
 monachism. It was the age of teachers and preach- 
 ers of all kinds, sent into all parts of the world to 
 convert all the heathen into Christianity. It was 
 the Church itself, for which human society was 
 then constituted, for w^hat were human things in 
 comparison with the eternal world which lay beyond 
 them. Hildebrand was, it appears, though not 
 certainly, the son of a Tuscan peasant ; he was a 
 great and deep thinker, and at an early period he 
 entered the monastic life, as it was natural he 
 should, for there was no other congenial employ- 
 ment open to him. He became one of the monks 
 in the famous monastery of Clugny. There he soon 
 distinguished himself for his superior attainments, 
 was successively promoted and employed by several 
 Popes on missions of importance, and at last he 
 became Pope himself. One can well see from his 
 history what it was he meant. He has been re- 
 garded by some classes of Protestants as the wicked- 
 est of men, but I do hope that we have at this day 
 outgrown all that. He perceived that the Church 
 
74 THE TEMPORAL POWER 
 
 was the highest thing in the world, and he iJesolved 
 that it should be at the top of the whole world, 
 animating human things and giving them their 
 main guidance. He first published the Decretal 
 Order on the celibacy of the clergy, determined 
 that they should have nothing to do with worldly 
 affairs, but should work as soldiers enlisted in a 
 sacred cause. 
 
 There was another pretension made by him, 
 which, indeed, had been the subject of controversy 
 before, but which Hildebrand put forward in quite 
 a new light. That was, that popes, bishops, and 
 priests had no right to be invested with their offices 
 by the Emperor of Germany, or any temporal lord, 
 but that being once nominated by the Church they 
 were henceforth validly invested with their offices, 
 and this was so because the world could have no 
 legitimate control in things spiritual. The Emperor 
 of Germany, at that time Henry IV., a young man 
 and not of sufficient wisdom to know the age, re- 
 sisted this pretension, and the Pope resisted him, 
 and there ensued great quantities of confused strug- 
 gling. At last, in the month of January, 1077, at 
 the castle of Canossa, now in ruins near Eeggio in 
 Modena, whither Hildebrand had retired after hav- 
 ing excommunicated the Germans, and freed the 
 Saxons then in arms against Henry's authority, 
 Henry became reduced to the painful necessity of 
 coming away to him, and offering to submit to any 
 
HENllY AT CANOSSA 75 
 
 punishment the Pope should appoint. His recep- 
 tion was most humiliating ; he was obliged to leave 
 all his attendants at some distance, and come him- 
 self in the garb of a penitent with nothing on him 
 but a woollen cloth, and there to stand for three 
 days in the snow before he was suffered to come 
 into the Pope's presence ! One would think from 
 all this that Hildebrand was a proud man, but he 
 was not a proud man at all, and seems from many 
 circumstances to have been, on the contrary, a man 
 of very great humility ; but here he treated himself 
 as the representative of Christ, and far beyond all 
 earthly authorities, and he reasoned that if Christ 
 was higher than the Emperor the Emperor ought to 
 subject himself to the Church's power as all Europe 
 was obliged to do. In these circumstances, doubt- 
 less, there are many questionable things, but then 
 there are many cheering things, for we see the son 
 of a poor Tuscan peasant, solely by the suj)erior 
 spiritual force that was in him, humble a great 
 Emperor at the head of the iron force of Europe ! 
 And to look at it in a tolerant point of view, it is 
 really very grand, it is the spirit of Europe set above 
 the body of Europe, mind triumphant over brute 
 force ! 
 
 Hildebrand endured great miseries after that ; he 
 was for three years besieged by Henry in the castle 
 of St. Angelo until he died. Some have feared that 
 the tendency of such things is to found a theocracy, 
 
76 THE CRUSADES 
 
 and have imagined that if this had gone on till our 
 days a most abject superstition would have become 
 established. But this is entirely a vain theory: 
 The clay that is about man is alwaj's sufficiently 
 ready to assert its rights ; the danger is always the 
 other way, that the spiritual part of man will be- 
 come overlaid with his bodily part. 
 
 This, then, was the Church. The Church and 
 the loyalty of the time were the two hinges of soci- 
 ety ; and that society was in consequence distin- 
 guished from all societies which had preceded it, 
 presenting an infinitely greater diversity of view, 
 a better humanity, a largeness of capacity. This 
 society has since undergone many changes, but I 
 hope that spirit may go on for countless ages yet, 
 the spirit which at that period was set going. 
 
 A strange phase of the healthy belief, the deep 
 belief of the time, were the Crusades. I am far 
 from vindicating the Crusades in a political point 
 of view, but at the same time we should miss the 
 grand apex of that life if we did not for a moment 
 dwell upon these events. It was a strange thing to 
 see how Peter, a jDOor monk, recently come home 
 from Syria, but fully convinced of the propriety of 
 the step, set out on his mission through Europe ; 
 how he talked about it to the Pope, regarding it as 
 a proper and indispensably necessary duty to re- 
 move the abomination of Mahometanism from the 
 sacred places, till in 1096 the Council of Clermont 
 
PETER THE HERMIT 77 
 
 was held in Auvergne. One sees Peter riding 
 along, dressed in bis brown cloak, with the rope of 
 the penitent tied around him, swaying all hearts 
 and burning them up with zeal, and stirring up 
 steel-clad Europe till it shook itself at his words. 
 What a contrast to that greatest of orators, De- 
 mosthenes, spending nights and years in the con- 
 struction of those balanced sentences which are still 
 read with admiration, descending into the smallest 
 details, speaking with pebbles in his mouth and the 
 waves of the sea beside him ; and all his way of life 
 in this manner occupied during many years, and 
 then to eud in simply nothing at all, for he did 
 nothing for his country with all his eloquence ; and 
 then see this poor monk start out here without any 
 art at all, but with something far greater than art ! 
 For as Demosthenes was once asked, what was the 
 secret of a fine orator, and he replied, action ! 
 action ! action ! so, if I were asked it, I should say, 
 belief ! belief ! belief ! He must be first persuaded 
 himself if he wish to persuade other people. 
 
 The Crusades altogether lasted upward of 100 
 years ; Jerusalem was taken in 1099. Some have 
 admired them because they served to bring all Eu- 
 rope into communication with itself, others because 
 it produced the elevation of the middle classes ; but 
 I say that the great result which characterizes them 
 and gives them all their merit is, that in them Eu- 
 rope for one moment proved its belief, proved that 
 
78 CHARACTEE OF THE AGE 
 
 it believed in the invisible v^^orld which surrounds 
 the outward visible world, that this belief had for 
 once entered into the circumstances of man ! This 
 fact that for once something sacred entered into the 
 minds of nations, has been more productive of prac- 
 tical results than any other could be ; it lives yet, 
 transmitting itself by unseen channels as all good 
 things do in this world. 
 
 In these ages it is not to be expected that there 
 was any literature : it was a healthy age. We have 
 remarked in the last lecture that the appearance of 
 literature is a sign that the age producing it is not 
 far from decline and decay. The great principles 
 which animate its development are at work, deep 
 and unconscious, long before they get to express 
 themselves, and the people follow by instinct their 
 commands. Literature could not exist in such a 
 time when even the nobles and great men were un- 
 able to write. Their only mode of signing charters 
 was by dipping the glove-mailed hand into the ink 
 and imprinting it on the charter. A strong warrior 
 would disdain to write, he had other functions than 
 this ; and though writing is one of the noblest utter- 
 ances, for speech is so, there are other ways besides 
 that of expressing one's self, and to lead a heroic 
 life is, perhaps, a greater thing than to write a he- 
 roic poem ! This was the case of the Middle Ages. 
 I do not mean to say that the ideal of the age was 
 perfect, far from that ! No age tliat has yet been 
 
THE TROUBADOURS 71) 
 
 has not been one of contradictions, which make the 
 heart sick and sore if the heart be earnest. But I 
 assert that an ideal did exist ; the heroic heart was 
 not then desolate and alone, it was appreciated, and 
 its great result was a perpetual struggling forward, 
 that was the real age of gold ! We know that in 
 any other way there has never been such a thing as 
 an age of gold. Nothing is to be won but by hu- 
 man exertions. But a literature did come at last. 
 I allude to the Troubadours and Trouveres of the 
 twelfth century. These will not detain us long. 
 Theirs were the beautiful childlike utterances just 
 waking to speak of chivalry, and heroic deeds, and 
 love, in song and music : the people had begun to 
 get able to speak then. This sort of poetry became 
 not much improved afterward, it was perfect from 
 the first ; indeed, it could not have received any 
 improvement from succeeding times, for shortly af- 
 terward we observe the rise of a kind of feeling 
 adverse to this spirit of harmony, which we shall 
 by and by see get out into Protestantism. In the 
 meantime all was one beautiful harmony and relig- 
 ious unity. It is astonishing to see to what an ex- 
 tent music and singing had already gone in all coun- 
 tries. The Troubadours and Trouveres belonged to 
 distinct races — the one Norman, with whom were 
 joined our English forefathers ; and the others, 
 the Troubadours, were Provenyal. This formed 
 a division between them. Those from the North, or 
 
80 THE NIEBELUNGEN LIED 
 
 Trouveres, sang of chivalrous histories, such as those 
 of Charlemagne, of Arthur and the Bound Table ; 
 while those from the South sang of love, of chivahy, 
 joustings, and so forth. From want of space I can- 
 not go deeper just now into the subject, but I will 
 just mention that the spirit of these two kinds of 
 ballads have been curiously preserved to us by two 
 poets, who can hardly be said to belong to the 
 Troubadours. Petrarch may be said to have been 
 the Troubadour of Italy, which country had prop- 
 erly none else of its own, though he came a century 
 later than the true Troubadours. I refer to his great 
 genius in sonnets and love singing. In him was a 
 refined spirit of the Troubadour poetry ; doubtless 
 it had many faults, but there it is in its more com- 
 plete shape, as it lay in the melodious mind of Pe- 
 trarch. This kind of song was cultivated even by 
 kings and princes, such as Richard Coeur de Lion 
 and Barbarossa. 
 
 The other production to which I have alluded, of 
 the Troubadour school, is better known by the name 
 of the Niebelungen Lied. This is j^roperly Trou- 
 vere. The probable date of this poem is the twelfth 
 century ; it is by far the finest poem connected with 
 the Middle Ages, down to Dante. It is of the old 
 heroic German spirit, and sounds true as steel. It 
 commemorates the adventures of the early Chiefs, 
 of Siegfried and King Attila, and of the whole nation 
 from their emiorations downward, all shadowed out 
 
PERMANENCE OF GOOD 81 
 
 there. It is of the first rate, not perhaps evincing a 
 shining genius, but far better than that, the simple, 
 noble, manly character of its age, full of religion, 
 mercy, and valor ! It was discovered about sixty 
 years ago, but became generally known only forty 
 years after that. I advise any of my friends who 
 know German to make this poem their study ; a 
 modern German translation of it has been published, 
 but the language of the original is not much older 
 to the German scholar than Chaucer is to us, and it 
 is by far the finest poem we have of that period. 
 
 We must now quit this general investigation of 
 the Middle Ages, but I must, in the last place, remark 
 that we must not suppose because the spirit of those 
 ages did not speak much it has been lost, or ever 
 could have been lost. It is not so ordered. There 
 is no good action man can do that is not summoned 
 up in time to come, and kept up there. We lose, 
 indeed, much of the inconsistencies and contradic- 
 tions of the times in the lapse of ages. But this 
 again is precisely what we observe of rude natural 
 voices, heard singing in the distance. Musicians say 
 that there is nothing so strikingly impressive as to 
 hear a psalm, for instance, sung by untaught voices 
 in the mountains ; many inaccuracies, no doubt, 
 there are in the performance, but in the distance all 
 is true and bright, because all false notes destroy 
 one another, and are absorbed in the air before they 
 reach us, and only the true notes come to us. So 
 6 
 
82 ACTIONS INDESTEUCTIBLE 
 
 in the Middle Ages we only get the heroic essence of 
 the whole. Actions only will be found to have been 
 preserved when writers are forgotten. Homer will 
 one day be swallowed up in time, and so will all 
 the greatest writers that have ever lived, and com- 
 paratively this is very little matter. But actions will 
 not be destroyed, their influence must live ; good or 
 bad they will live throughout eternity, for the weal 
 or woe of the doer ! In particular, the good actions 
 will flow on, in the course of time unseen perhaps, 
 but just as a river of water flowing underground, 
 hidden in general, but at intervals breaking out to 
 the surface in many a well for the refreshment of 
 men ! 
 
 In our next lecture we shall come to Dante. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 May lAth 
 
 SECOND VERIOB— Continued 
 Dante— The Italians— Catholicism— Purgatory. 
 
 We are now arrived at that point of history when 
 Europe becomes divided ; its great stem branches 
 off into different nations, one nation forming itself 
 after another. Each nation of modern Europe dis- 
 tinguishes itself in some measure from all other na- 
 tions. The language is the peculiar product of 
 each nation, containing something of its own not 
 supplied from the others ; the function so appointed 
 to be done by it, and the genius of it, everything 
 belonging to it, characterizes each nation. We 
 shall take them in their order. 
 
 The first nation which possesses a claim on our 
 solicitude is the Italian. It was the latest nation of 
 tho^e overrun by the barbarians which fashioned it- 
 self into something of an articulate result. It has 
 much distinguished itself in Europe, in ancient, as 
 well as in modern times. It was the first that was 
 notable in literature, in the exposition of opinions, 
 
84 LOMBARDS AND GUISCARDS 
 
 in arts, in all the products of the human intellect. 
 It is also important from being connected with that 
 characteristic of the Middle Ages, the religious feel- 
 ing then prevalent. It was the latest settled, and 
 the first notable ; it was the last modern nation 
 where the tumult of the northern emigrations sub- 
 sided. The Lombards conquered Italy in the sixth 
 century ; they were the latest of the German tribes 
 that left their native seat. Paul Diaconus wrote 
 their history. The Lombards, or Longobardi (Long- 
 beards), were a brave, gifted, excellent nation ; they 
 ruled in Italy for 150 years, after which time it split 
 itself into a number of small principalities and 
 towns, and so it has unhappily continued ever since. 
 The next memorable event is the conquest of the 
 South of Italy by the Guiscards, in the eleventh 
 century, some two or three centuries after the final 
 decay of the Lombard power,. They were the sons 
 of Tancred de Hauteville, the most impetuous fight- 
 ers Italy ever had to encounter. The part where 
 they settled was that which was remarked to have 
 been once colonized by Greeks, Magna Grsecia, 
 where to this day many Greek usages are still pre- 
 served. Part of it is now called Naples (Neapolis, 
 new town). The Saracens had gained a footing 
 there, and to dislodge them the Prince of Apulia 
 sent for Guiscard. He and his brother, who was 
 called Iron Arm, came over and eventually repelled 
 the Saracens. It was a great thing to do : it was 
 
ITALY IN THE MIDDL"K AGES 85 
 
 not much more tliau 100 years after these Normans 
 (Northmen) had emerged from the condition of wild 
 pirates, and settled in France, which was also about 
 100 years before the time of William the Conqueror. 
 It was a great feat. Naj)les was rendered a depend- 
 ency of Northern Europe, and has remained so ever 
 since. 
 
 If it had not been for the third memorable cir- 
 cumstance respecting Italy, the existence in it of 
 the Pope, an event not sudden but gradual (1077 
 was the culminating age of this political power), the 
 Guiscards would have conquered all Italy. But 
 the Pope had by this time got settled, and had ter- 
 ritories of his own. He did not choose to permit 
 the Guiscards to make further encroachments ; ac- 
 cordiugly, he interdicted their progress, and thus 
 doomed Italy to be forever divided, and politically 
 speaking, entirely paralyzed. If the Pope or the 
 Guiscards, no matter which, had got ground through- 
 out Italy, the result would have been very happy 
 for her, but it was not her lot. Lingering still 
 there in Italy, we observe that she occupies very 
 little place in Europe ; but Italy has a peculiar 
 character, and though Italians complain that their 
 country has not held that influence in modern 
 Europe to which, from her position and resources, 
 she is entitled, still I do not think that we should 
 say that her part has not been a great one. In one 
 respect it has been much greater than that of any 
 
66 DANTE 
 
 other nation. She has i^roduced a far greater num- 
 ber of great men, distinguished in art, thinking, 
 conduct, and everywhere in the departments of in- 
 tellect. Dante, Eaphael, Michael Angelo, among 
 others, are hardly to be paralleled, in the respective 
 department of each of these. In other departments 
 again, there are Columbus, Spinola, and Galileo. 
 And, after all, the great thing which any nation can 
 do is to produce great men. It is thus only that it 
 distinguishes itself in reality, and this distinction 
 lasts longer than any other. A battle would be a 
 comparatively trivial and poor thing ! 
 
 In our limits it is impossible to attempt the de- 
 lineation of the Italian people ; but in every people 
 there is to be found some one great product of in- 
 tellect, and when we shall have exjDlained the sig- 
 nificance of that one, we shall not fail to understand 
 all the rest. In this instance we shall take Dante, 
 one of the greatest men that ever lived ; perLaps 
 the very greatest of Italians, certainly one of the 
 greatest. The Divina Commedia is Dante's work. 
 He was from Florence, a town of all others fertile in 
 great men ; he was born in 1265. Florence had al- 
 ready come into note 200 years before that ; it was 
 first founded by Sylla. In the Middle Ages it 
 played a great part, and it was there that Dante 
 was born. His family was one of the greatest in 
 Florence, that of Durante Alighieri (Durante since 
 corrupted to Dante). He was well educated. We 
 
GUELPUS AND GHIBELLINES 87 
 
 hear mention made of the schoolmaster who taught 
 him grammar, and other great men of the day who 
 had to do with him in difterent branches of educa- 
 tion. He was much occupied in pubUc employ- 
 ments in his native town. Twice he was engaged 
 in battle, on one occasion with the Kepublic of 
 Pisa, and he was employed in fourteen embassies. 
 It was in his twenty-fifth year that he first fought 
 for Florence — in the battle of Arezzo, I think ; and 
 finally he became Prior or chief magistrate of Flo- 
 rence. 
 
 We can make nothing of those obscure quarrels. 
 They have no interest for us — those quarrels of the 
 Guelphs and Ghibellines. We saw the foundation 
 of all that in the quarrel of Hildebrand with the 
 Emperor. Year after year it went on, generation 
 after generation. The people that favored the Pope 
 were called Guelphs ; those who favored the Em- 
 peror, Ghibellines. The Guelphs were German 
 princes. The Ghibellines were so named from 
 Weiblin, a town of the Hohenstaufen, near Weins- 
 berg. Their real names were Welf and Weiblin. 
 Weibhn was made by the Italians into Ghibelline. 
 The Guelphs were the ancestors of the house of 
 Brunswick, the family on the throne of these realms. 
 I say that we can make nothing out of these quar- 
 rels, except that in every town of Italy party hatred 
 prevailed violently, and each faction directed its ut- 
 most endeavors to supplant the other. 
 
bo MISFORTUNES OF DANTE 
 
 Dante favored the side of the Emperor. There 
 being a very small number of families in Florence, 
 party hatred was proportionally more violent. Ban- 
 ishments of the highest personages were quite com- 
 mon there, and were employed as often as one party 
 was trodden down by its enemies. Dante accord- 
 ingly, being then absent upon some embassy, was 
 banished by his enemies. He was then in his thirty- 
 fifth year. He afterward made some attempt, with 
 others of his friends, to get back to Florence, and 
 made an attack by arms upon the city, which, prov- 
 ing unsuccessful, so exasperated the citizens that 
 nothing could appease them. Dante was then as 
 good as confiscated ; he had been fined before that. 
 There is still to be seen an act of that time in the 
 archives of Florence, charging all magistrates to 
 burn Dante alive when he should be taken, such 
 violent hatred had they conceived against him! 
 Dante was afterward reduced to wander up and 
 down Italy, a broken man ! His way of life is diffi- 
 cult to conceive of, with so violent a mind as his, 
 with such deep feelings, whether sad or joyful. 
 Henceforth he had sorrow for his portion. It is 
 very mournful to think of, but, at the same time, 
 the work he had to do could not have been done so 
 well had his lot been less unhappy. He was ever a 
 serious man, always meditating on some religious or 
 moral subject. After his misfortunes, besides, there 
 was no hope extant for him ; he tells us that he had 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 89 
 
 left everything he could love. This gave him double 
 and treble earnestness of character. The world was 
 now all over for him ; he looked now only to the 
 great kingdom of eternity ! It has been disputed 
 whether he had begun the Divina Commedia before 
 he left Florence. He had, at all events, not wiitten 
 much of it. He completed it in his exile, that he 
 might secure to himself powerful friends, who could 
 shelter him ; and he therefore got it published, to 
 be descanted on now 500 years after that, and to 
 continue to be so for 1,000 years and more to come ! 
 There are few things that exist worth comparing 
 to it. ^schylus, Dante, Shakespeare — one really 
 cannot add another greater name to these ! Theirs 
 were the utterances out of the great heart of nat- 
 ure, sincere outpourings of the mind of man ! His 
 Divina Commedia assumes at first the form of a 
 vision, though it soon loses it as he proceeds. In- 
 deed, he nowhere expressly announces it at all, 
 though he begins suddenly, as if it were a vision. 
 The three great kingdoms of Eternity are the sub- 
 ject of the poem : Hell, the place of final expiation 
 of guilt, where a stern, inexorable justice reigns 
 without pity, charged to inflict punishments for in- 
 fraction of the laws of the Most High ; Purgatory, 
 a place where the sin of man is, under certain con- 
 ditions, cleansed away ; and Paradise, where the 
 soul enjoys felicity forever ! This was the greatest 
 idea that we have ever yet had — the experience of 
 
90 CHARACTER OF THE POEM 
 
 entering into the soul of man, more full of grandeur 
 than any other of the elements, and it fell to the lot 
 of one who was singularly appropriated by his way 
 of life for the task. He was a man full of sorrows, 
 a man of woe ; by nature of a serious turn of mind, 
 and rendered doubly and trebly so by his way of 
 life. Accordingly, I think that when all records of 
 Catholicism shall have passed away ; when the Vati- 
 can shall have crumbled into dust, and St. Peter's 
 and Strasburg Minster be no more ; for thousands 
 of years to come Catholicism will survive in this 
 sublime relic of antiquity ! 
 
 ^ In seeking the character of Dante's poem, we 
 shall admire first that grand natural, moral depth, 
 that nobleness of heart, that grandeur of soul which 
 distinguish him. Great in all directions, in his 
 wrath, his scorn, his pity. Great above all in his 
 sorrow ! That is a fine thing which he says of those 
 in a state of despair, "They have not the Hope to 
 die " — '' Non hanno speranza di morte ! " What an 
 idea that is in Dante's mind there of death. To 
 most persons death is the dreaded being, the king 
 of terrors, but to Dante to be imprisoned forever in 
 a miserable complexity, without hope of release, is 
 the most terrible of things ! Indeed, I believe, not- 
 withstanding the horror of death, no human creat- 
 ure but would find it to be the most dreadful doom 
 not to be suffered to die, though he should be 
 decreed to enjoy all youth and bloom immortally ! 
 
Dante's greatness 91 
 
 For there is a boundlessness, an endless longing in 
 the breast, which aspires to another world tlum this. 
 That, too, is a striking passage where he says of 
 certain individuals that they are hateful to God, 
 and to the enemies of God. There was a deep feel- 
 ing in Dante of the enormity of that moral base- 
 ness, such as had never before gone into the mind 
 of any man. These of whom he speaks were a kind 
 of trimmers ; men that had not even the merit to 
 join with the devil. He adds : " Xon 7'agiomam di' 
 lor, ma guarda epaasa!" — "Let us say nothing of 
 them, but look and pass ! " The central quality of 
 Dante was greatness of heart ; from this all the 
 others flowed as from a natural source. This must 
 exist in every man that would be great ; it is impos- 
 sible for him to do anything good without it, and 
 by his success we may trace, in every writer, his 
 magnanimity and his pusillanimity. In Dante there 
 was the greatness of simplicity, for one thing. All 
 things are to be anticipated from the nobleness 
 of his moral opinions. Logically speaking, again, 
 Dante had one of the finest understandings, re- 
 markable in all matters of reason ; as, for instance, 
 in his reflections on fortune, free-will, and the nat- 
 ure of sin. He was an original, quick, far-seeing 
 man, possessing a deep insight into all matters, and 
 this, combined with the other quality which we no- 
 ticed, his greatness of heart, constitutes the princi- 
 pal charm in Dante. In the third place, his poem 
 
9a DANTE AND MILTON 
 
 was so musical that it got up to the length of sing- 
 ing itself, his soul was in it ; and when we read 
 there is a tune which hurries itself along. These 
 qualities, a great heart, insight, and song, are the 
 stamp of a genuine poem at all times. They will 
 not be peculiar to any one age, but will be natural 
 in all ages. For, as I observed, it is the utterance 
 of the heart of life itself, and all earnest men, of 
 whatever age, will there behold as in a mirror the 
 » image of their own convexed beam, and will be 
 grateful to the poet for the brotherhood to him in 
 which they stand. Then as to simplicity, there is 
 in the poem throughout that noble character, inso- 
 much that one would almost suppose that there is 
 nothing great there. For he remains intent upon 
 the delineation of his subject, never guilty of bom- 
 bastic inflation, and does not seem to think that he 
 is doing anything very remarkable. Herein he is 
 very different from Milton. Milton, with all his 
 genius, was very inferior to Dante, he has made 
 his angels large, huge, distorted beings. He has 
 sketched vividly his scenes of heaven and hell, and 
 his faculty is certainly great ; but I say that Dante's 
 task was the great thing to do. He has opened the 
 deep, unfathomable oasis of woe that lay in the soul 
 of man ; he has opened the living fountains of hope, 
 also of penitence ! And this I say is far greater 
 than towering as high as Teneriffe, or twice as 
 high ! 
 
THE INFERNO 93 
 
 In his delineations he has a most beautiful sharp 
 grace, the quickest and clearest intellect. It is just 
 that honesty with which his mind was set upon his 
 subject, that carries it out. Take, for instance, the 
 scene of the monster Geryon, with Virgil and 
 Dante, where he describes how he landed with them 
 in the eighth circle. He says that Geryon was like 
 a falcon in quest of prey, hovering without seeing 
 either the lure or the game. When the falconer 
 cries, " Oim^ tu call " (" Come down ! "), he descends, 
 wheeling round and round, and sits at a distance 
 disdainful and disobedient. Just so was Geryon. 
 And then he bolted up like an arrow out of the 
 bow. There are not above a dozen words in this 
 picture, but it is one that will last forever ! 
 
 So also his description of the city of Dis, to which 
 Virgil carries him, possesses a beautiful simplicity 
 and honesty. " The light was so dim that the peo- 
 ple could hardly see, and they winked at him, just 
 as people wink their eyes under the new moon," or 
 as an old tailor winks threading his needle, when 
 his eyes are not good. There is a contrast between 
 his subject and this quaint similitude that has a 
 beautiful effect. It brings one home to the subject ; 
 there is much reality in this similitude. So his de- 
 scrij^tion of the place they were in. Flakes of fire 
 came down like snow, falling on the skin of the peo- 
 ple, and burning them black ! Among these he 
 sees his old schoolmaster who taught him grammar, 
 
94 FRANCESCA 
 
 be winks at liim in the manner described, but be is 
 so burnt that Dante can hardly recognize him. 
 
 There are many of his greatest qualities in the 
 celebrated passage about Francesca, whom he finds 
 in the circle of Inferno appropriated to those who 
 had erred in love. I many times say I know no- 
 where of a more striking passage ; if anyone would 
 select a passage characteristic of a great man, let 
 him study that. It is as tender as the voice of 
 mothers, full of the gentlest pity, though there is 
 much stern tragedy in it. It is very touching. In 
 a place without light, which groaned like a stormy 
 sea, he sees two shadows which he wishes to speak 
 to, and they come to him. He compares them to 
 doves whose wings are open and not fluttering. 
 Francesca, one of these, utters her complaint, which 
 does not occupy twenty lines, though it is such an 
 one that a man may write a thousand lines about it, 
 and not do ill. It contains beautiful touches of 
 human weakness. She feels that stern justice en- 
 circles her all around. " Oh, living creature," she 
 says, " who hast come so kindly to visit us, if the 
 Creator of the World " (poor Francesca ! she knew 
 that she had sinned against His inexorable justice) 
 "were our friend, we would pray Him for thy 
 peace ! " Love, which soon teaches itself to a gen- 
 tle heart, inspired her Paolo (beautiful womanly 
 feeling that). "Love forbids that the person loved 
 shall not love in return." And so she loved Paolo. 
 
UGOLINO 95 
 
 " Caina awaits him who destroyed our life," she 
 adds with female vehemence. Then, in three lines, 
 she tells the story how they fell in love. " We read 
 one day of Launcelot, how love possessed him ; we 
 were alone, we regarded one another ; when we 
 read of that laughing kiss, he, trembling, kissed 
 me ! That day," she adds, '' we read no farther ! " 
 
 The whole is beautiful, like a clear, piping voice 
 heard in the middle of a whirlwind : it is so sweet, 
 and gentle, and good ! 
 
 Then the hunger power of Ugolino. This, how- 
 ever, is a much more brutal thing than the punish- 
 ment of Francesca. But the story of Francesca is 
 all a truth. He says that he knew her father ; her 
 history becomes a kind of concern in the mind of 
 Dante, and when he hears her relate it he falls as a 
 dead body falls. This, too, is an answer to a criti- 
 cism against Dante, and a paltry criticism it is. 
 Some have regarded the poem as a kind of satire 
 upon his enemies, on whom he revenged himself by 
 putting them into hell. Now, nothing is more un- 
 worthy of Dante than such a theory. If he had 
 been of such an ignoble nature, he never could 
 have written the Divina Gommedia. It was written 
 in the purest spirit of justice. Thus he pitied poor 
 Francesca, and would not have willingly placed her 
 in that torment ; but it was the justice of God's law 
 that doomed her there ! 
 
 How beautiful is his description of the coming 
 
96 FARINATA 
 
 eve, the hour when sorrow awakens in the hearts of 
 sailors who have left their land (sguilla di lontano), 
 the dying day. No one ever quitted home and 
 loved ones whose heart does not respond to that ! 
 
 We must not omit Farinata, the beautiful illustra- 
 tion of a character much found in Dante. He is 
 confined in the black dome where the heretics 
 dwell. In the same tomb is Cavalcante de' Caval- 
 canti, father of one of Dante's most loved friends. 
 The description is striking of the sarcophaguses in 
 which these people are enclosed, " more or less 
 heated " (there is nothing in Teneriffe like that) ; 
 the lids are to be kejot open till the last day, and 
 are then to be sealed down forever. He hears 
 Dante speaking in the Tuscan dialect, and he ac- 
 costs him. He is a man of great haughtiness {gran 
 dispitto, sdegnoso). This spirit of defiance of suffer- 
 ing, so remarkable in ^schylus, occurs two or 
 three times in Dante. Farinata asks him. What 
 news of Florence ? For in all his long exile Dante 
 himself thinks continually of Florence, which he 
 loves so well, and he makes even those in torment 
 anxious after what is doing in Florence. Then 
 Cavalcanti asks Dante why is he there, and not his 
 son. Where is he ? And Dante replies that per- 
 haps he had disdain for Virgil. Had ? Cavalcanti 
 asks (Ebbe) ; does he not live then ? And, as Dante 
 pauses a little without replying, he plunges down, 
 and Dante sees him no more ! 
 
DANTE AND FLORENCE 97 
 
 These sudden and abrupt motions are frequent in 
 Dante. He is, indeed, full of what I can call mili- 
 tary movements ; many of his gestures are ex- 
 tremely siguiticant. In another place three men 
 *' looked at one another, like men that believed." 
 In these words one sees it all, as it seemed to 
 Dante ! This is a feature I don't know how to 
 name well, but it is very remarkable in Dante. 
 Those passages are very striking where he alludes 
 to his own sad fortunes. There is in them a wild 
 sorrow, a savage tone of truth, a breaking heart ; 
 the hatred of Florence, and with it the love of Flor- 
 ence ! In one place, " Rejoice, O Florence, that 
 thou art so famous in hell ! " In another place he 
 calls her hell-guided. His old schoolmaster tells 
 him : "If thou follow thy star, thou canst not miss 
 a happy harbor." That was just it. That star oc- 
 casionally shone on him from the blue eternal 
 depths, and he felt he was doing something good ; 
 but he soon lost it again as he fell back into the 
 trough of the sea, and had to journey on as before. 
 And when his ancestor predicts his banishment, 
 there is the wild sincerity again. He must leave 
 every delightful thing ; he must learn to dwell on 
 the stairs of another man. Bitter ! bitter ! Poor 
 exile, none but scoundrelly persons to associate 
 with ! There are traces here and there of a heart 
 one would always wish to see in man. He is not 
 
 altogether, therefore, an unconscious man like 
 
 7 
 
98 IL PURGATOEIO 
 
 Shakespeare, but more morbid and narrower. 
 Though he does not attempt to compute it, he 
 seems to feel merely the conviction, the humble 
 hope, that he shall get to heaven in the end ! 
 
 A notable passage that on fame ! No man, if he 
 "were Alexander the Great, if he were Dante, if he 
 were all men put together, could get for himself 
 eternal fame ! He feels that, too. Fame is not of 
 any particular moment to him. That contradiction 
 between the greatness of his mind and his humble 
 attachment to Florence is difficult of utterance, and 
 it seems as if the spirit of the man were hampered 
 with the insufficient dialects this world imposes 
 upon him. 
 
 The "Inferno" has become of late times mainly 
 the favorite of the three divisions of Dante's great 
 poem. It has harmonized well with the taste of 
 the last thirty or forty years, in which EuroiDC has 
 seemed to covet more a violence of emotion and a 
 strength of convulsion than almost any other quality. 
 It is no doubt a great thing ; but to my mind the 
 ''Purgatorio " is excellent also, and I question even 
 whether it is not a better and a greater thing on the 
 whole. It is very beautiful to see them get up into 
 that black, great mountain in the western ocean, 
 where Columbus had not yet been. To trace gii^o 
 after giro, the purification of souls is beautiful ex- 
 ceedingly ; the sinners' repentance, the humble hoj)e, 
 the peace and joy that is in them. 
 
dante's doctkine 99 
 
 There is no book so moral as this, the very essence 
 of Christian morality ! Men have, of course, ceased 
 to believe these things — that mountain rising up in 
 the ocean, or that Male-bolge, with its black gulfs. 
 But still men of any knowledge at all must believe 
 that there exists the inexorable justice of God, and 
 that penitence is the great thing here for man. For 
 life is but a series of errors, made good again by 
 repentance ; and the sacredness of that doctrine 
 is asserted in Dante in a manner more moral than 
 anywhere else. Any other doctrine is with him 
 comparatively not worth affirming or denying. Very 
 touching is that gentle patience, that unspeakable 
 thankfulness with which the souls expect their 
 release after thousands of years. Cato is keeping 
 the gate. That is a beautiful dawn of morning. 
 The dawn drove away the darkness westward, with 
 a quivering of the sea on the horizon. 
 
 " Si clie di lontano 
 Conobbi al tremolar della marina." 
 
 He seems to seize the word for it. Anybody who 
 has seen the sun rise at sea will recognize it. The 
 internal feeling of the " Purgatorio " keeps pace with 
 that. One man says: "Tell my Giovanna that I 
 think her mother does not love me now " — that she 
 has laid aside her weeds ! The parable with which 
 he concludes his lament is as beautiful as it can be. 
 i^hen, too, the relation he stands in to Virgil and 
 
100 BEATRICE 
 
 Beatrice ; his loyalty, faith, and kindly feeling for 
 Virgil's nobleness. Loyalty, we remarked, was the 
 essence of the Middle Ages. Virgil was never angry 
 with him but once, when Dante seems to pay too 
 much attention to two falsifiers quarrelling. "A 
 little more," he says, " and I would quarrel with 
 thee." Dante owns himself in the wrong, and Vir- 
 gil then tells him it is not proper to listen to such 
 things. Beatrice was actually a beautiful little girl, 
 whom he had seen in his boyhood at a ball. She 
 was a young child, nine years old when he was ten. 
 He had never heard her speak but once, when she 
 was talking to some one at the corner of the street. 
 She was cinctured with a garland of olive, and ap- 
 peared " mirce pulchiitudinis." Such was the mood 
 of beauty, he says, in which her aspect placed him, 
 that that night, when he fell asleep, he dreamed 
 of her. This was at nine o'clock, for though it 
 was many years after he remembered it quite well. 
 They had met but little, but he seemed to know 
 that she loved him, as he her. She married another 
 afterwards, but not willingl}'. When all else is dark 
 with misery for him, this is the only recollection 
 that is beautiful, for nothing had occurred to render 
 it disagreeable to him, and his whole soul flies to it. 
 Providence sent an angel always to interfere when 
 the w^orst came. In Paradise, when Virgil vanishes 
 and he sees Beatrice, by this time purified from 
 mortal stain, how deep is the expression of his joy ! 
 
THE MOTHER OF feE'Al'KIOE lOl 
 
 How heavily the love he bore her weighed upon his 
 heart ! The mother of Beatrice treated him with 
 much seeming harshness (barbarezza), wasting his 
 very life away with severity ; but it was all through 
 her apprehension that if she were to give vent to her 
 love for him she should kill him ; it would be too 
 much for him. But he reads in her eye all the while 
 her deep affection ; in the flush of joy with which she 
 regards him, his successes, and good actions. One 
 can well understand, in this point of view, what the 
 Germans say of the three parts of the Dimna Comme- 
 dia. The first is the architectural, plastic part, as of 
 statuary ; the second is the pictorial ; the third is 
 the musical, the melting into song. 
 
 But I can afford no more time to speak of Dante. 
 My friends must endeavor to supply the omissions 
 I have been obliged to make, and to expand what 
 I have said over his whole poem. We must quit 
 Italy and Dante altogether with these imperfect re- 
 marks. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 May ISth 
 
 SECOND FERIOB— Continued 
 
 The Spaniards— Chivalry— Greatness of the Span- 
 ish Nation— Cervantes, his Life, his Book — 
 Lope— Calderon— Protestantism and the Dutch 
 War. 
 
 In our last lecture we saw the remarkable plienom- 
 enon of one great mind making of himself, as it 
 were, the spokesman of his age, and speaking with 
 such an earnestness and depth that he has become 
 one of the voices of mankind itself, making his voice 
 to be heard in all ages, for he was filled in every 
 fibre of his mind with that princiiDle, belief in the 
 Catholic Church : this was the model by which all 
 things became satisfactorily arranged for him in his 
 mind. We must now leave that altogether abruptly, 
 and come to the next great phenomenon in this 
 history, a new nation, new products in the human 
 mind. I allude to Cervantes and chivalry. But 
 before I come to that I may observe that Dante's 
 way of thinking was one which from its very nature 
 
WIDENING OF KNOWLEDGE 103 
 
 could not long continue ; indeed, it is not given to 
 man that any of his works should long continue, of 
 the works of his mind, any more than the things 
 which he makes with his hand. But there was 
 something in the very nature of Dante's way of 
 thinking which made it very natural that it should 
 have become generally altered even in the next gen- 
 eration. Dante's son even must have lived in an in- 
 creased horizon of knowledge, which the theory of 
 Dante could no longer fit ; as, for example, man had 
 then sailed to the Western Ocean, and had found 
 that the Mountain of Purgatory was not there at all. 
 Indeed, if we look at it, we shall find that every man 
 is first a learner, an apprentice, and then a work- 
 man, who at first schemes out to himself such 
 knowledge as his fathers teach him into quite a 
 familiar theory ; but the first researches will further 
 widen his circle of knowledge, and he will have cer- 
 tain misgivings as to the theory, the creed I may 
 call it, of the universe which he has already adopted, 
 certain suspicions in his own mind that there are 
 inconsistencies and contradictions in his theory not 
 at all satisfactory, and this will go on increasing 
 until this theory alters itself, shapes itself to them. 
 
 In Italy the same Catholic Church, which was 
 the mother of the mind of Dante, inspiring it with 
 every feeling and thought that was there, afterwards 
 condemned Galileo to renounce what he knew to be 
 true because it was at that time supposed to be 
 
104 PROGRESS INEVITABLE 
 
 contrary to the tenets the Church held on the sub- 
 ject, forcing him to be either the martyr of the In- 
 quisition or to deny the truth. Indeed, before that, 
 Europe had spHt itself into all kinds of confusions 
 and contradictions without end, in which we are 
 still enveloped. This, in short, is the foundation 
 and essence of the progress of the human mind, 
 which, in spite of the exaggerations and the mis- 
 representations which have been made of it, is really 
 the inevitable law for man, to go on, and to continue 
 to widen his investigations for thousands of years, or 
 even for millions, for there is no limit to it ! Any 
 theory of Nature is, at most, temporary ; but, on the 
 other hand, all theories contain something within 
 them which is perennial. In Dante that was belief, 
 the communion which the heart of hearts can hold 
 with Nature. The human soul, in fact, develops 
 itself into all sorts of opinions, doctrines which go 
 on nearer and nearer to the truth. All theories ap- 
 proximate more or less to the great Theory, which 
 remains itself always unknown, and in that propor- 
 tion contain somethinof which must live. There- 
 fore, whatever opinion we may form of his doc- 
 trines, we do not dissent from Dante's piety, that 
 will always be admired. There is no nation, too, 
 without progress. Some people say that the Chinese 
 are without it ; perhaps they may change less rapid- 
 ly than other nations, but they must change. It 
 appears to me to be inevitably necessary. Every 
 
GROWTH OF UNIVERSITIES 105 
 
 philosophy that exists is destined to be embraced, 
 melted down as it were, into some larger philosophy, 
 which, too, will have to suffer the same some day. 
 
 Cervantes lived more than two centuries after 
 Dante ; though we select him as the most remark- 
 able of his age there were, no doubt, before him 
 many other people very valuable in influencing the 
 human mind. All people, indeed, from Charle- 
 magne's time, had already made rapid advances in 
 all departments of culture. We may here remark 
 one or two symptoms of that restless effort after 
 advancement then in action everywhere in Europe. 
 First there was the institution of universities, which 
 was long before Dante. The University of Paris 
 had come into decided note in the time of Dante. 
 There is a tradition that Dante himself was at it, as 
 there is a vague tradition that he was at Oxford too, 
 but this last is very doubtful. These universities 
 of Europe grew up in a very obscure manner, not 
 noted at first, but rising up quite naturally and 
 spontaneously. Some great teacher, such as Abe- 
 lard, would get into repute with those who were 
 eagerly desirous of learning, and there would be no 
 other way of learning his knowledge except to gather 
 round him and hear him expound what knowledge 
 he had in his own department. When any other 
 teacher would be desirous of disj)laying his own 
 branch of acquirements he would naturally estab- 
 lish himself in the neighborhood of the first one, 
 
106 PRINTING 
 
 and so these many teachers would begin to gather 
 themselves together till their community should be- 
 come known generally, and more young men would 
 resort to them, until finally the king, as did the 
 King of France, would take notice of them, form 
 them into a corporation, endow them with lands, 
 and style the establishment university — the place of 
 a complete, settled course of instruction. It was 
 about the ninth century that Paris was first recog- 
 nized as an university, others soon followed, and the 
 system so founded continues down to our times. 
 One cause may be assigned for their existence, the 
 want of books. 
 
 Books at that period were not easily to be pro- 
 cured, and except by means of lecturing none could 
 learn what knowledge there was then to be attained. 
 But this want became supplied by another great 
 symptom of European improvement, the invention of 
 the art of printing in the century after Dante, that 
 is to say, the end of the fifteenth and beginning of 
 the sixteenth centuries. There are many contro- 
 versies as to where it was invented, but it is not 
 necessary to examine them here. Faust brought it 
 into full use about the year 1450. It is one very 
 great fact productive of important results for man- 
 kind, and one which has not clearly unfolded itself 
 yet ; but it was by no means a wonderful invention, 
 it was quite a corollary from another great art, writ- 
 ing, a much more wonderful achievement, yet com- 
 
GUNPOWDER 107 
 
 paratively insignificant too, compared with that ad- 
 mirable gift of speech, that power which man has 
 of expressing his meaning by certain sounds ! 
 
 Another symptom of the change of habits in Eu- 
 rope is the invention of gunpowder, which took 
 place prior to the century before the invention of 
 printing, two centuries we may say ; but the time 
 of this invention is not known either ; also some at- 
 tribute it to Friar Bacon, and others to Swartz. It 
 does not seem a very beneficent invention this, de- 
 signed for the destruction of man ; but yet, on the 
 whole, it has had immense consequences of the bene- 
 ficial sort, for, like all other things in military art, it 
 softens the miseries of war, and, we may add, with- 
 out entering into any wide conclusions about it, it 
 is really the setting of the soul of man above the 
 body of man, since it has reduced physical strength 
 all to nothing in the contests between man and man, 
 insomuch that, give the weakest woman a pistol, and 
 she instantly becomes a Goliath with that pistol in 
 her hand ! A great invention that ; so busy were 
 these ages in their efforts after progress ! 
 
 We shall now proceed to look at the Spaniards, 
 and the results they realized for themselves in this 
 world of ours. The two great things which we have 
 remarked in the Middle Ages— first, Christianity : 
 the Catholic religion ; and next, loyalty — had main- 
 ly the influence over Dante's works. That same 
 spirit of loyalty obtained, however, a practical illus- 
 
108 AGE OF CHIVALRY 
 
 tration of a striking character, which received the 
 name of Chivah-y. This, we may say, was the great 
 product of the Spanish nation. It seems very ex- 
 traordinary that Christianity, which is against war 
 altogether, teaching men even not to resist violence, 
 should, with its divine spirit, have penetrated even 
 into war itself, making it in the highest degree no- 
 ble and beneficial ; that that dark background which 
 lies in every man, and which tells him that he can 
 fight, and makes war at all times possible for man, 
 that even this should have been penetrated with 
 that sj)irit, and raised by it to an elevation, a noble- 
 ness, a beauty quite distinguished from anything in 
 the pagan world ! 
 
 The age of chivalry has been the subject of all 
 kinds of investigations, but writers have been able 
 to find no physical origin for it. It seems to have 
 been produced by the German spirit united to that 
 of the Christian doctrine. Among the Germans 
 courage in battle was greatly honored. According 
 to Tacitus, when a young man aspired to manhood, 
 he was solemnly led into the Public Assembly, tliere 
 girt with a sword, and proclaimed a fighter and a 
 man. 
 
 This is very analogous to the ceremonies of 
 knighthood, chivalry. This German quality, valor 
 of character, combined with the Christian religion, 
 as well as with another feature of the Germans, their 
 reverence for women, which also became a feature 
 
THE SPANIARDS 109 
 
 of chivalry. These two qualities of the German 
 character became blended under the sanctifying in- 
 fluence of Christianity, and the whole framed itself 
 into a system of opinions of the most beneficial 
 kind, tempering the horrid madness of war, man 
 meeting to kill man, and j^resenting a most beauti- 
 ful glow of worth, very different from what war was 
 in old times, where indeed there were always cer- 
 tain laws of war (as what can be done without some 
 law or other at any time), but there was none of that 
 mercy, that noble self-denial, that fidelity to a man, 
 and to the cause of that man, which we see in the 
 Middle Ages ! 
 
 In the next place, I may observe that probably 
 the Spanish nation was the most fitted for this mat- 
 ter, as it actually appears to have carried this mat- 
 ter forward to a higher perfection than it attained 
 anywhere else. The Spanish nation had made its 
 appearance in European history more than two cen- 
 turies before Christ, in the wars of the Carthagin- 
 ians and Romans. They were remarkable for their 
 tenacious valor. The Celt-iberian nation, the ori- 
 gin of the rest of Spain, had always that character, 
 and to this day they maintain it in Spain by the 
 name of Basques, and on the other side of the 
 Pyrenees by that of Gascons. In the barbarian in- 
 vasions they at first became mixed with the Goths, 
 and afterward with the Vandals, from whom they 
 received their slight admixture of Northern blood ; 
 
110 THE CID 
 
 and then with the Arabs. In modern times tiiey 
 maintained the nobleness which distinguished them 
 in ancient times, and have often displaj^ed a spirit 
 equal to that they exhibited in the sieges of Saguu- 
 tium and Numantia, which lasted fourteen years, 
 and the scenes of which are much analogous to the 
 siege of Saragossa in our times : a striking instance 
 which shows the character of nations to be wonder- 
 fully tenacious. The Spaniards had less breadth of 
 genius than the Italians, but they had, on the other 
 hand, a lofty sustained enthusiasm in a higher de- 
 gree than the Italians, with a tinge of what we call 
 romance, a dash of Oriental exaggeration, and a 
 tenacious vigor in prosecuting their objects. Of 
 less depth than the Germans, of less of that com- 
 posed silent force, yet a great people, and of much 
 knowledge, and at all times calculated to be distin- 
 guished ; and it was this people that developed the 
 thing we call chivalry : that system of noble deeds 
 in war, and noble feelings. These sieges of Sagun- 
 tium and Numantia, and the man Viriatus, a Span- 
 ish or Portuguese shepherd, who withstood the 
 whole force of the Romans for fourteen years — 
 that same sj^irit which was in them showed itself 
 early in modern Europe, in the Cid, for example — 
 whose memory is still musical among the people. I 
 am told that to this day they sing ballads about 
 him. A book has been written about his history by 
 Johannes von M tiller, who really sees good reason to 
 
THE MOORS 111 
 
 give credit to the popular ballads about his advent- 
 ures. You all know tlie famous version of it by 
 Corneille. His real name was Ruy Diaz. He was 
 the contemporary of William the Conqueror ; from 
 the first a hard destiny was laid out for him. He 
 had been betrothed to Lady Chimene, but their 
 fathers disagreeing, the match was broken off; a 
 contest ensued, in which his father was vanquished. 
 For the purpose of vengeance, he fought and con- 
 quered her father, merely from a sentiment of filial 
 duty, not from interest ; all personal wishes were 
 set at nought, and as to thoughts of personal ad- 
 vantage, it was altogether the reverse. So when 
 the King had employed him successfully against the 
 Moors, he afterward rejected him altogether from 
 his Court. He fought often against the Moors. (I 
 may here mention that Cid is a Moorish name, and 
 signifies master.) No doubt those contests against 
 the Arabs tended very much to keep alive that spmt 
 of chivalry. This people first landed in Spain in the 
 eighth century, and very soon overran it, and even 
 penetrated into France as far as Poitou, where they 
 were met by Charles Martel, and driven back upon 
 Spain. We may say that they made themselves mas- 
 ters of all Spain. The Christian people took refuge 
 in the mountains, and, issuing from thence, gradual- 
 ly reconquered the country ; but that contest last- 
 ed 800 years. Notwithstanding their hostility, we 
 must confess the Moors did great things for Spain. 
 
112 MAHOMET 
 
 They invented the decimal system of notation, the 
 greatest boon the world perhaps ever got in that de- 
 partment ; also they gave us the words azimuth, 
 nadir, zenith — in all sciences they effected great re- 
 sults. They were the first who translated the Greek 
 books ; and, in short, were the instructors of Europe 
 in many respects. But in particular, we are to re- 
 mark of them that they serve especially to illustrate 
 what was said of the Middle Ages, and the effect of 
 belief at that time. 
 
 The nation, ever since the time of their probable 
 founders (Hagar and Ishmael), had been a nation of 
 great energj^, but living alone in their deserts, and 
 entirely obscure in that way of life, until Mahomet, 
 the Prophet of Arabia, appeared. This was in the 
 seventh century. I must say that I regard this man 
 as no impostor at all, and I am glad to think so for 
 the honor of our human nature, but, as an enthusi- 
 astic man, who had by the powers of his own mind 
 gained a flash of the truth, living a quiet simple 
 life till the age of forty, then striking out into a new 
 path altogether, deeply imj^ressed with the heinous- 
 ness of Arabian idolatry, and full of the great truth, 
 that God was one ; in other respects a poor inferior 
 mortal, full of sensuality, corruption, and ignorance, 
 as he showed by the rewards he promised the Arabs 
 when he spoke out his system to them. He got 
 them, but with much difficulty, to believe that, and 
 then within a century afterward they had spread 
 
CERVANTES 113 
 
 themselves, like guDpowder ignited by a spark, 
 across the Indies on the one hand, and on the other 
 np as far as Poitou ! They made, besides, great 
 proficiency in the arts, poetr}^, science, and were 
 greatly superior in all these respects to any Euro- 
 pean nation of the time. 
 
 In Cervantes we see almost the first record of 
 Spanish literature. Viriatus, the Cid, and the like 
 men lived silent ; their works spoke for them, and 
 it is singular that a poor obscure man should be the 
 only voice which has reached us through so many 
 ages of Spanish history, without which, too, we 
 should never have so accurately known what was 
 the tone of the Spanish soul. His life was not that 
 of a scholar at all, but of a broken, active, bard man 
 of action. He was of a decayed family of gentry of 
 Ascalon, near Madrid ; his birth took place in 1547. 
 Being placed at school, he soon distinguished him- 
 self, insomuch that he was able to obtain an em- 
 ployment under the Cardinal Aquaviva, who was 
 then going to Eome ; but the great league being 
 about that time formed between Rome, Spain, and 
 Venice against the Turks, he resigned his post, and 
 became a soldier, as did many young men and 
 noblemen then, volunteering to serve in the fleet 
 under Colonna and Don John of Austria. The bat- 
 tle of Lepanto was the beginning of his hard expe- 
 rience ; there his left arm was cut off by a Turkish 
 scimitar. Returning home to Spain, though he had 
 8 
 
114 CAPTIVITY IN BAKBARY 
 
 not quitted the army not^vitbstandmg Lis wound, 
 he was taken captive by a Barbary corsair, carried 
 to Algiers, and there compelled to dig the ground 
 in the service of the rude and cruel corsair, his 
 master. Seven years he spent in slavery and the 
 most grievous suffering ; but his cheerful and noble 
 heart kept him up. He spent the whole of this 
 time in devising means to get out of the place. 
 
 In Don Quixote he has given us the story of a 
 captive's adventures, distinctly resembling his own. 
 Besides this, in a book upon Barbary, written by a 
 Spanish priest in the same century, the author, 
 Father Haydo, gives an account of Cervantes' cap- 
 tivity and adventures, of his plans of escape ; that 
 he and others hved in a cavern for six months, hop- 
 ing to get away ; that he escaped death many times, 
 and in particular on the occasion of his escape into 
 the cavern, where he was detected ; that he was 
 there very nearly killed, and would have been had 
 not the Dey of Algiers consented to let him ransom 
 himself for 500 crowns if he were able. His mother 
 and sister and others then began to contribute tow- 
 ard this amount, as it was too much for one of them 
 to bear ; and it is very touching to see how one 
 would give fifty crowns, and another perhaps not so 
 much, and so on. But the Society of Mercy was 
 then active in ransoming Christian slaves, and, 
 among others, they were induced to ransom Cer- 
 vantes. He was then in his thirty-fourth year. He 
 
KANSOMED BUT POOR 115 
 
 married shortly after ; but he made at that time no 
 progress in literature. He was taken up by some 
 of his kindred about Seville, who were merchants 
 there, and in their employment he occupied himself 
 by travelling up and down SjDain, which, by these 
 means, he came to know accurately, and could not 
 have known so well in any other way. 
 
 He finally came to Valladolid to settle, but it is 
 not known why he did so. There is yet a curious 
 document in the archives of Valladolid, which shows 
 his humble condition and the small estimation in 
 which he was then held. A man, it appears from 
 this record, was one night murdered in front of 
 Cervantes' house. Cervantes ran out to give assist- 
 ance upon hearing the cry, but, being found with 
 the corpse, he was taken up b}' the police, and car- 
 ried away from his family before the magistrates. 
 His house was so mean, where he and his family 
 lived on the fourth floor, and their appearance was 
 so haggard and squalid, that he was suspected of 
 being one of the worst characters in the place. Of 
 course he was cleared of this charge ; but it is a 
 striking record of the state of misery to which he 
 was then reduced. Yet he was always, in spite of 
 all this, as cheerful as any man could be ; and the 
 best proof of this is that that very year, some say 
 before that, he produced the first part of Don Quix- 
 ote, being then in his fifty-fourth year, already in 
 old age. The last part appeared ten years after 
 
116 DON QUIXOTE 
 
 that, in the year before he died. It has been often 
 remarked that he died on the same day that Shake- 
 speare died. Some grandees and others gave him 
 in his latter years some slight help, the Duke of 
 Lemos, for example, for which he was abundantly 
 grateful to them ; but he was never lifted at any 
 time above the state of poverty and dependence, 
 and was always, as he said himself, the " poorest of 
 Spanish poets." Three or four days, or perhaps 
 two weeks, before his death, he writes to his patron, 
 the Duke of Lemos, expressing warmly his grati- 
 tude for his favors to him, and taking leave of him, 
 as he says, with his " foot in the stirrup." His had 
 been a hard condition, full of privations and evils, 
 necessity and difficulty. In none of his literary 
 things he seems to prosper but Don Quixote, which, 
 indeed, is a most admirable Avork ; and it really 
 seems as if Fortune, in return for her man}^ unkind- 
 nesses, had given him this high gift — the power of 
 speaking out the spirit that was in him in a way 
 that should rank him among the great voices of the 
 world. 
 
 Don Quixote is the very reverse of the Commedia 
 of Dante ; but in one respect it is analogous to it. 
 Like it, it is the free utterance of the heart of man 
 and nature. At the outset Cervantes seems to have 
 contemplated not much more than a satire on 
 chivalry — a burlesque. But, as he proceeds, the 
 spirit soon grows on him. One may say that in his 
 
MEANING OF DON QUIXOTE 117 
 
 Don Quixote he portrays his own character, repre- 
 senting himself with good-natured irony, mistaking 
 the illusions of his own heart for realities ; but he 
 proceeds ever more and more harmoniously. The 
 first time where he appears to have gone deeply into 
 his subject is the scene with the goatherds, where 
 Don Quixote breaks out into an eulogy on the 
 Golden Age, full of the finest poetry, although 
 strangely introduced in the middle of the mockery 
 which appears before. Throughout the delineation 
 of the Don's character and the incidents of the 
 story, there is the vesture of mockery, parody, with 
 a seam of poetry shining through all ; and above 
 all we see the good - humored cheerfulness of the 
 author, in the middle of his unfortunate destiny ; 
 never provoked with it, no atrabiliar quality ever 
 obtained any mastery in his mind ! It was written 
 in satire of the romances of chivalry ; but it is the 
 only record we have of many of them, and it is 
 questionable whether any of those romances would 
 have lasted till now if not noticed there. We have 
 no time at all to dwell upon its merits. There is 
 one thing, however, we should remark — that all the 
 world seems to have a taste for the worth of it, and 
 it is of all books the most universally read except 
 the Bible. 
 
 Independently of chivalry, it is valuable, too, as a 
 sort of sketch of the perpetual struggle in the hu- 
 man soul. We have the hard facts of this world's 
 
118 THE POETRY OF COMEDY 
 
 existence, and the ideal scheme struggling with 
 these in a high enthusiastic manner delineated 
 there ; and for this there is no more wholesome 
 vehicle anywhere than irony, the best way in which 
 these ideas can live. If he had given us only a 
 high-flown panegyric of the Age of Gold he would 
 have found no ear for him, it is the self-mockery in 
 which he envelopes it which reconciles us to the 
 high bursts of enthusiasm, and which will keep the 
 matter alive in the heart as long as there are men to 
 read it ! It is the poetry of comedy ! 
 
 As a finish to all his noble qualities he possessed, 
 in an eminent degree, the thing critics call humor, 
 different from wit, mere laughter, which indeed 
 seems to be much the same thing at first, though, in 
 fact, widely different, and it has been said with much 
 plausibility that the best test is, whether the writer 
 in laughing at the objects of his wit, contemplates 
 to produce an effect of any kind by it, or whether 
 he is merely covering them with sport without being 
 contemplative of any such end ; so that if anyone 
 wishes to know the difference between humor and 
 wit, the laughter of the fool, which the wise man, by 
 a similitude founded on deep earnestness, called the 
 crackling of thorns under a pot, let him read Cer- 
 vantes on the one hand, and on the other, Voltaire, 
 the greatest laugher the world ever knew. 
 
 There remain two other characters which (taking 
 leave with great regret of Cervantes) I must now 
 
CALDERON 119 
 
 notice. One of these is Lope de Vega, and the 
 other Calderon. Both contain a certain representa- 
 tion of the spirit of their age, although they do not 
 come into actual contact with it. Of Calderon I 
 have not read much, in fact, only one play and 
 some choice specimens collected in German books, 
 for his works are in great favor with the Germans, 
 as much as the old dramas, Greek and others. 
 They are extremely fond of Calderon, but I suspect 
 that there is very much of forced taste in this ; he 
 did not strike me much, except for the wild, vague 
 shape he gave to his characters. There is in 
 general much of the mystic and vague in Calderon. 
 No doubt he was a man of great earnestness of 
 mind, and deep genius, and he was in his day more 
 popular by far than Cervantes, also it is clear that 
 his are the best Spanish plays. Of Lope de Vega I 
 can say almost nothing, except that he too has 
 obtained an historical name among us. A man of 
 the strangest literary fortune ! No man was ever 
 so popular in his day as he was, courted by all, and 
 even complimented in a letter by the Pope himself, 
 insomuch that his name became proverbial for good 
 fortune, or excellence, and it was the custom to call 
 a fine day or fine woman, a Lope day ! a Lope 
 woman ! He certainly was a man of a strange 
 facility, but of much shallowness too, and greatly 
 inferior to Calderon ; not that he was without 
 genius, which if properly concentrated must have 
 
120 LOPE DE VEGA 
 
 become productive of large results, but it was ill 
 directed. He wrote one of his plaj^s, he tells us, in 
 twenty-four hours, and I believe he wrote above a 
 hundred at the same rapid rate, so that he suffered 
 his genius to be dissipated away in sound and vague 
 splendor, and he has passed altogether out of our 
 remembrance. He was certainly very successful in 
 obtaining wages, yet he complains very much of 
 them in a letter to his son, who had a great wish to 
 learn literature, wherein he counselled him most 
 earnestly not to think of such a thing, that the life 
 of a literary man is full of bitterness and of poverty ! 
 This last was a singular complaint to come from 
 him, as he certainly realized an immense sum of 
 money by the profits of his works, and the presents 
 that were made him. Still, he was a true poet in 
 his way. 
 
 In the history of Spanish literature there are only 
 tliese three, Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope, and 
 Cervantes is far above the other two ; and it is a 
 curious reflection to make, that in so noble a nation, 
 whose whole history is full of valiant actions and 
 occurrences of every description, possessing so 
 much cheerfuhiess, humanity, and quaint generos- 
 ity, no writer for so many hundred years should 
 have been produced who could speak the sj^irit of 
 the nation, only Cervantes, an unknown, obscure in- 
 dividual, maimed, for he had lost an arm, and 
 miserably poor. It is universally true that we can- 
 
SPANISH ENTERPRISE 121 
 
 not tell the meaning that is in men and things till a 
 long time after their day. The Spanish nation was 
 the most distinguished nation in the whole world. 
 America was conquered by very great men of that 
 nation ; Cortes — Alexander the Great was not 
 greater than Cortes! Pizarro, Balboa Nunez, the 
 discoverer of the Pacific, of whom it is said that 
 when he first beheld it he rushed into it till the 
 waves reached his middle flourishing his sword, and 
 took possession of the whole in the name of Spain 
 with true chivalrous feeling ; and, again, we see him 
 patching up the roof of his hut with leaves, dressed 
 in an old canvas jacket. They were the most en- 
 terprising people the world has seen yet. England 
 and America, full as they are of the spirit of enter- 
 prise, do not carry us farther, and therefore I say 
 that it is a strange and almost awful thing to con- 
 sider how completely that nation has now jDassed 
 away, sunk down into an insignificant and altogether 
 mean nation. Many accounts have been attempted 
 to be given for this, but even now one does not at 
 all see why it should have so happened ; we can 
 only say just this, that its time was come, but the 
 law which bound it cannot be understood at all ! 
 
 It is curious to see how Spain broke itself to 
 pieces in that conflict of Catholicism and chivalry 
 with the Reformation, commonly called the Dutch 
 War. It is one of the most beautiful and heroic 
 pieces of history to see a poor people, mere fisher- 
 
12^ THE DUTCH WAR 
 
 men and slieplierds, wishing to live quietly within 
 their own dykes, and not to trouble the world at all, 
 but who, happening to be among the first to receive 
 a new doctrine, a new truth then preached in the 
 world, could not get it maintained at all ; but the 
 Inquisition burned and branded them for it, and 
 they were at last obliged to revolt in consequence 
 against the then King of Sj^ain, Philij) II., and re- 
 sisted him successfully during a thirty years' war. 
 The result was what it always will be in such a 
 struggle, the triumph of the right cause, of truth 
 and justice over a system of downright falsehood 
 and abomination. The siege of Lej^den is a memor- 
 able event, it was surrounded by Spaniards on all 
 sides, and reduced to the last straits by famine ; 
 but it was not yielded, the defenders declared that 
 they were ready, if necessary, to eat their left arms, 
 and fight on with the right. One day the poor 
 people of the town met the Governor in his rounds, 
 and told him that they must surrender, or they 
 would die of hunger, but he told them not to sjDeak 
 of such a thing, to eat him if they chose, but not to 
 surrender. In the end they succeeded, as we know, 
 in cutting the dykes at Flushing, and letting out 
 the water into the Spanish camp, which they at- 
 tacked in the confusion, and thus delivered the city. 
 Their resolution was inveterate : they wore, many 
 of them, crescents in their caps, to show that they 
 would be Turks rather than Papists. 
 
DURATION OF THE STRUGGLE 123 
 
 This struggle lasted for thirty years, and first 
 made the nation remarkable in the world ; the whole 
 of it does great credit to the German people, to 
 whom they belong. 
 
 This leads us naturally to the subject of our 
 next lecture, " The German People and the Refor- 
 mation." 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 May 21st 
 
 SECOND Vl^mOJ)— Continued 
 
 The Germans— What They Have Done— Reforma- 
 tion— Luther— Ulrich VON Hutten— Erasmus. 
 
 In our last lecture we had a glimpse of the Dutch 
 War, the war between the Spanish and Dutch 
 nations, and we observed the approach of a new 
 life, the Reformation, and the Sj^anish Power 
 wrecking itself against the Power it sought to 
 molest, but which, instead, almost annihilated it. 
 We are naturally led to look a little farther back 
 into the causes of this new order of things, and to 
 notice a new people more interesting to us, their 
 descendants, than any we have yet noticed, namely, 
 the Germans. 
 
 The German people has been mentioned in 
 authentic records for the last 2,100 years. The 
 earliest notice we have of the Teutonic race is giv- 
 en in Luden's History of Germany, in a passage 
 recovered from Pytheas, an obscure author men- 
 tioned by Strabo. This work of Pytheas, a sort of 
 
THE GERMAN PEOPLE 125 
 
 joiu'nal of a Marseilles merchant, in which he has 
 noted down such observations as occurred to him 
 in his commercial journeyings, mentions a people 
 called Germans as a " white-complexioned quiet 
 people, living at the mouth of the Elbe." AVhat 
 the Germans were before that, or what they had 
 been doing from immemorial time, can never be 
 known, but it is clear that they were a race of men 
 designed for great things ; perhaps even the highest 
 of their destiny is not as yet attained. They be- 
 came gradually known as they came into contact 
 with the Eg mans ; as the contact more and more 
 increased, collision more and more increased, till at 
 last the Empire itself was absorbed by them, and the 
 dark anticipation of Tacitus realized : that one day 
 Kome would be destroyed by these barbarians ! In 
 Tacitus' history, the old scanty records of German 
 life are very interesting. Their character was cer- 
 tainly uncivilized, but not at all savage; it had a 
 deep earnestness in it, and was that of a meditative 
 people. The Scandinavian mythology is still a 
 curious document, illustrative of many features of 
 the German character. The account given of their 
 form of worship by Tacitus evinces a very superior 
 species of Paganism, indicative of a deep nature. 
 They worshipped the earth — Tliorih or Tenth — from 
 whom they themselves claimed to be descended. 
 The thought of the people was forming its deep 
 words long before they came out into speech. Their 
 
126 THE BERSEEKEE 
 
 wliole mythology, that dark vast sohtnde, the home 
 of darkness, the home of light, the great hall of 
 Odin, and other such, belong to a people having 
 deep thoughts lying in it. 
 
 The story of the Berserker, which has attracted 
 the attention of antiquaries during the last fifty 
 years, is the personification of what lay deep in the 
 German mind, the wild mind of Germany. The 
 Berserker was one who despised danger and fear, 
 rushed forth fiercely to battle, and, though without 
 armor, trod down hosts of foes like shells under his 
 feet. Hence his name, Berserker, "bare spirit." 
 This character is analogous to much that we find 
 in the Germans. Not, certainly, a true sample of 
 their feeling is that constant state of explosive fury 
 which marks the Berserker ; yet it illustrates their 
 fundamental character, the strange fierceness called 
 afterward by Italians the ''furore Tedesco" the most 
 dreadful of any. Yet rage of that sort, defying all 
 dangers and obstacles, if kept down sufficiently, is 
 as a central fire, which will make all things to grow 
 on the surface above it. Fighting is the only way 
 it displays itself in the Berserker, but in the Ger- 
 mans at large it appears in many other ways. Well 
 if it never come out in that Berserker Wuth, as it is 
 called. On the whole, it is the best character that 
 can belong to any nation, producing strength of all 
 sorts, and all the concomitants of strength, perse- 
 verance, steadiness. It is not easily excited, but 
 
JUSTICE OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE 127 
 
 when called up, it will have its object accomplished. 
 We find it in all their history. 
 
 Justice : that is another of its concomitants. 
 Strength, one may say, is justice itself. The strong 
 man is he that can be just ; that sets everything 
 in its own rightful place, one above the other. It is 
 the only way to do anything great and strong ; and 
 it is always the boast, and a legitimate one, of this 
 peo^^le that they are a just people, framing all their 
 institutions for ends of justice. 
 
 Trial by jury is essentially German. Tacitus 
 mentions the existence of an institution precisely 
 analogous to it ; and to this da}', in one part of 
 Switzerland, there is an old usage of very remote 
 tradition, called the "street court," itself quite a rude 
 jury, by which tradition, if two men meet upon the 
 high road, men travelling on business— say carriers, 
 drovers — and one of them do some injury to the 
 other, and they cannot agree about it, they are bound 
 to wait there till seven other persons shall have 
 come up, and these shall judge of the dispute (hence 
 the name ''street court," "road court," "strasse 
 gericht ") ; and they are to decide it irrevocably. I 
 say that all the rudiments of our trial by jury exist 
 there in that canton of Switzerland. These few de- 
 tails sufficiently indicate to us what the German 
 character is, and I shall leave you to expand what I 
 have said in your own minds over other traits quite 
 as characteristic. 
 
128 SWITZERLAND 
 
 Before the Reformation even, the Germans had 
 ah-eady appeared more than once in modern history. 
 First, when Europe itself was completely destroyed 
 by them ; when, after more than two centuries of 
 confused fighting, they at last made peace among 
 themselves and joined against Rome, till Europe 
 was altogether abolished, and made anew. This 
 first i)eriod, however, was little but a confused de- 
 lineation of all the influences of that time at work in 
 Europe iill the time of Charlemagne. He was also 
 a German, and got all Germany united under him. 
 The modern system of division into kingdoms and 
 principalities came from him. 
 
 Their next appearance in the worlds history was 
 at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the 
 fourteenth centuries in Switzerland, for the Swiss 
 are, in fact, Germans. Tins was the age of Dante. 
 They were the first in modern Europe who attempt- 
 ed to establish a regular government of liberty or 
 freedom. The history of William Tell, a beautiful 
 mythos, is grounded on indisputable facts. Most 
 probably the story of the apple is not true ; indeed, 
 it is altogether improbable, as it has been told of 
 others besides Tell ; nor that of Gessler's hat either, 
 according to Johannes von Miiller. But, what is 
 certain, is that after enduring with extreme patience 
 their wrongs for some space of time, they did con- 
 trive to hurl out the Austrian dominion, and to estab- 
 lish in its place a regular government. 
 
SWISS AND CHARLES THE BOLD 129 
 
 This is a thing which reflects great credit on the 
 whole nation of Germans, and leads men to admire 
 them more and more as they consider it. One does 
 not know any instance where the people, during a 
 contest so long and obstinate, have comported them- 
 selves so well throughout ; enduring their grievances 
 at first, and even sluggishly patient under them ; 
 but, finally, these remaining unredressed, rising into 
 a lion-like rage with all the spirit of the Berserker 
 against their tyrants. 
 
 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was the last 
 to feel their brave resolution. He wanted a kingdom, 
 and for this sole reason contrived to quarrel with 
 them, as he imagined it was quite easy, with his 
 knights and men-at-arms, to overcome these peasants, 
 who fought on foot. He, therefore, made a quarrel 
 with them, but was altogether defeated in three great 
 battles, Granson, Morat, and Nancy, at which last 
 place he wrecked himself against the Swiss. In the 
 first battle, we are told, they knelt down when they 
 saw Charles' immense army coming, as it were, to 
 swallow them up, and prayed that God would that 
 day assist them to fight against their enemies. Co- 
 mines says that Charles, seeing this, cried : " See ! 
 they yield." But others, who knew them better, 
 observed that " they did not much like that species 
 of yielding altogether." And accordingly they soon 
 found out that there was not much in it to like at 
 all. The Swiss rose like a whirlwind on their ene- 
 
130 THE REFORMATION 
 
 mies, overwhelmed them, and maintained their own 
 rights ! 
 
 But the third remarkable appearance of the Ger- 
 mans was at the Reformation, and greater than all. 
 This was in the sixteenth century. I have repeat- 
 edly alluded to the necessity of change in matters 
 of doctrine, the impossibility of any creed being- 
 perpetual, any theory which man's small mind may 
 form of this great universe being complete, though 
 he should study to all eternity the immensity of 
 which he is a fraction. Any opinion he may form 
 will only serve him for a time, it expands itself 
 daily, for progression is the law of every man : if 
 he be a fool even, still, he must have some power of 
 progi'ess ; it is inevitable, and his creed will conse- 
 quently go on expanding by degrees till it gets to its 
 extreme limits, or, if not, till he discovers some ideas 
 which are inconsistent with it, and will produce un- 
 easiness in the mind, to go on increasing generation 
 after generation till it comes at last to spoken pro- 
 test. Another cause of the ruin of a creed consists 
 in the fact that when the mind begins to be dubious 
 it will rush with double rapidity toward destruc- 
 tion, for all serious men hate dubiety ; these view 
 the creed indeed, but if not satisfied with it have 
 done with it forever. They may decline meddling 
 with it for a long time, but when they come to ques- 
 tion it they will have nothing to do with it, they do 
 not want to have popes or priests undei' any such 
 
CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH 131 
 
 system. But there is always a number of inferior 
 men who aim at the rewards which the Church has 
 to bestow, and therefore they willingly adhere to it, 
 and the very circumstance of any such attaching 
 themselves to any given system is of itself a certain 
 and infallible cause of ruin to it. This last cir- 
 cumstance was precisely the case with the Roman 
 Catholic Church at this time. There was no Pope 
 Hildebrand then ready to sacrifice life itself to the 
 end that he might make the Church the highest 
 thing in the world. Anyone who was inclined to 
 see things in their proper light then would have de- 
 cided that it was better to have nothing to do with 
 it, but crouch down in an obscure corner somewhere 
 and read his Bible, and get what good he can for 
 himself in that way, but have nothing to with the 
 Machiavellian policy of such a Church. The popes 
 of that age were such men as Julius 11., Borgia, and 
 Leo X., who did indeed maintain the Church, but 
 as to faith in it, they just believed nothing at all, 
 or believed only that they got so many thousand 
 crowns a year by it ; the whole was one chimera, one 
 miserable sham. That change, however, had been 
 working more and more since Dante's time. Dante 
 himself has abundant complaints to make about 
 popes, putting several of them into hell and fright- 
 ful punishments there, and even earlier than Dante 
 in all literary men we see a more and more growing 
 censoriousness of priests and popes, till in the sis.- 
 
132 LUTHER 
 
 teenth century it had become the fixed idea of all 
 intelligent men, followers of manful and honorable 
 views, that priests and monks were an indolent, use- 
 less race who only set themselves against w^hat con- 
 duced to human improvement in all departments. 
 
 In these circumstances Martin Luther was born. 
 His parents were of the poorest people. His father 
 was a poor miner of Moerha or Moer, near Eisenach, 
 in Upper Saxony, where Luther was born on No- 
 vember 10, 1483. He was a man of the largest 
 intellect and learning born in that centmy, put 
 down by nature as it seemed for the lowest sphere 
 of life, to beat out a little lead ore in his capacity of 
 miner, but it was not so appointed. His father, 
 who seems to have been a remarkable man, con- 
 trived to send him to a school, where he struggled 
 on in his studies for a long time. It ajDpears that 
 he went with other of the boys, as was their cus- 
 tom, through the various villages in the intervals of 
 study, singing ballads^ and getting in this way a few 
 coppers thrown to him, till at last the widow of a 
 rich burgher, hearing of his ability, assisted him 
 forward, and got him placed at the University, 
 where he soon distinguished himself. His father 
 wished him to be a lawyer, and he was at first 
 studying for that, but afterward, upon seeing a 
 companion struck suddenly dead by his father's 
 side, Luther, naturally a serious, melancholy-mind- 
 ed man, was so struck to the heart at seeing before 
 
EAKLY LIFE 183 
 
 his eyes a dear friend at once hurried away into 
 Eternity and infinitude, that the law and the pro- 
 motions it offered him sank into a poor, miserable 
 dream in comparison to the great reality before 
 him, and he became a monk that he might occupy 
 himself wholly witli prayer and religion. He be- 
 came, as he tells us, ''a strict and painful monk," 
 and this life continued many years, nearly ten 
 years. He was very miserable in that life, imagin- 
 ing himself doomed to everlasting perdition, and he 
 could not see how prayer, saying of masses, could 
 save him or get him to Heaven. At last one of his 
 brother monks, a pious, good man, told him, what 
 was quite new to him at that time, that the real 
 secret of the thing lay in repentance and faith in 
 Jesus Christ. This was the first insight he ever got 
 into it, that it was not prayer nor masses at all that 
 could save him, but falling down in spirit as Script- 
 ure says at the foot of the Cross ! At this time, 
 too, he found a Bible, an old Vulgate Bible, in the 
 convent library, which he read, and in this way he 
 got peace of mind at last, but he seems to have in- 
 troduced no project of reform at the time. 
 
 He continued to grow in esteem with everybody. 
 The Elector of Saxony, hearing of his great talents 
 and harmony, brought him to the University he had 
 just founded, and made him one of the professors 
 there. His convent afterward sent him to Rome, 
 for he still remained an Au2:ustinian monk, to man- 
 
134 THE SALE OF INDULGENCES 
 
 age some affairs of the convent ; this was in the time 
 of Pope Julius n. He was deeply shocked at all 
 he saw there, but was not in the least aware then 
 of the work he was, in a few years, to do. It is a 
 true saying of Schiller's : " Genius is ever a secret 
 to itself ; the strong man is he that is unconscious 
 of his own strength." But at last Tetzel, the cele- 
 brated Dominican, came into Saxony to sell indul- 
 gences. He was sent by Pope Leo X., who wanted 
 money for some purpose, some say to buy jewels 
 for a niece, and he sold them there beside Luther. 
 Luther soon found it out in the confessional, as he 
 heard frequently from those who came to confess, 
 that they had no need of repentance for this or that 
 sill, since they had bought indulgences for them ! 
 This set Luther to preach a sermon against the sale 
 of indulgences at all, in which he asserted that the 
 Church has only power to remit the penalties itself 
 imposes on sin, but not to pardon sin, and that no 
 man has any authority to do that. Tetzel respond- 
 ed to this, and at last Luther saw himself obliged 
 to look deeper into the matter, and to publish his 
 ninety-five propositions as to indulgences, denying 
 the foundation of the whole matter altogether, and 
 challenging Tetzel to prove it to him either in rea- 
 son or Scripture. This occasioned a great ferment 
 in Germany, already in an unsettled state of opin- 
 ion, and j)roduced several missions from the Pope. 
 Cardinal Cajetan tried to persuade him to retract, 
 
THE DIET OF AVOKMS 135 
 
 but, not succeeding, at last brought him before the 
 Diet of Worms. Luther, on the other hand, was 
 going farther and farther off, as his enemies irri- 
 tated him, seeking to discover what truth there 
 might be in any of the Church's doctrines ; till 
 finally, being excommunicated by the Pope, he pub- 
 licly bui*ned the excommunication in the presence 
 of his friends, and excited thereby a deep murmur 
 of astonished expectancy among the beholders, but 
 nothing more then, though they could not help feel- 
 ing that the truth must be with him. 
 
 A few did stand by him, however ; and finally, in 
 the year 1521, the year after that, he surrendered 
 himself to the Diet of Worms, where the Emperor 
 had resolved to have him tried, although he remem- 
 bered how Huss had been betrayed before, and his 
 safe conduct violated. It was in the eyes of all a 
 daring, great, fearful enterprise, but not fearful to 
 Luther, whose life was not to sink into a downy 
 sleep, while he heard the great call of a far other 
 life upon him, so he determined to go. This was 
 on the 17th of April, 1521. Charles V., the Emperor, 
 and the six Electors were sitting there, and there was 
 he, a poor man, son of a poor miner, with nothing 
 but God's truth for his support. His friends met 
 him at the gate, and told him not to enter the city, 
 as the danger was great ; but he told them delib- 
 erately " that, upon the whole, he would go in, 
 though there were as many devils in Worms as 
 
136 1^0 RECANTATION 
 
 house- tiles." He accordingly appeared, and went 
 through an examination on natters of religion, 
 which was wound up by the question : " Would he 
 recant his opinions ? " 
 
 The answer was to be given on the morrow ; he 
 meditated it all the night. Next morning, as he 
 passed through the streets, the people were all on 
 their housetops, calling on him not to deny the 
 truth, and saying, "Whoso denieth Me before men, 
 him will I deny before My Father." And there 
 Avere other voices of that sort which spoke to his 
 heart, but he passed on without a word. In the 
 Council he spoke in reply for two hours, and was 
 admired by everybody for his modest sincerity. 
 " As to the retractation, he first wished to have ex- 
 plained to him what was wrong in the opinions." 
 They told him " that they had nothing to do with 
 scholastic theology, the question was. Would he re- 
 cant ? " To this he answered " that his book was 
 divided into two portions, part of it was his own, 
 part was Scripture. In the former it was possible 
 that there was much error, which, if proved, he was 
 not only willing, but eager to retract ; but as to the 
 other part, he could not retract it. It was neither 
 safe nor prudent to do anything against Conscience ; 
 let me," he said, " be convicted of error from the 
 Bible, or let the thing stand as written. Here I take 
 my stand ; it is neither safe nor prudent to do any- 
 thing against Conscience ; God be ray help. Amen ! '» 
 
TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 137 
 
 This speech will be forever memorable; it was as 
 brave a speech as was ever uttered by man. It was 
 the beginning of things not fully developed even 
 yet, but kindled then first into a flame, which shall 
 never be extinguished. It was the assertion of the 
 right of consulting one's own conscience, which every 
 new founder of a civilization must now take along 
 with him, which has entered largely into all the ac- 
 tivity men have had since ! 
 
 From this Council he returned to the Convent of 
 Wart^urg, under protection of the Elector of Sax- 
 ony, where he translated the Bible ; and he had 
 twenty-five years of life after this Council : a life of 
 wild struggle, busy and harassed. There is no other 
 finer proof of his greatness than the way he con- 
 ducted himself while enjoying the confidence of 
 princes ; never was his head affected by it, and no 
 judgment ever proceeded from him that was not 
 that of a worthy and brave man. He kejDt peace 
 between the parties during his life, and soon after 
 his death the war broke out, and the Smalcaldic 
 League was formed. 
 
 At Wart/burg, once famous for the Minnesingers, 
 he first translated the Bible into the vulgar tongue. 
 This was the most notable work since Ulphilas' trans- 
 lation into Gothic, made in the fourth century, and 
 it remains to this day a most admirable version. 
 
 Luther's character, on the whole, is one of the 
 most characteristic in Germany, of whatsoever is best 
 
138 ERASMUS 
 
 iu German minds. He is the image o^ a large, sub- 
 stantial, deep man, that stands upon truth, justice, 
 fairness, that fears nothing, considers the right, and 
 calculates on nothing else ; and again, does not do 
 it sxDasmodically, but adheres to it deliberately and 
 calmly, through good report and bad. Accordingly, 
 we find him a good-humored, jovial, witty man, 
 greatly beloved by every one, and though his words 
 were half battles, as Jean Paul says, stronger than 
 artillery, yet among his friends he was one of the 
 kindest of men. The wild kind of force that was in 
 him appears in the physiognomy of the portrait by 
 Luke Chranak, his painter and friend, the rough 
 plebeian countenance, with all sorts of noble thoughts 
 shining out through it. That was precisely Luther 
 as he appears through his whole history. 
 
 Another great German personage, very different 
 from Luther, but who also deserves to be noticed, is 
 Erasmus, a Dutchman (for, as we observed, the Dutch 
 are in fact the same as the Germans, and Erasmus, 
 at any rate, wrote German and spoke it too). His 
 business with respect to the Keformation was trifling, 
 compared to that of Luther. He was sixteen years 
 older than Luther ; born at Rotterdam. He, too, 
 like every clear-headed man, was disgusted with that 
 dark ignorance of the monks, and satirized them, and 
 at first admitted the necessity of some kind of re- 
 formation, but that he should risk his ease and com- 
 fort for it did not enter into his calculations at all ; 
 
WORKS OF ERASMUS 139 
 
 and though he supported Luther at first, he after- 
 ward quarrelled with him, and opposed all his views. 
 He was a great scholar. There was somethiug in- 
 teresting about his mother's history. His real name 
 had been Gerhardt, but he took that of Erasmus — 
 "love child." His mother's was a most tragical life ; 
 she had been separated from his father by her friends, 
 and he, believing the rumor of her death, made 
 himself a priest ; on hearing of which, she sank into 
 an untimely grave. 
 
 His mother took him to school. Poor, forlorn 
 woman ! she did not know then that he was to be- 
 come a light of the world ! Rudolf Agricola came 
 to the school, and first observing his abilities, took 
 him by the hand and said, " Study, my little boy ; 
 thou shalt be the talk of all men before long." He 
 subsequently came under the notice of the Ai'ch- 
 bishop of Paris, who brought him over to England. 
 Afterward he came frequently to England ; he knew 
 More, the Chancellor, intimately. He led from this 
 time a kind of wandering life. Mountjoy, our Eng- 
 lish Ambassador at Paris, was the first to obtain him 
 a i^ension. He published many books, among others 
 an edition of the Greek Testament, but the work he 
 was then best known by was the Praise of Folly, 
 written here in ]\lQrg's fectuse ; it disappoints anyone 
 who would read it now. Also he wrote his Colloquies, 
 a ver}' ingenious book, and of r. great delicacy ; in- 
 deed, I should say, to make my friends understand the 
 
140 ULRICH VOTnT HUTTEN 
 
 character of Erasmus, that he is more Hke Achlison 
 than any writer I could mention who is familiarly 
 known in this country. I have said what his course 
 was toward the Reformation — that at first he ap- 
 proved of Luther, and then disapproved of him. He 
 was a man certainly of great merit, nor have I much 
 to say against him ; yet when I hear historians con- 
 trasting him favorably with Luther, and actually up- 
 braiding Luther with him, I must dissent altogether 
 from that, and say that Erasmus is not to be named 
 by the side of Luther ; a mere writer of poems, a 
 " litterateur." There are many things in Erasmus 
 to object to. Franz Horn is very angry, too, about 
 this setting up of Erasmus, concerning which, I for 
 one, desire nothing more than not to get angry too, 
 and spasmodic, as Luther himself did, in fact, suc- 
 ceed in doing. Franz says Erasmus belonged to a 
 class of people who are very desirous to stand well 
 with God, yet, at the same time, are very loth to 
 stand ill with the devil ; who will build a church to 
 God, and a chapel by the side of it for the devil, a 
 sort of position that really is not good in the world. 
 There is a third striking German character whom 
 we must notice, Ulricli von Hutten. He was a 
 nobleman by birth, destined at first by his father, 
 a rather foolish, obstinate man, to be a monk, which 
 not wishing to be, he was then marked out for a 
 lawyer, but not that either would he be ; till at last 
 he got sent by some cousins, who understood him 
 
SATIRE ON THE MONKS 141 
 
 better than his father did, to a school or university 
 of some kind, where he occupied himself with liter- 
 ary pursuits. He wrote many books, both in Latin 
 and German, principally in Latin, and became dis- 
 tinguished and known in his own country ; but his 
 life was never easy to him. He was a wanderer all 
 his days, travelling about to Frankfort and other 
 places, and even to Rome. He was much too head- 
 long a man ; he so hated injustice that he did not 
 know how to deal with it, and he became heart- 
 broken by it at last. 
 
 He had begun before Luther to satirize monk- 
 ery in his " Epistolse Obscurorum," not entirely 
 written by him, indeed ; three or four of the best 
 heads joined with him in it. It is very amusing, 
 but full of all kinds of platitudes ; a collection of 
 letters supposed to be written by monks, one monk 
 writing to another what he intends to do, and la}^- 
 ing bare all the details of that miserabl-. imbecile 
 life. Erasmus, it is related, burst out laughing on 
 reading it, and by this means broke a suppuration 
 in the throat, which had formed and endangered his 
 life, a thing, therefore, of immense consequence to 
 him. Ulrich had many struggles to meet. His 
 cousin was basely hanged by the Duke of Wirtem- 
 berg, assassinated in a wood for some dark purpose. 
 Hutten indignantly pleaded everywhere against the 
 Duke for this, and even went to war with him, in 
 alhance with the free towns then in arms acrainst 
 
142 STAUNCH SUPPORT OF LUTHER 
 
 him. He found it difficult to get any man in office 
 to patronize him. He says of himself that he 
 *' hated tumult " of all kinds ; and it was thus a 
 painful and sad position for him — who wished to 
 obey order, while a still higher order commanded 
 him to disobey ; when the standing by the existing 
 order would be, in fact, the standing by disorder. 
 
 Uirich was miserably disordered all his life, and 
 wholly without guidance. He, a proud nobleman's 
 son, looked down at first on Luther, a poor monk ; 
 but immediately after the Diet of Worms he recog- 
 nized that Luther was a great man, and soon main- 
 tained a correspondence with him. He once wrote 
 to Luther : " Thy work is of God, and will con- 
 tinue ; mine " (his was to force Germany from monk- 
 ery and oppression), " mine is of man, and will not 
 continue." He was much courted and flattered by 
 the Emperor of Germany and other Catholic princes, 
 and even by Francis, the King of the French ; but 
 he positively refused to quit Luther's party. A 
 price was set on his head ; not exactly that either, 
 but the magistrates of his city had certainly orders 
 to have him sent bound hand and foot to Eome, 
 and murderous assassins were hired to slay him, 
 from all which he was obliged to escape by flight. 
 In that journey he met Hochstratten, the head 
 monk, whom he had satirized in his "Epistolae 
 Obscurorum," and who had ever since raised the 
 prince's ire. Full of rage, he dashed down on him, 
 
FRANZ VON SICKINGEN 143 
 
 drawing bis sword ; but wben tbe imbecile being 
 wLo bad done bim all tbis miscbief uttered a 
 prayer, cbangiug bis purpose be burled bim away, 
 and passed on. In tbis journe}', too, be met witb 
 Franz von Sickingen, an extraordinary, interesting 
 cbaracter, and introduced by Goetbe into bis " Ber- 
 licbingen." Franz gave bim sbelter in bis castle, and 
 bere tbe two first read Lutber's books, and con- 
 fessed tbat tbe tbing wbicb be meant, all good men 
 sbould mean ! Ulricb publisbed books, too, in tbis 
 place. 
 
 Tbe deatb of Sickingen contains a very noble 
 tbing. He bad a feud witb tbe Arcbbisbop of 
 Treves, and be defended bimself in bis castle on 
 tbe Kbine, Landstein, wbere tbe arcbbisbop be- 
 sieged bim ; but be could not be overcome at all, 
 till one day, wbile looking at tbe state of tbe de- 
 fences, be was struck by a musket-ball, and died in 
 twenty-four bours after. Tbe castle at once surren- 
 dered, as in bim tbe soul of tbe defence was taken 
 away. And bere comes tbe noble tbing I alluded 
 to. At tbe point of deatb, wbile be was ab'eady 
 pale witb deatb, tbe arcbbisbop came in to see bim, 
 tbe arcbbisbop wbo bad caused bis destruction, and 
 Sickingen at once raised bis cap, unmindful of tbe 
 feud, for bis reverence for wbat was above bim was 
 far deeper tban tbat ; and tbis seems to me tbe 
 noblest, politest tbing tbat is recorded of any sucli 
 moment as tbat. 
 
144 EEASMUS AND HUTTEN 
 
 Sickingen being killed, Hutten had no resource 
 but again to wander forth ; and then occurred the 
 worst thing that I have read of Erasmus, who once, 
 when poor and dependent, flattered Hutten, and ob- 
 tained his patronage, but was now living at Basle, 
 a rich man, and admitted to the councils of the 
 Emperor. To him Hutten came for relief, but he 
 would have nothing to do with him. Hutten then 
 wrote to his friends, complaining of this miserable 
 treatment of Erasmus, and Erasmus then gave a 
 false account of it in a work he published, where- 
 upon Hutten wrote at last to Erasmus, most indig- 
 nantly exposing the true affair as a miserably shab- 
 by thing to have been perpetrated against a poor 
 man, without hope, without money, without friends ! 
 Erasmus then took a violent antipathy to Hutten, 
 and wrote satires upon him ; but it was a poor 
 thing that, and he could not clear himself. Hutten 
 then wandered on ; but the hand of death was on 
 him. He came to Zurich ; but Erasmus wrote be- 
 forehand to the magistrates, warning them against 
 him as a hot-headed person, and they forced him to 
 quit the place. He left it, and came to a small 
 island in the lake of Zurich, and died there shortly 
 afterward. He had maintained a sister up to his 
 death, and at his death there was found in his pock- 
 et only one thaler. He died in his thirty-fifth year 
 — one of the bravest men Germany ever had, but of 
 a spirit that could not get to exhibit itself in litera- 
 
DEATH OF HUTTEN 145 
 
 ture at all ; the rough draft of something excellent, 
 but which could not get out into its full delineation. 
 This must suffice for what can be said of the 
 Reformation in Germany. In my next lecture I 
 shall resume the subject with reference to a coun- 
 try still more interesting to us — namely, our own 
 country. 
 
 10 
 
LECTUEE VIII. 
 
 Maij 25th 
 
 SECOND 'Pi:.mOJ)— Continued 
 
 The English: Thetr Origin, Their Work and Des- 
 tiny — Elizabethan Era — Shakespeare — John 
 Knox — Milton — Beginning of Scepticism. 
 
 In our last lecture we introduced ourselves to the 
 German people, the great Teutonic race, and to the 
 great work which was intrusted to them to do by 
 the economy of Providence in this world of ours. 
 We have now to occupy ourselves with one particu- 
 lar tribe of the Teutonic race : whether or not the 
 most important — although from the great things 
 they have had to do we might call it so — it is indis- 
 putably the most interesting to us, for it is our own 
 nation, the Saxon or English. This nation, too, 
 first came into decisive notice about the time of the 
 Reformation, and as a nation much connected with 
 that great event. We shall cast a glance over the 
 period which preceded its arriving at the condition 
 of an articulately - speaking nation, when it began 
 partly to understand its own meaning, partly to an- 
 nounce it. 
 
THE SAXONS 147 
 
 The Saxons are not noticed in the earliest periods 
 by the Romans. They are not even mentioned in 
 Tacitus. In Ptolemy there is but one single line 
 about them. He speaks of "the Saxons, a people 
 inhabiting the northern part of the Cimbric Cher- 
 sonesus," the modern Denmark. But they had 
 come into extraordinary notice from their formid- 
 able character in the fourth century, and were, along 
 with the Lombards, the chief fighters of the Ger- 
 man tribes. As to their piracies, they were addicted 
 early to the sea ; the adventurous of the tribe occu- 
 pied themselves very much with piracy and sailing 
 of all kinds. Their feats in sailing and fighting ex- 
 cited the greatest terror among the Romans. Si- 
 donius Apollinaris and Ammianus Marcellinus both 
 commemorate the ungovernable temper and wild 
 spirit of this people. Their craft were of a rude 
 description, made of wicker and covered with 
 leather. Gibbon describes their habit of ascending 
 the Rhine in these wicker boats, then carrying them 
 on their shoulders across the country to the Rhone 
 and launching them there, to make their appearance 
 in a short time at the Straits of Gibraltar. Am- 
 mianus Marcellinus speaks much of their fondness 
 for the sea. It is curious to see in this manner 
 the ancestors of our Blakes and Nelsons among 
 these people. In general, indeed, a seafaring peo- 
 ple is required to be one of the strongest of peo- 
 ples. Nothing can be a better measure of the 
 
148 CHAEACTER OF THE SAXONS 
 
 strength of a man than to put him into a ship in 
 the middle of the wild elements exjDosed to the 
 rage and variableness of the winds, which he must 
 observe with an ever-watchful care and shape him- 
 self by them, and wait for and seize every favorable 
 instant for the purpose of his enterprise. Accord- 
 ingly we find that the Dutch and English tribes are 
 the greatest of the Germans. So in Luden or Mas- 
 cou, I think Mascou, we find the mythus of the crea- 
 tion of the Teutonic people, how one tribe was made 
 out of the mould of the valley of the Danube, an- 
 other out of water, but the Saxons out of the Saxa 
 or rock of the Hartz Mountains. They were, in 
 fact, the hardest of the tribes, and greatly distin- 
 guished in that respect from the rest of the Ger- 
 mans ; there was a kind of silent ruggedness of 
 Nature in them, with the wild Berserker rage 
 deeper down in the Saxons than in others. They 
 have a kind of resemblance to the Eomans in that 
 respect, though much of it has not unfolded itself 
 even among the English, for we have as yet pro- 
 duced no great painter, nor anyone who has ex- 
 celled in the highest arts except Shakespeare, and 
 yet a nation which has produced a Shakespeare we 
 may justly conclude to be capable of producing 
 much. Their talent, however, was practical like 
 that of the Komans, a greatness of perseverance, 
 adherence to a purpose, method — i^ractical great- 
 ness in short. 
 
ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS 149 
 
 If any seer among them in the year 449, when 
 they landed here in the Isle of Thanet, could have 
 looked forward to the year 1838 as we can look back 
 to 449, he would have said, as we may say, that 
 great and remarkable as the foundation of Eome 
 certainly was, it was not a greater fact, nor so great 
 even, as that humble settlement of the Saxons on 
 these shores. He would have seen our present do- 
 minion extending from the Gulf of California, from 
 the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, away up to the 
 Ganges and Burrampootra, and descending even to 
 our antipodes. He would have seen these descend- 
 ants of Saxons conquering more than the Romans 
 did, who subdued men, but these subdued the in- 
 coherences and difficulties of Nature, reclaiming 
 wild and boundless wastes and converting them 
 into arable land and scenes of civilization ! 
 
 For about a hundred years after their landing 
 Saxons continued arriving : one regrets gi-eatly that 
 there is no intelligence to be had about this matter, 
 so full of moment, rude energy, and significance. 
 For three hundred years the war with the Britons, 
 ancient possessors of the soil, lasted ; these and the 
 Caledonians were gradually driven back into the 
 mountains, and the Lowlands were made into a 
 Saxon country. To this day "Saxon" is the Celtic 
 name for the English ; the Highland Scotch apply 
 it to the Lowlanders jet The name " English " or 
 " Angles " arose out of a small territory from which 
 
150 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 
 they originally came, in the Duchy of Schleswick, 
 where to this day it is called " Angleland." 
 
 The etymology of the name "Saxons" is uncer- 
 tain, nor is it of any value. The opinion seems to 
 be that it is derived from Saks, a sword or knife 
 worn by this peoj^le. Nennius has preserved the 
 word of command used by their leader Hengist, 
 '' Niemet hyr Saxas ! " (take your knives). " Saks " 
 is the Westphalian name yet, or was when Mascou 
 wrote. After these 300 years there remained yet 
 300 years more of incessant fighting between the 
 different kingdoms of the Heptarchy. We read of 
 battles and successions of kings, and one endeavors 
 to remember them, but without success, except so 
 much of this flocking or fighting as Milton gives 
 us, viz., that they were the battles of kites and crows, 
 for they have no interest for us. Indeed, those 
 who took part in this flocking and fighting were 
 making the reverse of a history of England. Who- 
 ever was uprooting a thistle or bramble, or drain- 
 ing out a bog, or building himself a house, or, in 
 short, leaving a single section of order where he had 
 found disorder, that man was writing the history of 
 England, the others were only obstructing it. Yet 
 these battles were natural enough. The peoj^le who 
 should succeed in keeping themselves at the top 
 of affairs were the fittest to be there, the weakest 
 would maintain themselves for a while, but when 
 the attack came they would be obliged in every 
 
ALFRED 151 
 
 case to surrender to the more force and method that 
 was in the others, which must triumph over all the 
 incoherent characters that needed to be regulated 
 by it. A wild kind of intellect as well as courage 
 was shown by each party in his own department, in 
 his own circumstances. 
 
 Traces of deep feeling are scattered over this his- 
 tory, as, indeed, over that of all the Germans. For 
 example, there is the speech of Clotaire, the French 
 king, himself a German, and a remarkable one it is. 
 When he was dying, when he felt himself dying, he 
 exclaimed: "Wa! Wa ! What great God is this 
 that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings ? '* 
 It was the expression of a wild astonishment in the 
 barbarous mind at the terrible approach of some 
 great unknown thing which he could not escape. 
 There was, too, an affectionateness, a largeness of 
 soul in the intervals of these fights of kites and 
 crows. We often see a prince doing all the good he 
 could, arranging everything as far as it was possible 
 to arrange it. 
 
 There was one memorable instance of this — 
 namely, Alfred. He was not exactly the first that 
 united the different kingdoms together, yet we ma}', 
 on the whole, say that he was the first. He pos- 
 sessed a very great mind, the highest qualification for 
 his office. He lived in a rude, dark age. We all 
 know his fighting against the Danish pirates ; his 
 succeeding, after great exertions and fightings, to get 
 
152 THE NORMANS 
 
 his crown back to liim again ; and how he pacified 
 the country by treaty and wise policy as much as by 
 war. Then in literature his services were, for the 
 age, great ; he translated many books from the Latin 
 language into Saxon. He first shaped the thing we 
 call the British Constitution ; he laid the founda- 
 tions of it, as it were. One fancies, too, that he was 
 able to have an instinct into the business, and in 
 that view to lay out institutions which have already 
 lasted 1,100 years. He founded Oxford according 
 to tradition, not by the name of university, but at 
 an}^ rate he founded schools there. He was as great 
 a man for this island as Charlemagne was the cen- 
 tury before for Europe. His influence was not for 
 the moment felt, but it has borne abundant fruit in 
 after times. Voltaire said of him that he was the 
 greatest man in history — for his self-denial and 
 heroic endeavors on the one hand, and his mild 
 gentleness combined with that on the other. 
 
 In the next century, or a centmy and a half after- 
 ward, the Normans gained possession of the throne 
 of England, an important event, which brought 
 this country into more immediate connection with 
 the Continent, and produced other results not all 
 beneficial in their way. They were the same people 
 (I say this in contradiction to a vague notion which 
 has circulated that, by the Conquest, England 
 became divided into two peoples), who had left 
 their country three or four centuries after the Saxon 
 
ELIZABETH 153 
 
 pirates bad come to these shores, and in the course 
 of their emigration had learned a new language by 
 their introduction to the Latin and the French, and 
 had generally attained to a higher culture than the 
 Saxons. They endeavored, too, to introduce the 
 French language in this country, but wholly failed. 
 
 The history of the succeeding periods is but a 
 strange description of elements. There seems to 
 have been nothing but war. At any rate, war was 
 far more frequent here than in any other country ; 
 and this lasted down to the very neighborhood of 
 Queen Elizabeth, for it was not till the reign of 
 her grandfather that the kingdom became consoli- 
 dated. Nay, Scotland was still more remarkable in 
 this respect. It had been continually fluctuating 
 for six centuries before the end of the Heptarchy, 
 now embracing Cumberland, now confined to the 
 Grampians. But in England, after the Wars of the 
 Roses had been ended, things began to change, till 
 at last the whole amalgamated into some distinct 
 vital unity. 
 
 This was begun about the time of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, in many respects the summation of innumera- 
 ble influences, the co-ordination of many things, 
 which till then had been in contest ; the first beau- 
 tiful outflush of energy, the first articulate spoken 
 energy. There was Saxon energy before that, in 
 Hengist and in Horsa ; not a spoken energy, but a 
 silent one ; not shown in speech, but in work. It 
 
+ 
 
 154 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 was here, as in general, the end of an epoch when 
 it began to speak. The old principle, feudalism, 
 and that other one, the Catholic religion, were 
 beginning to end ; when, like the cactus- tree, which 
 blooms but once in centuries, so here appeared the 
 blossom of poetry for once, w^hich done, that energy 
 was to carry itself on according to such laws as are 
 suitable to it, abiding till the time of a future mani- 
 festation. Nowhere has such a number of great 
 people been at once produced as here in the Eliza- 
 bethan era — Bacon, Raleigh, Spenser; above all, 
 Shakespeare ! It is not possible for us to go 
 through all those names in our short space, and we 
 must therefore confine our attention to Shakepeare 
 alone. 
 
 Shakespeare is the epitome of the era of Eliza- 
 beth. A man, in whom that era, as well as other 
 eras, have found a voice ; one who gives utterance 
 to many things silent before him, and worthy to be 
 called the spokesman of our nation ! It is now uni- 
 versally admitted that he must be regarded as the 
 greatest person that has been produced in the lit- 
 erature of modern Europe. The Germans have 
 long been as enthusiastic admirers of him as our- 
 selves, and often more enlightened and judicious 
 ones, for there the highest minds have occupied 
 themselves with criticism of Shakespeare. One of 
 the finest things of the kind ever produced is 
 Goethe's criticism on Hamlet in his " Wilhelm 
 
HIS INTELLECT 155 
 
 Meister," which many among you are aware of. I 
 may call it the reproduction of Hamlet in a shape 
 addressed to the intellect, as Hamlet is already ad- 
 dressed to the imagination. Even the French, in 
 late times, have come over to think in the same way. 
 He was one of the great sons of Nature, like a 
 Homer, an ^schylus, a Dante — a voice from the 
 innermost heart of Nature. ; He speaks the dialect 
 of the sixteenth century in words much more ex- 
 pressive and comprehensive than any used before 
 him, for knowledge had made great progress in his 
 time, and therefore his language became more com- 
 plex and rich in significance. 
 
 Anyone who takes in his likeness accurately must 
 pronounce him an universal man ! There is no tone 
 of feeling that is not capable of yielding melodious 
 resonance to that of Shakespeare. AVe have the 
 southern sunny language of his Juliet, the wild 
 northern melody of his Hamlet, varied with most 
 piercing feeling and tones of tenderness ; the rude 
 heartfelt humor of his Autolycuses and Dogberry s, 
 and, finally, the great stern Berserker rage burning 
 deep down under all, and making all to grow out in 
 the most flourishing way, doing ample justice to all 
 feelings, not developing any one in particular, but 
 yielding to us all that can be required of him upon 
 every subject. In a word, if I were bound to de- 
 scribe him, I should be inclined to say that his in- 
 tellect was far greater than that of any other man 
 
156 HIS HISTORICAL INSIGHT 
 
 who has given an account of himself by writing 
 books. I know that there have been distinctions 
 drawn between intellect, imagination, fancy, and 
 so on, and doubtless there are conveniences in such 
 division, but at the same time we must keep this 
 fact in view, that the mind is one, and consists not 
 of bundles of faculties at all, showing ever the same 
 features however it exhibits itself — whether in 
 painting, singing, fighting, ever with the same phys- 
 iognomy. And when I hear of the distinction be- 
 tween the poet and the thinker I really see no dif- 
 ference at all, for the poet is really such by dint of 
 superior vision, by dint of a more deep serene vi- 
 sion, and he is a poet solely in virtue of that. Thus 
 I can well understand how the Duke of Marlbor- 
 ough once declared that all his acquaintance with 
 the history of England was owing to Shakespeare. 
 One can understand it, I say, for Shakespeare ar- 
 rived at more of the meaning of history than many 
 books written on history could have done. His in- 
 tellect seized at once what was the proper object of 
 historical interest, and put it down there as the 
 leading incident of his play. The trace of intellect 
 is more legible in Shakespeare than in any other 
 writer. Bacon, indeed, was great, but not to be 
 compared with Shakespeare. He not only sees the 
 object but sees through it, sympathizes with it, and 
 makes it his own. Let us look into the scheme of 
 his works, the play of Hamlet, for instance. Goethe 
 
HIS UNCONSCIOUSNESS 157 
 
 found out, and has really made plausible to his 
 readers, all sorts of harmonies in the structure of 
 his plan's with the nature of things, and we have 
 realized in this way all that could be demanded of 
 him. And what is still more excellent, I am sure 
 that Shakesj^eare himself had no conception at all 
 of any such meaning in his poem ; he had no 
 scheme of the kind. He w^ould jast look into the 
 story, his noble mind, the, serene depth of it, would 
 look in on it as it w^as by nature, with a sort of 
 noble instinct, and in no other way. If he had 
 written a criticism upon it he would not at all have 
 said what Goethe said about it. And thus when we 
 hear of so much said of the art of any great writer 
 it is not art at all, it is properly nature. It is not 
 known to the author himself, but is the instinctive 
 behest of his mind. This all-producing earth knows 
 not the symmetry of the oak which springs from 
 it. It is all beautiful, not a branch is out of its 
 place, all is symmetry there ; but the earth has it- 
 self no conception of it, and produced it solely by 
 the virtue that was in itself. So is the case with 
 Homer ; and then critics slip in in the rear of these 
 men and mark down the practice they followed, and 
 prescribe it to others for imitation, forgetting that 
 the very thing to be prescribed is the healthy mind 
 of these men, which of itself knows what to put 
 down and what to omit in the beautiful sympathy 
 of brotherhood wdtli their subject, but not how to 
 
158 HIS MORALS 
 
 follow certain prescribed rules about beginning in 
 the middle, end, or beginning of the subject, and 
 other rules of that sort. 
 
 I have generally found that morals in a man are 
 the counterpart of the intellect that is in him. In 
 fact, morality is the noblest force in his mind, the 
 soul of his soul, and must lie at the root of all the 
 great things he could utter. In Shakespeare, then, 
 there are always the noblest sympathies, no sectari- 
 anism, no cruelty, no narrowness, no vain egotism ; 
 he is the best illustration we could have of what I 
 am always talking about, consciousness and uncon- 
 sciousness. The things great and deep in him he 
 seems to have no notion of at all. Occasionally w^e 
 have certain magniloquent passages which at this day 
 we can scarcely understand, often bombastic, vastly 
 inferior to his ordinary compositions, and these he 
 seems to have imagined extraordinarily great ; but, 
 in general, there is a fervent sincerity in any matter 
 he undertakes, by which one sees at once as through 
 a window into the beautiful greatness of the soul of 
 man. And as to his life, what a beautiful life was 
 that, amid trials enough to break the heart of any 
 other man. Poverty, and a mean poor destiny, 
 which if he were an ambitious man would have 
 driven him mad, but he would not suffer himself to 
 be subdued by it. And it was fortunate for us. 
 If he had been suffered to live quietly in Warwick- 
 shire his mind was so rich in itself he would have 
 
HIS MOTIVE AND METHOD 159 
 
 found such " sermons in stones and good in every- 
 thing" that he would probably not have troubled 
 the world at all with his productions. It is thus 
 that in all departments of thought an accidental 
 thing, the action of accident, becomes often of the 
 greatest importance. For the greatest man is al- 
 ways a quiet man by nature, we are sure not to find 
 greatness in a prurient noisy man. Thus Shakes- 
 peare at first lived, running about the woods in his 
 youth, together witb, as we find by dim traditions, 
 all the wild frolic of that age and place. Stealing 
 deer and the like feats of ebullient buoyancy, till 
 distress sends him to London to write his immor- 
 tal plays there ! And I will here, before conclud- 
 ing my remarks on Shakespeare, add a few words 
 on the conditions under which all human things are 
 to be written. We must say that what the critics 
 talk about, the harmony of the poet's purpose is not 
 true. In Shakespeare's plays genius is under fet- 
 ters, he has in general taken some old story and 
 used that for the subject of his play, with the mere 
 purpose to gather an audience to the Bankside The- 
 atre ; this was the only problem he had to resolve, 
 Nature and his own noble mind did the rest. In 
 consequence of this we find in some of his pieces 
 many things vague and quite unsatisfactory, and 
 are unable to discover any significance about them, 
 but ever and anon we see a burst of truth, and are 
 forced to exclaim, " Yes, that is true I " That is 
 
160 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the case with the deHneation of human feeHngs in 
 every age. 
 
 I shall now very reluctantly leave Shakespeare, 
 and direct your notice to another great man, very 
 different from Shakespeare — John Knox. He and 
 Shakespeare lived in the same age ; he was, indeed, 
 sixty years old when Shakespeare was born, but, at 
 any rate, both lived in the same age together. 0.f 
 him it may be said, that if Shakespeare was the 
 most giant-like man, and the highest of jDoets, John 
 Knox seems, if one knew him rightl}', to have been 
 as entirely destitute of immorality as Shakespeare 
 was of prose. 
 
 I cannot, however, think that he is to be com- 
 pared with Luther, as some of the Germans in these 
 days have done, who have set him even above 
 Luther ; struck with the great veracity of Knox. 
 Luther would have been a great man in other things 
 besides the Keformation ; a great, substantial, happy 
 man, who must have excelled in whatever matter he 
 undertook. Knox had not that faculty, but simply 
 this, of standing entirely upon truth ; it is not that 
 his sincerity is known to him to be sincerity, but it 
 arises from a sense of the impossibility of any other 
 procedure. He has been greatly abused by many 
 persons for his extremely rough and uncourteous 
 behavior, for he had a terrible piece of work to do. 
 He has been even represented as struggling for a 
 mere whim of his own, regardless altogether of other 
 
HIS EAKLY EXPERIENCE 161 
 
 things. But that charge is not true, and as to that 
 moral rigor of his, it is the great thing after all : 
 given a sincere man, you have given a thing worth 
 attending to. Since sincerit}-, what is it but a di- 
 vorce from earth and earthly feelings ? The sun, 
 which shines upon the earth, and seems to touch it, 
 does not touch the earth at alL So the man who is 
 free of earth is the only one that can maintain the 
 great truths of existence, not by an ill-natured talk- 
 ing forever about truth, but it is he who does the 
 truth. And this is a great and notable object to be 
 attended to, for that is the very character of Knox. 
 He was called out to free a people from dark super- 
 stitions and degradations into life and order. It is 
 very notable that at first he had no idea of being a 
 reformer, although he had a clear sound view that 
 Protestantism must be the true religion, and the 
 Catholic religion false. Though a monk, he deter- 
 mined now to have nothing to do with Catholicism, 
 and he withdrew from all prominence in the world 
 until he had reached the age of forty-tkree, an age 
 of quietude and composure. When he was besieged 
 in the Castle of St. Andrew's along with his master, 
 whose children he educated, he had many confer- 
 ences with his master's chaplain. The latter, having 
 first consulted with the people, who were anxious to 
 hear Knox preach too, suddenly addressed him from 
 the pulpit, saying that " it was not right for him to 
 sit still when great things were to be spoken ; that 
 11 
 
162 HIS CONSTANCY 
 
 the harvest was great, but the laborers were few ; 
 that he (the chaplain) was not so great a naan as 
 Knox, and that all were desirous to hear the latter ; 
 is it not so, brethren ? " he asked, to which they 
 assented. Knox then had to get into the pulpit, 
 trembling, with a pale face, and finally he burst into 
 tears, and came down, not having been able to say 
 a word. 
 
 From this time he wandered about, resisting the 
 destiny that was for him, until at last he dared not 
 refuse any more. It was a fiery kind of baptism 
 that initiated him. He had become a preacher not 
 three months, when the castle surrendered, and they 
 were all taken prisoners and worked as galley slaves 
 on the river Loire, confined for life there. The 
 chiefs of the conspirators were put in prison ; this 
 was the year forty-seven or forty-nine, from which 
 his whole life forward was as a battle. Seven years 
 after we find him escaping from the French galleys, 
 when he came to England. 
 
 In Luther we often see an overshadowing of 
 despair, and especially towards the end of his life, 
 when he describes himself as "heartily sick of ex- 
 istence, and most desirous that his Master would 
 call him to his rest." Another time he laments 
 the hopelessness of Protestantism, and says that all 
 sects will rise up at last in the day of judgment. 
 But there never was anything like this in Knox ; 
 he never gave up, even in the water of the Loire. 
 
HIS SENSE OF IIUMOU 163 
 
 They were ordered to hear mass ; but though they 
 went to hear it, they could not be prevented from 
 putting on their caps during it. Their Virgin 
 Mary was once brought for some kind of reverence 
 to the people in the galley, and it was handed to 
 Knox first ; but he saw nothing there but a painted 
 piece of wood — a " pented bredd," as he called it in 
 his Scotch dialect ; and on their pressing him, he 
 threw it into the water, saying that " the Virgin, 
 being wooden, would swim." There was a great 
 deal of humor in Knox, as bright a humor as in 
 Chaucer, expressed in his own quaint Scotch. He 
 wrote the History of the Scotch Reformation. By 
 far better than any other history is that autobiog- 
 raphy of his. Above all, there is in him a genuine 
 natural rusticity, a decided earnestness of j^urpose ; 
 the good nature and humor appear in a very strik- 
 ing waj', not as a sneer altogether, but as real de- 
 light at seeing ludicrous objects. Thus, when he 
 describes the two archbishops quarrelling, no doubt 
 he was delighted to see the disgrace it brought on 
 their church ; but he was chiefly excited by the 
 really ludicrous spectacle of rochets flying about 
 and vestments torn, and the struggle each made to 
 overturn the other. 
 
 The sum of the objections made to Knox, and 
 which have obfuscated and depressed his memory 
 for centuries, seems to be his intolerance ; that he 
 wanted tolerance and all the qualities that follow 
 
164 HIS INTOLERANCE AND JIUDENESS 
 
 out of it ; and particularly for bis rude, brutal way 
 of speaking to Queen Mary. Now, I confess that 
 when I came to read these very speeches, my opin- 
 ion of these charges was that they are quite un- 
 deserved. It was quite impossible for any man to 
 do Knox's functions and be civil too ; he had either 
 to be uncivil, or to give up Scotland and Protes- 
 tantism altogether. Mary wanted to make of Scot- 
 land a mere shooting-ground for her uncles, the 
 Guises. In many respects she seems to have been 
 a weak, light-headed woman, and Knox, in the ques- 
 tion between civility and duty, was bound to stand 
 by the latter and not by the former ; but his in- 
 civility was not at all rude or brutal ; it was noth- 
 ing more than the statement of what was necessary 
 to be done. It was unfortunate, too, for him that 
 the sovereign was a woman, that he had not a man 
 to deal with ; there would have been less commis- 
 eration then, and he would not have been afraid to 
 speak in the same way to a man if one had been 
 there. It was truly said of him on his death-bed 
 by the Earl of Morton : " There he lies that never 
 feared the face of man ! " When I look at what he 
 had to do ; at tlie wild people, the barbarous horde 
 he found it ; and how he left it a quiet, civilized 
 one, and how he brought down into the meanest 
 minds, into every hut of Scotland, the greatest 
 thoughts that ever were in the mind of mai), I can- 
 not but admire him, and expect all honest peoj^le to 
 
MILTON 135 
 
 do the same, however they may differ from him in 
 opiuioii. We canuot expect all men's opinions to 
 tally with our own. It ought to be enough for us 
 that there is sincerity of belief, of conviction. 
 
 The third person to whom I have to direct your 
 attention is Milton. He lived a century from Knox, 
 and he may be considered as a summing up, com- 
 posed, as it were, of the two — of Shakespeare and 
 Knox. As to Shakespeare, one does not find what 
 religion he was of ; an universal believer, impressed 
 with many things which ma}^ be called religious ; 
 having reverence for everything that bore the mark 
 of the Deity, but of no particular sect, not particular- 
 ly Protestant more than Catholic. But Milton was 
 altogether sectarian — a Presbyterian, one might say. 
 He got his knowledge out of Knox, for Knox's in- 
 fluence was not confined to Scotland. It was plant- 
 ed there at first, and continued growing in his own 
 country till it filled it, and then it spread itself in- 
 to England, working great events, and finally, after 
 causing the quarrel between Scotland and Charles 
 I, it ended in the Revolution of 1688, an event the 
 effects of which benefit England to this day. 
 
 Milton learned much of Knox. He was partly 
 the religious philosopher, partly the poet, for it 
 must be a little mind that cannot see that he was a 
 poet— one of the wild Saxon mind, full of deep re- 
 ligious melody that sounds like cathedral music. 
 However, he must not be ranked with Shakespeare. 
 
166 THE PARADISE LOST 
 
 He stands relative to Shakespeare as Tasso or 
 Ariosto does to Dante, as Virgil to Homer. He is 
 conscious of writing an epic, and of being the great 
 man he is. No great man ever felt so great a 
 consciousness as Milton. That consciousness was 
 the measure of his greatness ; he was not one of 
 those who reach into actual contact with the deep 
 fountain of greatness. His " Paradise Lost " is not 
 an epic in its composition as Shakespeare's utter- 
 ances are epic. It does not come out of the heart 
 of things ; he hadn't it lying there to pour it out in 
 one gush ; it seems rather to have been welded to- 
 gether afterward. His sympathies with things are 
 much narrower than Shakespeare's — too sectarian. 
 In universality of mind there is no hatred ; it doubt- 
 less rejects what is displeasing, but not in hatred 
 for it. Everything has a right to exist. Shake- 
 speare was not polemical : Milton was polemical al- 
 together. 
 
 Milton's disquisitions on these subjects are quite 
 wearisome to us now. "Paradise Lost" is a very 
 ambitious poem, a great picture painted on huge 
 canvas ; but it is not so great a thing as to con- 
 centrate our minds upon the deep things within 
 ourselves as Dante does, to show what a beautiful 
 thing the life of man is ; it is to travel with paved 
 streets beside us rather than lakes of fire. This 
 Dante has done, and Milton not. There is no life 
 in Milton's characters. Adam and Eve are beautiful, 
 
167 
 
 graceful objects, but no one has breathed the Pyg- 
 malion life into them ; they remain cold statues. 
 Milton's sympathies were with things rather than 
 with men, the scenery and phenomena of nature, 
 the trim gardens, the burning lake ; but as for the 
 phenomena of the mind, he was not able to see 
 them. He has no delineations of mind except 
 Satan, of which we may say that Satan was his own 
 character, the black side of it. I wish, however, to 
 be understood not to speak at all in disparagement 
 of Milton ; far from that. 
 
 In our next lecture we shall notice French litera- 
 ture. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THIRD PEEIOD 
 
 Voltaire— The French— Scepticism— From Rabelais 
 TO Rousseau. 
 
 Of this Lecture no record exists. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 June \st 
 
 THIRD V^mOT>— Continued 
 
 Eighteenth Century ix England— Whitfield— Swift 
 —Sterne — Johnson— Hume. 
 
 In onr lecture of this day we shall cast an eye upon 
 England during the eighteenth century, a period of 
 wide consec^uence to us, and therefore most inter- 
 esting to us now in the nineteenth centuiy. 
 
 In our last lecture we saw the melancholy phe- 
 nomenon of a system of beliefs which had grown 
 up for 1,800 years, and had formed during that pe- 
 riod great landmarks of the thought of man, crum- 
 bling down at last, and dissolving itself in suicidal 
 ruin ; and we saw one of the most remarkable na- 
 tions of men engaged in destroying : nothing grow- 
 ing in the great seed-field of time, so that w^ell 
 might Goethe say, " My inheritance, how bare ! 
 Time, how bare ! " For everything man does is as 
 seed cast into a seed -field, and there it grows on 
 forever. But the French sowed nothing. Voltaire, 
 on the contrary, casting firebrands among the dry 
 
170 FRENCH SCEPTICISM 
 
 leaves, produced the combustion we shall notice by 
 and by. Of Yoltaire himself we could make but 
 little — a man of a great vivacity of mind, the great- 
 est acuteness, presenting most brilliant coruscations 
 of genius, but destitute of depth, scattering himself 
 abroad upon all subjects, but in great things doing 
 nothing exce23t to canker and destroy. This being 
 once conceived, that the people had fallen into scep- 
 ticism, we can imagine that all other provinces of 
 thought were quite sure of being cultivated in the 
 same unfruitful desert manner — politics, for in- 
 stance. In France, too, appeared Mably, Monte- 
 squieu, and an innumerable host of other writers of 
 the same sort, finally summed up in the Contrat 
 Social of Kousseau. The only use to which they put 
 the intellect was not to look outwardly upon nature, 
 and love or hate as circumstances required, but to 
 inquire why the thing was there at all, and to ac- 
 count for it and argue about it. 
 
 So it was in England too, and in all European 
 countries. The two great features of French intel- 
 lect were formalism and scepticism. These became 
 the leading intellectual features of all the nations of 
 that century. French literature got itself estab- 
 lished in all countries. One of the shallowest things 
 that has ever existed, it never told man anything ; 
 there never was any message it had to deliver him. 
 But, on the other hand, it was the most logically 
 precise of all ; it stood on established rules, and 
 
REIGN OF QUACKERY 171 
 
 was the best calculated to make its way among na- 
 tions. Even in Germany it became so popular that, 
 for a time, it actually seemed to have extirpated the 
 public mind. In England too, and in Spain, where 
 it was introduced by the Bourbon sovereigns, and 
 where the beautiful literature of Cervantes dwindled 
 away before it, so as never to have recovered itself 
 since. It is not because any particular doctrine is 
 questioned, but because society gets unbelieving al- 
 together, and faith gets dwindled altogether into 
 mere chimeras, so that, to an observer, it might be 
 doubtful whether the whole earth were not hyj)o- 
 thetical. He sees the quack established ; he sees 
 truth trodden down to the earth everywhere around 
 him ; in his own office he sees quackery at work, 
 and that part of it which is done b}' quackery is 
 done better than all the rest ; till at last he, too, 
 concludes in favor of this order of things, and gets 
 himself enrolled among this miserable set, eager af- 
 ter profit, and of no belief except the belief always 
 held among such persons, that Money icill buy mon- 
 ey's iDorth, and that Pleasure is pleasant. But woe 
 to that land and its people if, for what they do, they 
 expect payment at all times ! It is bitter to see. 
 Such times are extremely painful — as it were, the 
 winter weather of the state. Woe to the state if 
 there comes no spring ! All men will suffer from it 
 with confusion in the very heart of them. 
 
 In England this baneful spirit was not so deep as 
 
172 THE KEIGN OF POLEMICS 
 
 in France, and for several reasons. One was that 
 their nature, the Teutonic nature, is much slower 
 than the French ; much deeper, not so absorbed 
 at any time as the French has been, whether with 
 scepticism or more worthy things. Another reason 
 was that England was a Protestant, free country, 
 and, as contra-distinguished from France, a well- 
 regulated countr}'. An Englishman, too, will moder- 
 ate his opinions, and at any time keep them to him- 
 self. We find many simply trusting themselves to 
 the examination of the great things of the world, 
 but notwithstanding barely keeping out of this dark 
 region of complete scepticism, and doing many 
 things hearty and manly in spite of that. In France, 
 on the contrary, all things were in an extremely bad 
 state, much depending on Jesuits. In the eigh- 
 teenth centur}', however — here with us a century of 
 disputation, if not of complete unbelief — a century 
 of contrariety, there was nothing to be found but 
 argument everywhere. 
 
 Never before was there so much argument, liter- 
 ary argument in particular. All things were brought 
 down to the one category of argument ; from con- 
 troversies about Dr. Sacheverell, through the whole 
 range of metaphysics, up to the Divine legation of 
 Moses, essays on miracles, and the like, by men like 
 Hume and Paley, and down to the writers of our 
 own time. Nichols' Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury, an interesting book, offers a curious picture of 
 
SILENCE 173 
 
 tills state of things. Nine-tenths of his anecdotes are 
 about the Church and Church questions, as if the 
 human intellect had nothing to do but with polem- 
 ics. Now, though I do all honor to logic in its 
 place, I will venture to say that such subjects as 
 these, high subjects of faith in religion, faith in 
 polity, are as good as lost if there be no other way 
 than by logic to take them up. I must impress upon 
 your minds the words of Goethe : " The highest is 
 uot capable of being sj^oken oaticarch at all." Ever 
 has deep secrec}^ been observed in sacred things. 
 Pompey could not understand this, when he sought 
 to discover what veiled thing that was in the temple 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
 Among the Egyptians, too, there was the veiled 
 figure of Sais, not to be looked upon. And secrecy 
 denotes importance in much lower things that that. 
 A man who has no secrecy in him is still regarded 
 as having no kind of sense in him for apprehending 
 whatever is greatest and best in the w^orld ! I ad- 
 mire much that inscription in the Swiss gardens, 
 " Speech is silvern, silence is golden ! " After speech 
 has done its best, silence has to include all that 
 speech has forgotten or cannot express. Speech is 
 of time, of to-day ; eternity is silent. All great things 
 are silent. Whenever they get to be debated on by 
 logic, tlie}^ are as good as lost. It is impossible to 
 prove faith or morality by speech at all, for logic, if 
 we consider it, what does it mean? It pretends to 
 
174 LOGIC AND BELIEF 
 
 enforce men to adopt a belief, and yet there is no 
 such constraint possible in that way. Looking at the 
 whole circle of things summoned before logic, I do 
 not find more than one single object taken in by 
 logic entirely, and that is Euclid's Elements. In 
 other respects logic, speaking accurately, can do no 
 more than define to others what it is you believe ; 
 and when you have so done, a mind made like yours, 
 which sees that you believe, will perhaps believe 
 also. But in mathematics, where things are called 
 by certain simple and authorized designations, there 
 alone is it final, as that two and two make four, the 
 angle in a semicircle is a right angle. But where 
 men are not even agreed on the meaning of the ap- 
 pellations, the case is different, as, for instance. Vir- 
 tue is utility, — try that. In every different mind 
 there will be a different meaning of the words virtue 
 and utility. Let them state the belief as they can, 
 but not attempt to confine it in the narrow bounds 
 of logic. In spite of early training, I never do see 
 sorites of logic hanging together, put in regular 
 order, but I conclude that it is going to end in some 
 niaiserie, in some miserable delusion. 
 
 However imperfect the literature of England was 
 at this period, its spirit was never greater. It did 
 great things, it built great towns, Birmingham and 
 Liverpool, Cyclopean workshops, and ships. There 
 was sincerity there at least. Eichard Arkwright, 
 for instance, who invented the spinning jennies, he 
 
WHITFIELD 175 
 
 was a sincere man. Not as in France. Watt, too, 
 was evidently sincere in that province of activity. 
 Another singular symptom of the earnestness of the 
 period was that thing we call Methodism. It seems 
 to have merely gathered up a number of barren for- 
 mulas, with little inspiration in it at first, as it ex- 
 hibited itself in the rude hearts of the common peo- 
 ple. Much of its success was due to Whitfield, who 
 must have been a man with great things in his heart. 
 He had many dark contests with the spirit of denial 
 that lay about him before he called his genius forth 
 into action. All the logic in him was poor and trifling 
 compared to the fire that was in him, unequrilled 
 since Peter the Hermit. First he went to Bristol, 
 and preached to the neighboring coal miners, who 
 were all heathens yet, but he preached to them till 
 he saw, as he tells us, " their black cheeks seamed 
 with white tears." He came to Scotland, and got 
 money there to convert the heathen. This was a 
 great thing to do, considering the hard, thrifty, cold 
 character of the nation. He came to Glasgow and 
 preached, and talked about the Indians and their 
 perishing state ; would they hesitate to contribute 
 of their goods to rescue this poor joeople ? And thus 
 he warmed the icy people into a flame, insomuch 
 that, not having money enough by them, they ran 
 home for more, and brought even blankets, farm 
 stuff, hams, etc., to the church, and piled them in a 
 heap there ! This was a remarkable fact, whether it 
 
176 DRYDEN AND ADDISON 
 
 were the work of a good spirit, or of the devil. It 
 is wonderful that it did not strike Hume more when 
 he heard Whitfield on the Calton Hill. 
 
 When we look at the literature of the times, we 
 see little of that spirit which is to be sought for in 
 the steam engines. We have no time to mention 
 Dryden, a great poet put down in the worst of 
 times, and thus a formalist ; a man whose soul was 
 no longer in contact with anything he got to deline- 
 ate ; for ever thinking of the effect he was to pro- 
 duce on the court, and for this end he adopted 
 French plays as the model of his own. He, I say, 
 became a formalist, instead of quietly and silently 
 delineating the thought that was Jn him. But 
 Dryden must not be censured for it ; his i^overty 
 was the cause, not his will. He changed to be a 
 Roman Catholic at last. A man of immense in- 
 tellect ; it is displayed in his translation, for ex- 
 ample, of the jEneid, which contains many beauti- 
 ful and sounding things. 
 
 In Queen Anne's time, after that most disgrace- 
 ful class of people — King Charles' people — had 
 passed away, there appeared the milder kind of un- 
 belief. Complete formalism is the characteristic of 
 Queen Anne's reign. But, amid all this, it is 
 strange how many beautiful indications there are of 
 better things, how many truths were said. Addison 
 was a mere lay preacher, completely bound up in 
 formalism, but he did get to say many a true thing, 
 
STEELE, SWIFT 177 
 
 in his generation ; an instance of one formal man 
 doino- o-reat tliin2:s. Steele bad infinitely more 
 naivete, but be ^yas only a fellow-soldier of Addison, 
 to wbom be subordinated bimself more tban was 
 necessary. It is a cold vote in Addison's favor tbat 
 one gives. 
 
 By far tbe greatest man of tbat time, I tbinli, was 
 Jonathan Swift : Dean Swift, a man entirely de- 
 prived of bis natural nourishment, but of great 
 robustness ; of genuine Saxon mind, not without a 
 feeling of reverence, though, from circumstances, it 
 did not awaken in him, for he got unhappily, at the 
 outset, into tbe Church, not having any vocation for 
 it. It is curio Qi? to see him arranging, as it were, a 
 little religion to bimself. Some man found him one 
 day giving prayers to bis servants in a kind of 
 secret manner, which be did, it seems, every morn- 
 ing, for he was determined, at any rate, to get out 
 of cant ; but he was a kind of cultivated heathen, 
 no Christianity in him. He saw bimself in a world 
 of confusion and falsehood. No eyes were clearer 
 to see into it than bis. He was great from being of 
 acrid temperament : painfully sharp nerves in body 
 as well as soul, for be was constantly ailing, and bis 
 mind, at tbe same time, was soured with indignation 
 at what he saw around him. He took up therefore, 
 what was fittest for him, namelj', sarcasm, and be 
 carried it quite to an epic j)itch. There is some- 
 thing great and fearful in bis irony, for it is not 
 13 
 
178 
 
 always used for effect, or designedly to depreciate. 
 There seems often to be a sympathy in it with the 
 thing he satirizes ; occasionally it was even impos- 
 sible for him so to laugh at any object without a 
 sympathy with it, a sort of love for it ; the same 
 love as Cervantes universally shows for his own 
 objects of merit. In his conduct, there is much 
 that is sad and tragic, highly blameable ; but I can- 
 not credit all that is said of his cruel unfeeling dis- 
 sipation. There are many circumstances to show 
 that by nature he was one of the truest of men, of 
 great pity for his fellow-men. For example, we 
 read that he set up banks for the poor Irish in his 
 neighborhood, and required nothing of them but 
 that they should keep their word with him, when 
 they came to borrow. "Take your own time," he 
 said, " but don't come back if you fail to keep the 
 time you tell me." And if they had failed, he would 
 tell them, "Come no more to me, if you have not so 
 much method as to keep your time ; if you cannot 
 keep your word, what are you fit for?" All this 
 proves him to have been a man of much affection, 
 but too impatient of others' infirmities. But none 
 of us can have any idea of the bitter misery which 
 lay in him ; given up to ambition, confusion, and 
 discontent. He fell into fatalism at last, and mad- 
 ness, that was the end of it. The death of Swift 
 was one of the awfullest • he knew his madness to 
 be coming. A little befo.rp his death he saw a tree 
 
STERNE, POPE 179 
 
 withered at the top, and he said that, **Hke that 
 tree, he, too, was dying at the top." He was well 
 called by Johnson a driveller and a show, a stern 
 lesson to ambitious people. 
 
 Another man of much the same way of thinking, 
 and very well deserving notice, was Laurence Sterne. 
 In him also there was a great quantity of good 
 struggling through the superficial evil. He terribly 
 failed in the dischai-ge of his duties, still, we must 
 admire in him that sportive kind of geniality and 
 affection, still a son of our common mother, not 
 cased up in buckram formulas as the other writers 
 were, clinging to forms, and not touching realities. 
 And, much as has been said against him, we cannot 
 help feeling his immense love for things around 
 him ; so that we may say of him, as of Magdalen, 
 *' much is forgiven him, because he loved much." 
 A good simple being after all. 
 
 I have nothing at all, in these limits, to say of 
 Pope. It is no use to decide the disputed question 
 as to whether he were a poet or not, in the strict 
 sense of the term ; in any case, his was one of the 
 finest heads ever known, full of deep sayings, ut- 
 tered in the shape of couplets — rhymed couplets. 
 
 The two persons who exercised the most remark- 
 able influences upon things during the eighteenth 
 century were, unquestionabty, Samuel Johnson and 
 David Hume : two summits of a great set of in- 
 fluences, two opposite poles of it — the one a puller 
 
180 joimsoN 
 
 down of magnificent, far-reaching thoughts ; the 
 other, most excellent, serious, and a great conserva- 
 tive. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, in some respects, stood entirely 
 alone in Europe. In those years there was no one 
 in Europe like him. For example, the defenders of 
 what existed in France were men who did nothing 
 but mischief by their falsehoods and insincerity of 
 all kinds. 
 
 Johnson was a large-minded man, an entirely sin- 
 cere and honest man. Whatever may be our differ- 
 ences of opinion is here entirely insignificant ; he 
 must inevitably be regarded as the brother of all 
 honest men. One who held this truth among the 
 insincerities that lay around him, that, after all, 
 "life was true yet," and he was a man to hold by 
 that truth, and cling to it in the general shipwreck 
 on the sea of Eternity. All would be over with 
 him without it ; he knew that, and acted up to it. 
 Hardly has any man ever influenced move an exist- 
 ing state of things. He produced in Eugland that 
 resistance to the French Kevolution, commonly 
 called Pittism, by demonstrating its necessity in 
 the most perfect sincerity of heart. A man whose 
 life was, in the highest degree, miserable ; hardly 
 any man, not even Swift, suffered so much as John- 
 son in the first part of his life. He was a " much en- 
 during man ! " A man of a most unhealthy body, 
 for ever sick and ailing, When he was at Oxford, 
 
HIS HARDSHIPS AND HEROISM 181 
 
 a sizar there, so great was Lis poverty that he had 
 no shoes to his feet, and used to walk about putting 
 bis bare feet into the mud of the streets. A chari- 
 table man, seeing this, put a pair of shoes at his 
 door for him, but this irritated Johnson as a reflec- 
 tion on his poverty, and he flung them oat of win- 
 dow, rather than use them. Then he fell sick over 
 and over again. Those about him regarded him as 
 a man that had gone mad, and was more fit for Bed- 
 lam than anything else. 
 
 After he left Oxford, he tried to be a schoolmas- 
 ter, but, failing in that, came to London to try his 
 fortune there. There he lived on fourpence a day, 
 sometimes having no home, and reduced to sleep on 
 bulks and steps, at other times to stay in cellars. 
 And I must regard him as one of the greatest heroes, 
 since he was able to keep himself erect amid all that 
 distress : he shook it from him as the lion shakes 
 the dewdrops from his mane ! He had no notion of 
 becoming a great character at all, he only tried not 
 to be killed with starvation ! And though it is 
 mournful to think that a man of the greatest heart 
 should have suffered so much, we must consider that 
 this suffering produced that enterprise in him, and 
 at last he did get something to do ; his object was 
 not to go about seeking to know the reasons of 
 things in a world where there is much to be done, 
 little to be known ; for the great thing, above all 
 others, is what a man can do in this wgiid ! 
 
182 JOHNSON AND BOSWELL 
 
 There is not such a cheering spectacle in the 
 eighteenth century anywhere as Samuel Johnson. 
 He contrived to be devout in it, he had a belief and 
 held by it ; a genuine inspired man. And it is a 
 great thing to think that Johnson had one who could 
 appreciate him ; anyone must love poor Boswell, 
 who (not fixing his eyes on the vain and stupid 
 things in "Bozzy's" character) remarks that beau- 
 tiful reverence and attachment he had for Johnson, 
 putting them side by side, this great mass of a 
 plebeian and this other conceited Scotch character : 
 full of the absurd pretensions of my country's gen- 
 tlemen, noting down and treasuring with reverence 
 the sayings and anecdotes of this great, shaggy, 
 dusty pedagogue. And really, he has made of these 
 things a book, which is a most striking book, and 
 likely to survive long after him ; a kind of epic 
 poem, by which Johnson must long continue in the 
 first ranks of English biography. 
 
 But we must now come to a very different per- 
 sonage, Hume. Hume was born in the same year 
 with Johnson, whom he so little resembles. He, 
 too, is deserving to be looked at. Very nearly of 
 Johnson's magnitude, and quite as sincere, but of a 
 far duller kind of sense. His eye, unlike Johnson's, 
 was not open to faith ; yet he w^as of a noble per- 
 severence, a silent strength, and he showed it in 
 his very complicated life, as it lay before him. He 
 could not go into commerce, for his habits as the 
 
HUME 183 
 
 son of a gentleman were averse to it. Yet his pa- 
 rents, wishing him to make money in some way, 
 he was set to various things, and finally sent to 
 Bristol to be a merchant. But, after trying and 
 struggling with it for two years, he found he could 
 not go on, and he felt a strong thirst to prosecute 
 the cultivation of learning, so that he abandoned the 
 other for that. 
 
 He tried to get appointed a professor in the 
 University of Edinburgh, but they would not have 
 him, so he retired to live upon sixty pounds a year 
 in a small town in Brittan}', called La Fleche, where 
 he began writing books, and thus got distinguished. 
 He was not at any time patronized by any consider- 
 able class of persons, though latterly he was noticed 
 by a certain class. The rich people did look after 
 him at last, but a general recognition in his day he 
 never got. His chief work, the History of England, 
 failed to get buyers. He bore it all like a stoic, 
 like a heroic, silent man as he was, and then pro- 
 ceeded calmly to the next thing he had to do. I 
 have heard old people, who have remembered Hume 
 well, speak of his great good humor under trials, 
 the quiet strength of it, the very converse in this of 
 Dr. Johnson, whose coarseness was equally strong 
 with his heroism. Then, as to his methodicalness, 
 no man ever had a larger view than Hume ; he 
 always knows where to begin and end. In his his- 
 tory he frequently rises, though a cold man natu- 
 
184 ROBEETSON 
 
 rally, into a kind of epic height as he proceeds. His 
 description of the Commonwealth, for example, 
 where all is delineated as with a crayon ; one sees 
 there his large mind, moreover, not without its 
 harmonies. As to his scepticism, that is perfectly 
 transcendental, working itself out to the very end. 
 He starts with Locke's Essay, thinking, as was then 
 generally thought, that logic is the only way to the 
 truth. He began with this, and went on ; in the 
 end he exhibited to the world his conclusion, that 
 there was nothing at all credible or demonstrable, 
 the only thing certain to him being that he himself 
 existed and sat there, and that there were some 
 species of things in his own brain. Any other man 
 to him was only a spectrum, not a reality. Now it 
 was right that this should be published, for if that 
 were all that lay in scepticism, the making that 
 known was extremely beneficial to us ; he did us 
 great service in that ; then all would see what was 
 in it, and accordingly would give up the unprofita- 
 ble employment of spinning cobwebs of logic in 
 their brain — no one would go on spinning them 
 much longer. 
 
 Hume, too, is very remarkable as one of the three 
 historians we have produced, for his history, an 
 able work for the time, shows far more insight than 
 either Robertson or Gibbon. Robertson Avas, in 
 fact, as Johnson thinks him, a shallow man. In 
 his conversation with Boswell about him, we have 
 
GIBBON 185 
 
 Johnson always contradicting Robertson ; yet there 
 was a power of arrangement in Robertson : no one 
 knew better where to begin a story and where to 
 stop. This was the greatest quaUty in him, that 
 and a soft sleek style. On the whole, he was merely 
 a pohtician, open to the common objection to all 
 the three, that total want of belief ; and worse in 
 Robertson, a minister of the Gospel, preaching, or 
 pretending to preach. A poor notion of moral 
 motives he must have had ; in his description of 
 Knox, for instance, he can divine no better motive 
 for him than a miserable hunger, love of plunder, 
 and the influence of money ; and such was Hume's 
 view also ! The same is remarkable of Gibbon in a 
 still more contemptible way — a greater historian 
 than Robertson, but not so great as Hume. With 
 all his swagger and bombast, no man ever gave a 
 more futile account of human things than he has 
 done of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ; 
 assigning no profound cause for these phenomena, 
 nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miser- 
 able motives, to the actors in them. 
 
 So that the world seemed then to j^resent one 
 huge imbroglio of quackery, and men of nobleness 
 could only despise and sneer at it. 
 
 On Friday next (not Monday) we shall resume 
 this discussion, and shall remark the downfall and 
 consummation of scepticism ; for, thank God, its 
 time was short. 
 
LECTURE XI. 
 
 Friday, June 8th 
 
 THIRD FER10T>— Continued 
 
 Consummation of Scepticism — Wertherism — The 
 French Revolution. 
 
 We traced the history of scepticism in literature in 
 our last lecture down to David Hume, the greatest 
 of all the writers of his time, and in some respects 
 the worthiest. To-day we shall delineate the con- 
 summation of scepticism. 
 
 It is very strange to look at scepticism in con- 
 trast with a thing that preceded it ; to contrast, for 
 example, David Hume with Dante, two characters 
 distant by five centuries from one another, two of 
 the greatest minds in their respective departments 
 (the mind of both was to do the best that could be 
 done in their existing circumstances) ; to contrast 
 them, I say, and see what Dante made of it and 
 what Hume made of it. 
 
 Dante saw a solemn law in the universe, pointing 
 out his destiny with an awful and beautiful cer- 
 tainty, and he held to it. Hume could see nothing 
 
SCEPTICISM 187 
 
 in the universe but confusion, and he was certain 
 of nothing but his own existence ; j^et he had in- 
 stincts which were infinitely more true than the 
 logical part of him, and so he kept himself quiet 
 in the middle of it all, and did no harm to anyone ; 
 for as to his books, he believed that they were true, 
 and therefore to publish them he was bound — bound 
 to do what seemed right to him. He had no other 
 business for his intellect than this, and, moreover, 
 as I have observed, in publishing them he did a 
 useful service for humanity. 
 
 But scepticism, however much called for at that 
 time, particularly in France, cannot be considered 
 other than a disease of the mind ; a fatal condition 
 to be in, it seems to me, or at best useful only as a 
 means to get at knowledge. For the thing is, not 
 to find out what is not true, but what is true. Surely 
 that is the real design of man's intelligence ! But as 
 to this overspreading our whole mind with logic, it 
 was altogether a false and unwarranted attempt, 
 considering logic as the only means to attain to 
 truth, and that things did not exist at all except 
 someone stood up and could mark the place that 
 they occupied in the world ; forgetting that it is 
 always great things that do not speak at all. If a 
 truth must not be believed except demonstrable by 
 logic, we had better go away without it altogether. 
 
 And it was not only the disbelievers in religion 
 that were sceptic at that time ; but the whole sys- 
 
188 THEORIES 
 
 tern of mind was sceptic. The defenders of Chris- 
 tianity were sceptic, too, for ever trying to prove 
 the truth of their doctrines by logical evidences. 
 What is the use of attempting to prove motion ? 
 The philosopher was right who got up and began 
 to walk instead. So with religion. It may seem a 
 plausible, but it is a vain attempt to demonstrate by 
 logical arguments what must be always unspeakable. 
 But this habit had in the eighteenth century over- 
 run all the provinces of thought. Nothiug but that 
 was serviceable or useful in the eyes of that genera- 
 tion. An indication of an unhealthy mind, that 
 system of trying to make out a theory on every sub- 
 ject. It is good, doubtless, that there should al- 
 ways be some theory formed, with a view to the ap- 
 prehension of a subject, but as for any other view it 
 is impossible. For example, there is a kind of 
 theory in what we have been following out — what 
 we call the history of European culture ; we use it 
 for facility of arrangement. But there is a wide 
 difference between a theory of this kind and a 
 theory by which we profess to account for it, and 
 give the reasons for its being there at alL 
 
 Accordingly, there is only one theory (as I ob- 
 served at the beginning of these lectures) which 
 has been most triumphant — that of the planets. 
 On no other subject has any other theory succeeded 
 so far ; yet even that is not perfect. The astrono- 
 mer knows one or two planets, we may say ; but he 
 
limitatiojS^s of knowledge 189 
 
 does not know ivJiat they are, where they are going, 
 or whether the sohir system is not itself drawn into 
 a hirger system of the kind. Iq short, with every 
 theory the man who knows something about it 
 knows mainl}' this — that there is much uncertainty 
 in it, great darkness about it, extending down to 
 infinite deeps ; in a w^ord, that he does not know 
 what it is. Let him take the stone, for example — 
 the pebble that lies under his feet. He knows that 
 it is a stone, broken out of rocks old as the creation ; 
 but what that pebble is he knows not ; he knows 
 nothing at all about that. 
 
 This system of making a theory about everything 
 was what we can call an enchanted state of mind. 
 That man should be misled ; that he should be de- 
 prived of knowing the truth, that this world is a 
 reality, and not a huge, confused hypothesis ; that 
 he should be deprived of this by the very faculties 
 given him to understand it, I can call by no other 
 name than enchantment. Everything was placed 
 upon the single table of logic ; one could hardly go 
 anywhere without meeting some pretentious theoiy 
 or other. Even the very centre of all was brought 
 to that level — morals. There was a theory of virtue 
 and vice ; duty and the contrarj^ of that. This will 
 come to be thought one day an extraordinary sort of 
 procedure. When I think of this, it seems to me 
 more and more that morality is the very centre of 
 the existence of man : that there is nothino: for a man 
 
190 MORAL SENSE 
 
 but that which it is his duty to do. It is the life, 
 the harmonious existence of any man — the good that 
 is in him ! No man can know how to account for it ; 
 it is the very essence and existence of himself. How- 
 ever, in the last century they had a theory for that 
 too, by w4]ich it was defined to consist in what they 
 called sympathies, the necessary attraction subsisting 
 between the inclination and the thing to be done ! 
 For all spiritual things were to be deduced from 
 something visible and material, and thus our mo- 
 ralit}'' became reduced to our sympathies for others 
 and other things. 
 
 This was the doctrine of Adam Smith and of others 
 older than Smith, and by him this habit of morality 
 had been termed moral sense, the natural relish for 
 certain actions ; a sort of palate, by the taste of which 
 the nature of anything might be determined. Hume 
 considered virtue to be the same as expediency, 
 profit ; that all useful things were virtues ; that people 
 in old times found the utility of the thing, and met, 
 or whether they met not, in any case agreed that 
 for the sake of keeping society together, they would 
 patronize such things as were useful to one another, 
 and consecrate them by some strong sanction, and 
 that was the origin of virtue. The most melancholy 
 theory ever propounded. In short, it was the highest 
 exhibition of scepticism — that total denial of every- 
 thing not material, not demonstrable by logic. The 
 result was to convince man that he was not of Heaven 
 
MATERIALISM 191 
 
 — the paltriest conclusion. Tell that to the savage, 
 the red man of the forest ; tell him that he is not of 
 Heaven, not of God, but a mere thing of matter, and 
 he will spurn you in his indignation at the base con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Besides morality, everything else was in the same 
 state ; all things showed what an unhealthy, poor 
 thing the world had become. All was brought down 
 to a system of cause and effect ; of one thing push- 
 ing another thing on by certain laws of physics, 
 gravitation, a visible, material thing of shoving. A 
 dim, huge, immeasurable steam engine they had 
 made of this world, and, as Jean Paul says, " Heaven 
 became a gas, God a force, the second world a 
 grave." We cannot understand how this delusion 
 could have become so general ; all men thinking in 
 so deplorable a manner, and looking down in con- 
 tempt on those who had gone before them. But it 
 was working itself out toward issues beneficial for 
 us all. Voltaire and Rousseau became, in the end, 
 triumphant over everything ; destroying, but sub- 
 stituting nothing ; attacking Jesuitism, and imag- 
 ining they were doing good by it ; cutting down, 
 burning up, because they were applauded for it. 
 They had always at their back people to cry out, 
 " Well done ! " But these having passed away, and 
 error having once been admitted to be erroneous, 
 and the world everywhere reduced by them to that 
 dire condition, I say that in that huge universe, be- 
 
192 WERTHER 
 
 come one vast steam engine as it were, the new gen- 
 eration that followed must inevitably have found 
 their position very difficult, and that it was perfectly 
 insupportable for them to be doomed to live in such 
 a place of falsehood and chimera. And that was, 
 in fact, the case with them, and it led to the second 
 great phenomenon we have to notice, the introduc- 
 tion of Wertherism. 
 
 Let us Jarst look at the very centre of it, at Werther 
 himself. " Werther " is the first book in which there 
 is any decided proof of its existence in the European 
 mind. "Werther" was written b}^ Goethe in 1775. 
 It was a time of a haggard condition, no genuine 
 hope in men's minds. All outwards was false : the 
 last war, for example, the Seven Years' War, the 
 most absurd of wars, undertaken on no public prin- 
 ciple, a contest between France and Germany, from 
 Frederick the Great wanting to have Silesia, and 
 Louis XV. wanting to give Madame de Pompadour 
 some influence in the affairs of Europe — and 50,000 
 men were shot for that purj^ose ! Under these cir- 
 cumstances Goethe, then of the age of twenty- five, 
 wrote this work at Frankfort-on-Maine. A man of 
 the liveliest imagination, aiid one who participated 
 deeply in all the influences then going on, not alto- 
 gether brought up in scepticism, but, in fact, very 
 well acquainted with religious people from his youth, 
 and, among them, with a lady named the Fraiilein 
 von Klettenberg, a follower of Zinzendorf, whom he 
 
WERTHERISM 193 
 
 always highly esteemed, and whom he is said to have 
 afterward described as the saintly lady in " Wilhelm 
 Meister." But, in fact, he studied all sorts of things, 
 and this among the rest. And when at last he grew 
 into manhood and looked around him on what was 
 passing, he was filled with unspeakable sadness, felt 
 himself, as it w^ere, flung back on himself, no sym- 
 pathies in anj^oue with his feelings, his aspirations 
 treated as chimeras which could not realize them- 
 selves at all ; and he brooded with silence long over 
 this. He has described it all in a clear manner, a 
 beautiful, soft manner. He was destined for a pro- 
 fession, to be a lawyer, and though much disinclined 
 for it he went accordingly to the University of Leip- 
 sic. Here he spent some time, till finally one of the 
 scholars, who had been violently attached to the 
 bride of another man, put an end to himself in de- 
 spair. This gave him the idea of Werther. The 
 sense of his own dark state and that of all others 
 rushed upon him now more forcibly than ever, and it 
 produced this book, the voice of what all men wanted 
 to speak at that time, of what oppressed the heads 
 of all, and of this young man in particular. It ac- 
 cordingly soon became generally read ; it was trans- 
 lated into English among other languages. Sixty 
 years ago young ladies here were never without all 
 sorts of sketches on articles used at their toilettes, 
 of Charlotte and Werther, and so on. Goethe him- 
 self was in possession of tea - cups made in China 
 11 
 
194 PHILOSOPHY OF WERTHER 
 
 ornamented with pictures of Charlotte. I suppose 
 that the story itself is known to every one of you, yet 
 our English version does no justice to the work. It 
 was made, I believe, from a French translation, and 
 it is altogether unlike the original. There is often 
 a sharp tone, a redeeming turn of bitter satire in it, 
 but it has become in general wearisome now to young 
 people. It was not so in those times. Werther we 
 may take to have been Goethe's own character, an 
 earnest man, of deep affections, forever meditating 
 on the phenomena of this world, and obtaining no 
 solution, till at last he goes into sentimentality and 
 tries that among other influences. By degrees he 
 gets more and more desperate at his imprisonment, 
 rages more and more against the evils around him, 
 and at length blows his brains out, and ends the novel 
 in that way. This was the beginning of the thing 
 which immediately afterward was going on through 
 all Europe. Only till lately this country knew any- 
 thing else, the thing which was not that was accounted 
 no better than confusion and delusion. And they 
 were right. If the world were realty no better than 
 what Goethe imagined it to be there was nothing for 
 it but suicide. If it had nothing to support itself 
 upon but these poor sentimentalities, view-huntings, 
 trivialities, this world was really not fit to live in. 
 But in the end the conviction that his theory of the 
 world was wrong came to Goethe himself, greatly to 
 his own profit, greatly to the world's profit. 
 
195 
 
 However, this new phenomenon flamed up, and 
 next produced "The Kobbers," five years later than 
 " Werther," a play by Schiller full of all sorts of wild 
 things. The Robber is a student at college, kej)t by 
 his brother from his inheritance, forever moralizing 
 on the rule of life, and the conclusion he comes to 
 is, that life is one huge Bedlam, with no rule at all, 
 and that a brave man can do nothing with it but re- 
 volt against it. So he becomes a robbei', rages and 
 storms continually to the end of the piece, and finally 
 kills himself, or does as good. The same sort of 
 man as Werther, but more remarkable for that rage 
 against the world, and the determination to alter it. 
 Goethe says that it quite shocked him, this play of 
 Schiller's. 
 
 There was a similar phase in the literature of our 
 own country, if we would look at it ; I allude to the 
 works of Byron. This poet is full of indignant rep- 
 robation for the whole universe, of rage and scowl 
 against it, as a place not worthy that a generous 
 man should live in it. He seems to have been a 
 compound of the Robber and Werther put together ; 
 his poems have evoked more response than any other 
 phase of Wertherism. This sentimentalism was the 
 ultimatum of scepticism, therefore we are bound to 
 welcome it however absurd it may be, for it cannot 
 be true, that theory of the universe ; if it were, 
 there would be no other conclusion to come to than 
 that of Werther : to kill one's self namely — no other 
 
196 BYRON'S POEMS 
 
 way for it than by one general simultaneous suicide ; 
 for all mankind to put an end to it, to return to the 
 bosom of their fathers with a sort of dumb protest 
 against it. There was, therefore, a deep sincerity in 
 this sentimentalism ; not a right kind of sincerity 
 perhaps, but still a struggling toward it. AVe are 
 forced to observe how like all this was to the scep- 
 tical time of Rome. That sj^irit raging there, in 
 Byron and Schiller, and in Goethe's " Werther," 
 trying its utmost to j)roduce a loud noise, thinking 
 it impossible for anything to be quiet and stormy 
 too ! So in Rome we have in her sceptical times 
 the tragedies of Seneca, full of nothing but tumult- 
 uous rage and storm, ending in suicide, too, bat not 
 unreasonably either. There was no way for men 
 but it. 
 
 But we must now pay attention to another thing 
 which followed closely on Wertherism : another 
 book of Goethe's, published the year after "The 
 Robbers," "Goetz von Berlichingen," the subject of 
 which was an old German baron of the time of Max- 
 imilian, grandfather to Charles V., who revoked the 
 law of duel. Goetz, for contravening his ordinance 
 in this, lost his right hand. A machine was made 
 and fitted to his arm, whence he was called "iron 
 hand." He was a real character, and has left 
 memoirs of himself. This curious feature joined it- 
 self alongside of "Werther" and " The Robbers," 
 this delineation of a wild, fierce time, not as being 
 
197 
 
 the sketch of what a rude, barbarous man would 
 appear in the eves of a philosophical man of civil- 
 ized times, but with a sort of natural regret at the 
 hard existence of Goetz, and a genuine esteem for 
 his man fulness and courage ! By this new work 
 Goethe began his life again ; he had struck again 
 the chord of his own heart ; of all hearts. Walter 
 Scott took it up here, too, and others. But the 
 charm there is in Goethe's " Goetz " is unattainable 
 by any other writer. In Scott it was very good, 
 but by no means so good as in " Goetz." It was the 
 beginning of a happier turn to the appreciation of 
 something genuine, as we shall notice in our next 
 lecture. This new work, however, had come in the 
 reign of quacks and dupes, when a good man was a 
 kind of alien, unable to do the good that lay in him. 
 "We must accept this with a kind of cheerfulness ; a 
 system of thought, whether of belief or no belief, 
 which results in suicide, must come to an end — that 
 custom of judging what was right and proper in a 
 man by the cut of his clothes, or by anything at all 
 but the heart God had placed in him. 
 
 We come now, therefore, to the last act of scep- 
 ticism, which was to sweep it all away. It was to go 
 on but little longer ; it was nearly out here too, but 
 more so in France than elsewhere ; still, a clear 
 light enables us to trace its jDath. We may say that 
 scepticism then had consummated itself. These 
 sceptical influences had principally developed them- 
 
198 LAST ACT OF SCEPTICISM 
 
 selves on books. If they had done nothing worse, 
 it would have been of very trifling moment. But it 
 is the infallible result of scepticism that it produces 
 not only bad unsound thought, but bad unsound 
 action too. When the mind of man is sick, how 
 shall anything about him be healthy ? His conduct, 
 too, is therefore sick, which indeed he partly feels 
 is false himself, for there is no reality in it. The 
 things, accordingly, that went on then reduce them- 
 selves to two ; first, respect for the opinion of other 
 people ; secondly, sentimentalism. The first of 
 these is in itself very right, but to do nothing at all 
 without first consulting others as to whether it be 
 moral or not, is exceedingly blamable. We say of 
 such a man, " all is over with that man if he is not 
 able to be moral without help." What is the use of 
 always asking about morality ? He has a certain 
 light given to himself to walk by, yet he must have 
 a great deal of talk with others about it, as if the 
 world could keep him right by watching over him. 
 The w^orld will never keep him right, will never 
 prevent him, when unseen, from breaking into doors 
 and stealing. 
 
 The next thing, sentimentalism, plays a great part 
 in the latter periods of scepticism. It had become 
 necessary ; it endeavored to trace out pleasure at 
 least in a thing where there was nothing better. 
 The writers of this class were Eousseau, Diderot, 
 and the rest of their school. Diderot was not at all 
 
SENTIMENTALISM 199 
 
 an exemplary man, far from that : one Las no busi- 
 ness to call liim virtuous at all ; yet in all Lis books 
 tLere is an endless tall? about tLe "pleasures of 
 virtue," and "Low miserable tLe vicious must be." 
 Quite as witL Seneca. TLen tLe work tLey made 
 about Dilettantism, tLe beauties of art ; an ever- 
 lasting tLeme in tLat day. 
 
 In one word, tLere was tLen an universal mani- 
 festation of consciousness ; every one conscious of 
 sometLing beautiful in Limself. And tLat we re- 
 mark in WertLer, among otliers, tLat fine eye, tLe 
 love of graceful tLiugs, wLicL Le knows Le Las, and 
 tLinks very desirable tLat otLer men sLould know it 
 too. It is really egotism ; just like a man taking 
 out tLe most precious tLings Le Las in Lis Louse, 
 and Langiug tLem on tLe front wall of it, tLat otLers 
 may see tLem ; Le Limself can derive no benefit 
 from tLem at all tLe wLile tLey are tLere, but only 
 wLen Le gets tLem back in Lis own Louse again. 
 TLe most fatal tLing in men is tLat recognizing of 
 tLeir advantages, all founded in tLat cursed system 
 of self-conceit ; I can call it by no otLer name ; it 
 Las never existed but for tLe ruin of a man. 
 
 All tLis went on more and more ; it Lad gained 
 everywLere a footing. TLe consequence was tLat 
 men in public offices tLougLt no more of tLeir 
 duties ; eacL gave Lis business tLe go-by wLen Le 
 found no emolument in it. It was long since any 
 serious attempt Lad been made to renovate tLe 
 
200 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 
 
 state of afiliirs. The duty was not done, tliougli the 
 wages were taken. 
 
 In that country, France, where scepticism w^as at 
 its highest extent, we can well conceive the end of 
 the last century, the crisis which then took place, 
 the prurience of self-conceit, the talk of illumina- 
 tion, the darkness of confusion ! The story of the 
 Diamond Necklace, for example. Goethe, that re- 
 markable character, a close observer of the French 
 Eevolution, and who understood better than any 
 man the meaning of it, regarded this strange inci- 
 dent of the necklace as so much " half-burned flax 
 in a powder magazine ! " It was but a spark 
 among all this combustible matter. Such a depth 
 of wickedness was there then in men. 
 
 Another symptom that this scepticism was about 
 to end was the new French kind of belief — belief 
 in the new doctrine of Kousseau, though he did not 
 begin it. That had been already done by Mably, 
 Montesquieu, Kobertson, and other writers on what 
 they called the Constitution. But Kousseau, a kind 
 of half-mad man, but of tender pity too, struggliug 
 for sincerity through his whole life, till his own 
 vanity and egotism drove him quite blind and des- 
 perate — Eousseau, I say, among those writers, was 
 the first to come to the conclusion of the Conlrat 
 Social, But before that he WTote " Essays on the 
 Savage State " — that it was better to live there than 
 in that state of society around him. We have a 
 
KOUSSEAU 201 
 
 curious anecdote, given by himself in his " Confes- 
 sions," of the manner in which he first formed his 
 poHtical opinions. He had been wandering about 
 somewhere in the south of France, and, being very 
 tired and hungry, he called at a cottage and asked 
 for food. They told him they had none. He per- 
 sisted in asking for some, " were it only a crust of 
 bread," and at last the cottager gave him some 
 black mouldy bread and water. He took this with 
 thanks, spoke in a cheerful and conversible manner, 
 and won upon the heart of his host. Whereupon 
 the latter told him to stop, and he opened a press 
 and took from it some extremely good food, which 
 he set before him, telling him that he was obliged 
 to keep very secret the possession of what comforts 
 he had, "or he would soon have no food for his 
 mouth nor clothes to his back " which the king's 
 tax-gatherer would not seize or his lord's bailiff. 
 From that time Eousseau says he became a demo- 
 crat. He began at first, as I said, disquisitions on 
 savage society ; then followed a kind of revocation of 
 that, a summing up of his ideas in the Conlrat Social, 
 the fundamental idea of the French Kevolution, by 
 which a final stop was put to the course of this scep- 
 ticism, and all things came to their ultimatum. 
 
 The French Revolution was one of the frightful- 
 est phenomena ever seen among men. Goethe, who 
 lived in the middle of it, as it were, declared when 
 it broke out, and for years after, he thought it " like 
 
202 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 to sweep himself away with it, and the landmarks of 
 everything he best knew," into one wild black dark- 
 ness and confusion. However, at last he got to know 
 it better than any other one of his time. It was, 
 after all, a new revelation of an old truth to this un- 
 fortunate people. They beheld, indeed, the truth 
 there clad in hell fire, but they got the truth. This 
 was how it ended ; but it began in all the golden ra- 
 diance of hope, the belief that if men would but meet 
 and arrange in some way the Constitution, then a 
 new heaven and new earth would come down to- 
 gether in this world. For they suj)posed that we 
 were all arranged right enough personally, we only 
 needed the arrangement of the Constitution. Ac- 
 cordingl}^ they arranged it in the most perfect sin- 
 cerity of heart. It is impossible to doubt this sin- 
 cerity. Take, for example, the Federation of 1790, 
 undertaken in the real spirit of Fraternity, a scene of 
 the most infantine simplicity, men falliog each on 
 the other's neck with tears of brotherly affection ; all 
 swore that they would keep that law. All classes 
 were rejoiced at the intelligence of this. For the 
 upper class of people it was the joyfullest of news : 
 now at last they had got something to do. To them 
 therefore, more even than to the lower classes, this 
 news was joyful : certainly to starve to death is hard, 
 but not so hard as to idle to death ! These i^eo- 
 ple were, therefore, glad as nation ever was : so 
 glad ! This was in 1790. 
 
FRANCE VERSUS EUROPE 203 
 
 Two 3'ears and six weeks after tliat tlie September 
 massacres began ! They had never been contem- 
 plated when the Ee volution commenced ; no man 
 friendly to the Eevolution had any idea of it. But 
 these people had no principle in what they did but 
 the idea of their duty to give happiness to them- 
 selves and one another ; that was their virtue. This 
 is not a true notion of virtue. A man who would 
 be virtuous must not expect to find happiness here. 
 We cannot flatter him that virtue is to give him 
 temporal happiness ; it is, too often, allied to phys- 
 ical suffering. We can say, then, as to these phe- 
 nomena of the French Revolution in general, that 
 where dishonest and foolish people are, there will 
 always be dishonesty and folly. We cannot distil 
 knavery into honesty ! 
 
 The next fact that we have to notice is that in 
 such a consummation Europe would infallibly rise 
 against it, and try to put it down. And it actually 
 did so. Nor could Europe avoid it. Euroj)e had a 
 right to do what it did, just as the French Eevo- 
 lution, which it tried to crush, had a right to be. 
 For the poor people, ground down to the lowest 
 stage of oi)pression and misery, had a right to rise 
 and strive to be rid of it ; they had rather be shot 
 than endure it any longer. And Europe, which saw 
 that this could not end with France, but that the 
 interests of all its nations were to be transacted in 
 that arena, had a right to put it down if it could. 
 
204 BUONAPARTE 
 
 And there was no way to adjust tliese two nghts 
 except to fight it out — that dismal conclusion ! 
 Europe, therefore, assembled, and came round 
 France, and tried to crush the Eevolution, but 
 could not crush it at all. It was the primeval feel- 
 ing of nature they came to crush. Eound it the old 
 spirit of fanaticism had rallied, and it stood up and 
 asserted itself, and made Europe know, even to the 
 marrow of its bones, that it was there. Buonaparte 
 set his foot on the necks of the nations of Europe. 
 
 Buonaparte himself was a reality at first, though 
 afterwards he turned out all wrong and false. But 
 his appreciation of the French Revolution was a 
 good one, that it was " the career open to talents," 
 not simply as Sieyos supposed, a thing consisting of 
 two Chambers, or of one Chamber. And this, in 
 fact, is the aim of all good government in these 
 days, to get every good able man into action ; all 
 Europe endeavors to put the ablest man in a situa- 
 tion to do good. Buonaparte at last set himself up, 
 put out the Bourbons, set up the Buonapartes. 
 But the thing could not be done. He made wars 
 and went about plundering everybody, and the con- 
 sequence was that as all the sovereigns had been 
 provoked before, France provoked every man now. 
 In Germany, at last, he stirred up that old Berser- 
 ker rage against him, by which he burned himself 
 up in a day, and France then got ordered back into 
 its own boundaries. Thus the French Eevolution 
 
END OF SCEPTICISM 205 
 
 was only a great outburst of the truth, that this 
 world was not a mere cliimera, but a great reality. 
 Scepticism was ended, and the way laid open to new 
 things whenever they should offer. 
 
 In my next lecture I think I shall show you that 
 there is a new thing ; we shall see the streaks of 
 something developing itself in Europe. 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 
 June 11th 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD 
 
 Of Modern German Literature— Goethe and His 
 Works. 
 
 During tlie last two or three lectures we Lave 
 brought the history of that particular phenomenon 
 of European culture, which we are obliged to de- 
 nominate scepticism, down to its last manifestation, 
 the great but not at all universally understood 
 phenomenon of the French Revolution, the burning 
 up of scepticism, an enormous phenomenon ! It 
 was, we saw, the inevitable consummation of such 
 a thing as scepticism. The life of man cannot 
 subsist on doubt or denial, it subsists only on belief, 
 attaching itself to bring out of any particular theory 
 what life it offers. The French Revolution began 
 some centuries before it finally broke out ; a rude 
 condition to go through all Europe, a fiery phe- 
 nomenon to go through all the world, it was in- 
 dispensable. Yet, frightful as it was in itself, and 
 as productive of a bloody twenty-five years' war, we 
 
A NEW PEKIOD 207 
 
 ouglit to welcome it : it was the price of what is 
 indispensable to our existence, aud at that time the 
 world at whatever price must have got done with 
 scepticism. The human mind cannot forever live 
 in bitter sneering contrast with what lies about it, 
 it must turn back at last to communion once more 
 with Nature. It was, therefore, a cheering thing ; 
 a piiceless worth was in it : by it the European 
 family got its feet once more out of the mists and 
 clouds of logic, and got down again to a firm footing 
 on the ground. It is now nearly twenty-five years 
 since the first act of this drama finished, and 
 Napoleon, who from being the great " armed soldier 
 of democracy," became at last a poor egotist, and 
 with his ambition and rapacities provoked the whole 
 earth, got flung out in the end to St. Helena as an 
 instrument which Providence had once made use of, 
 but had done with now. It becomes then interest- 
 ing for us to inquire what we are to look for now. 
 In what condition has this consummation left the 
 minds of men ? Are we to reckon on a new period 
 of things, of better, infinitely extending hopes ? or is 
 scepticism still to go on in the same phase through 
 Europe? To these questions we shall direct our 
 attention to-day. 
 
 In the first place I must remark that if we admit 
 the French Revolution to be such a thing as it 
 really is, we shall see that such a continuance of old 
 things had become altogether impossible, that all 
 
208 MAN AWAKENED 
 
 things predicted of it had come to pass, that men 
 had shaken off their formulas and awoke out of the 
 nightmare that had gone on so long, crushing the 
 life out of them, that state of paralysis ; and that 
 man so awakened, like as in the fable of Antseus, 
 gathered strength and life once more as he touched 
 the earth and its realities. If we look over the 
 history of Europe, both prior to the French Eevolu- 
 tion and since, we see good in store for us ; the 
 political world if not better regulated still regulated 
 by a reality, and, independently of that, the spiritual 
 side of things undergoing a great change also, by 
 means of the modern school in German literature, a 
 literature presenting a character far more cheering 
 to us than any literature that has appeared for a 
 long series of generations. 
 
 In the second place we can notice here a strik- 
 inef illustration of the ancient fable of the Phoenix. 
 The ancients had a wise meaning in all these fables, 
 far deeper than any of their philosophies have. All 
 things are mortal in this world ; everything that 
 exists in time exists with the law of change and 
 mortality imprinted upon it. It is the story of the 
 Phoenix which periodically^ after a thousand years, 
 becomes a funeral pyre of its own creation, and so 
 out of its own ashes becomes a new Phoenix. It is 
 the law of all things. Paganism, for example, in its 
 time produced many great things, brave and noble 
 men, till at last it came to fall and crumble away 
 
MEANING OF GERMAN LITERATURE 209 
 
 into a mere disputatious philosophy. And so down 
 to the Protestant system ; for the Middle Ages in 
 this respect answered to the Heroic Ages of old 
 Greece, and as Homer had lived, so Dante lived. 
 Similarly" the destruction of the Eoman system of 
 Paganism (for the Romans had their distinct system, 
 very different from that of the Greeks), like the 
 introduction of Protestantism, was followed by its 
 own period of Wertherisni, a kind of blind struggle 
 against the evils that lay around it, and ending at 
 last in what was infinitely more terrific than any 
 French Ee volution, that wild in-bursting of all the 
 barbarians into the old world, long spell-bound by 
 the Eoman name, but now determined not to endure 
 any longer the domination of so degraded and 
 profligate a race ; when, I saj, these barbarians 
 gathered themselves and burst in on that world and 
 consumed it ! The awfullest period ever known. 
 And just so in later times the French Eevolution, 
 that bursting in of the masses who could not starve, 
 could not submit to it, but must rise up and get 
 rid of the oj^pression that weighed them down ; 
 this, I say, is little less remarkable while it lasts, 
 until there is found force enough in society to sub- 
 due it. 
 
 These things, therefore, being finished, and lyinf 
 
 behind us, we now naturallj'. enough might inquire 
 
 what new doctrine it -i« that is now proposed to us ; 
 
 what is the meaning of German literature? But 
 
 14 
 
210 OEIiMAN DOCTRINES 
 
 tliis question is not susceptible of an immediate 
 answer. It is one of the chief qualities of German 
 literature, that it has no particular theory at all, in 
 the front of it ; very little theory is to be had 
 posted tliere — oClcrcMl for sale to us. The men who 
 (;{)iiHtj'U(;tcd tlio German literature had quite oilier 
 objects in view ; tlieir object was not to teach the 
 world, but to ^vo^k out in some manner an enfran- 
 chisement for their own souls, to save themselves 
 from being crushed down by the world. And on 
 the contrary, BC(;in<^ hero what I have been always 
 convuic(!d I saw, the l)l(!Hse(l, thrice blessed, plie- 
 iiomenon of men uniuutilated in all that constitutes 
 man, able to believe, and bo in all tliiugs men ; 
 seeing tliis, I ^jay, tliere is lierc the tiling that lias 
 all other things presupposed iu it. It needed but 
 the first time to have been ever done, the second 
 time they would have found it a great deal easier to 
 do. 
 
 As to their particular doctrines, tliere is nothing 
 defiiiito or precise to bo said. How they thought 
 or iv\{,, how ihcy proposed to bring in the heroic 
 age again, how they did their task, can only be 
 learned by dint of studying long what it is these 
 men found it good to say. Doubtless there are few 
 hero who are as yet siiihciently a(!(piainted with the 
 language to make that study, but I hope it will not 
 bo many years before it will be dillicult to get any 
 aiidicncij gathered here to hear a lecture upon the 
 
RECIPES FOR HAPPi:!^ESS 211 
 
 literature of Germany without having read its chief 
 productions. To explain them best, I can only 
 think of the revelation, for I call it no other, that 
 tbese men made to me. It was to me like the 
 lisiiLg of a light in the darkness which lay around 
 and threatened to swallow me up. I was then in 
 the veiy midst of Wertherism, the blackness and 
 darkness of death. There was one thing in particu- 
 lar which struck me in Goethe : it is in his ''"Wil- 
 helm Meister." He had been describing an asso- 
 ciation of all sorts of people of talent, formed to 
 receive propositions and give responses to them, 
 aU which he described with a sort of seiiousness at 
 first, but with irony at the last. However, these 
 people had long had their eye on Wilhelm Meister, 
 with great cunning watching over him, at a distance 
 at first, not interfeiing with him too soon. At last, 
 the man who was intrusted with the management of 
 the thing, took him in hand, and began to give him 
 an account of how the association acted. Now this 
 is the thing which, as I said, so much struck me. 
 He tells "W'ilhelm Meister that a number of applica- 
 tions for advice were daily made to the association, 
 which were answered thus and thus, but that many 
 people wrote in particular for recipes of happiness, 
 all that, he adds, " was laid on the shelf, and not 
 answered at all ! " Now this thing gave me great 
 surprise when I read it *' What ! " I said, " is it 
 not the recipe of happiness that I have been seeking 
 
212 THE WORSHIP OF SORROW 
 
 all my life ; and isn't it precisely because I have 
 failed in finding it that I am now miserable and 
 discontented ? " Had I supposed, as some people 
 do, that Goethe was fond of paradoxes, that this 
 was consistent with the sincerity and modesty of 
 the man's mind, I had certainly rejected it, without 
 further trouble, but I could not think it. At length, 
 after turning it over a great while in my own mind, 
 I got to see that it was very true what he said, that 
 it was the thing about which all the world was in 
 eiTor. No man has the right to ask for a recipe of 
 happiness, he can do without happiness. There is 
 something better than that. All kinds of men who 
 have done great things, priests, prophets, sages, 
 have had in them something higher than the love 
 of happiness to guide them, spiritual clearness and 
 perfection, a far better thing than happiness. Love 
 of happiness is but a kind of hunger at the best ; a 
 craving, because I have not enough of sweet provi- 
 sion in this world. If I am asked what that higher 
 thing is, I cannot at once make answer : I am afraid 
 of causing mistake. There is no name I can give it 
 that is not to be questioned. I could not speak 
 about it : there is no name for it but Pity ; for that 
 heart that does not feel it, there is no good volition 
 in that heart. This higher thing was once named 
 *' The Cross of Christ," not a happy thing that sure- 
 ly. The worship of sorrow named by the old heroic 
 martyrs, named in all the heroic sufierings, all the 
 
METAPHYSICIANS 213 
 
 heroic acts of man. I do not mean to say that the 
 whole creed of German hterature can be reduced to 
 this one thing, it would be absurd to say so ; but 
 that was the commencement of it. And just as 
 AVilliara Penn said of the Pagan system, that Chris- 
 tianity was not come to destroy what was true in it, 
 but to purify it of errors, and then to embrace it 
 within itself ; so I began to see with respect to this 
 world of ours, that the Phoenix was not burnt wholly 
 up when its ashes were scattered in the French Rev- 
 olution, but that there was yet something immortal 
 in all things that were genuine, which now survived, 
 and for the future was to cherish all hopes. For it 
 is the special nature of man to have comfort by him, 
 to aid and support himself. If there is any one of 
 you here now prosecuting the same kinds of studies 
 as I then did, and has not arrived at it yet by a way 
 of his own (for there are many ways to it), he will, 
 when he first discovers this high truth, be anxious 
 to know what it is, and get better and better ac- 
 quainted with it. 
 
 And that you also may be enabled to realize to 
 5'ourselves what I have realized to myself, I shall 
 proceed to point out one or two figures in German 
 literature, one or two men who have been the chief 
 speakers in it. 
 
 Of the XDhilosophers of Germany, the metaphy- 
 sicians of Germany, I shall say nothing at present. 
 I studied them once attentively ; but I found that I 
 
214 GOETHE 
 
 got iiotliing out of them. One may just say of tliem 
 that they are the precisely opposite to Hume ; Hume 
 startiug out of materialism and sensualism, certain 
 of nothing except that he himself was alive ; while 
 the Germans, on the contrary, start from the prin- 
 ciple "that there is an universal truth in things" — 
 spiritualism ; that trying to go about seeking evi- 
 dences for belief is like one who would search for 
 the sun at noonday by the light of a farthing rush- 
 light ! Blow out your rushlight, they say, and you 
 will soon see the sun ! But this study of meta- 
 physics, I saj', had only the result, after bringing 
 me rapidly through different phases of opinion, at 
 last, to deliver me altogether out of metaphysics. I 
 found it altogether a frothy system ; no right be- 
 ginning to it, no right ending. I began with Hume 
 and Diderot, and as long as I was with them I ran 
 at Atheism, at blackness, at materialism of all kinds. 
 If I read Kant, I arrived at j)recisely opposite con- 
 clusions, that all the world was s^^irit namely, that 
 there was nothing material at all anywhere ; and 
 the result was what I have stated, that I resolved 
 for my part to have nothing more to do with meta- 
 physics at all ! 
 
 The first writer I shall notice is Goethe. The ap- 
 pearance of such a man at any given era is, in my 
 opinion, the greatest thing that can hapjoen in it — 
 a man who has the soul to think, and be the moral 
 guide of his own nation and of the whole world. 
 
GOETHE AND SHAKESPEARE 215 
 
 All people that live under his influence gather 
 themselves round him, and therefore, although 
 many writers made their appearance in Germany 
 after him, Goethe was the man to whom they looked 
 for inspiration ; they took from him the color they 
 assume. I can have little to say of him in these 
 limits. I can say of him the same as I said of 
 Shakespeare : there has been no such man as him- 
 self since Shakespeare. He was not like Shake- 
 speare, yet in some respects he came near to Shake- 
 speare — in his clearness, tolerance, humane depth. 
 He, too, was a devout man. You grant a devout 
 man, j^ou grant a wise man : no_man_ has a seeing 
 ®Z®J^iyi^yi-toi- having Jiad a geein^ hearjL Other- 
 wise the genius of man is but spasmodic and frothy. 
 I should say, therefore, that the thing one often hears, 
 *' that such and such a man is a wise man, but a 
 man of a base heart," is altogether an impossibility, 
 thank Heaven ! Virtue is the palladium of our in- 
 tellects. If wickedness were consistent with wis- 
 dom, we should often have the Devil in this world 
 of ours regulating all our affairs ; but the thing is 
 impossible. 
 
 Thus all the things in Shakespeare breathe of 
 wisdom and morality, and all are one. So, if you 
 grant me Goethe's worth, you grant me all things 
 beside it. Indeed, we may find his greatness in 
 this one fact. We saw his " Werther " and " Ber- 
 lichingen " appear, those fountain - heads of that 
 
216 
 
 European literature which has been going on ever 
 since. Goethe himself soon got out of that alto- 
 gether, and he resolved to be sincere once more, 
 being convinced that it was all wrong, nonsense, 
 mean, and paltry ; and that, if there was nothing 
 better to be done with it, he ought to hold iiis 
 tongue about it altogether. This was to feel like 
 one who was to become one of the kings of this 
 world. Accordingly, for twenty years after that, 
 while all Germany was raging, as we saw, and the 
 whole people had in a manner become one set of 
 desperate, whiskered man-haters, Goethe held his 
 peace. Fame to him was little in comparison with 
 an enfranchised soul. His next work (for " Faust," 
 properly speaking, belongs to the "Werther" pe- 
 riod) was " Wilhelm Meister," i3ublished in the 
 year 1795. This is a strange book, and though it 
 does not fly away on the Avind like " Werther,*' it is 
 even stranger than " "Werther." 
 
 At this time the man has got himself organized at 
 last — built up ; his mind adjusted to what he can- 
 not cure, not suicidally grinding itself to pieces. 
 But there was no pity yet in him. It is very curious 
 to observe how at this time, ideal art, painting, 
 poetry, were in his view the highest things, good- 
 ness being only included in it. There is even no 
 positive recognition of a God, but only of a stubborn 
 force, really a kind of heathen thing. Still, there 
 is some belief ; belief in himself, that most useful of 
 
217 
 
 all beliefs. He got that when his strength was at 
 its highest. As his miud gets higher, more concen- 
 trated in itself (for Goethe lived very silent, the 
 most silent of men), in its own privacy it becomes 
 more serious too, uttering tones of most beautiful 
 devoutness, recognitions of all things that are true 
 in the world. 
 
 For example, in the continuation of his "Wil- 
 helm Meister," w^-itten when he w'as near seventy 
 yeai'S old, there is a chapter that has been called 
 the best chapter ever yet written on Christianity. 
 I never met anywhere with a better. It is out of 
 that I quoted that beautiful phrase applied to 
 Christianity, " the Worship of Sorrow," also styled 
 by him " the Divine Depth of Sorrow ! " Also in 
 the last book of all he ever wrote, the most consid- 
 erable book in a poetical view, the " West-Ostlicher 
 Divan," we have the same display of pious feeling. 
 Yet it is in form a Mahometan-Persian series of de- 
 lineations, but its whole spirit is Christian ; it is 
 that of Goethe himself, the old poet who goes up 
 and down singing little snatches] of his own feelings 
 on different things. It grows extremely beautiful 
 as it goes on, full of the finest things possible, which 
 sound like the jingling of bells when the " queen of 
 the fairies rides abroad." The whole gathers itself 
 up in the end into what Goethe thinks on matters 
 at large. But we can see that what he spoke is not 
 the thousandth part of what lay in him. It is, in 
 
218 DEFENCE OF GOETHE 
 
 fact, the principal charm in him, that he has the 
 wisdom to speak what is to be spoken, to be silent 
 on what is not to be spoken. 
 
 Alongside of Goethe we must rank Schiller. By 
 the bye, I have said nothing about the objections 
 sometimes made to Goethe. It is a mortifying thing 
 to feel that want of recognition among men to 
 which a great writer is subject. Not that Goethe 
 has not had in general an ample recognition ; but 
 still there are men, whose ideas are not nonentities 
 at all, but who very much differ about Goethe and 
 his character. One thing that has been said of him 
 very strangely is that in all his writings he appears 
 "too happy." A most amazing accusation against a 
 man ! much more against Goethe, who tells us that 
 in his youth he could often have run a dagger into 
 his heart. He could at any time have been as mis- 
 erable, if he liked, as these critics could wish ; but 
 he very wisely kept his misery to himself, or rather 
 misery was to him the problem he had to solve, the 
 work he had to do. Thus, when somebody, on 
 seeing his portrait, exclaimed, " Voilu un homme 
 qui a eu beaucoup de chagrin," he instantly replied, 
 " No ! but of one rather who has turned his suffer- 
 ings into useful work ! " Another objection made 
 to him has been that he never took part in the polit- 
 ical troubles of his time, never acted either as a 
 Reformer or Conservative. But he did right not to 
 meddle with these miserable disputes. To expect 
 
SCHILLER 219 
 
 this of Lis genius would be like asking the moon to 
 come out of the heavens, and become a mere street 
 torch, and then to go out. 
 
 Schiller has been more generally admired than 
 Goethe, and no doubt he was a noble man ; but his 
 qualification for literature was in every way nar- 
 rower than Goethe's. The principal characteristic 
 of Schiller is a chivalry of thought, described by 
 Goethe as " the Spirit of Freedom," struggling ever 
 forward to be free. It was this that produced " The 
 Bobbers." Goethe says that the " very shape of 
 his body and the air with which he walked showed 
 the determined lover of freedom, one who could not 
 brook the notion of slavery," and that not only 
 under men, but under anything else. But Schiller, 
 notwithstanding this, in my opinion, could not have 
 written one good poem if he had not met with 
 Goethe. At the time of their meeting he had last 
 written the play of "Don Carlos," a play full of 
 high-sounding but startling things. The principal 
 character, ]\Iendoza, in particular talks very grandly iMH^ 
 and largely throughout. It is well described as 
 being like a '*' lighthouse, high, far-seen, and withal 
 empty." It is, in fact, very like what the people of 
 that day, the Girondists of the French Revolution, 
 were always talking about, the "Bonheur du Peu- 
 ple," and the rest. To this point, then, Schiller had 
 arrived, when, being tired of this kind of composi- 
 tion, he left poetry, apparently forever, and wrote 
 
220 GOETHE AND SCHILLER 
 
 several very sound historical books, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 Goethe, who was ten years older than Schiller, 
 first met him at this period. He did not court an 
 acquaintance with him. In fact, he says himself 
 that he " disliked Schiller," and kept out of his way 
 as much as possible. Schiller also disliked Goethe 
 for his cold impassivity, and tried to avoid him too. 
 However, they happened to come together, and a 
 mutual friendship ensued ; and it was very credit- 
 able to Schiller — how he attached himself to Goethe, 
 and sought his instructions, and how he got light 
 out of Goethe. There was always something, how- 
 ever, monastic in Schiller. He never attempted to 
 bring the great page of life into poetry, but would 
 retire into corners, and deal with it there. He was 
 too aspiring, too restless ; it brought him to the bed 
 of sickness ; he could not live in communion with 
 earth. It is melancholy to read how in his latter 
 days he used to spend whole nights in his garden 
 house, drinking wdne-chocolate (a beverage of which 
 I can form no notion) to excess. Here he was often 
 seen by his neighbors, declaiming and gesticulating 
 and writing his tragedies. His health became com- 
 pletely destroyed by it, and finally he died at the 
 age of forty. 
 
 There was a nobleness in Schiller, a brotherly 
 feeling, a kindness of sympathy for what is true and 
 just. There was a kind of silence, too, at the last. 
 
RICHTER 221 
 
 He gave up his talk about the " Bonheur du Peuple," 
 and tried to see if he could make them happier in- 
 stead. Accordingly his poems became better and 
 better after his acquaintance with Goethe. His* 
 *' Wilhelm Tell " was the best thing he ever wrote. 
 There runs a kind of melody through it ; the de- 
 scription of the herdsman of the Alps is exquisite. 
 It is a kind of Swiss thing itself ; at least, there are 
 passages in it which are quite in that character. 
 It i^roperly finishes at the fourth act. The fifth 
 was afterward added, as the rules of the drama 
 obliged him to write it ; but this, though it may 
 have been considered a fault, is not a fault for the 
 reader. 
 
 The third great writer in modern German litera- 
 ture whom I intend to notice is Jean Paul Fried- 
 rich Kichter. Richter was a man of a large stature, 
 too. He seems, indeed, to be greater than either ; 
 but, in my opinion, he was far inferior to Goethe. 
 He was a man of a hard life, miserable enough for 
 the people even who complain of Goethe. I do not 
 mean that he was unhappy in any particular circum- 
 stances ; but what I do say is, that he had not 
 gained a complete victory over the world as Goethe 
 had done. Goethe v/as a strong man, as strong as 
 the mountain rocks, but as soft as the green sward 
 upon the rocks, and, like them, continually bright 
 and sun-beshone. Richter, on the contrary, was 
 what he has been called, a " half-made " man. He 
 
222 EICHTER 
 
 struggled with the world, but was never completely 
 triumphant over it. 
 
 But one loves Richter. He is most universally to 
 * be loved, indeed, provided one can get to read him. 
 But that is a great proviso, for his style is as con- 
 fused and unintelHgible, as Goethe's is the best of 
 styles — like the clear harmony of Xenophon, but 
 far deeper than Xenophon. As he is the best of 
 Germans for style, Richter is the worst. He cannot 
 get half the things said that he has to say — a con- 
 fused, strange, tumultuous style ! It is like some 
 tangled American forest, where the axe has never 
 been, and no j)ath lies through it. For my part, I 
 tried to understand him over and over again before 
 I succeeded ; but I got finally to perceive his way 
 of thinking, and I found a strange kind of order in 
 him at last, and it was quite easy after that to make 
 him out. His is a most gorgeous style ; not an 
 articulate voice, but like the sound of cataracts fall- 
 ing among the wild pine-forests ! It goes deep in 
 the human heart. A man of a great intellect, great 
 heart, great character — all exemplified in his way of 
 life. 
 
 His father, who was a clergyman, dying when he 
 was young, left him in charge to his mother, a fool- 
 ish woman, by whom his patrimony was completely 
 wasted. In his twenty-fifth year he entered the 
 University of Leipsic. He was at this time of a 
 stranoe nature ; there was a sort of affectation in 
 
 i 
 
RIcnTER*S NOVELS 223 
 
 him. Not only bad lie no words adequate to express 
 his ideas, but those he had were not good enough. 
 He» found the professors, in his eyes, very feeble in- 
 dividuals. He met there, however, Ernesti, the 
 distinguished scholar,' for whom he had a great 
 regard. Yet his college life was one of great pri- 
 vations. He says : "In gaols the prisoner's allow- 
 ance is bread and water. I had the latter, but not 
 the former." Plenty of water, but no bread ! Yet 
 he was a cheerful, indomitable man amid it all. 
 He held his peace and struggled on, determined to 
 wait his time. That time came ! The people of 
 the college had thought him mad, but he soon 
 i^roved to them that he was not a madman, for he 
 bestirred himself, and wrote books which became 
 very successful. I recommend my friends here who 
 know German to read his novels : to struG'^^le 
 through his difficulties of style, and get acquainted 
 with him. He has, amoDg other qualities, that of 
 great joyousness ; there is more joyous laughter in 
 the heart of Eichter than in any other German 
 writer. Goethe has it to a certain extent, and 
 Schiller too ; but Richter goes into it with all his 
 heart. It is a deep laughter, a wild laughter ; and, 
 connected with it, there is the deepest seriousness. 
 Thus his dreams ; they are as deep as those of 
 Dante : dreams of annihilation, not surpassed, per- 
 haps, except by the prophetic books of the Bible. 
 There are yet many more writers besides those 
 
224 FUTURE PROSPECTS 
 
 I have named, but I Lave not time for them. What 
 can I do ? I can but invite my friends to get ac- 
 quainted with them, and find out for themselves the 
 nature of the belief that is in these men. They will 
 find in them not a theory, not the demonstration of 
 motion ; but they will see men walking, which is far 
 better. 
 
 I shall add but a few words on our prospects of 
 what is next to come. I think, therefore, that we 
 have much reason to hope about the future. Great 
 things are in store for us. The world has but 
 begun to enter upon this new course, and wise men 
 will, I trust, continue to come and devote themselves 
 to it. This hope assures me when I see people in a 
 deep distress about it ; for I feel that it is possible 
 for us to be free — to attain to the possession of a 
 spiritual freedom, compared with which political en- 
 franchisement is but a name ; not living on any 
 longer in a blind sensualism and egotism, but suc- 
 ceeding to get out and be free, out of this state of 
 nightmare and paralysis. It is my hope that the 
 words which were spoken by Richter in the end of 
 the eighteenth century are to come true in this. It is 
 a most remarkable passage, and I must endeavor to 
 give it you. He had been saying that on the out- 
 gates of European history he thought he could read 
 inscribed a similar inscription to that which the 
 Russians had engraved on the iron gate at Derbent, 
 *'Here goes the road to Constantinople." That so, 
 
LEAVE-TAKING 225 
 
 on the out-gates of events be could also read, " Here 
 goes the road to virtue ! " " But as yet," he goes on 
 to say, " as yet are struggles. It is now the twelfth 
 hour of the night (it was, indeed, an awful period) ; 
 birds of darkness are on the wing (evil and foul 
 things were meditated on) ; the spectres uprear ; the 
 dead walk ; the living dream. Thou, Eternal Provi- 
 dence, wilt cause the da}' to dawn ! " 
 
 I cannot close this lecture better than by repeat- 
 ing these words of Richter : ''Thou, Eternal Provi- 
 dence, wilt cause the day to dawn ! " 
 
 Nothing now remains for me but to take my 
 leave of you — a sad thing at all times that word, but 
 doubly so in this case. When I think of what you 
 are and of what I am, I cannot help feeling that you 
 have been very kind to me ! I won't trust myself to 
 say how kind ! But you have been as kind to me as 
 ever audience was to man, and the gratitude which 
 I owe you comes to you from the bottom of my 
 heart. 
 
 May God be with you all ! 
 
 15 
 
NOTES 
 
 LECTUKE I. 
 
 Page 3. — The PelasgL — Vague statements about the 
 Pelasgi were currently and most uncritically accepted at 
 the time of Carlyle's Lectures. Even in later years pro- 
 fessed scholars seem unwilling to confess how little 
 they know concerning them. Thus, a strange mixture of 
 truth and error exists in the learned Essay of Canon 
 Eawlinson — "On the Traditions respecting the Pelas- 
 gians " — ai^pended to his version of Herodotus (Vol. III. 
 pp. 530-538, 4th ed. 1880). 
 
 A useful note on the Pelasgi and some other obscure 
 tribes mentioned by Greek writers will be found in Vol. 
 I. of the last edition (1891) of Max Miiller's Science of 
 Language. After examining (p. 136 et seq.) the most 
 accredited sources of information Professor Max Miiller 
 concludes — "It is lost labor to try to extract anything 
 positive from these statements of the Greeks and Eo- 
 mans on the race and the language of their barbarian 
 neighbors." 
 
 We cannot enter here upon the discussion of a subject 
 so wide as the origin of the Hellenic and Italic peoples. 
 The reader will find it most compendiously treated, 
 with abundant references to other authorities, in Vol. 
 in. of Dr. I wan Miiller's useful Handbuch der Kiassischen 
 Alterthums-irissenscJia/f. This volume, published in 
 
228 NOTES 
 
 1889, is by six different authors. (It can be had sepa- 
 rately.) No English work replaces it. For the Pelas- 
 gi see especially p. 364 and context. 
 
 Page 4. — Foolish to War for a Woman. — " Now as for 
 the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a 
 rogue ; but to make a stir about such as are carried off, 
 argues a man a fool. Men of sense {e.g., Ulysses, in 
 Shakespeare's Troilus and Ci-essida] care nothing for 
 such women, since it is plain that without their own 
 consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, 
 when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troub- 
 led themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for 
 the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast 
 armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of 
 Priam." Herodotus, I. 4 (Kawlinson's version). lo and 
 Europe are noticed in the preceding paragi-aphs 1 and 2. 
 
 Page 6. — Greek still spoken in parts of Italy. — The fol- 
 lowing passage lately written at Lecce (Lupiae) in south- 
 ern Italy by a well-known French poet and romance- 
 writer eloquently confirms Carlyle's words : 
 
 *'Un je ne sais quoi de delicat s'y mele qui trahit, 
 par-dessous I'ltalie et I'Espagne, le vieux fond Hellene. 
 Dans cette province jieupl^e de villages ou I'on parle 
 encore grec, il semble qu'un rien de I'ame antique ait 
 laisse partout sa trace. Les airs que chantent les en- 
 fants prennent dej^ ce trainement de m61op6e grave, 
 tres distinct de la cantilene si vite commune de Naples. 
 Les habitants ont une sobriete de gestes qui contraste 
 avec le voisinage du Midi bruyant. II y a, dans le de- 
 tail des choses de la rue, des gentilesses ou Ton se i^lait 
 it retrouver la preuve d'une race affinee, — comme ce 
 petit iDont de bois monte sur des roues que Ton dresse 
 d'un trottoir a I'autre par les jours de pluie pour que 
 
NOTES 229 
 
 vous puissiez passer sans vons salir, — et, lorsque c'est 
 comme maiutenant, marclie public, la forme ties lampes 
 de terre avec leur bee allonge, celle des vases, j'allais 
 dire des ampbores, menagees pour I'buile et le vin, avec 
 leurs deux oreilles, suffit a vous rappeler que ces pay- 
 sans venus des plaines avoisinantes sont les beritiers 
 modemes des colons cretois debarques avec Idomenee 
 et les arriere-neveux des anciens sujets de Daunus, le 
 beau-pere de Diom^de." (Paul Bourget, Sensations 
 (TltaUe, p. 229. Paris, 1891.) 
 
 Page 7. — Date of the Trojan War. — For "a list of tbe 
 principal views on tbis subject," see Rawlinson's note 
 to Herodotus, II. 145. 
 
 Page 9. — Lycidas. — Herodotus, IX. 5. 
 
 Page 10. — Pelasgic Architecture. — Usually termed Cy- 
 clopean. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. III. p. 537 ; 
 4tb ed. See also Schliemann's Ausgrahungen, von Dr. 
 Carl Scbucbbardt, 2d ed. ' Leipzig, 1891. Tbis useful 
 book, epitomizing in one volume all Scbliemann's works, 
 is now translated into Englisb. Tbe wall of Tiryns, 
 figured on p. 122, bas many stones measuring 2-3 metres 
 in lengtb, and 1 metre (nearly forty incbes) in lieigbt 
 and deptb. 
 
 Page 12. — Euhemerism. — For a satisfactory explana- 
 tion of tbis tbeory on tbe origin of mytbology see Max 
 Miiller's Science of Language, Vol. II. p. 41:9, ed. of 1891. 
 
 Page 13. — Philipjndes. — His name in many manu- 
 scripts is spelt— Pbeidii^pides. Herodotus, VI. 105. 
 
 Page 15.— 77^6 Getce.— Herodotus, IV. 94. Tbe otber 
 people wbo made war upon tbe soutb wind are tbe Psylli 
 
230 KOTES 
 
 (Herodotus, IV. 173), noticed by Plutarch, Pliny, and 
 various writers. Tliey lived close to the Greater Syrtis, 
 in the Libyan oases, and were renowned as snake 
 charmers. 
 
 LECTUKE II. 
 
 Page 17. — Wolff. — Many do not know that the opinions 
 on Homer which have made the name of Friedrich 
 August Wolf so celebrated were anticipated by Giam- 
 battista Vico, the author of the Scienza Nuova, of whose 
 life and writings a pleasing account, by Bishop Tliirl- 
 wall, will be found in the second volume of the Philo- 
 logical Museum (Cambridge, 1833). 
 
 Page 17. — The Homeric Controversy. — What is called 
 the Homeric question has two divisions. Both concern 
 the Iliad. The first compares this poem with the 
 Odyssey. The second discusses the relations of the 
 whole Iliad to its parts. 
 
 Many passages of the Odyssey, considered (as Hamlet 
 says) too curiously, seem to show that it may have been 
 composed at a later period than the Iliad. It describes 
 scenes and beliefs, men, arts, and circumstances, in a 
 manner often foreign to our readings of its predecessor. 
 These views, respectable when urged by thoughtful 
 critics, have gained a crowd of adherents to the opinion 
 — that one Homer could not have written both poems, 
 an opinion older than the Christian era. 
 
 That the Iliad, as we now have it, is without unity of 
 composition has certainly not yet been j)roved. Wolf's 
 conglomerate theory, to which so many have yielded (it 
 may be with reservations put forward as critical by those 
 who envy Wolf his miserable reputation), appears allow- 
 able only so long as we dwell on the mosaic structure of 
 
^^OTES 231 
 
 the poem with its varied episodes and its few trifling in- 
 consistencies. Let lis grant that before Wolf's time this 
 mixed nature of the Iliad was not suflSciently recognized 
 (for Homer's changes are so pleasing that one pauses not 
 always to ask the reasons of these changes). Is the 
 Iliad therefore a patchwork, because we cannot believe 
 in a Homer who invented all that was once assigned him 
 and who was supposed himself to supply his own ma- 
 terials ? The rhapsodists living before and beside Ho- 
 mer doubtless recited numerous hymns and ballads, the 
 greatest of which told the fate of Troy and the anger of 
 Achilles. They sang to audiences who appreciated the 
 diverse versions of their lays due to the inventiveness of 
 successive singers. Homer, his mind filled with these 
 songs, re -shaped and put together such of them as best 
 fitted his high purjDOse. In this work of giving form 
 and combination to scattered themes lay the real strength 
 of his genius. Could any poet do more ? The elements 
 of existence are always the same ; the artist moulds and 
 composes them into expressiveness. The infinite lies 
 ever around us, within us. The commonest things are 
 more suggestive than w^e suppose ; they are infinite in 
 the extent and diversity of their relationships. 
 
 The whole Homeric question thus gets involved in 
 the wider one concerning the application of current 
 phrases to designate the artist's productions. What is 
 the significance of words like invention and originality, 
 employed as synonyms for a certain excellence of literary 
 compositions? The word invention itself, by a hajDpy 
 amphibolism, when used transitively cannot be deprived 
 of its primitive meaning. Shakespeare knew this. He 
 represents Worcester planning the rebellion against 
 Henry IV., but he makes Falstaff say of him with grim 
 irony, "Kebellion lay in his way, and he found it." 
 Poor Worcester therefore was not original, though his 
 
232 NOTES 
 
 invention cost him his head. No man of genius is 
 original if we regard only his materials. A weaver is 
 nobody. A smith makes neither coals nor iron ore. 
 The miner who is nearer nature is an extractor, not a 
 fabricator. Such spurious analysis would render Saxo, 
 not Shakespeare, the author of Hamlet ; it would resolve 
 portraits into pigments and canvas. But who accepts 
 these results ? True invention is a thing too subtle to 
 be analyzed. The critics who like parasites crawl over 
 men of genius never can discover it. On the other hand 
 there is a painful originality which all excellent authors 
 avoid. They remember that what is called the common- 
 place interests when presented from new points of view. 
 The overpowering inventiveness of Edgar Poe is a de- 
 fect ; his horrors displease us on a second perusal. 
 Sophocles, more moving than any other tragedian except 
 the author of " Lear," did not invent the awful myth of 
 (Edipus. He took it as it was and transformed it for 
 ever into a thing of power and beauty. The story of 
 the Saltzburg emigrants was re-fashioned by Goethe 
 into his "Hermann und Dorothea." Art and nature, 
 here in perfect harmony, have united to fjroduce the 
 most finished, the most Greek-like of post-classical 
 poems. The first, like the last, of poets was a shaper, a 
 creator. Before all others he called into being persons 
 and deeds never to be forgotten. The real Agamemnon 
 must have been a poor creature compared to the " King 
 of Men " portrayed by Homer. 
 
 In reviewing Homer it is wrong to begin by contrast- 
 ing the Iliad with the Odyssey — an easy task. This was 
 "Wolf's j)rocedure, who did but industriously follow a 
 clew already traced in the writings of Bentley. By pur- 
 suing an opposite course, by first studying the Iliad as 
 an independent work, we drop the prejudice which makes 
 plausible these attempts to break the earlier epic into 
 
NOTES 233 
 
 pieces. If then we again take up the Odyssey we find 
 it not so difficult to conclude that its author also wrote 
 the Iliad. To retain the more archaic constituents of 
 the latter was surely not beyond Homer's skill. The 
 remembrance of old customs and of quaint phrases had 
 not yet expired in the minds of his hearers. The nice 
 discrimination of the means at his disposal for the proper 
 treatment of his two great subjects could not puzzle 
 Homer, as it has done his commentators. 
 
 Homer is for laymen more than for scholars. These 
 have mauled him and made a muddle of his works, his 
 fame, his personality ; those have revered him and above 
 all read him. They have translated his writings, exca- 
 vated his soil, and drawn renewed inspiration from his 
 surroundings. Voss and Lord Derby, Schliemann and 
 Byron have interpreted Homer better even than Heyne, 
 better than the learned and conscientious Grote. Schlie- 
 mann's diggings have caused us to distrust Grote's ex- 
 cessive scej^ticism, so gently rebuked by his friend 
 Hallam (whose long letter is given in The Personal Life 
 of George Grote, by Mrs. Grote, pp. 164-169), Byron's 
 plea for the truth of Homer now triumphantly shows 
 (see his "Bride of Abydos," Canto II., 2-4) that the 
 poet's insight transcends that of the professors. All 
 difficulties about the Homeric poems sink into nothing 
 when we gi-asp the final question — could a plurality of 
 Homers have existed ? That they did not exist is a be- 
 lief some students have never ceased to cherish. And 
 (to borrow Yorick's words) " the vulgar are of the same 
 opinion to this hour." 
 
 Page 19. — Piohin Rood's Ballads. — A much better illus- 
 tration is now afforded by the Kalevala of the Tavastians 
 or inhabitants of Western Finland. *' Their epic songs 
 still live among the poorest, recorded by oral tradition 
 
234 NOTES 
 
 alone, and preserving all the features of ar perfect metre 
 and of a more ancient language. A national feeling has 
 arisen among the Fins, despite of Eussian supremacy : 
 and the labors of Sjogern, Lonnrot, Gastrin, Kellgren, 
 Krohne, and Donner, receiving hence a powerful im- 
 pulse, have produced results truly surprising. From the 
 mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected 
 equalling the Iliad in length and completeness — nay, if 
 we can forget for a moment all that we in our youth 
 learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Fin is 
 not a Greek, and Wainamoi'nen was not a Homeric 
 rhapsodos. But if the poet may take his colors from 
 that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict 
 the men with whom he lives, the Kalevala possesses 
 merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will 
 claim its place, as the fifth national epic of the world, 
 side by side with the Ionian songs, with the [Indian] 
 Mahdbhdrata, the [Persian] Shdhndmeh, and the [Ger- 
 man] Nihelunge. If we want to study the circumstances 
 under which short ballads may grow up and become 
 amalgamated after a time, into a real epic poem, nothing 
 can be more instructive than the history of the collection 
 of the Kalevala. We have here facts before us, not 
 mere surmises, as in the case of the Homeric poems and 
 the Nibelunge. We can still see how some j)oems were 
 lost, others were modified ; how certain heroes and epi- 
 sodes became popular, and attracted and absorbed what 
 had been originally told of other heroes and other epi- 
 sodes. Lonnrot could watch the effect of a good and of 
 a bad memory among the jjeople who repeated the songs 
 to him, and he makes no secret of having himself used 
 the same freedom in the final arrangement of these 
 poems which the people used from whom he learnt 
 them." (Max Miiller's Science of Language, Vol. I., p. 
 437.) 
 
^•OTES 285 
 
 Page 20. — Charactei' of Hornet'' s Poems. — Homer in 
 describing natural objects and events had the advant- 
 age over other eminent poets of coming first. But this 
 will not account for his inimitable freshness. Neither 
 can we explain it by saving that he possessed those 
 qualities which all consummate artists share jn com- 
 mon. To feel the full charm of Homer we must hear 
 him as a Greek who sung to Greeks. That is whv he 
 is now addressing the world. 
 
 The adaptation of Greek character to Greek circum- 
 stances sujDplies a constant topic for admiration. Greece 
 so suited the ancient Greeks during the earlier and bet- 
 ter i^eriods of their history that one might say truly — 
 mind has never since been so happily combined with 
 matter. English readers, a few students and visitors to 
 the Mediterranean excej^ted, seem to miss the signifi- 
 cance of Greece through some vice or defect of organi- 
 zation. Yet one may still walk up to the Acropolis 
 through the " shining clear air " of Euripides. Fogs 
 and beer are but poor substitutes for wine and sunlight. 
 The English, though wealthy and powerful, are discon- 
 tented. The Greeks were active but not unresting as 
 we are. Disposed to cheerfulness they gained repose 
 by not craving what was beyond their reach. The 
 Greeks loved returning to familiar things ; they sought 
 no impossible j^leasures, but enjoyed life as they found 
 it amid their own beautiful world. Mountains to them 
 were awful as the dwelling places of the gods, yet they 
 saw these mountains arising from jDleasant plains and 
 rearing their crests under a smiling heaven. Ever the 
 blue sky covered them, the earth was fertile, the forest- 
 shade grateful, the sea rich and strange, the air fra- 
 grant, luminous, and warm. The Greek mind was fitted 
 by a wonderful capacity to take in all the good it could 
 get. Like flowers on a fine day, this gay intellectual 
 
236 NOTES 
 
 people opened to receive the light that shone on them. 
 Their feelings did not wear out. Their senses did not 
 tire. They did not, like the moderns, faint from ennui. 
 Unlike the cold inhabitants of Northern Europe, the 
 demon of dissatisfaction had not taken possession of 
 their souls. Pessimist critics fail to perceive the inher- 
 ent excellence of the Greeks. Their learning alone will 
 not teach them to appreciate these children of the sun 
 who, with child-like susceptibility, thought daily exist- 
 ence a delight, who lived and who were happy. Pleased 
 with so much gratitude the whole universe looked on ; 
 kind Nature smiled and flung fresh gifts to the favored 
 of earth and heaven. Thus Art arose, a bright exhala- 
 tion of the dawn, a grateful incense upon Nature's al- 
 tar. What the Greek saw he loved, what he wrought 
 he refined, what he touched he made beautiful. His 
 thoughts were, like his firmament, transparent, exqui- 
 site ; his works sincere, fair, and finished. Why did he 
 not stay with us? Why did he go away to a heaven al- 
 ways rich and leave an earth made poor without him ? 
 ''The Beauty asked Zeus — why am I so transitory? 
 Did I not, said the god, make only the transitory fair ? " 
 These are the words of one who well understood the 
 Greeks, though he was a modern and a German. But 
 he was a man of genius and a poet — Goethe. Hapi^ily 
 genius is beyond time and place. Let us pray that men 
 of genius may ever arise to console mankind for the ab- 
 sence of the vanished Greeks. 
 
 Goethe has a striking passage in his Propylaen show- 
 ing why a perfect work of Art appears also like a work 
 of Nature. He says — "It _is supra natu ram , but no t e.r- 
 trajiQiLmmi. A perfect work of Art is a creation of the 
 human mind, and in this sense it is also a work of Nat- 
 ure. But whereas the scattered parts are here gathered 
 up into one, and even to the most insignificant are as- 
 
NOTES 237 
 
 signed their due import and dignity, on that account 
 does it rank above IS'ature. In conception and composi- 
 tion, it is the creation of a mind which, by origin and 
 cultivation, is at harmony with itself ; and such a mind 
 finds that by nature it is in unison with all that is in- 
 trinsically excellent and perfect." [Shakespeare comes 
 close to these views in Act IV., Scene 3, of A Wintei-'s 
 Tale.] 
 
 Moreover the modesty of the artist, who knows better 
 than others that he cannot*comprehend the full sugges- 
 tiveness of his subject, makes him appear less than he 
 is. Carlyle has profoundly said — "In the commonest 
 human face there lies more than Raphael will take away 
 with him." The true artist therefore gives us his thoughts 
 under the gnise of simple descriptions. 
 
 Such are Homer's descriptions. His words convey 
 more than they first express. They never lose their 
 meaning. They still speak to us when the battle of life 
 is well nigh over. Eminent men of noisy reputation, 
 once innocent scholars but led astray by worldly ambi- 
 tion (whether on the joaths of politics, law, trade, or ec- 
 clesiastical strife matters little) may keep uncorrupted 
 one corner of their heart which registers and responds 
 to youthful sympathies with Homer. Such men cannot 
 be altogether lost. There is a something in them, if not 
 their own, which may yet soften the inexorable Parcse, 
 nay even Minos himself. Plutarch tells how the Sicilians, 
 before sheltering a shii3 chased by pirates, asked if any 
 on board could repeat to them verses from Euripides. 
 
 Page 21. — noo-etSo)!/. — It was at the Isthmian games 
 that Poseidon was especially honored. In less pious 
 times a profane Greek versifier thus referred to him : 
 
 "When Neptune appeared at the Isthmian games, 
 He spoke most politely to numerous dames. 
 
238 NOTES 
 
 But. not finding one free from frivolity. 
 
 He bowed and went back to his home in the sea. 
 
 'The mermaids,' lie murmured, 'are better for me.'" 
 
 Paiisanias (VIII., 10) tells how *' the Mantineans said 
 that Poseidon appeared helping them " in their victory 
 over the Lacedsemonians (see Mr. Shilleto's translation). 
 
 Page 23. — The Bark-colored Sea. — In his beautiful pas- 
 sage on art (Iliad, XXIII., 313-318, and context) Homer 
 makes Nestor say to Antilochus — 
 
 ' ' By skill the steersman guides 
 His flying ship across the dark-blue sea." 
 
 BarTi-hlue is here Lord Derby's translation of a word 
 which, strictly rendered, is wine-looking. (The French 
 call certain dark-colored wines viyis hleus.) The Latin 
 translators of Homer ventured to substitute black. 
 Homer has another term for the open sea reflecting the 
 light blue of the sky. The sea " far shaded by the rocky 
 shore " (Byron's " Giaour," line 43) and dangerous to the 
 pilot was what Nestor meant. The fine and almost weird 
 effect produced by this dark water in contrast with "the 
 blue crystal of the seas " beyond [ibid., line 17) and the 
 intense brightness of the firmament much impressed 
 Goethe when for the first time he saw it at Palermo (the 
 scenic character of Sicily resembling that of Greece 
 rather than Italy). Byron must have been very familiar 
 with it, and Lord Derby, with appreciative tact, proba- 
 bly thought he could not do better than follow the lines 
 in the " Bride of Abydos" (Canto L, 9)— 
 
 " His head was leant upon his hand, 
 His eye look'd o'er the dark blue water." 
 
 Other English translators (see Walker's Clavis Homer- 
 ica, p. 47) say the darkling main, which sounds affected 
 
NOTES 239 
 
 and is erroneous, the appearance referred to being no 
 characteristic of the ocean in general. Homer was not 
 thinking of the main but of those parts of the Mediter- 
 ranean which had often charmed him. I do not know 
 Avhether Mr. Euskin has noted this passage. 
 
 Some German critics interpret wine-looking differently. 
 Thus Gobel thinks it means transparent as opposed to 
 troubled sea-water. Autenrieth restricts it to the dee^) 
 open sea, when it reflects light in calm warm weather 
 (see the Lexicon Homericum edited by H. Ebeling). It 
 seems to be forgotten that deep water may occur very 
 close to shore. Homer applies this word eighteen times 
 to the sea, twice to cattle. Drs. Butcher and Lang 
 translate it in both cases ivine-dark. 
 
 Page 24. — Epithets of Ulysses. — The endurance, or 
 rather pale rage, of Ulysses against the suitors is per- 
 haps best shown in the opening of Book XX. of the 
 Odyssey. Ulysses, after nightfall, has gone to rest on 
 a bed of skins in the veranda of his own house. Seeing 
 the suitors' mistresses go by his wrath is stirred, where, 
 upon he displays the struggle within his mind by alter- 
 nately expressing and calming his pent-up feelings. 
 The reader is referred to the translation of the Odyssey 
 by Drs. Butcher and Lang, the best English prose ver- 
 sion known to us. These writers for much-enduring sub- 
 stitute steadfast. 
 
 As to the epithets of Ulysses Carlyle is certainly 
 wrong. The word he translated by the phrase — " man 
 of cunning and stratagem " (i.e., prudent, strategic) is 
 applied to Ulysses only fourteen times in the Iliad, but 
 sixty-six times in the Odyssey. It has three approxi- 
 mate synonyms, similarly used, eight times in the for- 
 mer, twenty-four in the latter poem. The term much- 
 enduring, with its synonyms, does not occur in the 
 
240 NOTES 
 
 Odyssey fifty times. Surely the two qualities Carlyle 
 opposes are not incompatible. They are so far from 
 being so that Homer himself ascribes both to his hero 
 in the context of the passage to which we have above 
 referred. If Victorian is to prevail over Elizabethan 
 English the terms canny and gritty will take the places 
 of iDrudent and steadfast. 
 
 Page 25. — Ajax like an Ass. — Homer's comparison of 
 Ajax to an ass may be naif, but it is also scientifically 
 true and simply excellent. 
 
 *' As when a sluggish ass has got the better of the boys, 
 Passing by a harvest field, and many a stick is broken 
 Upon him, yet he gets within and crops the lofty corn, 
 While they with cudgels smite him, yet their strength 
 
 cannot avail, 
 And hardly is he driven forth when satisfied with food." 
 
 Iliad, XL, 558-562. 
 
 The ass, like Ajax, is constitutionally courageous to a 
 very high degree. Not being a predaceous animal, it 
 shows its courage chiefly in defence, as Ajax does in 
 the passage quoted. The strong nervous system of the 
 ass is displayed not only by its pertinacity but by its 
 soundness ; for, in spite of the bad treatment it receives, 
 it is little subject to those disorders of wind and limb 
 which beset the horse. Moreover, in southern and east- 
 ern countries the domestic ass is often a splendid ani- 
 mal, carefully improved by selection. In Homer's days 
 such selection was not unknown. The wild ass is as 
 graceful as the gazelle. In England the ass appears 
 abject, since it suffers from the poverty or ignorance of 
 its owner. See on this point what is said by Darwin in 
 his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 
 In Carlyle's younger days little attention was paid to 
 those extra-zoological topics which concern rather the 
 
NOTES 241 
 
 scholar than the naturalist, and which are now made 
 familiar to ns by the writings of De Gubernatis, Victor 
 Hehn, and others. Gibbon, it is true, urged historical 
 students to read for pleasure and profit those classical 
 chapters of Buffon which describe domestic animals. 
 Buffon nobly pleads for the ass, neglected by the nar- 
 row-minded merely because it is not a horse. 
 
 Page 26.— r/^e Greek type.-ihe late Mr. Hope, in 
 his Anastasius (Chap. IV.), })uts into the mouth of a 
 modern Greek the following reflections on his country- 
 men : — 
 
 *' Believe me, the very difference between the Greeks 
 of time past and of the present day arises only from 
 their thorough resemblance ; from that equal pliability 
 of temper and of faculties in both, which has ever made 
 them receive with equal readiness the impression of 
 every mould and the impulse of every agent. When 
 patriotism, public spirit, and pre-eminence in arts, sci- 
 ence, literature, and warfare, were the road to distinc- 
 tion, the Greeks shone the first of patriots, of heroes, 
 of painters, of poets, and of philosophers. Now that 
 craft and subtlety, adulation and intrigue, are the only 
 l^aths to greatness, these same Greeks are — what you 
 see them ! " 
 
 See the context. Anastasius was at first attributed to 
 Lord Byron, who in the earlier pages of his Giaour se- 
 verely lashes the degenerate Greeks. For an eloquent 
 tribute to the qualities of the ancient Greeks consult 
 the Port-Royal of Sainte-Beuve (LivreS, xviii.). 
 
 Page 28. — Pythagoras. — Bayle in his article on this 
 philosopher cites almost all of the classical comments 
 on the precept as to abstinence from beans. A further 
 copious instalment of Pythagorean literature is given in 
 Krug's Encydopddischphilosophisches Lexicon. 
 16 
 
242 NOTES 
 
 Page 32. — jEschylus. — A spirited transMion into Eng- 
 lish verse of the opening chorus of the Agamemnon was 
 published in the Classical Museum (Vol. VII., pp. 97- 
 104) by Professor Blackie, who wrote several useful 
 papers on iEschjlus in earlier volumes of the same 
 periodical. 
 
 Page 33. — Sophocles. — Those who wish to enjoy and un- 
 derstand Sophocles should use the editions and trans- 
 lations of his plays now being revised by Professor Jebb. 
 Cambridge has at length the honor of being foremost 
 to interpret this, the foremost of the Greek drama- 
 tists, as formerly she took possession of Euripides by 
 means of his two illustrious editors, separated from each 
 other by a century — Barnes and Porson. 
 
 Page 34. — Socrates. — The reader of course is aware 
 that we possess no writings of Socrates, and that what we 
 know of him is chiefly derived from reports of his con- 
 versation and habits by Xenophon and Plato. These 
 rank among the most precious and pleasing of the 
 Greek prose classics. A very readable account of Soc- 
 rates was given by Bishop Hampden in his "Fathers 
 of Greek Philosophy " (reprinted from the Encyclo- 
 pcedia Britannica). The reader may consult this as a 
 corrective (especially pp. 403 et seq.) of Carlyle's remarks 
 on Socrates as a wire-drawer. The prejudice of Carlyle 
 against our philosopher was noticed by Emerson when 
 he visited Carlyle in 1833— " We talked of books. 
 Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Soci'ates." 
 Besides a paper by Schleiermacher " On the Worth of 
 Socrates as a Philosopher " (translated by Bishop Tliirl- 
 wall in Vol. II. of the Philological Museum) the most 
 important works on Socrates are Grote's Plato and La 
 Philosophie de SocratCy par Alfred Fouillee, 2 vols., 
 Paris, 1874. 
 
NOTES 243 
 
 Page 36. — Tlie Greek Decline. — For a compendious 
 survey of the Greek authors neglected by Carlyle see 
 Jebb's Primer of Greek Literature, a book equally i^rofit- 
 able to young and old students, jDarticularly Part III., 
 " The Literature of the Decadence." Also, Geschichie 
 der Dyzantinischen Litteratur, von Karl Ki'umbacher. 
 8vo, Miinchen, 1891. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Page 41. — The Etruscans. — More copious and accurate 
 information on this people, whose real origin is conjec- 
 tural and whose language is still completely isolated, 
 may be had from K. O. Miiller, Die Etrusker, 2 Aufl., 
 von Deecke, Stuttgart, 1876, 1877. 
 
 Page 41. — Cato, Varro and Columella. David Hume 
 gives some interesting references to these writers in his 
 Essay XI. " Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations." 
 
 Cicero {De Senectute XV.) represents M. Porcius Cato 
 vindicating at length the claims of agricultural pursuits 
 as well fitted to occupy the energies of the Romans. 
 
 Page 46. — Napoleon on Hannibal. — The following ci- 
 tation is from the Memorial de Sainte-Helene, of Las 
 Cases (Tome VII., p. 237) :— 
 
 *'Et cet Ayinihal, disait-il, le plus audacieux de tons, 
 le plus etonnant peut-etre ; si hardi, si sur, si large en 
 toutes clioses ; qui, a 26 ans, con9oit ce qui est a peine 
 concevable, execute ce qu'on devait tenir pour impos- 
 sible ; qui, renongant d toute communication avec sou 
 pays, traverse des peuples ennemis ou inconnus qu'il 
 faut attaquer et vaincre, escalade les Pyrenees et les 
 Alpes, qu'on croyait insurmontables, et ne descend en 
 Italic qu'en payant de la moitie de son armee la seule 
 
244 NOTES 
 
 acquisition de son champ de bataille, le seul droit de 
 combattre ; qui occupe, parcourt et gouverne cette 
 meme Italie durant 16 ans, met plusieurs fois a deux 
 doigts de sa perte la terrible et redoutable Rome, et ne 
 laclie sa proie que quand on met a profit la le9on qu'il a 
 donnSe d'aller le combattre cliez lui. Croira-t-on qu'il 
 ne dut sa carriere et tant de grandes actions qu'aux ca- 
 prices du hasard, aux f aveurs de la fortune ? Certes, il 
 devait etre done d'une forte trempe d'ame, et avoir una 
 bien haute idee de sa science ; en guerre, celni qui, in- 
 terpelle par son jeune vainqueur, n'liesite pas a se 
 placer, bien que vaincu, immgdiatement apres Alexandre 
 et Pyrrhus, qu'il estime les deux premiers du metier." 
 Napoleon further comments on Hannibal in his " Notes 
 sur I'Art de la Guerre." (See Correspondance de Na- 
 poleon, F% Tome XXXI. Paris, 1869.) 
 
 Page 48. — Words traced to the Pelasgi. — For "suffi- 
 cient proof that Latin never could have passed through 
 the Greek, or what used to be called the Pelasgic stage, 
 but that both are independent modifications of the same 
 original language," see Vol. I. of Max Mailer's Science 
 of Language. -• 
 
 Page 54. — Ovid. — Carlyle would perhaps have been 
 less severe on Ovid had he noted that the grave Milton 
 preferred the "Metamorphoses" of this poet to any 
 other of the Latin classics. Barrow also is loud in his 
 praise. The elder Rousseau thus sums him up, — 
 
 " Ovide, en vers donx et mclodieux, 
 Sat debrouiller I'histoire de ses dieux : 
 Trop indulgent an feu de son genie, 
 Mais varie, tendre, plein d'liarmonie, 
 Savant, utile, ingenieux, profond, 
 Riche, en un mot, sil etait moins fecond." 
 
NOTES 2:15 
 
 The moralizing Seneca abused him. Montaigne failed 
 to appreciate him. Princij^es poetce VirgiUus et Ovidiva 
 is the verdict of Joseph Scaliger. But he thought the 
 Epistles of Ovid his most perfect work. 
 
 Page 59. — Passage from Tacitus. — Of this passage, 
 celebrated as the first noteworthy reference to the early 
 Christians by a pagan author, Gibbon [Decline and Fall^ 
 Chap. XVI.) gives another translation. 
 
 The same passage is further remarkable as showing 
 how Tacitus sometimes loses power by not considering 
 that the law of moderation holds good even in the exer- 
 cise of that rare merit — brevity of expression. Further 
 illustrations of this defect in that great writer are pleas- 
 antly discussed by Father Bouhours in his delightful 
 Maniere de Bien Penser dans les Ouvrages d' Esprit, a 
 book which, together watli the Memoirs of Cardinal de 
 Ketz, was highly commended by the most graceful of 
 English politicians. Lord Chesterfield. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 Page 62. — The Middle Ages. — The recognition of the 
 Middle Ages shows that tripartite arrangements, in spite 
 of superficial objections, are not always to be set aside 
 in favor of more popular and usually more logical bi- 
 nary divisions. The partition of history into ancient 
 and modern is less intelligible and significant. Per- 
 haps, when the world is older, this partition may come 
 to be adopted ; but in that case what we call the Middle 
 Ages will then be relegated to ancient history, and 
 modern history will date from the first appearance of 
 printed books, or from the nearly coincident epoch of 
 the discoveries of Columbus. 
 
 The breakiug-up of the Roman empire was a slow pro- 
 
246 NOTES 
 
 cess. Until it begins we are clearly within the limits of 
 ancient history. But when did it begin ? Koman de- 
 cadence came not alone from invading barbarians, be- 
 coming conscious of their growing power. It was also 
 promoted from within. It had its origin while the em- 
 pire yet appeared strong, but displayed its self-abase- 
 ment by allowing its seat to be transferred from the 
 banks of the Tiber to those of the Bosphorus. 
 
 The Middle Ages end with the Byzantine Empire. 
 But this empire had long before become insignificant, 
 though not till long after were established those 
 European kingdoms whose foundation seemed to follow 
 the failure of the great Eoman dominion. Are these 
 modern kingdoms established ? Greece was reconsti- 
 tuted during the first half of our century ; Italy in the 
 second half. To the present boundaries of the German 
 empire a date of less than a quarter of a century can be 
 assigned. And now we hear of wars threatening again 
 to unfix these limits. An ironical writer might say, not 
 without truth, that the beginnings of modern history 
 are still dubious, and that their adequate consideration 
 must be left to some historian yet unborn. 
 
 For the present, however, we may conveniently dis- 
 tinguish the Middle Ages (330-1453) as exhibiting [a) a 
 capital city, (b) a religion, (c) certain forms of govern- 
 ment, (d) a learned language, and (e) a poem, which 
 differs no less from the literary productions of antiquity 
 than it*does from those of modern times. 
 
 (a.) Constantinople was the capital city of the Middle 
 Ages, which began with its dedication by Constantine, 
 and ended with its capture by the Turks. Here again 
 comes in the irony of events. In ancient history EurojDe 
 triumphs over Asia; the Trojans, the Persians, the 
 Phoenicians, and others being in turn successfully re- 
 pelled, while modern history is introduced by the es- 
 
NOTES 247 
 
 tablishment in Europe of an Asiatic power, which holds 
 possession of the seat of mediaeval rule to this day. 
 
 {b.) The religion of the Middle Ages in Europe 
 was Catholicism, i.e., established Christianity. Con- 
 stantine's endowment of his own Church could not hin- 
 der the split which afterward severed the eastern from 
 the western Christians. It is easy to exaggerate the 
 importance of this schism, which served to show that 
 Rome, deprived of temporal sway, could still subdue the 
 minds of men. The blow dealt the Catholic Church by 
 the secession of northern Europe from its allegiance 
 marks indeed the commencement of modern histoiy. 
 Yet was this loss the effect of printing and political 
 causes rather than of sincere religious convictions, and 
 the Papal power has since succeeded in checking the 
 further advances of Protestantism. 
 
 (c.) As to government, the Middle Ages display the 
 downfall of despotism, the anarchy which ensued, and 
 the subsequent rise of feudal authority. The peoples of 
 Europe then possessed very little power. The Roman 
 pontiffs'became more dominant than kings or emperors. 
 Subject to qualification the general proposition is true — 
 that monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, respectively, 
 characterize the three great periods of histoiy. In this 
 matter likewise we seem (but seem only) returning to 
 ancient ways. 
 
 (d.) During the transitional linguistic conditions of 
 the Middle Ages men of learning found a temporary aid. 
 in such Latin as they could use, good, bad, and indiffer- 
 ent. The Glossarium of Du Cange remains the most 
 indispensable guide to the Middle Ages in the hands of 
 those who know how to read it. 
 
 (e.) But in 1300 a bold, though not unconsidered, 
 way of escape from this jDrevailing influence of the Latin 
 language was indicated by no less a person than Dante. 
 
248 NOTES 
 
 Not only does the Divine Comedy reveal the Middle 
 Ages and Catholicism by a crowd of allusions, else lost 
 to us, but its unai^proachable excellence of diction 
 makes welcome the light it sheds on what is eternal in 
 man's nature, and those recurring events which to the 
 serious never can lose their significance. 
 
 Much labor will henceforth be spared the student of 
 the Middle Ages who has at hand the valuable Tresor de 
 Chronologie iVHistoire et de Geograpliie pour VHude et 
 Vemploi des documents du Moyen Age, i^ar M. le C* De 
 Mas Latrie, Paris, 1889. 
 
 Page 63. — Belief during the Middle Ages. — Jean Paul 
 in his eulogium of Herder has these words (which we 
 give from the translation of De Quincey): — 
 
 " Two sayings of his survive, which may seem trifling 
 to others ; me they never fail to impress profoundly : one 
 was, that on some occasion, whilst listening to choral 
 music that streamed from a neighboring church as from 
 the bosom of some distant century, he wished, with a 
 sorrowful allusion to the cold frosty spirit of these 
 times, that he had been born in the Middle Ages." 
 
 Page 71. — The Celebrated Lettei- of Pliny. — The reader 
 may compare this letter with Trajan's reply in the Let- 
 ters of the Younger Pliny, translated by J. T. Lewis, 
 London, 1879 (p. 377). 
 
 Page 73. — Pope Hlldehrand. — For a careful and un- 
 prejudiced history of this great reformer, with abundant 
 references to other authorities, see Hlldehrand and his 
 Times by the Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, London, 1888 ; 
 a small but useful book. In the Homily against Dis- 
 obedience and wilful Rebellion some violent abuse of 
 Hildebrand will be found. 
 
NOTES 249 
 
 Page 76. — The Crusades — Considerate historians now 
 believe that the two great lessons taught by the crusades 
 were these. — First, the more thoughtful crusaders learnt 
 that eastern infidels, Jews, Turks and heretics might be 
 as good as themselves, and that sometimes it is right to 
 regard our conduct toward our neighbors from points 
 of view which priests are apt to neglect. Next, the citi- 
 zens of western Euroj^e, left to themselves, found they 
 could do very well without feudalism. Thus tlie air 
 was cleared, and people began to^ see how their freedom 
 from licensed robbers, whether of land, power or privi- 
 lege might, perhaps, one day be accomplished. 
 
 Page 79. — The Troubadours.— Ouv best guides to the 
 language and literature of the Troubadours are still the 
 works of Fr, Raynouard, who was, however, wrong in re- 
 garding Provencal as the mother, rather than the sister, 
 of French and other modern Romance languages. His 
 Choix des poesies originales des Troubadours is indispen- 
 sable. Taylor's Lays of the Minnesmgers and Trouba- 
 dours may also be noted. Useful are the Essays on 
 Petrarch by Ugo Foscolo. According to Coleridge, 
 " Petrarch was the final blossom and perfection of the 
 Troubadours." The Italian text of Dante's Purgatorio 
 is curiously interrupted (close of Canto XXVI.) by eight 
 lines of Provencal, spoken by the once-famous poet Ar- 
 naud. 
 
 Page 80. — Tlie Mebelungen Lied. — Carlyle's review of 
 Simrock's edition of the Nibelunge, reprinted among 
 his Miscellanies, should of course be consulted. It is 
 full of information and contains some very striking 
 specimens of his powers as a translator. 
 
250 NOTES 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Page 84, — The Lombards. — The etymology of their 
 name endorsed by Carlyle is now questioned. Longo- 
 bardi may mean (not long beards, but) those living along 
 the border of tlie Elbe, whence the Lombards are sup- 
 posed to have come. See a note by Dr. William Smith 
 to Vol. v., p. 165 of his edition of Gibbon. 
 
 As to Magna Grsecia (mentioned in the same page) 
 most interesting details are given by Fr. Lenormant, La 
 Grand Grece — Paysages et Histoire (3 tomes, Paris, 1881- 
 1884). But see further the remarks in Vol. III. (p. 
 474) of Dr. Iwan Miiller's Handbiich, to which work we 
 have referred in our Notes to Lecture I. 
 
 Page 86. — Illustrious Italians. — Desiring to occupy 
 most of his lecture with Dante, Carlyle says nothing of 
 the two great poets, Tasso and Ariosto. England has had 
 the honor of publishing the best edition of both Orlan- 
 dos (that of Ariosto and his predecessor Boiardo), by the 
 learned Pauizzi. Neither does he mention the Italian 
 historians. On these two topics much that is valuable 
 is told us by Isaac D'Israeli in his Curiosities of Litera- 
 ture, first and second series. 
 
 Carlyle can scarcely be blamed for not anticipating 
 the advent of another group of Italian worthies, includ- 
 ing those heroic or more thoughtful men of action, such 
 as Garibaldi and Cavour, who have so unselfishly 
 achieved the noble work of liberating their country. 
 
 Page 89. — jEschylus, Dante, Shakespeare. — Many will 
 demur to this juxtaposition and say that the greatest 
 poet of antiquity was Homer, of the Middle Ages Dante, 
 and of modern times Goethe ; Shakespeare being ' * not 
 
NOTES 251 
 
 for an age, but for all time." Truly ^schylus is grand, 
 but be is not the representative poet of Greece, like Ho- 
 mer. 
 
 Page 90. — Quotations from Dante. — To understand 
 these quotations we must remember that the Inferno 
 really consists of three unequal regions. The first of 
 these, outside Dante's first circle, from which it is sepa- 
 rated by the river Acheron, is for the frivolous, those 
 mean Laodicean souls who are neither cold nor hot. 
 The first circle, also called Limbo, is the i^lace of the 
 sinless unhaptized. It includes good pagans, many in- 
 fants, and others. The remaining eight circles are for 
 unrepentant sinners. The^ incontinent occujDy the four 
 circles (2-5) which in descending order succeed' the first. 
 Sins from corrupt will are punished in the four lower 
 circles (6-9), or city of Dis. This main division of the 
 wicked into two classes is taken from the Ethics of Aris- 
 totle, as Dante himself (Cantos VI. and XI. ) fully ex- 
 pounds. Dante is very precise, like a professional engi- 
 neer, in describing these circles and their subdivisions. 
 
 The occupants of the first circle are unpunished; they 
 sigh, because eternally excluded from heaven. The 
 frivolous are merely stung, outwardly by insects and 
 from within by their own aimless propensities. But 
 yet they are in Hell. Thus, not pain but hopelessness 
 is the distinctive attribute common to every dweller in 
 the Inferno, just as repentance marks the Purgatorio, 
 and spiritual communion the Paradiso. 
 
 This hopelessness is characteristically and not un- 
 necessarily indicated three times in the third canto. 
 First, by the dismal inscription above the gate of Hell, 
 applicable to whomsoever it contains. Next (as quoted 
 by Carlyle), when the case of the frivolous is told by 
 Virgil. Lastly, Charon says to the sinners, before he 
 
252 NOTES 
 
 ferries them across the dark river, " Hope not ever to 
 see heaven." 
 
 Dante puts forth his gravest powers in this inimita- 
 bly picturesque canto, the only one wherein all the in- 
 habitants of the Inferno are presented. Coleridge has 
 noted its "wonderful profoundness." The severe side 
 of the poet is most eifectually displayed when he de- 
 picts the state of the frivolous, of those whose char- 
 acter is thoroughly unlike his own. Their place is 
 never named. Not a word of articulate speech, but 
 cries merely, do we get from them. Particular mention 
 is made of one only, and this is done by way of peri- 
 phrasis. Dante himself scarcely speaks of them. He 
 dismisses them with extreme contempt as "the set of 
 caitiffs hateful to God and to his enemies ; these scoun- 
 drels who never were alive." With fine observation he 
 notices their pauseless pursuit of a flag ; for such spuri- 
 ous energy, by a strange contradiction, is often shown 
 by swarmers (we may see it daily in our streets with 
 restless pleasure-seekers ; we may read it on the features 
 of giddy nursemaids, whirling along perambulators con- 
 taining children for whom they care nothing). It is 
 Virgil who explains to Dante their wretched condition 
 — " This miserable mode those sad souls maintain who 
 lived without infamy and without praise. Mingled are 
 they with that caitiff choir of angels who were not 
 rebellious nor were faithful unto God but were for 
 themselves. Heaven chases them out, not to be less 
 fair. Nor does deep Hell receive them, lest the wicked 
 should have from them any glory." Dante then asks — 
 "Master, what grieves them so much, that they lament 
 thus loudly?" Virgil answers — " I will tell it thee very 
 briefly. These have no hope of death, and their blind 
 life is so low that they are envious of every other lot. 
 Fame of them the world does not allow to exist. Mercy 
 
 J 
 
NOTES 253 
 
 and justice disdain them. Let us not speak of tliem, 
 but look and pass." 
 
 This last sentence (Carlyle's second quotation) is one 
 of those few passages in which our English gives, with- 
 out loss of style, the full meaning of the original ; the 
 monosyllabic words reminding us of some of Shake- 
 speare's most emphatic lines, best suited to solemn topics, 
 like the — " Aye but to die and go we know not where " 
 of Measure for Measure. 
 
 When the pious and gentle Abbe de Saint-Cyran, 
 shortly before his death, wrote, *' que les foibles sont 
 plus a craindre quelquefois que les mechants," he drew 
 a faint but exact parallel to one side of the powerful 
 Dante {Port-Royal , par Sainte-Beuve, Livre 2, xiii.). 
 
 Page 98. — Piirgatorio. — Carlyle has elsewhere reiter- 
 ated his preference for the Purga,torio. But he goes 
 too far in attributing the greater attention commonly 
 l^aid the Inferno " to our general Byronism of taste." 
 The Inferno comes first and must be read first ; other- 
 wise the Divine Comedy is not intelligible. Simply 
 throjigh laziness or want of leisure many fail to pursue 
 their studies beyond "the first song, which is about the 
 sunken." (Inferno, XX., 3.) 
 
 Page 100. — Paradiso. — The Paradiso is more difficult 
 than the two other songs, not in style but in subject- 
 matter, which by its nature remains ethereal, intangi- 
 ble, unearthly. For both Hell and Purgatory belong to 
 our globe and Dante himself has said in a letter — "I 
 found the original of my Hell in the world which we in- 
 habit." (See Isaac D'Israeli's paper on " The Origin of 
 Dante's Inferno.") Yet has the Paradiso never quite 
 wanted some devoted English appreciators. Thus we 
 read of young Hallam, the hero of In Memoriam — " Like 
 all genuine worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he 
 
254 NOTES 
 
 rated the Inferno below the two later portions of the 
 Divina Commedia ; there was nothing even to revolt his 
 taste, but rather much to attract it, in the scholastic 
 theology and mystic visions of the Paradiso." 
 
 The Paradiso is so beautiful throughout that quota- 
 tions from it lose much by their removal from the con- 
 text, a sure sign of perfect works of art (as with Mozart's 
 operas, compared to those of other composers). We 
 may refer, however, to one passage at the opening of 
 Canto XXVII. When Dante hears all Paradise begin- 
 ning to chant their hymn of glory to the Trinity, he 
 says — " that the sweet song intoxicated me. What I 
 saw seemed to me the smile of the universe." He had 
 previously used the same concept of inebriation to indi- 
 cate the very opposite extreme of feeling in the first 
 lines of Canto XXIX. of the Inferno, which Coleridge 
 cites as a chosen specimen of '* the endless subtle beau- 
 ties of Dante." We are here, curiously enough, re- 
 minded of Byron — 
 
 " Man, being reasonable, must get drunk ; 
 The best of life is but intoxication." « 
 
 The reader should study the instructive "parallel be- 
 tween Dante and Petrarch " to be found in the Essays of 
 Ugo Foscolo. 
 
 LECTUEE VI. 
 
 Page 103. — Galileo. — It is insufiBciently known that 
 Galilei was not only great as a man of science ; he is 
 also among the most charming of writers. His dia- 
 logues sparkle with the liveliest humor. Asked why he 
 wrote so well, he said he was fond of reading Ariosto. 
 
 Galilei did more than Luther for the cause of real be- 
 lief, by freeing men's minds from subjection to the tyr- 
 
 i 
 
NOTES 255 
 
 anny of ecclesiastical opinions. Luther and liis suc- 
 cessors but endeavored to substitute one kind of priest- 
 ly domination for another. Galilei taught serious en- 
 quirers how they should begin if they sincerely wished 
 to study nature for themselves. Let the way be cleared 
 by getting rid of prevailing errors, that we may see in 
 what direction the truth lies, and then methodically 
 pursue it. The Copernican point of view was not a 
 thing fixed before Galilei entered on his labors. He it 
 was who effectually subverted previous confusing no- 
 tions ; who showed the remoteness and littleness of man, 
 no longer occupying the centre of all things, though 
 capable of becoming great by the pious exercise of 
 those powers w^hich reveal to him his time relations to 
 the universe. 
 
 The clergy, from their point of view, beheld the wide 
 firmament (that is to say, almost everything which ex- 
 ists) as a ceiling stretched above man's unshiuing abode. 
 To this restricted opinion they had adjusted their dog- 
 mas ; and these, in the course of time, were threatened 
 with the fate of the worn-out geocentric hypothesis. It 
 is often now said that we are irreligious because we 
 have abandoned our faith in miracles. Not so, but men 
 ask what provision has been made to save the souls who 
 are on the planet Jupiter ? The Church, therefore, was 
 right in persecuting Galilei. 
 
 " The moral law, in its api^lication to man, is not the 
 same, if (1) the earth revolves or if (2) she is motionless 
 in space. Were she motionless, man evidently would 
 have the right to believe himself the principal object of 
 the Creator's thoughts ; but she revolves, and hence- 
 forth man is no more than the privileged being of 
 one of the millions of worlds circulating within infinite 
 space. That is very different; and this it is which has 
 been perfectly comprehended by the very pious folks of 
 
256 KOTES 
 
 a certain epoch. Those who condemned Galileo, Coper- 
 nicus, Giordano Bruno . . . were logical in their 
 ignorance : 'tis this which excuses them. Piety did not 
 suifice to teach us whether the earth revolves or not ; 
 that, science alone could do." (Translated from Ana- 
 lyse eUmentaire de V Univers, par G. A. Hirn, Paris, 18G8, 
 p. 528.) 
 
 Professor Macli, of Prag, has given us the best ac- 
 count of Galilei as the founder of modern dynamics, the 
 worthy precursor of Huyghens and Newton. His book 
 {Die MecJtanik, Leipzig, 1883) contains a coj^y of the 
 fine old portrait of " the Tuscan artist " on whose 
 friendly features our own Milton was permitted to gaze. 
 
 Men of science are often absurdly contrasted with 
 men of literature. I feel it good to remember that, 
 thirty years ago, Mr. Huxley was the first person who 
 kindly explained, to me some passages in Dante, the 
 last and the greatest of the geocentrists. 
 
 Page 106. — Printing. — The date of 1450, assigned in 
 the text to the full utilization of this invention, is rather 
 too early. Yet 1440 has often been mentioned, as in the 
 Essay prefixed to the edition of Pascal's Provincial Let- 
 ters published by the elder Didot. 
 
 Discussions as to the origin of printing have a more 
 than antiquarian interest, although much of the evi- 
 dence for their exact treatment seems wanting. We can 
 hardly deny that Gutenberg was the real inventor of 
 printing. Poverty and his necessary dependence on ex- 
 traneous artistic aid threw him into the hands of Fust 
 and Schoeffer, who from Gutenberg's workshop issued 
 at Mayence in 1454 copies of the famous letters of in- 
 dulgence, the first sheet printed from movable types 
 which we are now able to verify. At the close of 1455 
 or beginning of 1456 the same pair published the first 
 printed book, the so-called Mazarin Bible, which Guten- 
 
NOTES 257 
 
 berg years before had begun. A year later followed 
 their Psalter of 1457, the first printed book bearing a 
 date. Gutenberg, turned out of his laboratory, set up 
 another, and in 1460 issued the Catholicon of Balbi. 
 The merit of executing this work has also been snatched 
 from Gutenberg by some of his pupils and others. The 
 slowness and secrecy with which he had to labor not 
 only injured jDOor Gutenberg in his life-time, but have 
 since tended to hurt his reputation. 
 
 That printing came late, that it was not devised at a 
 stroke, that its inventor long toiled amid darkness and 
 difficulties which have obscured his nobleness, his self- 
 abnegation, his identity ; further, that its products were 
 soon spread abroad, and that, unlike other arts, it 
 reached rapidly a high state of relative perfection — need 
 not now surprise us. These things are at once ex- 
 plained if we bear in mind the many disciplines, antece- 
 dent and collateral, which this invention demands, and 
 consider the wonderful results it is fitted to effect with 
 peoples ready to receive its influence. 
 
 Page 107. — Gunpowder. — The results of the invention 
 of gunpowder, dispassionately regarded as the typical 
 species of the genus explosive, the editio princeps of a 
 classical gospel preached to moderns (harmonizing and 
 conflicting, in the most intricate manner, with the teach- 
 ings of other uncontroverted gospels, which appeal like- 
 wise to the passions of fear, greed, or vanity) may be 
 viewed as they affect {a) professional fighters and (b) 
 students of history. 
 
 (a) Napoleon, a brilliant operator because he was a 
 deep thinker in the art of war, is here our highest au- 
 thority. He expresses clearly his opinion that certain 
 qualities must have been common to the great generals 
 of all times, and that they owed their advantages to the 
 17 
 
258 NOTES 
 
 exercise of these rather than to fortune. But he says 
 further that, supposing the Elysian fields should send 
 back to earth the choicest of the dead, less than a day's 
 notice would enable Gustavus Adolphus or Turenne to 
 fight efficiently a modern battle, while Alexander, Csesar, 
 or Hannibal would need at least one or t^vo months to 
 study what can be done with gunpowder (" Notes sur 
 I'histoire de la Guerre," in Correspondance^ Tome XXXI., 
 p. 501). 
 
 {h) The historian, as well as the military man, will 
 reflect that the eff'ects of gunpowder are twofold — phy- 
 sical and moral. It kills men at a distance, in great 
 numbers at once, often with little skill, sometimes with- 
 out danger to the aggressor, and usually by means 
 which readily permit repeated application. It awes 
 men because it may be used by unseen foes, because its 
 action is swift and may find them unprepared, and be- 
 cause skill can do little or nothing to thwart it. 
 
 Hence the fear of death or wounds thus produced, the 
 attendant uncertainty and such circumstances, immedi- 
 ately influencing the senses, as noise or smoke, over- 
 come enemies rendered careful of lives which in hand- 
 to-hand encounters they would freely venture. 
 
 Gunpowder is merciful, because by it (1) battles are 
 soon decided and (2) victory cannot long be concealed. 
 With cold steel it is imperative that a small disciplined 
 army slaughter a considerable proportion of those op- 
 posed to them. Eead, for example, the account in Gib- 
 bon [Decline, Chap. XIX.) of the battle of Strasburg, 
 fought A.D. 357 by the Emperor Julian against the fierce 
 barbarian Chnodomar. It must often have been diffi- 
 cult for ancient conquerors to know when they had won. 
 We should therefore dismiss many charges of cruelty 
 brought against Csesar and other illustrious captains of 
 antiquity. 
 
NOTES 259 
 
 Improvements of explosive weapons enhance their 
 merciful tendencies. On the Franco-Prussian warfields 
 in 1870, with needle-guns and chassepots, fewer propor- 
 tionally were shot than with the flint-muskets fired at 
 the battle of Albuera in 1811. In this terrible engage- 
 ment seventy per cent, of the victors were placed hors 
 de combat (Napier's Penmsular War, Book XII., Chajj. 
 VI.).^ 
 
 It is true that non-explosive like explosive weapons 
 act both on men's minds and bodies. But the former 
 exert less influence morally, notwithstanding that, with 
 strict irony, they are more sure in their physical ojDera- 
 tion. 
 
 The spear and the sword suggest feudal times and 
 privileged persons. Gunpowder is a leveller, the fit 
 precursor of our democracy. The weakest can use it, 
 the strongest sufifer from it. Its action, like that of 
 fate, appears accidental ; premeditated as to its causes, 
 its incidence is mechanical. Thus it is doubly dreaded. 
 It is less horrible to be killed by a man than by a 
 machine. 
 
 " It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, 
 
 That cocking of a pistol, when you know 
 A moment more will bring the sight to bear 
 Upon your person, twelve yards off, or so." 
 
 Hotspur's popinjay was rightly frightened at " vile 
 guns." As the imj^rovement of lethal weaj^ons pro- 
 gresses, so does the unwillingness of men to be hit by 
 them increase in a more than corresponding ratio (see 
 •' The Warfare of the Future," by A. Forbes, Nineteenth 
 Century, May, 1891). Perhaps in times to come every 
 bullet will not have its billet. 
 
 Page 109. — TJie Spanish Nation. — Prescott's Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella is more instructive and appreciative 
 
260 NOTES 
 
 than any other book we can cite on the leading facts in 
 the history of Spain and the distinguished qualities of its 
 once eminent people. Nor is Prescott despondent as to 
 the future which may yet be in store for the Spaniards. 
 
 Page 112. — Mahomet. — Carlyle refers to Mohammed 
 from the same point of view in his Lectures on Heroes. 
 Space fails us for the discussion of this tempting and 
 very interesting topic. The reader is referred to Gib- 
 bon's treatment of it (see Chap. L. of his Decline, with 
 the copious notes of Dr. W. Smith's edition) and to the 
 learned Wellhausen's article on Mohammed (in the ninth 
 edition of the Ency. Britannica) . 
 
 That Mohammed was either a true prophet or an im- 
 postor (a deceiver of himself and others from first to last) 
 states two contradictory opinions which in words are 
 very easily expressed, but neither of which considerate 
 students can accept as satisfactory. The first of these 
 opinions receives some support from facts ; the second 
 must be rejected, in spite of much plausible criticism. 
 Neither Jews, professing Christians, nor infidels are likely 
 to be fair Judges of Mohammed as he really was, unless 
 their minds are capable, in an extraordinary degree, of 
 standing aside from the j)rejudices of education. The 
 intermediate hypotheses — that Mohammed began in sin- 
 cerity and ended in deception, or that his whole life 
 shows a mixture of faith and scepticism, are somewhat 
 more tenable. But they are also more ambiguous and 
 less conclusive. Eather did Mohammed waver, not be- 
 tween belief and doubt, but between belief as modified 
 by contem]3lation or by practice. Like all distinguished 
 men he displays a union, intricate enough, of weakness 
 and strength. Powerfully as he moulded many circum- 
 stances by his will, their force sometimes compelled him 
 to say things in apparent opposition to what he thought 
 
 I 
 
NOTES 2G1 
 
 and did. Moses, too, was impeded in his good inten- 
 tions bv external necessities, affecting men's minds, op- 
 portunities and acquired habits. We do not sufficiently 
 allow for the extreme sensitiveness inherent in several 
 great men of action, such as Caesar, Mohammed, and 
 Napoleon. They may disguise this by their power 
 of rapid reflection, enabling them to utilize what seem 
 to others defects, to derive fresh energy from the 
 high tension of their repressed sufferings. Archbishop 
 Whately [Lessoyis on Mind, p. 174) indicates '* a sort of 
 intermediate state of mind between belief and disbe- 
 lief." He illustrates his subject by reference to Cowper's 
 poem — "The Castaway." This weak though amiable 
 and gifted man offers the strongest possible contrast to 
 Mohammed ; but such remote analogies are, in one essen- 
 tial particular, often the truest of all. It can scarcely be 
 said with truth that conviction implies the initial absence 
 of doubt, the power to question the crude assumptions 
 others would impose on us. The exemplary hero of In 
 Memoriam gathered strength and gained a stronger faith 
 by fighting his doubts, not by ignoring them ; but dog- 
 matic theologians do not commend Hallam's method. 
 The progress of Mohammedanism after the death of its 
 founder ; its persistence and extension to this day, not- 
 withstanding hostile missionaries, politicians and ar- 
 mies ; its suitability to many and diverse peoples — these 
 things declare, better than historical comments, how vast 
 was the plan this man set himself to devise, how exce^D- 
 tional were the endowments by which he achieved it. 
 
 It is well known that Goethe's mind was long occu- 
 pied by reflections on Mohammed, whom he once in- 
 tended to make the hero of a drama (see his Life by 
 Lewes, Book III., Chap. 4). He has left us as a h'2ig- 
 ment Mahomet^ s Gesang. He himself translated the Ma- 
 homet of Voltaire, played at the Weimar theatre in 1800. 
 
262 NOTES 
 
 Heinricli Heine's account {Englische Fragmente, XII.) 
 of his visit to the London docks shows how genial is 
 the response an appeal to the prophet's name can evoke 
 from believers. 
 
 Page 118. — Humor of Cervantes. — In this quality (good 
 judges now admit) Cervantes is surpassed by no writer. 
 The scene of Don Quixote's visor immortalizes a recur- 
 rent weakness of all reformers. 
 
 Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver's Travels 
 are unquestionably the masterpieces of fiction. Perhaps 
 the Vicar of Wakefield and Tom Jones should be added 
 to the list. England, relatively weak in the fields of 
 history and the drama (Shakespeare, a mighty excep- 
 tion, deducted), shines well in this comparison, which 
 attests the glowing imagination and rich descriptive 
 gifts of its best literary rejjresentatives. Still Do7i Quix- 
 ote remains the freshest of novels, if by a name since 
 applied to so many worthless productions, it may be 
 now thus designated. 
 
 Page 119. — Lope and Calderon. — A little volume — The 
 Spanisli Drama, 181:6, by the late G. H. Lewes, is almost 
 wholly devoted to a very readable account of these skil- 
 ful and prolific play-writers. 
 
 Page 120. — Spanish Literature. — For a good guide to 
 the authors Carlyle does not notice see the English 
 translation of Bouterwek's History of Spanish and Por- 
 tuguese Literature, in two vols. 1823. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Page 124. — Pytheas. — The scanty fragments left us 
 from the lost writings of this traveller (whom Strabo, 
 when he cites him, loves to contradict) are little known. 
 
 \ 
 
NOTES 263 
 
 But see the '' Eclaircissemens sur la vie et les voyages 
 de Pytlieas de Marseille," par M. De Bougainville, in 
 Tome XIX. of the Memoires de VAcadcmie royale des In- 
 sci'iptions et Belles- Lettres. 
 
 Page ll^. — WilUam Tell— A chapter under this title, 
 showing how the story about shooting the apple arose, 
 may be read in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, by S. 
 Baring-Gould. 
 
 Page 129. — Comines. — Scott drew largely upon this 
 writer in the preparation of two of his romances, Queri- 
 tin Durivard and A}i7ie of Geierstein. The historian ap- 
 pears as an acting personage in the first of these works. 
 
 Page 133. — Luther found a Bible. — His doing so, an 
 event nowise extraordinary, has in our time been made 
 a subject for much misrepresentation by Protestants of 
 the untruthful aggressive sort. In The Dark Ages, by 
 the Eev. S. K. Maitland (a valuable book, lately re- 
 printed), will be found a clear account of the matter. 
 
 Page 137. — Ulphilas. — The significance of the work 
 done by this estimable and much-abused bishop is well 
 explained in Max Mailer's Science of Language. 
 
 Page 138. — Lidher's words half battles. — Jean Paul was 
 anticij^ated as to his motive for this comparison. Quin- 
 tilian says of Ceesar, that he seemed to speak as he had 
 fought. 
 
 Page 138. — Erasmus. — Bayle's articles on Erasmus, 
 Ilutten and Luther abound in fair and instructive com- 
 ments on many things touching these reformers. "What 
 Bayle says or suggests, in his very pleasant manner, has 
 been often in substance pilfered and clumsily refitted to 
 suit the views of those who care more for their own nar- 
 row views than for truth and honesty. 
 
264 NOTES 
 
 Page 141. — EpistolcB Obscurorum Virorum. — A full 
 paper on these letters, with much concerning von Hut- 
 ten, will be found in Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions. 
 
 LECTUEE VIII. 
 
 Page 148. — Mascou. — Geschichte der Deutschen bis 
 zum Abgang der Meroving. Konige, Leipzig, 1726-37. 
 In 2 vols. 4to. "The first German historian [says 
 Ebert] who undertook to write the history of the nation 
 (not merely of the empire).'' Translated into English, 
 1737-38. 
 
 Page 148. — Saxons. — Consult about this people 
 Klemm's GermaniscJie Alterlhumskunde, Dresden, 1836, 
 and the word Saxa in the Glossarium of Du Cange. 
 
 As to Saxon being to this day the Celtic name for 
 the English — read in the Life and Letters of Rowland 
 Williams, D.D. (Vol. I., p. 179) how this excellent cler- 
 gyman introduced his wife to his parishioners, " and 
 when, as in duty bound, they made some complimentary 
 speech (of course in Welsh) his reply in the same lan- 
 guage was, * Ah, she is only a poor creature ; she can 
 only speak Saesneg ! ' " 
 
 Page 152. — Normans and English. — The spoken Eng- 
 lish language shows in its grammar convincing traces of 
 its Teutonic origin, although, in consequence of the 
 Norman conquest and other influences, the number of 
 Norman (or rather Graeco-Latin) ivords our dictionaries 
 contain is double that from all other sources. We call 
 English a mixed language with much confusion of 
 thought, best dispelled by studying that serviceable 
 book — Max Miiller's Science of Language. 
 
NOTES 265 
 
 Page 153. — EUznleth. — If England, as Caiiyle states, 
 was first consolidated under Queen Elizabeth's grand- 
 father, so had France gained the blessings of peace, 
 post-offices, strength and union, when guided by a far 
 greater ruler, Louis XI., who died two years before 
 Henry YII. came to the throne. In that same ominous 
 year (1J:83) of the French king's death were born, by a 
 strange conjuncture, the pious artist Eaphael and Lu- 
 ther, the potent disturber of nations. Euroj^e was not 
 long permitted to enjoy quiet. Yet England, as well as 
 France, began at once to progress as soon as the former, 
 after the wars of the Roses, ceased interfering with the 
 affairs of the latter. When the English, under the 
 younger Pitt, resumed their meddling policy, in sup- 
 port of the wretched Bourbons whom they could not 
 keep on their thrones, much misery for both peoples 
 was again brought about. And we are still galled by the 
 weight of debt and taxes then imposed on us. 
 
 Page 154:. — Shakespeare. — The essential resemblance 
 of Shakespeare to Homer, in spite of obvious distinc- 
 tions, is not the vain thing spurious criticism would 
 make it. Both combine ease and strength, subtlety and 
 naivete of expression, in a mode only possible to artists 
 of the highest genius. 
 
 That Shakespeare indulged in conceits of language, 
 after the manner of the Spanish and Italian dramatists, 
 is undeniable. But so did the severe Dante. Playful- 
 ness in the handling of words pleases expectant hear- 
 ers, reveals while it conceals the gi-eater skill of the 
 master, relieves his tension of mind, not unbecomingly 
 places him on a level with his audience, and above all is 
 necessaiy to the contrasted effect of those serious pas- 
 sages he must introduce. 
 
266 NOTES 
 
 Page 156. — Poet and T^m^er.— No considerate person 
 Disposes the poet to the thinker, for thought involves 
 sentiment and will as well as iDurely intellectual pro- 
 cesses. (See Wundt, System der Philosophie, LeijDzig, 
 1889, p. 41.) 
 
 Coleridge {Notes and Lectures upoyi Shakespeare, p. 6) 
 says — "Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but 
 to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to 
 metre." But is it not more correct to distinguish 
 science, strictly so called, from art in general ? And is 
 there not a still more real distinction between conscious 
 logical operations of the mind and those imaginative 
 gifts by which both the poet and the man of science may 
 profit ? 
 
 Page 159. — The greatest men quiet. — The finest proof 
 of this truth is afforded by one of the greatest of all 
 writers, Caesar, to those who are caj^able of reading him 
 between the lines. The brief gentle references of this 
 powerful man of action to the blunders of his subordi- 
 nates, the quiet way in which he passes over his own ex- 
 ploits, his manner of speaking (or rather, not speaking) 
 of himself are at once delightful and awful. No so- 
 called religious loader has ever gained victories over 
 others and himself like those of this immortal pagan 
 conqueror. I could name two men of genuine ability, 
 both of humble origin, unprejudiced and unspoilt by 
 books, who felt almost inclined to worship Csesar's bust 
 in the British Museum. The age of heroism is not 
 dead, so long as this is possible. Eead what the late 
 Eichard Jefferies says of Caesar's lineaments in TJie Story 
 of my Heart. 
 
 Page 160. — John Knox. — The character of Knox will 
 scarcely be upheld by Carlyle's eulogies. We may will- 
 ingly recognize his unusual courage ; such men are rare. 
 
NOTES 267 
 
 and he who is not a coward fairly claims our praise. 
 But Catiline also was a very courageous man. Hume's 
 History tells us how Knox successively persecuted two 
 queens, Mary of England and Mary Queen of Scots. 
 As an indication of his unrivalled coarseness of language 
 read *' The first blast of the ti-umpet against the mon- 
 strous regiment of women." To learn his powers of 
 tergiversation (for Knox, with his scholastic training, 
 could play the logician's part, denounced in others by 
 Carlyle as antagonistic to sincere belief) consider how 
 he afterward behaved when Queen Elizabeth came to 
 the throne. Maury {Essai sin- les Legendes Fieuses du 
 Moyeyi-age) indeed says that Knox " etait un hallucine." 
 See his article in Bayle and what is told of him by the 
 Kev. S. K. Maitland, in his Essays on the Reformation. 
 
 Page 165. — Milton. — Milton loved what was good in 
 the Puritans, but he who sung of dim religious light 
 and of St. Peter shaking his mitred locks could not be 
 a Puritan at heart. Or rather, the pious author of 
 Adam's evening i^rayer {Paradise Lost, IV., 720-735), 
 than which David, Isaiah and other prophets of old 
 have not left us more inspired utterances, was the 
 only true Puritan of his time, compared to whom nomi- 
 nal Puritans are but as stubble. Milton, like Schiller, 
 was a real lover of liberty, without being an anarchist. 
 In this respect he was superior to Carlyle, who shows 
 himself an oligarch whenever he deliberately states his 
 political opinions and is full of that morgue aristo- 
 cratique which Napoleon declared to be, next to money- 
 making, the highest creed of Englishmen, of middle- 
 class Englishmen most of all. The American descend- 
 ants of the Puritans still, in secret, cultivate this weed. 
 The French, the Swiss and the Dutch are comj^arative- 
 ly free from it. So long as Germany cherishes it, its 
 
268 NOTES 
 
 unity will be spurious ; with all its strength and disci- 
 pline, it will have this disadvantage, should it fight its 
 internally unfettered antagonist. Strange irony of fate — 
 that the least and the most despotic of the great Euro- 
 pean powers, the first liberators and the last persecutors 
 of the Jews, should now be united against that nation 
 in which feudalism maintains an influence out of con- 
 cert with the enlightenment and strong character of its 
 hitherto unconquered inhabitants. 
 
 LECTUEE IX. 
 
 Mr. Anstey was hindered by an attack of malaria from 
 attending Carlyle's ninth lecture. The reader, while re- 
 gretting the absence of his reporter, will console him- 
 self with the reflection that this lecture has been lost 
 rather than any of the others. What the lecturer had 
 to say on French literature may well be conjectured from 
 the long papers on Diderot and Voltaire, reprinted in 
 his Miscellanies. 
 
 Strongly sympathizing, as did Carlyle, wdth certain 
 aspects of the French Revolution, and powerfully as he 
 has represented several of its scenes, he never could 
 rightly appreciate French views of things. We regret 
 here to find him in good company ; for Coleridge, De 
 Quincey, and many worthy English authors exhibit a 
 like deficiency. 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 Page 169. — Quota/ ion from Ooellie. — But Goethe also 
 said, '* My inheritance, how wide, how fair ! Time is 
 my estate ; to Time I'm heir." 
 
 Page 171. — Reign of Quackery. — Carlyle might have 
 added that nowhere is the doctrine that money will buy 
 
NOTES 269 
 
 money's worth move practised than in the land of the 
 almighty dollar, the free country of the free children of 
 his favorite Puritans, who sought (as a female poet, 
 with impious humor, has sung) "freedom to worship 
 God," that is, to split into as many denominations as 
 they pleased. See, inter alia, Dickens' American Notes. 
 This multiplicity of sects, Archdeacon Farrar tells us, 
 is to be taken as a sure sign of sincerity. A more suc- 
 cessful preacher of the modern gospel of Mammon, Mr. 
 Jay Gould, improves its text by inserting a trifling mar- 
 ginal gloss ; for money now buys what is not money's 
 worth. He means " L'argent des autres," to quote Ga- 
 boriau. For has not Mr. Gould honestly declared that 
 without outsiders (the great host of worshippers who, 
 with innocent and touching credulity, like all true be- 
 lievers, kiss the rod and rejoice when they are robbed) 
 speculators on the Stock Exchange, the high priests of 
 the temple in Wall Street, would certainly stai-ve ? The 
 demon of credit (called by Addison a goddess !) sitting 
 on his stool in the infernal counting-house, must view 
 with an evil eye these ready-money transactions. 
 
 Carlyle's second doctrine (taken from Byron), that 
 Pleasure is pleasant, holds true, but chiefly for begin- 
 ners and fresh converts. It is milk for babes. Happily, 
 pleasure soon palls uj^on those who get more than their 
 share of it, and thus the distribution less of pleasure than 
 of pain is more equable in our life than the ignorant sup- 
 pose. Philippe de Comines, commenting on the King's 
 death, says — " Poor and mean folks ought to have little 
 hope about this world, since so great a king suffered 
 and toiled so much, and could not find one hour to push 
 off his death, whatever diligence he knew to make " 
 {Memoires^, VI., Chap. XIII.). And again he writes {Ibid. 
 VIII., Chap. XIII. Note the ominous number of the 
 chapter in both books) — "No creature is exempt from 
 
270 NOTES 
 
 suffering, and all eat their bread in pain and grief. 
 Our Lord promised it when he made mankind and has 
 loyally kept it with all people. But pains and griefs 
 are different ; those of the body are the least, and those 
 of the understanding the greatest ; those of the wise are 
 of one sort, those of fools of another. Yet too much 
 grief and suffering afflicts the fool like the sage (though 
 to many it seems the contrary), and he has less consola- 
 tion. Poor x^eople (who toil and plough, to feed them- 
 selves and their children, and pay taxes and subsidies 
 to their lords) ought to live in great discomfort, if great 
 princes and lords had all the world's pleasures, and 
 they toil and misery; but things go on quite otherwise." 
 
 Page 173. — Speech and Silence. — The saying quoted 
 by Carlyle is an old oriental one, though it has had 
 many modern editions. Thus Schleiermacher says, in 
 praise of a great scholar — " Bekker is silent in seven 
 languages." 
 
 Page 11^.— Whitfield.— K favorable view of Whitfield 
 is taken by Lord Malion (Stanhope) in Chapter XIX. of 
 his History of England. 
 
 Page 177. — Steele. — Thackeray has, perhaps better 
 than any other writer, said a good word for the neglect- 
 ed Steele, whose fine panegyric on one woman well 
 rivals the more famous quotations made from Petrarch 
 or Dante on like subjects. We love Steele ; we praise, 
 but seldom read Addison. 
 
 Page 179. — Swift. — Carlyle refers here to the lines in 
 Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes — 
 
 "From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow. 
 And Swift expires a driveller and a show." 
 
NOTES 271 
 
 It is cruel to quote them. The beauty and strength of 
 Swift's unsurpassed prose are the product of a clear in- 
 tellect and a genuine (if not always apparent) fineness 
 of feeling, rarely found united in Englishmen. Swift is 
 too honest not to show us his faults ; we therefore the 
 more willingly pardon them. A Tale of a Tub demands 
 his canonization by Anglicans, could they see how true 
 and badly treated a friend they had in him. His Gulli- 
 ver's Travels, the charmer of our childhood, the in- 
 structor and amuser of our later years, is simply (we 
 speak advisedly) the best work of pure imagination ever 
 put forth, after the Divine Comedy of Dante. The 
 genius of Bunyan, in sj^ite of his high theme, does not 
 so impress us, with all his allegorical names and char- 
 acters. But in reading Swift and Dante their perfect 
 style is forgotten, because it is perfect ; we think only 
 of the real things they describe and the characters who 
 act again, in our presence. We are not told that Ca- 
 paneus A*ages ; we hear him vagmg. We become Lili- 
 putians ourselves when the Emj^eror of Liliput ap- 
 pears. " He is taller, by almost the breadth of my 
 nail, than any of his court, which aJone is enough to 
 strike an awe into the beholders." Great is the power 
 of words, in themselves the idlest things, when used by 
 a master. 
 
 Page 179. — Sterne. — Sterne (like Rabelais, whom in 
 many respects he resembles less than critics pretend) 
 is, in one word, indescribable. He should be read, not 
 criticised. He has certainly some of the merits of Cer- 
 vantes and Swift ; his humor is as exquisite, but very 
 different and all his own. Coleridge, strange to say, 
 has best commented on him (a Course of Lectures, IX., 
 in Vol. II. of his Notes). Dr. Slop, Corporal Trim, the 
 Widow Wadman, and Uncle Toby are quite as real to us 
 
272 NOTES 
 
 as Don Quixote himself. The improprieties of Sterne 
 are indeed provoking, but we pity those who see not 
 the refinement which lies beside them. In subtlety 
 of conception and expression the character of Mr. 
 Shandy is worthy of Shakespeare. We praise many 
 books more ; but there are few we would not part with 
 for a comfortable fireside copy of the inimitable Tris- 
 tram Shandy. 
 
 Page 179. — Pope. — An afi'ected contempt for Pope, 
 whom they do not understand, is one of the symptoms 
 common to a sickly class of modern essayists, who spin 
 weak cobwebs about him from their own ailing moral 
 interior. Byron knew better when he called Pope "a 
 poet of a thousand years." He is not to be spoken of 
 in the same breath with the other poets of Queen 
 Anne's contemptible reign. His Essay on Criticism re- 
 mains a marvellous performance, though written in his 
 twentieth year. Notwithstanding Hallam's pseudo-pla- 
 tonic criticism [Literatia^e of Europe, Chap. I.) Eloisa to 
 Ahelard most touchingly expresses the feelings of one 
 of the truest of women, while the immortal Dunciad 
 asks in vain for a twin-brother, to stigmatize the obtru- 
 sive pretenders to fame swarming in our nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Page 182. — Johnson and Boswell. — The reader should 
 again compare Carlyle's essay on Johnson with that of 
 Macaulay, and note well the superiority of the former. 
 
 The recent edition of Bosrcell by Dr. Hill treats this 
 masterpiece of biography with unusual care and sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Page 182. — Hume. — Hume (against all differences of 
 opinion) ranks with Malebranche in France and Leibnitz 
 in Germany as one of the few modern writers who, like 
 
NOTES 273 
 
 Plato and Cicero among the ancients, know how to 
 make philosophy agreeable. See the edition of his 
 works in four vols., by Green and Grose. 
 
 Page 184. — Robertson. — Eobertson is the baby Carlyle 
 flings to the wolves, that he may save the rei^utation 
 of other Scotchmen whom he always pets. Even our 
 James I. (his James VI.) won his admiration. 
 
 Page 185. — Gibbon. — Gibbon, the only Englishman 
 who has united German learning with French grace, is 
 less understood by Carlyle than by many of the ortho- 
 dox, admirers of the finely tempered weaj^on that 
 wounds them. Carlyle used more moderate language 
 in talking to Emerson. *' Gibbon he called the splendid 
 bridge from the old world to the new." He is still the 
 only general historian for the whole period of the Mid- 
 dle Ages. Unfortunately the latest and best annotated 
 edition of his Decline has penuriously been printed on 
 very poor pajDer. 
 
 LECTUKE XI. 
 
 Page 187. — Inadequacy of Logic. — What Carlyle here 
 states resembles, more closely perhaj^s than he might 
 have wished, the opinions set forth on the same subject 
 by Cardinal Newman, with all his characteristic charm 
 of expression (see An Essay in Aid of the Grammar of 
 Assent). 
 
 Page 193. — Wei-ter and Charlotte on Tea-cups. — In the 
 poem expressive of gratitude to his kind friend and 
 patron the Duke of Weimar, among his Roman elegies, 
 Goethe thus wrote — 
 
 " Yet what avails it me, that indeed the Chinese, too, 
 Painted, with careful hand, Werter and Lotte on glass." 
 18 
 
274 NOTES 
 
 This translation is literal. But see the whole poem, 
 with much else that is enjoyable, in Mrs. Austin's Char- 
 acteristics of Goethe, 3 vols., London, 1833, 
 
 Page 195. — The Works of Byron. — Byron never seri- 
 ously said that the world was a place not worthy for 
 generous men to live in. He says quite the contrary. 
 Upbraiding the degenerate inhabitants of the beautiful 
 land of Greece, before it regained its freedom, he refers 
 to the time " when man was Worthy of thy clime." In 
 the same poem (see the delicious verses at the beginning 
 of The Giaour) he often expresses the same sentiment. 
 For example — 
 
 " Strange — that where Nature loved to trace, 
 As if for Gods, a dwelling place, 
 And every charm and grace hath mix'd 
 Within the paradise she fix'd, 
 There man, enamour'd of distress, 
 Should mar it into wilderness." 
 
 And again- 
 
 ' So soft the scene, so form'd for joy, 
 So curst the tyrants that destroy." 
 
 The burning stanzas of his inspiriting Isles of Greece ex- 
 quisitely display the same conviction. 
 
 Page 196. — Goetz von Berlichingen. — Sir Walter Scott 
 translated, not well, this poem, in which the characters 
 are thoroughly alive, and which Goethe wrote as a young 
 man beginning to show his strength, and anxious for a 
 while to save his mind from the oppression caused by 
 the symptoms of weakness he saw around him. Goetz 
 is the pendant to Werter. It expresses the mediaeval 
 spirit, as against the modern. Goetz struggles to the 
 last; Werter is worn out. The truth is that Goethe, 
 
NOTES 275 
 
 writing these poems out of his heart, in quick succes- 
 sion, split his own comi3lex being into two characters, 
 the man of contemplation and the man of action. In 
 Faust this double theme is again taken up on a much 
 greater scale, both as to extent and intricacy, and with 
 far more refined mental resources. 
 
 Those who neglect Werter's Leiden, fearing it should 
 prove too melancholy, are deceived. It contains not a 
 few bright thoughts and many charming descri^jtions of 
 external nature. 
 
 Page 200. — The Diamond NecMace. — The reader will, 
 doubtless, turn to Carlyle's paper on this matter (re- 
 printed in his Miscellanies), and to the well-known ro- 
 mance of Alexandre Dumas {Le collier de la reine). The 
 English *' Baccarat scandal " of 1891 might, like the affair 
 of the Diamond Necklace (which it more resembles than 
 at first appears), have caused mischief, had attendant 
 circumstances aided. It, too, was a spark, which by 
 good luck did not fall upon gunpowder. 
 
 Page 200. — Rousseau. — For an instructive and very 
 pleasantly written lecture on Bousseau, which many of 
 our readers have probably not seen, we cite the title of 
 Emil Du Bois-Eeymond's " Friedrich II. uud Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau," in his Reden, erste Folge, Leipzig, 
 1886. 
 
 As Rousseau, like Don Quixote (see the English 
 translation of Griesinger's Mental Diseases, p. 10), with 
 all his exquisite genius, reminds us of those who belong 
 to the so-called borderland between sanity and insanity, 
 we may refer also to J.-J. Rousseau's Krankheitsgeschichte 
 von P. J. MObius, Leipzig, 1889. See, likewise, the 
 somewhat rare Expose succinct de la contestation qui 
 s'est elevee entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, avec les 
 pieces justificatives (a Londres, 1766), and Mr. John 
 
276 NOTES 
 
 Morley's welcome Life of this eminent French writer. 
 Diseased nerves, in si)ite of Carlyle's protest, sometimes 
 offer the only true explanation of the strange conduct of 
 great men. 
 
 Page 201. — Tlie French Revolution. — For a calm and 
 hopeful discussion, written with much eloquence, of the 
 ideas suggested by a study of the three French revolu- 
 lutions (1789-1830-1848) every reader should think over 
 Ernest Renan's UAvenir de la Science : Pensees de 1848. 
 Paris, 1890. 
 
 Page 203. — Europe and France. — Carlyle is not con- 
 sistent in asserting the right of Europe against France, 
 while he commends Napoleon's maxim of " the career 
 open to talents." The English and the Germans threat- 
 ened France in the first instance, and caused a misery 
 more widespread than that of the French Revolution it- 
 self, by their vicious intromission in the affairs of a peo- 
 ple with which they had no concern. The two Teutonic 
 i^ations, in fact if not in right, were consistent enough. 
 Whatever they might say, they showed by their actions 
 they preferred to freedom that slavery to oligarchical 
 governments it was the chief business of the French 
 Revolution to put down. These things began before 
 Buonaparte. It is wrong to look on him as an upset- 
 ter of the principles of the Revolution. He indeed 
 saved France from anarchy, restored religion, and raised 
 that nation to a height of power it never reached before 
 or since. But was he not a promulgator from the can- 
 non's mouth of the gi'eat revolutionary maxim Carlyle so 
 much admires ? And was it not their terror lest Europe 
 in general should find this maxim too captivating, that 
 made its rulers send their misguided hosts against the 
 preacher of a doctrine which, once taught, meant the 
 destruction of all oligarchy ? 
 
NOTES 277 
 
 Napoleon said, that John Bull in the end "wonld do 
 him justice. Has not the chief recorder (Gen. Sir W. 
 Napier) of Wellington's victories emphatically asserted 
 the incomparable superiority of his Corsican opponent ? 
 Did not our Queen appear in public leaning on the arm 
 of the nephew of her grandfather's enemy, and has 
 not the son of the same nephew since died in her ser- 
 vice? 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 Page 207. — Return to Nature. — This is precisely the 
 advice of the leading interlocutor in Galilei's DialogOy 
 published in 1632 (not 1630 as stated by Whewell, 
 whose account, in his Inductive Sciences, of this first of 
 modern philosophers is very far from being the best). 
 Besides Mach's chapter on Galilei, already recommended 
 (under p. 103), see Poggeudorffs Gescliichte der Physik, 
 Leipzig, 1879, pp. 204:-2-45, and Heller's Gescliichte der 
 Phi/sil; Stuttgart, 1882, I. Band, pp. 343-383. Also, 
 the German translation of i)art of Galilei's Biscorsi 
 (1638), forming No. 11 of Ostwald's Klassiker der exacten 
 Wissenschaften, Leij^zig, 1890. Galilei may be called 
 the Homer, while Newton is the Shakespeare of dynam- 
 ics. Huyghens (the " Summus Hugenius " of our 
 Newton, a man not prone to distribute praise) is its 
 Sophocles. The merits of Huyghens are well set forth 
 not only by Mach, but also by Diihring in his very 
 original Kritische Geschichte der Meclianik, 3 ed. LeijDzig, 
 1887. 
 
 Page 208.— TAe Phoenix— ^hai Carlyle says of the 
 end or consummation of scepticism viiW be consoling to 
 many, but it is not the view of theologians and logi- 
 cians, for whom he never cared. The Rev. Dr. Mo- 
 merie, who belongs to both these classes (a union some- 
 
278 KOTES 
 
 what rare), tells us that those who still cling to their 
 earl J faith "are every now and then pained, embarassed, 
 staggered, by the fact that so many of their intellectual 
 superiors consider their faith to be absurd. The spirit 
 of agnosticism is in the air. The reviews are full of it. 
 Poi3ular lecturers are everywhere insisting upon it. We 
 meet it in novels, and even in poetry. At the universi- 
 ties it is the predominant creed among the undergradu- 
 ates and the younger dons. And, worst of all, we hear 
 it sometimes in drawing-rooms from women's lips — from 
 women, strange to say, who are young and fair, who are, 
 or should be, hapiw " {Agnosticism, 3 ed. revised, 1889). 
 We all wish, like the Phoenix, to rise again from our 
 ashes, but it is not quite so pleasant to be reminded that 
 ashes must again and again be our doom. This series 
 of transvolutions, which Carlyle promises us, savors 
 rather of Indian than Christian belief. In his too em- 
 l^hatic declaration of our ignorance (p. 188), in itself 
 sufficiently real, he goes beyond poor Ophelia (Hamlet, 
 Act IV., Scene V.) in her frenzy, — "Lord, we know 
 what we are, but we know not what we may be." 
 
 We would point out the frequent error of using "scep- 
 tic " as a synonym for the words "agnostic" or "infidel." 
 Sceptics are extremely rare. We hardly know of any 
 beside Montaigne, Bayle, Hume (perliai3S Gibbon and 
 Mill, father and son), with Fontenelle — all delightful 
 writers. Pascal, that matchless writer, had also his 
 sceptical side. He is finely discriminated by Paul Bour- 
 get as the only apologist for orthodoxy who ever under- 
 stood doubters. Most defenders of Christianity, laud- 
 ably desiring to slay the errors of their opi^onents, dis- 
 charge their missiles at everything excej)t the mark. 
 They failed by not discovering the sources of conviction 
 and its opposites. They hit the ambient air. Archbishop 
 Whately and Cardinal Newman have indicated some of 
 
 1 
 
NOTES 279 
 
 these faults of method, but they themselves in practice 
 have likewise failed. Of living eminent writers we may 
 name as sceptics the fervid Eenan and the acute Du 
 Bois-Eevmond. Among those lately deceased we might 
 also designate as sceptical, in the best and truest sense, 
 one of the choicest geniuses of our time, a discoverer 
 comparable to Newton, the pious Gustav Theodor 
 Fechner. Carlyle, without knowing it, was himself a 
 sceptic. 
 
 Page 212. — Happiness. — Carlyle, as so many know, has 
 expressed noble thoughts on the signification of happi- 
 ness in the most remarkable chapter of his Sartor 
 Resartus (Book IL, ChajD. IX.). His friend, John Stuart 
 Mill, referring to these views, has modified them from 
 his own experience [Autohiography, pp. 132-143). His 
 theory, strange as this may sound, is veiy like the only 
 true and pious one ; it is, in fact, a moonlight reflection 
 of it. We may, in our ingratitude, reject the happiness 
 offered to us ; but hai3piness is not to be snatched by our 
 own efforts. It comes to us like genius, beauty (Iliadis, 
 III., 65), or sleep (Psalm, cxxviii. 2). It is a gift from 
 on high. 
 
 Vfx^e 21"^. — German Metaphysicians. — We fully admit 
 the inherent difficulties of metaphysics, and the further 
 difficulties superinduced by many painstaking German 
 writers and others ; but Carlyle' s views of both defy our 
 powers of annotation. They are more incomprehensible 
 than metaphysics themselves. 
 
 The best modern works on i:)hiIosophy are unquestion- 
 ably the very original and critical writings of Wundt, 
 namely, his Psychologie, Logik, Ethik, System der Philos- 
 apJiie, and Studien, which last is a most useful periodi- 
 cal by himself and others on all topics ajipertaining to 
 things of the mind. These books we have bought and 
 
280 NOTES 
 
 read (let others do likewise). They could not, their 
 dates being considered, have come within Carlyle's cog- 
 nizance. A little more patience in dealing with such 
 subjects would have done our Lecturer no harm. Meta- 
 physics were certainly not C'M'lyle^s forte, though he has 
 strangely been cited as a promulgator of idealism. He 
 errs in blaming metaphysic for failing to supj^ly that 
 which (like a custom-house) it can never afford. 
 
 Page 216. — Goethe. — Carlyle has said so much that is 
 good about Goethe, that no one who possesses his works 
 needs the particular references which are here omitted. 
 He is at his best whenever he treats of him. Between 
 Goethe and Englishmen he still remains the one indis- 
 pensable medium. 
 
 Page 217. — Westostliclier Divan. — See Simrock's edi- 
 tion (Heilbronn, 1875) of this incomparable work, with 
 its references to the original eastern sources from which 
 Goethe drew. Also consult an interesting article 
 (" Goethe und Suleika ") in Julian Schmidt's Bilder aus 
 clem geistigen Leben, Leipzig, 1870. 
 
 Page 218. — Schiller. — The cheap edition of Carlyle's 
 Life of Schiller, published in 1873, has a supplement on 
 Schiller's parents and sisters. This is chiefly made up 
 of translations from the works of Saupe and others. It 
 is well worth reading, and it touchingly dej^icts (to use 
 Carlyle's words) " an unconsciously noble scene of 
 Poverty made richer than any California." 
 
 Page 221. — Wilhelm Tell. — Wilhelm Tell (though 
 prostituted as a school-book) is, next to Faust, the no- 
 blest tragedy w^hich has appeared since the times of 
 Shakespeare. The third scene of the fourth act, where 
 Tell struggles w^ith his feelings before slaying the 
 
NOTES 281 
 
 tyrant, is Tinsurpassed for tone patlios and itigged 
 strength of expression. Carlyle has given a translation 
 of this scene in his Life of Schiller. 
 
 Page 221.— i?/c7?Yer.— Jean Paul, unlike Goethe and 
 Schiller, has not been fully translated for English read- 
 ers. Carlyle himself has left us renderings of two of 
 his stories, chosen by him as thoroughly representative. 
 Two other translations are in Bohn's Libraries— Zercma, 
 a work on education, and the romantic tale entitled 
 Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. 
 
 Page 225. — Leave-taking. — Carlyle has been often 
 comi^ared, sotto voce and expressly, to each of the three 
 German authors he most loved, and whose works he in- 
 troduced by his useful labors to so many English read- 
 ers. He has thus in turn been likened to Goethe, Schil- 
 ler, and Richter. He is furthest from Goethe, whom 
 he most venerated, to whom his obligations were great- 
 est, and with whom^ alone of the three, he entered into 
 personal communion. Goethe, with much of Carlyle's 
 conscientiousness and force, possessed in a large meas- 
 ure those very qualities wherein Carlyle was weakest ; 
 for who does not allow Goethe's calm, his fairness, his 
 fine appreciation of all that is essential and beautiful in 
 form. He is accordingly by French admirers and by 
 his own countrymen placed far above his great English 
 interpreter, as a man in every way wider and pro- 
 founder. Certainly he is more harmonious ; he was 
 guided by the key-note of artistic forbearance (the 
 tir^heu ayav of the Greeks — the ne quid nimis of their 
 Latin imitators) with a nicety to which Carlyle could 
 never adjust his own compositions. He at no time 
 made any such pretensions. It were useless, therefore, 
 to pursue this comparison further. 
 
 Yet surely Carlyle deserves praise for perceiving, as 
 
282 NOTES 
 
 he did, the distinctive excellence of Goethe. This vir- 
 tue is enhanced when we reflect on the differences be- 
 tween those two writers. To revere what we lack our- 
 selves is the genuine nucleus of piety. We find good 
 in the humblest man when he admires the teacher who 
 shows him a little part of the road to the infinite. 
 There were strong ties of attraction between Carlyle 
 and Goethe. How else could Carlyle have translated 
 so beautifully the charming verses in Wilhelm Meister? 
 Through these versions he shines as a true i^oet, and 
 not a mere satellite, fitted only to reflect the light of 
 the sun of Weimar. 
 
 Goethe sincerely esteemed Carlyle's Life of Schillei\ 
 who is not wholly unlike his biographer. Carlyle sur- 
 passed Schiller in the important gift of humor and in 
 dogged industry. In other resj)ects Schiller ajDpears 
 his equal or superior. Both were historians. Carlyle 
 was more copious, more desciiptive, more vehement ; 
 in quiet streiigth, in smoothness, in love of liberty, in 
 his firmer and more psychological grasp of the ruling 
 ideas which persist from age to age, the author of The 
 Thirty-years' War transcends the sturdy chronicler of 
 the great Frederick, the eloquent but too precipitate 
 commentator on France in her good and evil efforts to 
 obtain freedom. Fine was the dramatic genius of Car- 
 lyle, but he diffused what it revealed to him through 
 the general body of his writings. He never so concen- 
 trated his powers as to rival those lofty works, worthy 
 of their heroes, Wilhehn Tell and Wallenstein. 
 
 Carlyle comes much closer to Kichter, howsoever di- 
 verse their gifts and products. To call the latter a 
 writer inferior to Goethe or Schiller is at once true, ob- 
 vious, unnecessary, meaningless, and invidious. Kich- 
 ter would have shrunk, with real modesty, from the 
 comparison. He has his own excellences ; like every 
 
NOTES 283 
 
 noteworthy man of genius he is, in a certain sense, in- 
 comparable. The German, like the English Jean Paul 
 (for so is Carlyle often termed), has been well styled 
 the unique, der einzige, the only one. Eichter resem- 
 bles Carlyle in his mixture of defects and merits. 
 Eoth play tricks with language, alternately losing and 
 gaining by risking extraordinary expressions. Both 
 indulge, like St. Paul, in numerous anacolutha. The 
 humor of both is strong, and not always restrained ; it 
 highly pleases, it sometimes shocks us. They agree 
 most in the spirit animating their works, their love of 
 innate heroism struggling against outward hindrances, 
 their confidence in the ultimate victory of truth and 
 providence, their hopes for man and their faith in his 
 future. Both were hard workers and high thinkers : 
 none could be more unlike Dante's " scicmrati che mai 
 lion fur viTiy Eichter ami Carlyle were thoroughly in- 
 stinct with life and with that which is better than life — 
 immortality. That is why they have left such good 
 things behind them. Now they rest from their labors, 
 and their works will follow them. Each might have 
 felt, like Goethe, — 
 
 "Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen 
 Niclit in Aeouen untergeliu : " 
 
 and have said with Schiller, — 
 
 " Getrcstet konnen wir zu Grabe steigen : 
 Es lebt iiacli uns ;— durcli andre Krafte will 
 Das Herrliclie der Menschheit sich erhalten. " 
 
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