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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 COLLECTED 
 LITERARY ESSAYS
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 ILonUon: FETTER LANE, E.G. 
 
 C. F. CLAY, Manager 
 
 CFliinfiurgt) : loo, PRINCES STREET 
 
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 A// riif/Us reseiued
 
 ^i. 4/ . /"eL^^^
 
 COLLECTED 
 LITERARY ESSAYS 
 
 CLASSICAL AND MODERN 
 
 X*-" ^ BY 
 
 A. W. V^RRALL, Litt.D. 
 
 KING EDWARD VII PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 AND FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 HON. LITT.D., DUBLIN 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 M. A. BAYFIELD, M.A. 
 
 AND 
 
 J. D. DUFF, M.A. 
 WITH A MEMOIR 
 
 Cambridge : 
 at the University Press
 
 y^7 
 
 CambnUgt : 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE essays contained in this volume have been 
 collected from various periodicals, some of 
 which are now difficult of access. The selection 
 was made by the author a few months before his 
 death, at a time when there was every expectation 
 that he would live to see the republication. The 
 names and dates of issue of the periodicals in which 
 the essays originally appeared are given in the 
 Table of Contents. 
 
 For permission to republish, our thanks are due 
 to the editors of the Quarterly Review, the New 
 Quarterly, the Oxford and Cambridge Review, the 
 Independent (and Albany) Review, to Mrs M'^Nalty, 
 executrix and literary legatee of the late editor of 
 the Universal Review, and to the Executive Com- 
 mittee of the National Home-Reading Union. 
 
 The Commemorative Address by Dr Mackail, 
 which is appended to the Memoir, was delivered 
 at a meeting of the Academic Committee of the
 
 VI Preface 
 
 Royal Society of Literature on November 28, 191 2. 
 We are much indebted to him for his kindness in 
 allowing us to include this valuable appreciation, 
 and we have to thank the Society for permission 
 to reprint it. 
 
 We have also to thank Mrs Verrall for valuable 
 assistance. 
 
 May 1 913. 
 
 M. A. B. 
 J. D. D.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Portrait Frontispiece 
 
 Memoir ix 
 
 Memorial Inscription in Trinity College Chapel ciii 
 
 Commemorative Address. By J. W. Mackail, LL.D. cv 
 
 'H'^ A Roman of Greater Rome . . . , . J . i 
 
 I Universal Review, 1888. /^ ^-,4b,A^ 
 
 An Old Love Story 27 
 
 Universal Review, 1888. 
 
 The Feast of Saturn 58 
 
 Universal Review, 1889. 
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History . . 85 
 
 Universal Review, 1889. 
 
 Love and Law 112 
 
 Universal Review, 1889. 
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 127 
 
 Universal Review, 1890. 
 
 "To Follow the Fisherman": a Historical Problem 
 
 IN Dante 153 
 
 Independent Review, 1903. 
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statius . . . , 181 
 Albany Review, 1908. 
 
 «5
 
 Vlll 
 
 Contents 
 
 y 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 204 
 
 Albany Review, 1907. 
 
 
 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 319 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge Review, 1907. 
 
 
 Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 236 
 
 New Quarterly, 1909. 
 
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott ..... 
 
 247 
 
 Quarterly Review, 1910. 
 
 
 "Diana of the Crossways" ..... 
 
 276 
 
 National Home-Reading Union's Magazine, 1906. 
 
 
 General Index 
 
 289 
 
 Index of Passages 
 
 290
 
 \ X 
 
 \J. 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 Whatever way my days decline, 
 I felt and feel, tho' left alone. 
 His being working in mine own, 
 
 The footsteps of his life in mine. 
 
 In Memoriaffi. 
 
 Arthur Woollgar Verrall was bom at 
 Brighton on February 5, 1851, and was the eldest 
 of a family of three brothers and two sisters. His 
 father, Henry Verrall, was a well-known solicitor 
 who held for many years the office of Clerk to the 
 Magistrates of the town. Since it is always inte- 
 resting to trace the influences of heredity, some 
 characteristics may be mentioned here which seem 
 to have been part of the boy's natural debt to his 
 parents. From his father he would appear to have 
 derived his remarkable inductive powers, his simple 
 tastes and dislike of ostentation, and the patient 
 endurance with which he bore the sufferings and 
 disabilities of his later years. His mother's gift 
 embraced a rare conscientiousness, the aptitude for 
 languages and teaching, the delight in music and the 
 ear for rhythm. The tie of affection between mother 
 and son was unusually strong.
 
 X Memoir 
 
 At the age of nine, his health being thought too 
 fragile even for the conditions of a preparatory school, 
 he was sent as a private pupil to the Rev. R. Blaker, 
 Vicar of I field. Mr Blaker soon discovered the boy's 
 genius for languages, and Greek was immediately 
 begun. Progress was exceptionally rapid, and two 
 years later Mr Blaker wrote : 
 
 He certainly gives promise of more than ordinary scholar- 
 ship, and if his health is good, I augur an honourable future 
 for him. . . . He evinces a quickness of comprehension which is 
 remarkable for so young a boy. His memory is excellent, 
 and he is able to retain facts and draw inferences from matters 
 connected with his reading with wonderful clearness. 
 
 ' An amusing little story of nursery days perhaps 
 gives an even earlier indication of his bent in this 
 direction. The child was looking at some pictures 
 of red-legged partridges, and was overheard saying 
 to himself, 'Arthur is a good boy; he doesn't say 
 thenis grouses, he says thenis grice' 
 
 In 1863 he went to Twyford, the well-known 
 preparatory school for Winchester, where he stayed 
 a year and a half. His health during this time was, 
 however, much broken. In 1864 he competed for 
 a Winchester scholarship, and failed. No doubt 
 the failure was a disappointment at the time, but in 
 after years he would refer to it as really a piece of 
 good luck, since if he had gone to Winchester, he 
 would have been sure to go to Oxford! In this 
 judgement we may concur, for we can see that 
 Oxford would hardly have helped him to * find 
 himself.' The Greats course would have led him
 
 Memoir xi 
 
 into fields of study foreign to his intellectual 
 temperament, and for metaphysics he had a whole- 
 hearted dislike, as he had for all speculation that 
 promised to lead to no definite conclusion. Never- 
 theless, he had a great respect for Oxford and 
 a special affection for Winchester, where he was 
 a frequent visitor. The defeat was almost im- 
 mediately retrieved. In October of the same year, 
 at the suggestion of Dr Beard, a friend of his father, 
 he was hurried off at a few hours' notice to compete 
 for a scholarship at Wellington College. Though 
 his name had not been previously entered, his 
 candidature was accepted, and he gained the second 
 scholarship, being just beaten by E. Heriz Smith, 
 afterwards Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. 
 In a letter now before me, Dr Benson wrote that 
 the boy ' was nearly though not quite equal to the 
 first candidate.... I like very much the boy's clear 
 and unassuming manner, and am very glad nothing 
 prevented him standing.' It was like Benson to 
 add that he hoped he had ' been comfortable under 
 the odd and hurried circumstances of his competition.' 
 While at Wellington, Verrall must have experienced 
 and observed many such instances of thoughtful 
 courtesy, and as we know, they bore abundant fruit. 
 Mr Wickham of Twyford, in a letter written when 
 the boy was leaving the school, repeats Mr Blaker's 
 impression of his character and augury for his future. 
 An earlier letter of Mr Wickham's contains one 
 significant remark : ' I must try to get him to read 
 a little Ovid next half year, to get him into more
 
 xii Memoir 
 
 style in his verses.' The boy, then, was capable of 
 independent reading at the age of thirteen, had 
 learned to dislike Ovid, and needed persuasion 
 before he would read him. This dislike Verrall 
 never lost, and I can recall the tone of real sadness 
 with which he once referred to the essential trivi- 
 ality of Ovid's art ; it actually distressed him that 
 a man who could have done better things ' should 
 have left only piffle.' One can well believe that 
 the boy dimly felt the same disappointment, that 
 he was even at that early age seeking in his 
 author something more than the ' topmost froth of 
 thought.' 
 
 He entered Wellington at the end of his 
 thirteenth year. Nattifally reserved, of a tempera- 
 ment unusually refined, and with enthusiasms pre- 
 dominantly intellectual, he was not one of those 
 best fitted for the rough and tumble of public school 
 life. ' Something of home-life,' he wrote in his 
 contribution to the Archbishop's Life, ' something 
 like the sympathetic and intelligent circle from 
 which I came, was almost as necessary to me as 
 bread and butter.' When he got into the Sixth, as 
 he very soon did, Benson's keen observation detected 
 this want, and he and Mrs Benson supplied it in the 
 best of ways, by treating the boy as one of the family. 
 He was continually in and out of the house, and 
 whenever he liked, which was two or three times 
 a week, he used to join the ' nursery tea,' at which 
 Dr and Mrs Benson were habitually present. The 
 value to him of this happy modification of the
 
 Memoir xiii 
 
 ordinary conditions of school life, and the incal- 
 culable gain from these closer relations with two 
 such natures, he always felt he could not over- 
 estimate. He would say, referring to those days, 
 ' the Bensons made Wellington possible for me ' ; 
 and he has written, ' He [Dr Benson] saved my 
 health and my sense ; I believe that he saved my 
 life.' 
 
 If Verrall had written an autobiography (a thing 
 incredible), not the least interesting period of it 
 would have been that of his later school years. 
 Unfortunately even recollections of him as he 
 appeared to others are disappointingly meagre. 
 One school-fellow writes, 'As soon as Verrall was 
 in the Upper Sixth we were aware that his mind 
 was of a different order from ours,' and mentions 
 'the width of his reading.' In an obituary notice 
 in the Wellingtonian, Mr E. K. Purnell, also a 
 school-fellow, gives a little vignette of unmistakable 
 fidelity : 
 
 A contemporary, who knew him first as a clever boy of 
 1 8, described him as in those days a most talkative vivacious 
 youth, his eyes kindling with life and enthusiasm as he talked, 
 his voice running up into a kind of falsetto. He observed 
 and was interested in everything and everybody, and his 
 personality, with its many-sided sympathies, impressed itself 
 on all with whom it came in contact. The same person, 
 meeting him when he was examining for the Benson a few 
 years ago, was drawn irresistibly by the charm of his intense 
 vitality, and the unconquerable courage which still helped 
 him to keep up his part in the scheme of life — in a Bath 
 chair.
 
 xiv Memoir 
 
 These two brief scraps are all that can now be 
 obtained. One episode, however, Verrall has him- 
 self related with curious but characteristic detachment 
 and candour in the contribution to the Life of the 
 Archbishop referred to above. 
 
 I saw that after the approaching holidays I should... 
 almost certainly be ' Head of the School,' a really laborious 
 and responsible change. I was then a rapacious student and 
 (except perhaps an infamous player of football) nothing else. 
 My perturbation may be measured by my helpless imperti- 
 nence. Without any intimation of the Headmaster's purposes, 
 I actually went and told him that I could not be ' Head,' and 
 that I should leave ! I ought, I dare say, to have been 
 snubbed. What I know is that a harsh or light word then 
 would have ruined my best chance in life, and (as I make 
 bold to say) would have lost a good year to the school.... He 
 discussed the matter with me almost daily, always from my 
 point of view.... In a fortnight I was a very little ashamed 
 and exceedingly sanguine. And during my year I was to 
 the Headmaster like a third hand. 
 
 In the spring of 1869 he obtained a Minor 
 Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and 
 a Foundation Scholarship in the following year. 
 He was bracketed with Henry Butcher from Marl- 
 borough and Walter Leaf from Harrow — a remark- 
 able trio to have entered for the same examination. 
 When the result was known, Dr Benson wrote to 
 Mr Henry Verrall : 
 
 He has done beautifully, and he deserves success. For 
 his heart is wholly in his work, and that with so much modesty 
 and so much affectionateness, that no one can rejoice too 
 much at his success or fear that it may spoil him. His two 
 co-equals are respectively thought the best of their two
 
 Memoir xv 
 
 schools for several years past. And one of the examiners 
 has written to tell me that if it had been possible to make 
 a diiference it would have been in Arthur's favour. 
 
 We may congratulate each other most sincerely — only on 
 one point you must not congratulate me, for it is hard to part 
 with him, I assure you. 
 
 Of the undergraduate period available informa- 
 tion is scanty, and no letters have been preserved. 
 In the time at which he went up to the University- 
 he was not a little fortunate, for among his contem- 
 poraries and friends were such men as Walter Leaf, 
 Henry Butcher, F. W. Maitland, J. G. Butcher, 
 Frank and Gerald Balfour, A. J. Mason, A. T. 
 Myers (a younger brother of F. W. H. Myers), 
 T. O. Harding, Edmund Gurney, G. H. Kendall, 
 W. Cunningham, and F. J. H. Jenkinson. With 
 all these, and the first three especially, he main- 
 tained a life-long friendship, and the deaths of 
 F. W. Maitland in 1906 and of Henry Butcher in 
 1 9 10 were blows little less than overwhelming. 
 Among his older contemporaries were Henry 
 Sidgwick, R. C. Jebb, Henry Jackson, and Frederick 
 Pollock. One event, which occurred early in his 
 University career, he spoke of at the time as ' the 
 best thing that ever happened to me in my life.' 
 This was his admission to a private but not obscure 
 society, consisting of graduates and undergraduates, 
 which met, and still meets, for intimate discussion of 
 any and every subject. Dating at least as far back 
 as the time of Tennyson, it counts among its numbers, 
 I believe, many of Cambridge's most distinguished
 
 xvi Memoir 
 
 men, and Verrall always considered that he owed 
 
 more to his membership of this * glorious company ' 
 
 than to any other influence of Cambridge life. 
 
 Another surviving incident of the undergraduate life 
 
 is sufficiently characteristic to deserve record. It 
 
 , fell to him to have to read in the College chapel the 
 
 I lesson about the feast of Belshazzar from the Book 
 
 I of Daniel. Those who were present declare that 
 
 the solemnity and dramatic power with which he 
 
 delivered it, combined with the rare quality of the 
 
 voice, were astonishingly impressive and made the 
 
 occasion quite unforgettable. 
 
 To The Tatler in Cambridge, an unusually good 
 example of those short-lived periodicals with which 
 the undergraduate genius from time to time pro- 
 motes the gaiety of University life, he contributed 
 four clever papers. The most amusing of these is 
 perhaps one on Bain's Mental and Moral Science. 
 The book, he discovers, has running through it a 
 vein of subtle humour, and he gently warns the 
 author that this is a talent which in such a work 
 should be exercised with philosophic discretion. 
 The criticism of satire is perhaps all that the work 
 deserves, and an admirable piece of fooling closes 
 with the following poetical summary of Mr Bain's 
 views. 
 
 There was a Professor called Bain • 
 
 Who taught, in the Land of the Rain, 
 
 That the ultimate Fact 
 
 Which induced you to act 
 Was an Inkling of Pleasure or Pain.
 
 Memoir xvii 
 
 He proved that Volitional Force 
 Depended entirely on Sauce, 
 
 Inasmuch as the Question 
 
 Was one of Digestion, 
 And Morals would follow of course. 
 
 Your Head was impressible Batter 
 Compounded of White and Grey Matter, 
 
 So your Measure of Reason 
 
 Would flow from 'Adhesion ' 
 To a tender and merciful Hatter. 
 
 He laid the Foundations of Virtue 
 In finding by Trial what hurt you ; 
 
 And spite of your Terror 
 
 Would stick to his Error, 
 And at last, and at best, would desert you. 
 
 Religion and Duty he made 
 A Manner of feeling afraid ; 
 
 And Tact, on his showing, 
 
 Consisted in knowing 
 The Feel of the Tongs from the Spade. 
 
 Faith, Charity, Hope were reducible 
 To Phosphate or Salt in a Crucible, 
 
 Dissent and Dysentery 
 
 Both 'Alimentary,' 
 Manners and Mammon both fusible. 
 
 If Flesh can be sane or insane. 
 And Meat the sole Factor of Brain, 
 
 Then hey ! for the Cooks, 
 
 Since the Moral of Books 
 Is 'Leave Writing for Eating,' O Bain. 
 
 In 1872 he obtained the Pitt University Scho- 
 larship, and in the next year passed out in the 
 Classical Tripos, being bracketed second with T. E. 
 Page ; Henry Butcher was Senior Classic. In the
 
 xviii Memoir 
 
 examination for the Chancellor's Medals, which 
 immediately followed, the three were bracketed 
 equal, and a third medal was awarded, — a thing 
 never done before or since. 
 
 In connexion with his Tripos Verrall used to 
 tell an amusing story, which he always regarded as 
 illustrating in a remarkable manner the perverse 
 vagaries of the human mind. He had to translate a 
 passage from Tacitus in which Tiberius is described 
 as doing something Rhodo regressus. These words 
 he rendered by 'on his return to Rhodes,' and 
 added two marginal notes, the first explaining and 
 endeavouring to justify the use of Rhodo for Rhodum, 
 and the second explaining how Tacitus came to 
 speak of Tiberius as having done after his return to 
 Rhodes what it was common knowledge that he did 
 after his return from Rhodes. Not till he got back 
 to his rooms did it occur to him that it would have 
 been simpler to v^Yii^ from in his translation ! 
 
 In the same year he was elected Fellow of 
 Trinity College, and resided in Cambridge until the 
 summer of 1874, taking private pupils. I was my- 
 self an undergraduate at this time, and knew him 
 by sight, but alas ! did not know what I was losing 
 by not asking to be allowed to join those lucky 
 youths. 
 
 In July Benson, who had now left Wellington, 
 wrote to him that there was a vacancy on the staff 
 of the School : — 
 
 I need scarcely say to you that the idea present to all 
 men's minds is what would have been present with me, viz.
 
 Memoir xix 
 
 whether it would be compatible with your arrangements that 
 
 you should give them any help I need scarcely put into 
 
 words the fact that you would be more useful to Wellington 
 College than any man living. What they want is enthusiasm 
 — high-couraged work — with scholarship. And of course 
 they want a feeling, understanding soul. 
 
 Happily he resisted this earnest appeal. 
 
 For the next three years he lived in London, 
 reading for the Bar and doing a certain amount of 
 teaching work. From 1875 ^o ^'^11 ^^ was 'Super- 
 numerary Instructor in composition and extra read- 
 ing ' at S. Paul's School. He gained the Whewell 
 Scholarship for International Law in 1875, was 
 called in 1877, and held one brief, if not two. 
 A legal career, however, had no attraction for him : 
 in October he returned to Cambridge, and was soon 
 afterwards placed on the teaching staff at Trinity. 
 From that time onwards Cambridge was his home. 
 For the next five years he combined with his work 
 at the University some teaching at Wren's well- 
 known coaching establishment in London. He also 
 taught at Newnham College, and in connexion with 
 his work there Miss Jane Harrison tells a delightful 
 story. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered if a brilliant dramatist was 
 not lost in the finding and making of a subtle classical 
 scholar. One day, as quite a young mfan, he was looking 
 over my composition in the then library of Old Hall. Coals 
 were wanted and no coal-scuttle in sight. After a longish 
 hunt I remembered that the library coal-scuttle always lay 
 perdu between the double doors that led to Miss Clough's 
 sitting-room. The arrangement, owing to its ingenious 
 economy in coal-scuttles, used to cause Miss Clough a quite 
 
 V. L. E. b
 
 XX Memoir 
 
 peculiar and intimate joy. No less though a slightly different 
 joy did it cause Mr Verrall. On catching sight of the coal- 
 scuttle and the double doors he stood transfigured and trans- 
 fixed. ' What a scene for a play ! ' he exclaimed, and coal 
 scuttle in hand, me and my composition utterly forgotten, 
 the plot of that play he then and there constructed and 
 enacted. 
 
 In 1 88 1 he published his first book, an edition 
 of the Medea of Euripides. He had been asked 
 by Messrs Macmillan & Co. to prepare a school 
 edition of the play, but on getting to work he found 
 that the limits of a school-book, even if that were 
 the proper medium, would be far too narrow for 
 what needed to be done for the Medea, and what 
 he felt he could do. The book was remarkable not 
 only as the production of a young man of thirty, but 
 in itself; it was strikingly original and brilliant, and 
 was at once recognised as the work of a scholar of 
 the first rank. Nothing of the kind, nor perhaps 
 anything approaching it, had previously been done 
 on the Greek tragedians. While he breathed fresh 
 life into the play itself, the effect of his work went 
 further ; for it suggested what might be done for 
 other legacies of the Attic stage, interest in which 
 seemed to be steadily sinking into the mere formal 
 respect one pays to a dull old man whose former 
 dignities do not permit him to be quite ignored. 
 The volume was welcomed with delight and admi- 
 ration, and I think I recognise the hand of Professor 
 Tyrrell in a long and frankly eulogistic article un- 
 earthed from the file of the Saturday Reviezv. The
 
 Memoir xxi 
 
 textual restorations, of which something will be said 
 below, naturally attracted special attention, and 
 confirmed to their author, if they did not originate, 
 the half-jesting, half-earnest sobriquet ' Splendid 
 Emendax.' But this part of the work was by no 
 means the chief or the most valuable. Other merits 
 were found in rare and perhaps unprecedented com- 
 bination : a peculiarly delicate appreciation of the 
 subtleties of the language, a fine discrimination 
 between expressions superficially identical, a subtle 
 appreciation of the poet's skill in delineation of 
 character, and an acute perception of the necessities 
 and possibilities of a dramatic situation. In the two 
 last Verrall had no rival among his predecessors, 
 and few if any equals then or later among his con- 
 temporaries. As one perused the text afresh after 
 digesting the commentary, one found the scenes 
 leap into life, one saw and heard the drama in 
 progress ; or rather — but here we have first to 
 thank Euripides — one felt one was in the presence 
 of a living Medea and a living Jason. The notes 
 were enriched with illustrations drawn from English 
 literature and even (as the writer in the Saturday 
 Review notes) a parallel from Lohengrin, * which to 
 a commentator of the older school would have ap- 
 peared unpardonably frivolous.' 
 
 Of these qualities of the book there was but 
 one opinion, but the textual work divided readers 
 into two camps. While the teachable, old or young, 
 were only grateful, there were some who were 
 offended by the originality and alarmed at the 
 
 bz
 
 xxii Memoir 
 
 brilliance. They mistrusted the cleverness of emen- 
 dations which took their breath away, making 
 familiar passages unrecognisable, and they feared 
 the effects of a pernicious example. Thus did the 
 mediaeval world regard Galileo. It is an attitude 
 towards Verrall's work as a textual critic — whether 
 here or in later books — which has always filled me 
 with astonishment, for his methods were essentially 
 sound. As all his labours in this department show, 
 his decisions were not based on mere guess-work 
 (of which he always spoke with some impatience), 
 but were conclusions arrived at from the evidence 
 furnished by the mss. themselves. Where he dif- 
 fered from others was in the possession of unusual in- 
 ductive powers, which enabled him to see further; and 
 these powers were assisted by a rare sense of lite- 
 rary and dramatic fitness, an apparently complete 
 acquaintance with the extant vocabulary of classical 
 Greek, and an exceptional memor)^ We may, if 
 we please, sum up all this as ' ingenuity,' but if we 
 do, we must not use the word in a disparaging sense. 
 Of course, and he used readily to admit it, the 
 sharp-edged tool sometimes slipped. Impatient of 
 the ' fluffy ' explanation that does not explain, he 
 was occasionally tempted to ofler something which 
 still fails to satisfy, and which only he could have 
 made plausible. Again, as some think, he some- 
 times finds a point where none was intended. It 
 may be so, but it is surely well to err on the side of 
 respect for one's author, and if we do not believe 
 in pointless lines in Aristophanes, why should we
 
 Memoir xxiii 
 
 tolerate them in the texts of the tragedians ? And 
 after all, to accompany Verrall even on an incon- 
 clusive quest, is to learn things by the way which 
 are perhaps as valuable as what we may have set 
 out to seek. 
 
 In emendation he kept two ruling principles 
 always before him : he did not accept or offer a 
 correction as more than possible, unless the sup- 
 posed corruption were accounted for, either by the 
 correction itself or otherwise ; and he held that an 
 odd variant, just because of its oddness or grotesque- 
 ness or absurdity, might possibly conceal the true 
 reading, as against the passable respectability of the 
 textus receptus. The first, of course, was a well 
 established canon, though one freely ignored ; the 
 potentialities of the second had been but dimly ap- 
 prehended. Three examples, taken from the Medea, 
 will show his methods at work. 
 
 At V. 668, 
 
 is the text of all the mss. ; but the second hand in b 
 (one of the inferior class s) has superscribed tKicti/et?. 
 ecrraXry? is irreproachable, but iKaveis cannot be a 
 gloss on it, and Verrall deduces H^dvet^; as the true 
 reading. If anyone cannot see this, there is no 
 more to be said ; in the name of all that is dull, let 
 him hug his eVraXr;? and be happy. 
 
 At 27. 53 I the ' superior' class of mss. give 
 
 a>? *E/3a)9 cr' -qudyKacre 
 
 TTOVdiV d(f)VKTO)U TOVfXOV eKaOXTaL 0€fJia<i.
 
 xxiv Memoir 
 
 The ' inferior ' class give robots d(f)VKToi<;. Paley's 
 note is, ' There is a variant ro^ot? d<f)VKTOL<s, ap- 
 proved by Elmsley,' and he passes on with the 
 crowd. Verrall was not so easily satisfied. Both 
 variants are passable though feeble, but their pre- 
 sence as alternatives is unaccounted for, and he 
 offers ToVots d^u/crots as the common original. If 
 anyone thinks there was no problem to be solved, 
 again there is no more to be said. 
 
 At V. 1 183 the 'superior' mss. have 
 
 7) 8' €^ dvavhov /cat ^vcravros ofJifxaTO? 
 S€t^'ov (TTevd^acT rj rakaiv r^yeipero. 
 
 The * inferior ' class give a variant dncoWvTo. No 
 one had seen that dvavhov (dvavyov, Verrall) 
 required correction, and since aTrwXXvro passed un- 
 heeded, riyeip€To of course incurred no suspicion. 
 But it is just from this absurd diToiWvTo, as a cor- 
 rection of ANQ/\AATOY, a misreading of a mis-spelt 
 ANQMATOY, that our 'daring' editor restores ANQM- 
 MATOY. Unfortunately dvoixfjiaro) is not an extant 
 word, and that fact has been to some, in this case 
 and others, a stumbling-block in the way of accept- 
 ance. One reviewer solemnly deprecated ' these 
 attempts to enrich the Greek language.' The logic 
 is somewhat Chinese, but minds work variously. 
 In China the scholar himself, on returning from a 
 journey, is in danger of being refused recognition 
 by his family, argue as he may, unless he can pro- 
 duce the tally which is the one sure proof that he is 
 not a masquerading devil. So the English editor
 
 Memoir xxv 
 
 should perhaps not be surprised if, when he says 
 'Take my word for it,' his word is regarded as some 
 such masquerading devil, unless he can produce 
 from the lexicon a reference to its respectability. 
 
 There is naturally no trace in Verrall's Medea of 
 the theory of Euripides' art which he afterwards 
 elaborated, and the one miraculous incident in the 
 play, the dragon-chariot, is passed over without 
 special comment. One paragraph in the Introduc- 
 tion is, however, noteworthy in this connexion. It 
 was a traditional commonplace that the poet's con- 
 cern in the stories which he dramatized was pre- 
 dominantly with their human interest, but so far as 
 I am aware, no one had previously laid stress on the 
 significant completeness with which the marvellous 
 and all reference to it are excluded from the Medea, 
 at any rate until the play's proper climax has been 
 reached. The observation appears to have been 
 fruitful. 
 
 To Euripides, therefore, the story of Medea is interesting 
 wholly as a plot of passion, and all other aspects of it are 
 thrown into the background. Indeed, considering the rich 
 fabric of romance with which her name had been interwoven, 
 it is not a little curious to observe how strictly it is reduced 
 by the dramatist to its human and ethical elements. The 
 splendid and marvellous story of the Argonauts is of course 
 a necessary presumption, but the allusions to it are so curt 
 and so colourless that, even with the story before us, it is 
 sometimes a matter of difficulty to interpret them {Med. 479, 
 487) ; and it is plain that any other story would have been 
 as acceptable, which furnished or admitted the essential points 
 of the situation, the proud barbarian wife and mother aban- 
 doned by the Greek husband to whom she has sacrificed all.
 
 xxvi Memoir 
 
 Even the chorus in their lyric songs occupy themselves with 
 the ethic and pathetic aspects only, with the social and intel- 
 lectual position of woman, the virtue of self-control, the 
 blessings and trials of parents, the sanctity of hospitable 
 Athens, with anything, in short, rather than the clashing 
 rocks and the fire-breathing bulls, the ram of Phrixos and 
 the cauldron of Pelias. (p. xviii.) 
 
 In 1882 (June 17) he married Margaret de Gau- 
 drion Merrifield, daughter of Frederic Merrifield, 
 Barrister-at-law, of Brighton, now Clerk of the 
 Peace of East and West Sussex. Miss Merri- 
 field, after a study of Latin and Greek extending 
 over practically no more than the period of her 
 University life, had taken honours in the Classical 
 Tripos Examination of 1880, and was at the time a 
 resident Classical Lecturer at Newnham College. 
 For many years after her marriage Mrs Verrall 
 continued to take part in the classical teaching at 
 Newnham, and her valuable work in connexion 
 with the Society for Psychical Research during the 
 last ten years is well known to a large section of the 
 public. Of the married life of these my dearest 
 friends I cannot trust myself to say more than that 
 the union seemed to be as ideal as that of Robert 
 and Elizabeth Browning, and to realise to the utmost 
 the beautiful vision of The Princess : 
 
 Two heads in council, two beside the hearth. 
 Two in the tangled business of the world, 
 Two in the liberal offices of life. 
 Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
 Of science, and the secrets of the mind.
 
 Memoir xxvii 
 
 There is one daughter of the marriage, Miss 
 Helen de G. Verrall, who has inherited largely 
 both the gifts and qualities of her parents. She 
 obtained a First Class in the Classical Tripos Part I 
 in 1905, and a First Class in Part II in 1906. 
 
 Verrall's next book, Studies hi Horace, published 
 in 1883 and now out of print, is a collection of essays 
 on the Odes of Horace. The volume is written 
 with charming freshness, and the poems discussed 
 gain a new life and often a quite unexpected interest 
 from the originality and independence of the 
 criticisms. The most important essay is the one 
 entitled Murena. Identifying the famous con- 
 spirator of that name with the Murena of iii 19 
 and the Lucius Licinius Varro Murena whose 'sister' 
 Maecenas married (and on this identification the 
 main weight of the contention rests), Verrall en- 
 deavours to show that the first three books of the 
 Odes were not published before B.C. 19, as against 
 the generally accepted lowest date e.g. 23. 
 
 Although he failed to commend his view on 
 either point to some of those best entitled to form 
 an opinion, nevertheless both questions are still 
 matters of dispute, and an eminent Italian historian, 
 ignorant of the existence of Verrall's book, has 
 recently expressed agreement with him so far as to 
 hold that the Odes ' are a single poetic work, ani- 
 mated by a central idea, and not a miscellany of 
 disconnected verse.' 
 
 Scattered through the volume are vivid pictures 
 of Roman society in the Augustan age, drawn with
 
 xxviii Memoir 
 
 a rare dexterity, and the power exhibited in ap- 
 praising the significance of historical events, the 
 liveliness and sureness of touch with which they 
 are described, and the insight which marks the pour- 
 trayal of character, show that when we gained a 
 scholar and critic, we perhaps lost an unusually 
 gifted historian. A great Latinist wrote at the 
 time : ' The essay on Murena was to me the one of 
 most fascinating interest. If a drama or historical 
 romance on the personages and incidents of the 
 Augustan age were to be written, the writer would 
 find his materials in that essay.' The following 
 brief extract may serve as a specimen of much more 
 that is equally striking. 
 
 For the difficulty lies not in the fact of the allusion to 
 Murena, but in the tone of it. That Horace, writing or pub- 
 lishing after the conspiracy, would pass the history of Murena 
 in silence can in no way be presumed. As a poet, indeed, 
 he could ill afford to do so. A theme more suggestive for 
 poetry of a tragic cast, especially as the ancients conceived 
 of tragedy, it would be difficult to imagine. The whole story 
 from prologue to catastrophe — the hard lessons of experience 
 learnt and forgotten, the humiliation, the sudden rise and ill- 
 sustained prosperity, the insolent tongue which made enemies 
 when it was the time to propitiate envy, the doubtful guilt 
 and certain ruin, the wide-spread sympathy not unmixed 
 with horror — all that our authorities give us unites in a 
 subject such as Aeschylus chose, a veritable rpayuSta of real 
 life, acted not in the theatre of Dionysus but in the midst of 
 the society of Rome. Nor would the relation between the 
 poet and Maecenas forbid the subject, if only it were touched 
 in a proper spirit. What was the private opinion of Maecenas 
 on Murena's crime and the emperor's justice, it would be vain 
 to conjecture. But on no view could he desire silence, (p. 31.)
 
 Memoir xxix 
 
 From 1886 to the summer of 1889, in addition 
 to his other work, he lectured at Pembroke College. 
 An interesting anecdote falls somewhere in this 
 period. On a certain Saturday he was going to 
 London for the day. On the following Monday the 
 Trinity lecturers would be wanting to distribute to 
 their pupils printed copies of a piece of English for 
 translation into Latin hexameters. It was Verrall's 
 turn to set this piece, and at the Cambridge station 
 he remembered that he had not done so. More- 
 over, his Latin version of the piece should be in the 
 lecturers' hands on the Tuesday morning. From 
 London he telegraphed to the University Press to 
 print and send out to the lecturers that day 'Merchant 
 of Venice, Act v. sc. i, from "The moon shines 
 bright " to " footing of a man," ' and he composed 
 the version, from a perfect recollection of the Eng- 
 lish, during the day. A few final touches were given 
 next day, and the copy sent off to press. It will be 
 found, with about a score more from his pen, in 
 Cambridge Compositions (1899). ^^ wrote Greek 
 and Latin with almost as much facility as English, 
 and in a style that has the true ring, as a man writes 
 a language which he speaks. All his compositions 
 possess distinction and individuality, and some of 
 his verse is such as an ancient poet might have 
 published with advantage to his reputation. One 
 merit of his versions is sufficiently uncommon, even 
 in the best work of this kind, to deserve special 
 mention : he never failed to catch the spirit of the 
 original. I regret that there is not space to quote
 
 XXX Memoir 
 
 here the copy referred to above, for it affords an 
 excellent illustration of this, reproducing with an 
 absolute fidelity (so at least it seems to me) the 
 extremely delicate tone of Shakspeare's sole but 
 perfect idyll. 
 
 In 1887 he published an edition of the Septem 
 cont7'a Thebas of Aeschylus. The play offers no 
 scope for such a comprehensive view of the poet's 
 art as we have in the commentaries on the great 
 trilogy, but this volume inaugurated a new era in 
 the interpretation of the play and in the study of 
 Aeschylus as a whole. The same faculties which 
 had been so fruitful in the case of the Medea were 
 brought to bear, and now by a reconstruction of the 
 text, now by a more satisfying interpretation, he 
 gave to passage after passage fresh or fuller sig- 
 nificance. At the same time he did much to quicken 
 and enlarge our appreciation of the characteristic 
 qualities of Aeschylean diction and style. There 
 were of course, here and there, instances of the 
 inevitable over-subtlety, — he expected it himself, no 
 less than did his readers ; but we have learned to 
 regard these things as mere spots on the sun, which 
 are, I believe, due to uprushes of excessive energy 
 from the solar subliminal, and doubtless not without 
 their use. No man was less disposed to hold to 'a 
 poor thing' because it was 'his own,' and I can 
 remember points, both in this play and in others, 
 which upon discussion he instantly abandoned when 
 a reasonable objection was presented. Sometimes 
 (and every scholar could illustrate this from his own
 
 Me7nou^ xxxi 
 
 case) the obvious vie,w had simply not occurred to 
 him. One day, during my last visit, I was reading 
 over in his presence an unpublished ms. which he 
 had written on a passage in Lucan, and in which 
 reference was made to a statuette possessed by 
 Alexander the Great, 
 
 quam comitem occasus secum portabat et ortus. 
 
 Verrall had translated, ' whether he went east or 
 west,' and I interrupted my reading to ask him why 
 he did not think the meaning was ' night and morn- 
 ing.' His immediate answer was, ' I did not think 
 of it.' 
 
 Perhaps the most valuable of Verrall's contribu- 
 tions to our enjoyment of the Septem is one which 
 affects the whole play, and concerns a matter on 
 which no one dreamed that there could be anything 
 novel to say. By general consent it was agreed 
 that the play was wanting in true dramatic interest. 
 There was a wealth of gorgeous and majestic poetry, 
 and a succession of stirring scenes, which never- 
 theless failed to give the genuine tragic thrill. 
 There was none of the suspense and painful interest 
 that is produced as we watch the action steadily 
 working up to a supreme moment ; none of the 
 ' horror and pity ' to which we are moved when at 
 that moment the blow of fate is suddenly struck, 
 without warning, and in a manner that its victim 
 had never suspected. By a master-stroke of dra- 
 matic instinct Verrall restored the deficiency, and 
 showed that the meeting of the brothers, usually
 
 xxxii Memoir 
 
 supposed to be foreseen, was on the contrary an 
 Mr\t.y.'^^QX^A peripeteia developed on the stage. This 
 makes tragedy indeed ; but a reviewer, as I remem- 
 ber, ' confessed that he thought the new view made 
 no difference,' — and this, though he was writing 
 under no compulsion. 
 
 In 1889 he became one of the four Tutors at 
 Trinity. He accepted the office with a deep sense 
 of its responsibilities. Its duties, he felt, included 
 the cultivation of really human relations with the 
 men, a thing involving considerable expenditure of 
 time and energy, but an expenditure that must be 
 made, he believed, if the work was to be properly 
 performed. For this closer intercourse, which was 
 to him and Mrs Verrall a source of genuine pleasure, 
 opportunities were made in a manner at that time 
 almost unknown among Tutors, by the exercise of 
 frequent hospitality at Selwyn Gardens. All the 
 freshmen, some fifty in number, were invited to 
 dinner in their first term, which involved a dinner- 
 party two or three times a week, and tennis and 
 croquet parties on Tuesdays and Fridays were a 
 regular institution of the May term. It was in this 
 way, besides others, that he sowed the seeds of that 
 affection which most of his men came to feel towards 
 him. ' You know how much more than a merely 
 official relation Dr Verrall made of his tutorship,' 
 writes one ; and another, ' he made a man feel he 
 was more than one in a long list.' 
 
 Mr E. H. Marsh, C.M.G., a former pupil, who 
 has kindly sent me some reminiscences, writes,
 
 Memoir xxxiii 
 
 He was an extraordinarily sound, just, and sympathetic 
 judge of character. No one valued cleverness and originality 
 more, but there were plenty of rather commonplace good 
 fellows whom he not only appreciated for their * English ' 
 qualities, but thoroughly liked. I remember his going 
 through the list of freshers on his ' side ' one year, — ' No,' he 
 said when he came to the end, 'they are not a galaxy'; but 
 before their first year was over I am sure he had made 
 personal friends with a great majority of them. He seemed 
 rather formidable of course at first sight, but no one could 
 mistake the perfect simplicity of character which he com- 
 bined with that unusual complication of mind ; and as he 
 always steered between talking down to people and talking 
 over their heads, everyone was soon at ease with him. He 
 used to have croquet parties in old days, and though I don't 
 remember his playing himself, he used to throw himself into 
 the games and devise complicated tactics for the players — 
 the balls almost became characters in a subtle Euripidean 
 plot. 
 
 He was a very successful president at smoking-concerts, 
 etc. I remember how everyone shrieked with laughter when 
 he excused himself for having been prevented from preparing 
 an after-dinner speech by 'a succession of incalculable circum- 
 stances over whom I had no control.' He was never on a 
 high horse for a moment ; he used to tell delightedly how, 
 when the son of an old friend paid his first visit, the talk fell 
 on Shelley, and Verrall said he had never read The Revolt of 
 Islam. 'Ah,' said the youth, 'that's sheer indolence of mind.' 
 
 With the Tutorship he combined his ordinary 
 work as lecturer. This was not usual, but he made 
 it for himself a condition of undertaking the office, 
 and managed the double work easily for most of the 
 period of ten years over which the Tutorship usually 
 extends. 
 
 Verrall's reputation as a lecturer and teacher
 
 xxxiv Memoir 
 
 grew year by year, and of the value of this part of 
 his work there is but one opinion. To my own 
 lasting regret, I heard him lecture twice only, 
 although he was my most intimate friend for more 
 than thirty years. For the present purpose, how- 
 ever, this matters little, for I am fortunately able 
 to give the reader the life-like impression of him 
 in this aspect contained in a letter kindly contri- 
 buted by Mr F. M. Cornford, Fellow and Lecturer 
 of Trinity College. The following pages are from 
 Mr Cornford's pen, down to the place where his 
 signature appears (p. xlviii). 
 
 Letter from Mr F. M. Cornford. 
 
 You have honoured me by asking me, as one 
 who was first a pupil, and later a colleague, of 
 Verrall at Trinity College, to write some account of 
 him as a teacher and lecturer. Several Trinity men 
 have helped me by sending their impressions of him. 
 They all agree, as we should expect, in saying that 
 it was, above all else, his personality that counted ; 
 one or two of them speak as if contact with him had 
 changed the whole current of their intellectual life. 
 To describe that personality is another matter, but 
 it cannot be left out in any account of his teaching 
 and lecturing. 
 
 It was in this part of his work that his extra- 
 ordinary gifts had fullest play ; yet, when I call up 
 my memory of him, it is neither as ' lecturer ' nor as
 
 Memoir xxxv 
 
 'teacher' that I can think of him. In both these 
 words there is an undernote of pedantry ; and, in 
 the rear of the two respectable nouns comes a flock 
 of woolly epithets — 'painstaking,' 'conscientious,' 
 and the rest — which in this case are, all of them, 
 thoroughly deserved, but convey nothing of the 
 quality and distinction of Verrall's genius. He did 
 take unlimited pains, not only because he was 
 'conscientious,' but because to him teaching was the 
 means of expression in which he felt the passion and 
 the joy of an artist. His emotion seemed, at least 
 in his last years, to have fused with his intellect in 
 a way that is rare among northerners : it strengthened 
 the impression that he must have had a strain of 
 Latin blood — an impression given by his dark 
 colouring and the particular clear-cut and dignified 
 beauty of his features, the long fine aquiline nose 
 and oval cheeks. This passionate intellectuality, 
 moving most easily at a height of rarefied atmosphere 
 where few could follow him, combined with something 
 aristocratic in his nature to tinge his pupil's admiration 
 with awe. He was, to many people, always a little 
 terrifying ; but he became much less so to those who 
 found out that he genuinely cared, not only to set 
 their minds working, but to win their sympathy. 
 I was slow to discover this : it was long before it 
 occurred to me that he could mind what I thought 
 about his theories, or want others to share his delight 
 in the things he enjoyed. There must be something 
 in the relation of pupil to master which makes it 
 hard to perceive such a need ; for with Verrall it was 
 
 V. L. E. c
 
 xxxvi Me^noir 
 
 very strong and characteristic, and to a great extent 
 the secret of his influence. Without it, he might 
 have been too remote ; but, as it was, it moved him 
 to exert his marvellous powers of exposition to the 
 utmost, so as to bring the slowest minds under his 
 spell. 
 
 Perhaps only an acute reader would detect this 
 trait in his books. In writing, his sensitive courtesy 
 never allowed him to forget that he was addressing 
 strangers ; there is a certain formality of style, which, 
 together with his scrupulous use of words and the 
 polish of his dexterous sentences, would leave anyone 
 who had merely read his books with only a faint 
 notion of what it was to hear him speak to an 
 audience whom he knew. In conversation, again, 
 there was scope for his wit and for that adorable 
 silliness in which an intellect incapable of foolishness 
 can bubble over ; but in conversation only the 
 pompous can be eloquent ; and of pompousness he 
 had not a grain. It was only when he lectured that 
 he could let loose all his rhetorical powers and yet 
 keep the explosive flash and exuberance of hi§ talk. 
 On informal occasions in his own class-room, his 
 delight in some absurdity would vent itself in that 
 strange noise, which was at once a laugh, a crow, 
 and a shriek. But, being never afraid of losing his 
 dignity, he never lost it ; and, for all his need of 
 sympathy, he neither flattered his hearers nor traded 
 on his charm. He was too completely absorbed in 
 the point he was making : and this — whatever it 
 w^as, from a subtlety of Euripidean psychology to
 
 Memoir xxxvii 
 
 a detail of syntax — seemed to everyone, because it 
 seemed to him, the only thing in the universe that 
 mattered for the moment. 
 
 Mr E. H. Marsh writes : 
 
 Did you hear his lectures on the Choephori} Those are 
 the ones I have the clearest recollection of. You know how 
 he used to sit, in a subdued frenzy of impatience, waiting till 
 everyone was there and seated, and how, if the noise of 
 settling down went on a moment after he had hoped it was 
 over, there was an agony, shown only by his martyred face 
 and the drumming of his pencil on the desk. There was 
 never any noise when once he had begun, and the high rich 
 shrillness of his voice came streaming out, under the closed 
 eyelids in his ivory face. We are not likely to see anything 
 more resembling the phenomena of inspiration. I find my 
 mental picture has completed itself with curls of pale blue 
 smoke from a tripod. 
 
 He could work us up into excruciating suspense, as when 
 he unfolded Ridgeway's theory of why Electra recognised 
 Orestes' hair and footmark. And how beautifully he told the 
 story of the man who had only time to write ' irdpeaTi ' before 
 he was overwhelmed by the mud avalanche ! It was all far 
 too exciting to take notes. I used to put a dot under each 
 word that he noticed, and he put everything so perfectly that 
 I scarcely ever found I had forgotten what the dots meant. 
 I was usually convinced by everything, and always felt at 
 least that, if Verrall's own theory was not certain, at any rate 
 all the others were impossible. 
 
 This description brings out what is quite true, 
 that a lecture by Verrall was definitely a performance, 
 prepared down to small details with an orator's sense 
 of effect. The performance, however, was not a 
 display of fireworks, but dramatic, requiring (as I 
 
 C2
 
 xxxviii Memoir 
 
 have said) the sympathy, and therefore the under- 
 standing, of the whole audience. This is not an 
 easy end to achieve in lecturing to a class which 
 covers the whole range of ability and knowledge 
 lying between the first and last divisions of a Classical 
 Honours list. To bring in the third class man, 
 elementary truths must be mentioned which were 
 known to the first class man years before he left 
 school. How to instruct the most backward without 
 boring the advanced, is a problem that few can 
 solve. Verrall managed it so cunningly that one 
 could never see how it was done ; he neither talked 
 over their heads, nor yet seemed to talk down to 
 them. It was partly that, in lecturing as in talking, 
 he had the art of thinking aloud and taking his 
 audience through all the processes by which he 
 reached his conclusion. Often he followed what 
 one may call a Ring-and-t he-Book method, repeating 
 the same thing again and again, but so as to put 
 a finer edge on it each time. This was, of course, 
 most delightful in ordinary talk, because then he 
 started without knowing himself where he would get 
 to : as he went on, the idea cropped up and sprouted 
 and branched and flowered under your eyes. His 
 wit was never expressed in the dry drawl of an 
 academic epigram ; his best jokes broke cover in the 
 heat of some excited discourse, and, once they were 
 sighted, he spared them no turn or double of the 
 chase. In lecturing, the excitement was even more 
 intense, for he only allowed his pack to scent the 
 quarry from afar, so as to give them their share in
 
 Memoir xxxix 
 
 the passion of pursuit as well as the joy of being in 
 at the death. 
 
 The following extract is from a letter written by 
 one of his most recent pupils, Mr J. R. M. Butler : 
 
 I think the first thing about Verrall's lecturing which 
 struck one coming from school was the way in which he 
 forced you to take no literary judgment for granted, but 
 to justify your opinions at first hand. He challenged every- 
 thing that occurred to you as a truism, and his paradoxes 
 could not be answered by stock arguments out of books. 
 And by discussing with you on equal terms — as he did in the 
 notes he scribbled on your papers — he gave you a self-respect 
 in literary things and made you ashamed of being dishonest. 
 
 That was one thing — forcing you to criticise. Another 
 was the desire his own strange theories gave you to discover 
 new and hidden things yourself. There might be endless 
 secrets lurking in the best-known places, and Classics became 
 a delightful and adventurous thing. 
 
 I don't think we believed very much what he said ; he 
 always said he was as likely to be wrong as right. But he 
 made all Classics so gloriously new and living. He made us 
 criticise by standards of common sense, and presume that 
 the tragedians were not fools, and that they did mean some- 
 thing. They were not to be taken as antiques privileged 
 to use conventions that would be nonsense in anyone else.... 
 
 He was good about keeping in touch with his class. 
 I remember once he sent for me to his house, to ask if 
 I could suggest any reason why he was not getting satisfactory 
 papers done, and if I thought he ought to make any change 
 in his own method. 
 
 It is interesting to compare this writer's ' I don't 
 think we believed very much what he said,' with 
 Mr Marsh's ' I was usually convinced by everything.' 
 But both letters equally show how little it mattered
 
 xl Memoir 
 
 whether this or that statement bore the cold light 
 of reconsideration. The point was to witness the 
 reaction of this astonishing intellect upon literature 
 which to him, and to all whom he made see it with 
 his eyes, was the subtlest form of art. He was, I 
 suppose, one of the first lecturers in Cambridge who 
 resolutely insisted on always treating the Classics as 
 works of art and not as masses of so much Greek 
 and Latin, from which samples of dubious grammar 
 could be extracted and held up with the warning : 
 * Not for imitation ! ' He was not, by modern 
 standards, a very learned man ; he knew the ancient 
 writings that deserve to be called literature up and 
 down, but he was a little impatient when he was 
 made to attend to archaeological lore. Not, of 
 course, that he either despised or neglected it ; but 
 his private name for it was 'stuffage.' And, as a 
 civilised man, with a preference for civilised products, 
 he disliked the grim remains of prehistoric savagery 
 which, as he felt, are now being pinned to the skirts 
 of Hellenism. What he loved to analyse was the 
 intended qualities of technique and design, and all 
 the unconscious effects of style. He realised that 
 a Greek play, for instance, must be interpreted 
 primarily from itself, not buried under a load of more 
 or less relevant learning, still less used as a text for 
 a general disquisition on grammar. This may seem 
 obvious enough ; but, if we compare his editions, 
 which in this respect are like his lectures, with the 
 commentaries of an older generation, we see that he 
 was one of the first who made it obvious. Many
 
 Memoir xli 
 
 generations of pupils got from him their first 
 revelation of literature as an art. At school, they 
 had necessarily — or so, at any rate, it used to be 
 considered — spent their time in struggling with the 
 difficulties of learning to read and write the ancient 
 languages. At that stage, the Classics are used as 
 textbooks ; and, while it is dimly apparent to the 
 schoolboy that as textbooks they leave much to be 
 desired both in subject and style, it is not always 
 possible for him to see that their authors had any 
 other purpose in view. In Verrall's lecture-room 
 the light broke upon them. Some speech in Euripides 
 which had seemed a dry tissue of commonplaces 
 suddenly began to glow with passion and flash with 
 wit ; and as he lit up the large outlines of the piece 
 and showed how one part gained its meaning from 
 its relation to another, undreamed-of prospects 
 opened out. 
 
 Verrall's manner in reciting poetry naturally pro- 
 duced different effects on various temperaments. I 
 quote two extracts from letters which, as it happens, 
 refer to the same occasion. Mr H. A. Hollond 
 writes : 
 
 Too rare, we thought, were the occasions on which he 
 exercised his wonderful gift of reading aloud in order to 
 illustrate his point. No word-music has left with me so vivid 
 a memory as his rendering of Horace's Solvitur acris hiems. 
 I feel, as if it were yesterday that I listened, the passionate- 
 ness, at its beginning, of the sentence : Pallida mors aequo 
 pulsat pede... dying away into the whispered sibilant at its 
 close. A long pause, and then the sad but calm philosophy : 
 O beate Sesti, vitae summa brevis spent nos vetat inchoare 
 
 1
 
 xlii Memoir 
 
 longam ; and last of all the courageous change of mood into 
 the forced gaiety about young Lycidas. On that day Verrall 
 must have been giving us much of himself. 
 
 Another correspondent says : 
 
 He gave you a new idea of the importance of language 
 and sound in poetry, by chanting Horace, Catullus, etc. It 
 was often fantastic, as when, in Solvitur acris hiems, he said 
 ' regumque turres ' meant the approach of thunder, or that 
 ' Hadria ' in Donee grains eram ought to be laughed — ' Ha- 
 ha-ha-dria ' ; but it made you believe in the power of subtle 
 word-building. In reciting Vivamus, mea Lesbia, he showed 
 wonderfully how the change of sound meant change of 
 thought. I think the finest of all was when he declaimed 
 Creusa's monody in the Ion, at a University Extension 
 lecture; Kai...oros ■/ . . .dfjia6rj<; was extraordinarily dramatic. 
 
 In teaching composition to individual pupils, 
 Verrall had nothing in common with the school 
 of teachers whose favourite words are 'grinding' 
 and 'grounding.' Instead of setting himself to fake 
 a goose till it should pass, in the examiner's eyes, for 
 a swan, he was content to help the creature to see 
 what it was to be a swan, and, with gentle derision, 
 when it was deserved, to make it feel what a goose 
 it had been. But, if he pounced upon stupidity, he 
 watched eagerly for every symptom of intelligence, 
 and encouraged it with generous praise. 
 
 He had, writes Mr Marsh, the most scrupulous sense 
 I have ever known of the value of exactness in language. 
 There was nothing academic in this : no one took more 
 pleasure in novelty or audacity of expression, if, on close 
 inspection, it was justified and held water; but he would 
 never tolerate an approximation to the meaning required. 
 I suppose very few of the greatest writers always came up to
 
 Memoir xliii 
 
 his standard ! Do you remember how particular he was 
 about not misleading the reader (except, of course, on 
 purpose, when he loved it) as to the form a sentence was 
 going to take? Any such inelegance would cut him like 
 a knife. 
 
 He had beautiful manners as a teacher, and never made 
 one feel a fool when one wasn't. When he did, it was 
 delightfully done. I remember dining with him once, as 
 a mature wise second-year man, to help with three freshmen. 
 After dinner modern novels were discussed, and one of the 
 freshmen contributed his view as follows : ' Well, Dr Verrall, 
 I must avow that in my opinion Edna Lyall is the first of 
 contemporary novelists.' Verrall was taken aback for a 
 moment ; but then : * Well, if you think so, you're quite right 
 to avow it, you know...^?-. ..' (the long high ur, between a 
 laugh and a crow). His sense of justice made him approve 
 the young man's candour, but his humour couldn't resist the 
 handle given him by the unlucky word ' avow.' 
 
 Another pupil says : 
 
 I think that Verrall's personal teaching was exactly com- 
 plementary to the stimulus of his written work. Whereas the 
 latter, whether convincing or not, teaches one to try to see 
 what the author really felt and meant, conversely his teaching 
 of composition showed one how to shape one's mind to the 
 formal mould on which our ideas must be impressed if they 
 are to seem to be the utterances of Greeks or Romans. So 
 many scholars who write admirable Greek or Latin are quite 
 unable to point out to a learner what are the features which 
 cause it to be idiomatic. They can tell you intuitively ' That 
 won't do,' but not why it won't do. Verrall's own Greek and 
 Latin did not always seem to have quite the quality of that of 
 some of his colleagues ; he sometimes strained the language ; 
 but he seized unhesitatingly the merits of another's fair copy 
 and showed exactly why an effect in the English piece, of 
 emphasis for example, could only be produced in the transla- 
 tion by a device of a completely different character. For
 
 xliv Memoir 
 
 instance, he was continually pointing out the use which can 
 be made in Latin of alliteration, of the repetition of an 
 important word, of compact phrasing. In correcting a verse 
 composition he would urge us to look at the structure of the 
 piece as a whole and to avoid uniformity and monotony of 
 rhythm, whereas so many teachers content themselves with 
 indicating the faults — grammatical, syntactical or metrical — 
 of each particular sentence. 
 
 I have the feeling — do you know whether anyone shares 
 it with me ? — that Verrall, however enthusiastic he was about 
 Greek literature, nevertheless understood the Latin mind 
 better, or, at any rate, Latin modes of thought and expression. 
 
 The extremely difficult, and often impossible, 
 task of translating English poetry into Greek or 
 Latin taxed all his peculiar powers, and he rejoiced 
 in it. If he had been imprisoned till such time as 
 he should have rendered (say) Stubbs' Select Con- 
 stitutional Charters into Greek Iambics, I believe he 
 would have emerged in a surprisingly short time, 
 refreshed in spirit; and Stubbs' treatise would thence- 
 forth have been better reading than it is. This 
 curious form of art, beloved of English scholars, 
 provided him with just what he most liked — a strictly 
 
 1 1 limited problem, only to be solved by the utmost 
 stretch of dexterity and the finest sense of word- 
 values in both languages. His versions were 
 
 ^ brilliant. He used to say that he was not sure 
 that composition could be taught in any other way 
 than by the master's letting the learner see how he 
 did it himself. 
 
 To his colleagues, Verrall was generous and 
 considerate. Staff meetings are commonly dull
 
 Memoir xlv 
 
 enough, but if he was present, there was sure to be 
 fun. One never knew what he would say next, or 
 how his whimsical humour would twist the banalities 
 of business into every shape of absurdity. He had 
 not, at least when I knew him, the temper of a 
 reformer. The traditional system of teaching 
 satisfied him ; within its limitations he found room 
 to do all that he wanted. But, though he seldom 
 initiated changes, he never obstructed, but always 
 listened readily to others who recommended them, 
 giving his support, if he was convinced. He was, 
 all his life, steadfast to Liberalism in politics, and 
 the passion that went with his reason was quickly 
 fired in any cause of justice or liberty; yet he had in 
 his composition something of the conservative. With 
 an instinct for ceremony, he always liked a decency 
 to be observed. This feeling for tradition was 
 connected with his devotion to the College to which 
 he gave his best work. It is hard to tell how far it 
 is possible for one man to affect the life of an 
 institution where the generations come and go in 
 rapid succession ; but it is certain that Verrall's 
 influence will be felt so long as anyone who knew 
 him remains connected with Trinity College, and 
 his lectures and books have permanently affected 
 the tradition of teaching. 
 
 Before ending, I should like to be allowed to 
 recall one of his most exquisite and characteristic 
 performances. It was at a College meeting which 
 met in January, 1906, to discuss certain changes 
 in the papers set in the Fellowship Examination at
 
 xlvi Memoir 
 
 Trinity. The old ' Philosophy papers ' were to be 
 remodelled and their range extended to include 
 questions on the general aspects of science, art and 
 history. Literature, for some reason, had been 
 omitted from this list. I believe Sir Richard Jebb 
 f had intended to move for the insertion of it ; but 
 I before the meeting was held, Sir Richard was dead, 
 I and Verrall took up the proposal in his place. He 
 I had been deeply moved by J ebb's death. He 
 delivered his speech sitting in his chair (he was too 
 crippled to stand) and, as usual, with closed eyes. 
 Ostensibly, he was outlining the sort of questions 
 about literature that might be set in the examination ; 
 they were questions, it is true, that few but himself 
 could have thought of, much less answered. But as 
 the speech went on, his audience began to realise 
 that they were listening to a funeral oration, though he 
 said nothing about Jebb, and I doubt if he mentioned 
 his name. It was, perhaps, the most audacious 
 thing that Verrall ever did. College meetings are 
 extremely impatient of long speeches, and he ran 
 the risk of being interrupted at any moment by 
 an appeal to the chairman to check his irrelevancy. 
 Who else could have trusted his power of holding 
 such an audience, and who else could have succeeded ? 
 The climax came when he contrived to recite a 
 passage from Massillon's Oraison Funebre de Louis 
 le Grand, in which a quotation from the Vulgate is 
 several times repeated : Qtmndo interrogaverifit vos 
 Jilii vestri, dicentes : Quid sibi volunt isti lapides f 
 His pronunciation of French was singularly pure ;
 
 Memoir xlvii 
 
 his musical intonation rendered the melancholy pomp 
 of echoing sounds and slow, massive rhythms ; and 
 he made the recurrent Quando (pronounced, of 
 course, with the French nasal n and a long-drawn a) 
 strike through them like the passing bell with its 
 harsh clang at long intervals : Quando inter rogaverint 
 vos filii vestri, dicentes : Quid sibivolunt isti lapidesf 
 
 With my correspondents' help, I have tried to 
 give some idea of Verrall's influence on the men he 
 taught. But, as I look back, what fills me with 
 admiration and gratitude is not so much his teaching 
 as the splendid spectacle of his triumph over physical 
 pain. He will live in my memory as he was in the 
 last years of his life, when his mind seemed to have 
 withdrawn inside the last defences, gallantly defying 
 the encroaching disease that had crippled and 
 emaciated his frame. Beaten back from point to 
 point, as one activity after another was taken from 
 him, he kept the flag flying as gaily as ever. When 
 his body failed him he treated it with contempt. 
 He thrust his infirmity aside as a tiresome accident, 
 about which the less said the better. Latterly, his 
 mind was like a fire that smouldered through hours 
 of bodily exhaustion, and then would suddenly shoot 
 up in flashes of white flame. As soon as this 
 happened, his illness was utterly ignored. It was 
 impossible to remember that every movement was 
 pain ; he made one forget it, as he forgot it himself. 
 There was in this no hint of an heroical pose. 
 Probably no man of equal rhetorical gifts ever so 
 
 ' s 
 
 j
 
 I 
 
 s 
 
 V 
 
 xlviii Mernoir 
 
 completely kept rhetoric out of his life. Nor was it 
 resignation ; but rather the magnificent pride of the 
 spirit setting its heel upon the flesh. 
 
 Much as his friends have learnt from him, it 
 is above all for this last conquest of a courageous 
 and noble mind that they will always hold his memory 
 in reverence and honour. 
 
 F. M. CORNFORD. 
 
 Numerous other letters received from former 
 pupils confirm one point or another of Mr Corn- 
 ford's impression. One writes : — 
 
 There was no one of his generation at Cambridge who 
 meant so much as he did to us younger men. It was not 
 only the immense pleasure and stimulus of hearing him 
 either on his own subject or any subject, but besides that 
 his constant kindness and readiness to give sympathy and 
 advice were a very great help and a thing for which I shall 
 always be grateful. 
 
 And another, to the same effect : — 
 
 My intellectual debt to him is greater than I can estimate ; 
 but even more than the brilliance of his mind, it was the 
 fearless directness of his character and the inspiring ardour 
 of his enthusiasm which endeared him to those who had the 
 good fortune to come under his influence. 
 
 Another writes that, to know Verrall 'meant an 
 awakening all round, and something of " the rapture 
 of the forward view." ' 
 
 In 1889 Verrall published his Agamemnon of 
 Aeschylus, and in the general judgement the book
 
 Memoir xlix 
 
 at once established him in a position of supremacy 
 among the poet's interpreters. The position was 
 confirmed later by his Choephori and Eumenides, 
 but it was assured to him by this work alone. As 
 an instrument of expression, for flexibility and range, 
 for delicacy and subtlety as for force, the Greek 
 language confessedly has no rival. To judge from 
 his work on Aeschylus, Verrall would seem to have 
 come near to grasping its utmost possibilities. By 
 a fearless recognition of the boldness and pregnancy 
 of Aeschylean phraseology, and of the freedom of 
 Aeschylean syntax, he enlarged our conceptions of 
 the whole language. He, so to speak, extended its 
 reach. We may sometimes be tempted to think 
 that he claims for Aeschylus a latitude of expression 
 which the poet would not have claimed for himself, 
 but when that occurs, it may serve to give us pause 
 before condemning, to recall that Tennyson in a 
 certain place wrote 
 
 'and felt the boat shock earth.' 
 
 If he thought of strike (with the poet, however, 
 la parole suit la pensde), he rejected it, to give us 
 something peculiarly Tennysonian and better, if we 
 can see it, — but, like much in Aeschylus, at once 
 audacious and ' unexampled ' ! On the other hand, 
 Verrall's surer judgement rejected not a few ex- 
 travagances, both of language and grammar, which 
 less discriminating editors would father on the poet; 
 nor could he be beguiled into believing that what 
 was on universal principles false in taste, might 
 
 I s
 
 1 Memoir 
 
 nevertheless be Aeschylean. Again, not once nor 
 twice nor thrice, his mere command of the language 
 enabled him to give meaning to what others had 
 found untranslatable or unsatisfactory ; and in many 
 a familiar passage his more than Oedipodean acute- 
 ness as a solver of riddles detected a point or allusion 
 which had hitherto been missed. Not a few passages 
 he restored to sense by no more than a change in 
 the punctuation or re-division of the words. 
 
 But the unique value of the book consists in 
 something more than all this. If any new thing 
 was less expected than another in connexion with 
 the Agamemnon (as with the Septem), it was the 
 discovery that our conception of the plot was in 
 essential features wholly wrong. Verrall declared 
 that it was, and propounded a view which fell on 
 the classical world like a bomb-shell. 
 
 No edition known to me ventures to tell without disguise 
 the story of the Agamemnon. I do not of course mean 
 merely that the story told is not correct. This would be 
 to assume the very point we are to discuss. I mean that 
 the story, as it is commonly understood, is not told without 
 concealment and practical misrepresentation. 
 
 With cruel frankness he makes good these 
 editorial laches. He relates the story as it ' is 
 still, with whatever dissatisfaction, accepted,' and 
 goes on to ask, 
 
 Is it possible that the story above told really represents 
 the intention of Aeschylus? That a man who had spent 
 most of his life in writing plays, when he came to lay down the 
 lines of his supreme masterpiece should encumber himself at
 
 Memoir li 
 
 starting with absurdities so glaring, so dangerous, so gratuitous, 
 as this fable exhibits in all its parts ? 
 
 To sweep away any lingering traces of delusion 
 as to what the story amounts to when seen in its 
 naked simplicity, he adds : — 
 
 As I see no reason to think that the popular mind in 
 the time of Aeschylus was in this respect very different from 
 the popular mind now, I will offer a Socratic parallel, not the 
 less just because it is homely. — Scene : A room in London. 
 Time : Early morning. Servants discovered preparing the 
 room. From their conversation it appears that the master 
 of the house has been for some time in Africa, and that 
 the conduct of his wife, in relation to a person too often 
 received, is causing them much anxiety and a strong desire 
 for the master's return. They have learnt with satisfaction 
 that their mistress is expecting soon to hear that he is on his 
 way home. A telegram arrives for the lady, who presently 
 appears and informs them that it is from her husband, and 
 was despatched last night from Lake Nyanza. Being asked 
 by a servant whether there is a telegraph at the Lake, she 
 explains that the wires have just been extended so far by 
 the result of her husband's enterprise. He intends to return 
 forthwith. She wonders what sort of breakfast he is having 
 in Africa, and hopes that he will not meet with any accident 
 on the road back. The table is laid, and the lady is sitting 
 down to it, when there is a ring at the bell. Enter the 
 husband's courier, who announces that his master is detained 
 for a few minutes at the terminus, but is coming immediately. 
 He dilates upon the discomforts of the overland route and 
 the breaking-down of an Italian train. The husband follows 
 accordingly. He describes the success of his explorations. 
 The lady receives him with rapture but without any surprise. 
 In conversation with him she says nothing of the telegram, 
 nor he to her. And so ends the first scene. — Now, at this 
 point of the story we might either know the key to the riddle 
 
 V. L. E. d
 
 Hi Memoir 
 
 (if the author were dramatizing a popular novel) or we might 
 wait for the solution in the sequel. But what would be the 
 bewilderment and the dismay of the audience if it should 
 prove that there was no solution, and that the mysterious 
 telegram, introduced with so much circumstance, had no 
 bearing on the story whatever ! I submit that this is not 
 the way in which the crowns of the drama may be won, and 
 that the most rigorous proof should be required before we 
 assume that it ever was. (p. xxiv.) 
 
 Verrall's solution of the tangle will be found in his 
 Introduction, which, as also all the Euripidean 
 volumes, can be readily understood and enjoyed 
 even by those who have no knowledge of Greek. 
 The power with which the exposition is worked 
 out, and the skill with which the threads of the 
 argument are gathered and combined, alike from 
 innumerable hints scattered through the play and 
 from the necessities of the whole situation, are 
 beyond praise. It is a masterpiece of induction, 
 and we are left staggered, but convinced and 
 satisfied. The play which we had admired for 
 little more than the great scenes which follow the 
 king's entrance — being a little bored (to tell the 
 truth) by the want of dramatic interest in what 
 precedes, despite the magnificence of the poetry — 
 we now see has a close-knit unity which keeps us 
 enthralled from beginning to end. 
 
 It is notoriously difficult to lay aside deep-rooted 
 prejudices, and accordingly this account of the plot 
 was greeted by some with murmurs of disapproba- 
 tion or doubt ; but it may be safely prophesied that 
 the Byzantine view of the Agamemnon will not again
 
 Memoir liii 
 
 find a serious champion. There is one little dilemma 
 to be faced by such a defender at the outset. If 
 Verrall's story is not what Aeschylus had in his 
 mind, then some Maxwell 'sorting demon,' with a 
 literary turn, must have been having the time of his 
 life, as he popped in note after note of his own leit- 
 motivy in faultless accord, under the poet's very 
 nose ! The suggestion, made some three years ago, 
 that an interval of several days may be assumed 
 between vv. 493 and 494, is sufficiently condemned 
 by an examination of the text at this point, — to say 
 nothing of other serious objections. 
 
 In the editions of the Choephori (1893) ^'^^ 
 the Eumenides (1908) there is the same luminous 
 exposition of details, fresh evidence of that charac- 
 teristic faculty of seeing in one view the drama and 
 its purpose, the same skill in presenting it to the 
 reader, the same incomparable dramatic instinct. 
 Who but Verrall could have offered such a solution 
 as he offers of the problem raised by the sudden 
 conversion of the Erinyes ? 
 
 Ath. {coming closer). I am not to be wearied of pleading 
 with thee what is good [etc.]. 
 
 {She is now in the midst of them, and speaks as for 
 them alone.) 
 
 Ah, if sacred Suasion be holy unto thee, the appeasement 
 
 of my tongue, the soothing... {Her voice ceases to be heard, 
 
 and for a while she seems to commune with them in silence. 
 
 They become suddenly calm, and show in their behaviour a 
 
 great awe.) 
 
 ...So thou wilt belike abide;... 
 
 We cannot be sure that this is the manner in 
 
 d?2
 
 liv Memoir 
 
 which the wondrous reconciliation was effected, but 
 who would not be profoundly grateful for the con- 
 ception, and that, if only because it inspired the 
 following noble and eloquent passage ? 
 
 Now here [in the conversion of the Erinyes] is a solution 
 indeed, a solution not of any particular casuistical or judicial 
 problem (we may notice that after the trial the specific crime 
 of Orestes is ignored completely), but of the universal problem, 
 the discordance of principles, the antithesis of Right against 
 Right. If the Inexorable can indeed be pacified, then there 
 is somewhere One Right, one universal principle, something 
 upon which ' the fallen house of Justice ' may be builded 
 again. Let us but know ivhy this pacification takes place, 
 upon what grounds and by what persuasions, and we shall 
 be admitted to the very secret of things. We turn to the 
 speech which effects all this, but — no explanation appears. 
 At a certain point it is assumed by Athena that the ad- 
 versaries are content, as they prove to be ; it is assutned 
 that this content proceeds from something just said or done. 
 And just before stands — an unfinished sentence. Ah, if 
 sacred Suasion be holy imto thee, the appeasement of my 
 tongue, and the soothing.... Thou, then, tvilt belike abide, or 
 if it should be thy will not to abide — but that is not their will. 
 A hiatus (it would appear), an injury singularly deplorable, 
 has obliterated the words of the Eternal and the wisdom of 
 the Most High. But never (we may hope) were they written. 
 It is a gap which Aeschylus could no more have filled, nor 
 would, than Dante could have told us what was the song 
 which, on the Mount of Purgatory, hailed the forgiveness of 
 sin and the restoration of man : ' I understood it not, nor 
 here is sung the hymn which that folk then sang.' Not 
 Aeschylus, nor any one who had felt, like him, that ' burden 
 of thought ' which can be lifted away only in the name of 
 Zeus, would pretend to tell us what thought or thing it was 
 with which Athena won the Erinyes. He that would put it 
 in words, in his own words, would not be worth our hearing
 
 Memoir Iv 
 
 Such a conciliation, if it is to command faith, cannot and 
 must not be explicit. Something there must be which by 
 men is not understood nor even heard, some place for the 
 miraculous, mystic, and incomprehensible, (p. xxxii.) 
 
 And this — 
 
 Indeed the strongest reason for believing, provisionally 
 and until the contrary is proved, that the mystic and 
 miraculous conversion of Vengeance to Grace, the sudden 
 revelation that, in some incomprehensible way, Vengeance 
 and Grace are the same, punishment and prosperity parts 
 and aspects of one Providence, was the thought, substantially 
 new and original, of Aeschylus himself, is its profound un- 
 likeness and immense superiority to the common religious 
 products of the Greek mind. It has the stamp of Aeschylus, 
 perhaps the only Greek who shows a strong genius for 
 religious invention, not metaphysical, or moral, or artistic, 
 or imaginative, or ritual, or anything else but religious. 
 The conversion of the Erinyes is a religious idea, awful, 
 dark, and intensely satisfying, (p. xHii.) 
 
 In the summer of 1890, at the request of the 
 Syndics of the University Press, and with a view- 
 to the performance of the play at Cambridge in the 
 coming term, he prepared and pubHshed an edition 
 of the Io7i. The commentary, though intentionally 
 limited in scope, gives an adequate explanation of 
 the text, and as was to be expected, throws new 
 light on a considerable number of passages. The 
 dialogue is admirably translated into blank verse, 
 with occasional deviations into the rhyming couplet, 
 and the lyric portions of the play are rendered in 
 a variety of metres adapted to the subject-matter of 
 each. The following is the version of the passage
 
 Ivi Memoir 
 
 beginning "^Xl Havos OaK-rjixara {v. 492), and for spirit, 
 music, and rhythm, would seem to be hardly capable 
 of being bettered. The reader will observe the 
 felicity with which the sad note of the thrice- 
 recurring w of the original (^11 Iiav6<i...St Tidv... 
 w fieXea) is echoed in the burden of the version. 
 
 O Athens, what thy clifif hath seen ! 
 The northward scar, Pan's cavern-seat, 
 With rocks before and grassy floor, 
 Where dancing tread the Aglaurids' feet 
 Their triple measure on the green 
 
 Neath Pallas' fane, 
 Whene'er the god in his retreat 
 Times on the reed a quavering strain : 
 
 O Athens, what thy cliff hath seen ! 
 It saw the ravish'd maiden's pang. 
 The babe she bare to Phoebus there 
 Cast to the talon and the fang. 
 There on the same insulting scene ! 
 
 Of any born 
 'Twixt god and man none ever sang, 
 None ever told, but tales forlorn. 
 
 O Athens, what thy cliff hath seen ! 
 
 The chief interest of the book, however, lies in 
 the Introduction, where we have the earliest of 
 those studies in the work of Euripides by which 
 Verrall attained what is perhaps his greatest and 
 most lasting distinction. For these studies have 
 achieved a result which, in all its circumstances, is 
 unique in the history of literature. The admiration 
 of the poet's contemporaries for his dramas knew 
 no bounds, and the judgement of the whole ancient 
 world, Greek and Roman, ranked him, howsoever
 
 Memoir Ivii 
 
 different the quality of his genius, as the equal of 
 Aeschylus and Sophocles. His right to the place 
 was not discussed, it was taken for granted. In 
 the popular favour he stood far above his two 
 great rivals, and the picture drawn by Browning 
 in Balaustions Adventure, though heightened by 
 poetical expression, represents in spirit an en- 
 thusiasm which was universally felt. In contrast 
 to the ancient estimate of Euripides, the modern 
 world, since the Revival of Learning, while not 
 blind to his merits as a poet, found him as a play- 
 wright, in almost every one of his extant works, 
 frankly beneath contempt. He was a botcher and 
 bungler, a mere patcher of theatrical quilts which 
 lacked all unity of design. 
 
 Story ! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir ; — 
 
 or at least he could not tell it intelligibly, or without 
 making it impossible and ridiculous. When he 
 seemed to be desiring to rouse the hearer to 
 emotion, with incredible perversity or stupidity he 
 would kill the nascent feeling by a dash of the 
 grotesque. Even when he had touched on some- 
 thing like success, he would spoil his own effect, 
 and you would have the preposterous god or 
 goddess contradicting from the clumsy machine all 
 you had been led to expect, and failing to unravel 
 the tangled skein after all. In a word, what stood 
 for the plot did not work ; and the dubious thing 
 which he offered as drama, though 'good in parts,' 
 as a whole failed to please, if it did not actually
 
 Iviii Memoir 
 
 stink in the critical nostril. It was left for Verrall 
 to do for the whole work of Euripides what he had 
 done for the Aga7nemnon and Septem — to solve the 
 enigma by recovering the old-world point of view, 
 and to justify the ancient enthusiasm by showing 
 that we have before us not only sane, peculiarly 
 sane, art but also a supreme artist. 
 
 Thus in the prologue of the Ion Hermes tells us 
 that Apollo intends to guide the day's events in a 
 particular way : in the sequel these events go their 
 own way, in defiance of the intention of the prophetic 
 god. In the course of the play the Oracle makes 
 a certain statement about Ion's parentage, but cir- 
 cumstantial evidence, furnished by the Delphian 
 authorities themselves, convinces the boy later that 
 the statement is false. When he realises the contra- 
 diction his simple soul is ' horrified ' — -for the oracle 
 must have lied — and he turns to enter the shrine 
 and ask Apollo for an explanation. At this moment 
 Athena appears above the temple roof. The 
 following account is no travesty of the speech which 
 she proceeds to deliver ; Verrall has only added the 
 touch of an inimitable raillery to the common im- 
 pression of its effect. 
 
 Such being the knot to be solved, let us now consider the 
 solution. To say that Athena cuts it, without untying, is to 
 pay her an unmerited compliment. She does not touch the 
 nodus at all. Whatever she said, how could she ? This 
 goddess, or this part of a goddess (for we seem not to be 
 shown the whole of her, though we doubtless see all that 
 there is), this divine Trpoo-wTroj', heaved up by the machine, is 
 herself a walking or rather a swinging fallacy, a personified
 
 Memoir lix 
 
 ignoratio eknchi\ A goddess of Olympus, and a goddess 
 'rising above' the Delphian temple, is to give bail for the 
 Oracle of Delphi ! And where then is the security for herself? 
 As is the speaker, so is her speech. It ignores the question, 
 and Ion bluntly tells her so. More than half of it is spurious 
 legend, complimentary to Athens but nothing to the matter. 
 In the other half she repeats, point for point and almost 
 without change, the explanations which Creusa has already 
 offered in vain, and which now fall the flatter after exposure. 
 Her apology comes to this : ' Yes, the facts are precisely as 
 you can hardly believe. You, Ion, are the son of Creusa and 
 Phoebus, who is indeed the selfish, brutal being that, on that 
 hypothesis, he has been freely called. (In fact it is because 
 he is ashamed to show himself, that I am here.) He did tell, 
 and through his oracle, the lie in question ; his motive, if that 
 mattered, was no better, but a trifle worse, than Creusa has 
 said ; and he does propose to save his credit by the quirk 
 which has been treated with such contempt. As to the 
 question asked, whether then the Delphian oracle is worthy 
 of credence or not, I do not choose to answer directly ; but 
 I leave you to suppose, if you please, that it is not. I have 
 only to add, that (since Ion will grow up into an excellent 
 father and hero of the Ionian race) all this is of no importance, 
 and you may all go happily home, convinced that revelation 
 is a fraud, and faith a delusion. And of this there is no 
 shadow of doubt, no possible, probable shadow of doubt, — 
 for I am Pallas Athena ! ' 
 
 No wonder that she produces no effect ! (p. xvii.) 
 
 Clearly this sort of thing won't do. By ' this 
 sort of thing' I mean, not the echo of the Gondoliers 
 — by which, as one grieves to learn, a certain 
 Professor was inexpressibly shocked — but Athena's 
 speech. It won't do. But what if it was not meant 
 to do ? What if in fact the Ion conveys, beneath 
 a veil thin enough for sharp eyes to pierce, a
 
 Ix Memoir 
 
 deliberate attack upon Delphi and the Olympian 
 religion? Euripides was notoriously a 'free-thinker': 
 by putting the gods on the stage he persuades the men 
 that they dont exist, is the complaint of a woman in 
 Aristophanes. Strip the play of its divine prologue 
 and finale, and what have we left ? A perfectly 
 constructed drama in which every point tells, and 
 from which every supernormal element is absent, 
 but at the same time a drama in which the purely 
 human story is, with consummate skill, so handled 
 that Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of 
 truth. As the pious Ion perceives to his dismay, it 
 can lie. This discovery, however, which forms the 
 climax of the play proper, has more than a polemical 
 purpose ; it contributes to the pathos of the story no 
 less than the sufferings and anguish of Creusa. For 
 the shattering of a cherished religious faith is in itself 
 a sufficiently tragic experience, and this Euripides 
 plainly meant to show. Indeed, it is Ion's case, 
 rather than Creusa's, which would seem to have 
 lain closest to the poet's heart ; and I hazard a 
 conjecture that as he drew this touching picture of 
 the boy's distress, he was recalling the shock which 
 had ' confounded ' his own youthful soul when its 
 early beliefs were swept away. 
 
 Such is the scope and purpose of the Ion, as 
 revealed by Verrall's analysis : it is an impeachment 
 of Delphi and all its works. The attack is covert, 
 indeed, but it is so by preference as much as by 
 necessity, for Euripides had in his armoury a better 
 weapon than open invective, and one in the use of
 
 Me^noir Ixi 
 
 which he is unsurpassed. He knew the deadly effect 
 of innuendo, and Verrall aptly sums up his method in 
 a quotation from George Meredith, prefixed to one 
 of his later essays : — ' Yes, dear Van ! that is how 
 you should behave. Imply things.' And though 
 two gods are introduced to deliver speeches, this is 
 no more than a concession to convention, and one 
 that the poet is little loth to make, for the prologue 
 and finale which he maliciously claps on to his 
 already finished play are so contrived as to give the 
 coup de grace. As our bloodthirsty old drill-sergeant 
 used to say at bayonet practice, 'one half-turrn to 
 the right makes the wound incurable.' 
 
 What contemporaries of Euripides, who shared 
 his views, might have thought and said of such 
 a Day at Delphi as the Ion represents, Verrall has 
 embodied in an epilogue. This epilogue is dramatic 
 in form, and represents a conversation between the 
 Delphian authorities and some Athenians who have 
 been silent spectators of all that has taken place. It 
 extends to no less than twenty-two pages, and is in 
 its kind a perfect work of art ; one knows not whether 
 to admire most its originality as a conception, or its 
 brilliance and truly Athenian wit. To read it is to 
 receive a positive thrill of intellectual delight. When 
 the talk is over, the scene is suddenly changed : we 
 are in Athens, and the curtain has just fallen on 
 Euripides' play. 
 
 Ati Athenian {sadly). And is there then no god, O 
 Euripides ? 
 
 Euripides. Neither that do I say, or have said, O
 
 Ixii Memoir 
 
 Chaerephon. Whence, or from whom, came to that feast 
 the detecting dove ? Who sent that dumb creature to save, 
 at the cost of her own * incomprehensible agony,' the Ufe of 
 the kind-hearted lad who was sorry to kill the birds? Apollo, 
 Chance, Providence? We know not. Only, for the gods' 
 sake, do not think that it was the ravisher of Creusa. 
 
 Which is more likely ? That this frame of the heavens, 
 this truly divine machine, is governed by beings upon whom 
 our poor nature cries shame ; or that a knot of men, backed 
 by prejudice and tempted by enormous wealth, should try 
 by cunning to keep up a once beneficent or harmless delusion 
 for a little while longer ? 
 
 For a little while ! Xpona /mcv to. twv Qtwv ttws, cis tc'Xos 
 8' ovK daOevrj. Good night. Let us go to our chambers and 
 pray, to Pallas, if you must, to Zeus if you will, but let us 
 pray at least to the Father of men and women and beasts 
 and birds of the air, and give the verdict according to our 
 hearts, (p. xlii.) 
 
 The recognition of a double purpose in the 
 Euripidean drama forms the basis of the work by 
 which Verrall has vindicated Euripides as a dramatic 
 genius inferior to none, and has rehabihtated indi- 
 vidually more than half-a-dozen of his plays. He 
 contends that while, as a poet, Euripides found 
 sufficient material for his art in the play of human 
 passion and the tangle of life, he saw his way to 
 combining with this an attack on a theology and 
 religious practices which were, in his judgement, 
 both puerile and harmful, — or rather that the latter 
 was his life's purpose, which the stage was em- 
 ployed to subserve. In the conjunction he con- 
 trived to strike a tragic note such as had not 
 been heard before, and the skill with which he has
 
 Memoir Ixiii 
 
 united the two aims leaves him in this respect 
 absolutely without a rival. If we did not see this 
 before, it is because we did not know the man 
 Euripides as Verrall has taught us to know him ; 
 we had failed to recognise the full import of hints, 
 and more than hints, scattered broad-cast over his 
 works. And if any do not now recognise or care 
 for this contexture of tragedy and wit, then Euripides 
 did not write for them ; but the enjoyment of those 
 who do, comes as near as the lapse of ages will 
 permit to that of the poet's contemporaries and the 
 ancient world. All thanks and homage to him who 
 has placed the key to it in our hands. 
 
 After the publication of the Choephori in 1893 
 the Euripidean studies were resumed, and bore fruit 
 in Euripides the Rationalist, which appeared in 1895. 
 The Alcestis, Ion (for a second time) and Iphigenia 
 in Taurica are subjected to an exhaustive analysis, 
 and the general result is to establish that view of 
 Euripides as a dramatist which is indicated by the 
 title of the volume, and which had already been 
 shown to be the only view accounting satisfactorily 
 for the phenomena presented by the Ion. 
 
 Of the novel and startling view taken of the 
 Alcestis no extract or summary could give a fair 
 presentation ; the whole essay, which extends to 
 128 pages, must be read (and more than once) 
 before the cumulative force of the argument can 
 be appreciated. The many who agree with the 
 conclusion arrived at, regard the essay as a
 
 Ixiv Memoir 
 
 marvellous example of inductive reasoning. On 
 the other hand, a reader who for any reason 
 hesitates to yield assent, finds himself again con- 
 fronted with the ' sorting demon ' ; for the play is 
 manifestly open to Verrall's interpretation, while 
 from beginning to end it does not present a single 
 refractory feature. Let us make a supposition. 
 Let the story of Alcestis' restoration to life be 
 familiar, but let Euripides' play exist only in one 
 recently discovered copy, still kept secret in the 
 pocket of a happy digger in the Fayum who is a 
 convert to the rationalist view of the poet's work. 
 Let him be challenged to sketch the plot of a 
 covertly rationalistic play on the Alcestis story, 
 after the manner of his Euripides, and let him for 
 answer produce the Alcestis that we have. Can it 
 be doubted that by the general vote he would be 
 pronounced to have scored a triumphant suc- 
 cess ? 
 
 L In this same year the honorary degree of Litt.D. 
 
 jl was conferred upon Verrall by Trinity College, 
 Dublin. As will be seen, the Public Orator did 
 justice both to his theme and to himself. 
 
 Maximo meo gaudio ad vos duco Arturum Woollgar 
 Verrall, virum excellenti ingenio, doctrina, industria prae- 
 ditum, qui nomen meruit nulli secundum eorum quibus 
 Cantabrigia pristinam famam hodie auget. Postquam spatia 
 Academica felici eventu percurrerat, totum se dedit Musis 
 quarum ingenti percussus amore sacra fert. Studiis Aeschyleis, 
 Euripideis, Horatianis operam praecipuam adhibuit. Fabulas 
 Aeschyli tres, Euripidis Medeam edidit. Non huius est 
 tritam criticorum orbitam sequi. Pennis non aliis datis
 
 Memoir Ixv 
 
 negata temptat iter via 
 coetusque volgares et udam 
 spernit humum fugiente penna. 
 
 Novas verborum gemmas eruere hunc valde iuvat, novosque 
 flores decerpere unde prius nuUi velarunt tempora. Locis 
 obscuris lampada ingenii admovit, sententiamque latentem 
 saepe elicuit quae alios omnes fugerat. Quid? Nonne ab 
 inferis Alcestin revocavit, Stesichori exemplo damans ovk 
 t(TT erv/Mo^ Xo'yos outos, negavitque in fabula earn decessisse, 
 ut vulgo perhibetur, argumentisque baud spernendis senten- 
 tiam suam stabilivit ? Ut ingenio dives, ita animo candido 
 ingenuoque est : et ipse pro me testari possum quam libenter 
 auxilium ferat iis quos idem pratum metentes viderit. 
 
 Musarum pio sacerdoti interpretique sanctissimo Arturo 
 Woollgar Verrall plaudite. 
 
 The year 1897 marks the beginning- of the 
 declension in bodily health. There was a definite 
 attack of arthritis, from which, in spite of a visit 
 to Bath, he never made a complete recovery, and 
 the smaller disabilities in the use of the hands and 
 limbs began. In 1899 the Tutorship terminated, 
 and in the summer he went for a ' cure ' to Strath- 
 peffer, but without obtaining any appreciable benefit. 
 The next years were uneventful. He pursued 
 further the study of Euripides, and in 1902 wrote, 
 in the Alps, the essay on the Heracles which was 
 afterwards published va Four Plays. In the October 
 term of 1903 he delivered a lecture on the Birds. 
 This was the first of those, given to a general 
 audience, which came to be looked forward to as 
 an invaluable prelude whenever afterwards a Greek 
 play was to be produced in Cambridge. I regret
 
 Ixvi Memoir 
 
 that I can give no account of it beyond saying 
 that it was astonishing for brilliance and originality, 
 and that the enthusiasm of the audience knew no 
 bounds. It was found necessary to repeat the 
 lecture for the benefit of many for whom there was 
 no room at the first delivery. The later lectures on 
 the Eumenides (1906) and the Wasps (1909) live 
 no less, I believe, in the memory of those who were 
 fortunate enough to hear them. The following 
 extract from a report of this last in the Cambridge 
 Review will give an idea of the delightful humour 
 which from moment to moment convulsed with 
 laughter an audience of nearly a thousand people 
 in the Examination Schools. 
 
 The Old Man Philocleon is trying to adorn his con- 
 versation with the Uterary anecdote in the true style of the 
 day. Unfortunately his fund of stories all date from the 
 glorious but old-fashioned times of Peisistratus, and they 
 are marred by the fact that in his drunkenness he ends 
 off each anecdote or allusion with a piece of scurrility. 
 Dr Verrall explained how much of the humour of this 
 scene was lost to a modern audience. For instance, we 
 can hardly raise a smile at the lines 
 
 Simonides and Lasus once were rivals : 
 
 Then Lasus says, ' Pish, I don't care,' says he. 
 
 Now, the point lies in the fact that Simonides and Lasus 
 are two poets of the Peisistratid period, and reference to 
 them sounded grand in the ears of Aristophanes' contem- 
 poraries. We might produce something of the same effect 
 if we imagined a dispute about the fare between a Festive 
 Person and a Cabman. The Festive Person or F. P. 
 attempts to silence the Cabman with the following remark : 
 
 Great Galileo through his optic glass 
 
 Saw once, as I see now, a silly ass.
 
 Memoir Ixvii 
 
 A Policeman summoned says F. P. must pay. Says 
 F. P., 
 
 Carlyle thought not. He closed a like dispute 
 With Ruskin by the observation ' Scoot ! ' 
 
 The Policeman says there must be an end to this. 
 'Ah,' says the F. P., 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton knew that Science springs 
 From careful notice of the simplest things, 
 And when he rode a coach would never fail 
 To keep an eye upon the horse's tail. 
 He learn'd a lesson which I recommend 
 To your attention: 'All things have an endJ 
 
 In other matters also is the humour of Aristophanes not 
 obvious to a modern audience. The Introduction of the 
 Chorus is really a piece of delicate parody. In Tragedy 
 it had frequently been the custom to introduce a Chorus 
 speculating and questioning as to the absence of the hero. . . . 
 In the Wasps the Old Dicasts come searching for their 
 absent brother, who appears, be it remembered, out of the 
 chimney-pot. Throughout there is sly imitation of Tragic 
 Drama. We may partly reproduce the effect in English, 
 by introducing somewhere a parody of English poetry — say 
 of Locksley Hall: 
 
 What constrains him, 
 
 What detains him? 
 
 May the cause of his arrest 
 
 Be some injury? Or how, sirs, 
 
 If he have mislaid a vest. 
 
 Shirt, or coat, or even trousers? 
 
 Or perchance the mischief's root 
 
 Is a tightness of the boot? 
 Comrades, let us wait a little, while as yet 'tis early morn, 
 Wait, and if our friend should want us, help him with the 
 shoeing-horn. 
 
 v. L. E. e
 
 Ixviii Memoir 
 
 Verrall was an active member of the Greek Play- 
 Committee, and in connexion with the performance 
 of the Eutnenides in 1885 and the Oedipus Tyrannus 
 in 1887 executed the tour de force of rendering the 
 lyrics of these plays into rhymed verse which could 
 be sung to Stanford's music, composed for the Greek 
 text. 
 
 In 1905 the work of the poet who had now 
 perhaps become his favourite — at least among the 
 ancients — was examined afresh in Four Plays of 
 Euripides. The plays discussed were Andromache, 
 Helen, Heracles, Orestes. With characteristic apt- 
 ness in the selection of titles, the essays are headed 
 respectively, 'A Greek Borgia,' 'Euripides' Apology,' 
 'A Soul's Tragedy,' 'A Fire from Hell.' The first 
 essay and the two last — these last especially — were 
 hailed as masterpieces of analysis and criticism ; and 
 the volume, together with Euripides the Rationalist 
 and the essay on the Bacchants afterwards published, 
 has no doubt settled the main questions of Euripidean 
 interpretation for all time. The view propounded 
 of the origin of the Helen is, from its nature, not 
 such as could be more than suggested. The true 
 answer to the riddle may lie elsewhere, but even 
 if we remain unconvinced, and regard Verrall's 
 solution as no more than a clever guess (which 
 would be to do it great injustice), we are far from 
 regretting that the essay was written. There is the 
 expected originality in the way in which the whole 
 problem is handled, the familiar but always astonish- 
 ing 'ingenuity,' with humour, fancy, playfulness, wit,
 
 Memoir Ixix 
 
 tout ce quil y a de plus Verrallesque, — in a word, 
 Verrall in his lighter vein at his very best. The 
 following passage gives one of the many reasons 
 which compel him to regard the play as a jest. 
 
 Whether the cardinal miracle of the phantom Helen and 
 its astounding disappearance could by any treatment be made 
 credible to the imagination, we need not speculatively enquire. 
 What is certain is, that Euripides does not so treat it. Never 
 for an instant do the personages of the drama exhibit the 
 sort of emotion which such an event must be expected to 
 excite. They neither speak nor behave as if it were real. 
 A single quotation will settle the point. Where then is the 
 evil thing which was sent to Troy instead of you ? asks 
 Theoclymenus of Helen when he has been informed that 
 Menelaus has died at sea. The cloud-image, yoti mean, she 
 answers ; // vanished into air. Ah Priam ! sighs the amiable 
 prince, and ah Troy town, destroyed for nought I — and then 
 without another word on the subject they settle the details 
 of a funeral ceremony for Menelaus. We do no disrespect 
 to the author of such a dialogue, but conceive on the 
 contrary that we are following his clear direction, when we 
 say that it recalls not even the midsummer night's dream, 
 but another famous dream, which I need not specify, in 
 which the cat asks what became of the baby. ' It turned 
 into a pig.' ' I thought it would,' says the cat, and closes 
 the incident by vanishing, (p. 46.) 
 
 The following, from 'A Soul's Tragedy,' is a 
 remarkable piece of writing, independently of its 
 bearing on the play. 
 
 But among the conceivable factors of legend, among the 
 many ways in which things might come to be believed though 
 they never happened at all, or at any rate not as they were 
 related, there was one upon which Euripides, whether guided 
 or not by any predecessor, had meditated, as a tragedian, 
 
 e2
 
 Ixx Memoir 
 
 with special and specially justifiable interest. That the topic 
 of madness and mental aberration was attractive to him, is 
 noted by ancient critics, and is indeed obvious.... [Illustrations 
 are here given from various plays.] 
 
 These, however, were but steps on the road. It is in 
 the Heracles that this conception is applied on the largest 
 scale, with most skill, with most insight, and most profoundly 
 tragic effect. For power, for truth, for poignancy, for depth 
 of penetration into the nature and history of man, this picture 
 of the Hellenic hero may be matched against anything in 
 art. 
 
 Although both in fact and in fiction madness is most 
 commonly associated with crime, this conjunction is neither 
 the only one in which mental extravagance is actually found, 
 nor that in which it may with most profit be studied and 
 depicted. Great hearts, as well as great wits, are to madness 
 near allied ; and among the consecrated benefactors of man- 
 kind there are perhaps few whose intellectual constitution 
 appears to have been particularly sane, while in many the 
 vigour of delusion has been proportional to the general 
 strength of the faculties and character, Euripides needed 
 not to look beyond the market-place of Athens for a 
 personality scarcely more distinguished from the mass by 
 acuteness and benevolence than by eccentricity of spiritual 
 imagination. Nor are these higher types of aberration 
 exempt, any more than the vulgar sort, from fluctuation 
 and intermittence. The madman of genius or virtue may 
 swing, like another, between sanity and insanity, and may 
 be great in both. Now let us suppose (and the supposition 
 is surely entertainable) that in the dark ages of superstition 
 in the very dawn of civilized life and intelligent speculation, 
 there arose a hero physically, mentally, and morally far 
 superior to his contemporaries, but curst from his birth with 
 a taint in his blood, a recurrent and progressive malady of 
 the brain. Let such an one, in ardent and solitary medita- 
 tion, have so far purged his notions of man and God from 
 the grossness and barbarity around him, as to grasp at least
 
 Memoir Ixxi 
 
 in vision the hint of philosophies still unbuilt, the principles 
 of creeds and religions long after to be preached and estab- 
 lished. All this has been achieved by many a 'madman,' 
 whose thoughts, by the favour of circumstances, have passed 
 into circulation and are famous to this day; and doubtless 
 (as Euripides justly divined) it has also been achieved by 
 many and many another, whose voice was not heard nor 
 even raised, and whose meditation effected nothing but the 
 uplifting of his own heart and the ennobling of his own life. 
 Let our hero have done his duty faithfully up to and beyond 
 the demand and standard of the time, loving his home 
 and family, devoted in friendship, fighting gallantly and 
 victoriously for the little struggling community to which he 
 belonged. Let him have lent his services without stint to 
 the largest and most beneficial enterprises which the state of 
 things presented, to penetrate as pioneer the uncleared and 
 unknown waste, peopled in reality by savage beasts and men, 
 and supposed to be the haunt of monsters yet more terrible. 
 By the vulgar herd, nay, even by his nearest and dearest, 
 the source and nature of his greatness will be ignorantly 
 misconceived, and most of all by those who admire most. 
 On all sides he will hear his praises translated into language 
 which he loathes and contemns. His superiority to others 
 will be explained by the fiction of a divine parentage, which 
 to his better thoughts will seem a revolting blasphemy. His 
 genuine achievements will be enlarged and travestied by a 
 huge appendix of incongruous falsehood. And worst of all, 
 because of that taint in his blood, because he is not only 
 inspired but also, in the plain and gross sense of the word, 
 mad, because he has his hours of darkness as well as his 
 hours of illumination, he himself will sometimes lend his 
 authority to confirm the tales which he abhors, will repeat 
 the abominable nonsense with which his ears are fed, pro- 
 claiming himself that which he knows he is not, and painting 
 the good deeds of which he is proud, with the crude, 
 disgusting colours of folly and misbelief. In process of 
 time he will become aware that he does these things.
 
 Ixxii Memoir 
 
 Long before anyone else, he will know how it is with him. 
 Self-hatred and self-suspicion will aggravate the inner mischief 
 from which they spring. And at last, upon the occasion of 
 some special excitement, in a few moments and without any 
 effective warning, the thin partition of his brain will break, 
 and a burst of cruel fury will exhibit the benefactor of 
 humanity, for some horrible hours, in the secondary but 
 not less genuine character of a fiend. Such is the Heracles 
 of Euripides, (p. 139.) 
 
 As a constructive study in the psychology of madness, 
 based not upon observation but on intuition, and for 
 sheer eloquence, the passage stirs in me a greater 
 admiration than I dare express. 
 
 In 1 9 10 was published The Bacchants of Euri- 
 pides, a volume which contains seven other essays 
 besides that which gives its name to it. The 
 essay on the Bacchae is a worthy companion of 
 those on Euripides previously published, both in 
 power of analysis and in literary grace and vigour. 
 But it was much more than a mere addition to its 
 predecessors ; it formed the indispensable completion 
 of the work which Verrall purposed to do in connexion 
 with the poet. Other remaining plays could easily 
 be brought into line by application of the principles 
 of interpretation already laid down, but in the Bacchae 
 the miraculous, or seemingly miraculous, appears not 
 in a detachable prologue or finale, but interwoven 
 with the whole action of the play. What counten- 
 ance, if any, Euripides intended to give to the cult 
 of Dionysus, had long been a matter of debate with 
 scholars ; to Verrall the question naturally presented 
 itself in another form. What puzzled him was the
 
 Memoir Ixxiii 
 
 presence of the miraculous element at all, and its 
 contradiction of the poet's practice in other plays 
 offered a problem which he had long felt demanded 
 solution before he could himself consider his views 
 to be securely established. After much pondering 
 this last riddle was guessed, and with the discovery 
 that in the Bacchae the miraculous was after all 
 intended to be no more than clever wizardry or 
 the familiar exaggeration of hearsay, his last difficulty 
 was removed, and the rationalistic interpretation of 
 the Euripidean drama was rounded off into a har- 
 monious whole. 
 
 As a critic Verrall possessed certain qualities of 
 mind which gave his work a peculiar differentia. 
 In their combination and in the degree of their 
 development, so far as I am aware, he stands alone. 
 Perhaps the most distinguishing mark of his genius 
 was his power of reconstructing his author. I do 
 not mean his author's works, nor his author as a 
 writer, but as a man. In the case of modern or 
 even ancient writers, if a moderate amount of 
 biographical information is available, such recon- 
 struction is not difficult, and the thing has often 
 been admirably done ; but when this information 
 is wanting or negligible in quantity, as in the case 
 of Aeschylus and Euripides, the task is of an 
 altogether different nature. Verrall's rare insight 
 and inductive powers, brought to bear on little 
 more than the text of these authors (on no more 
 in the case of Aeschylus), enabled him to trace the 
 workings of their minds as it were from within, and
 
 Ixxiv Memoir 
 
 so to embody with some measure of completeness 
 the Hving, thinking man behind. He seemed to 
 know them as one knows a personal friend, the 
 natural current of whose thoughts one can in given 
 circumstances divine, and of whom one can affirm 
 with some certainty (as in deciphering, say an 
 illegible passage in a letter) that he would, or would 
 not, have written this or that. To this power of 
 psychological reconstruction we are indebted for a 
 more profound and comprehensive conception of 
 the genius and aims of Aeschylus, and for a pre- 
 sentation of Euripides which we can well believe 
 touches close upon the truth. In the long monologue 
 put into the poet's mouth in Etiripides the Rationalist 
 (pp. io6 ff.) we feel that we are listening to a living 
 man, in comparison with whom the personages in 
 Landor's Imaginary Conversations are hardly more 
 than marionettes. Clever, again, as is the New 
 Lucian of H. D. Traill, the author has all the 
 advantage that comes from the selection of modern 
 characters and well-known public men. Verrall did 
 better with much less promising material. It was 
 because Euripides had come to be alive to him, no 
 less than by critical observation directed to the play, 
 that he was led to his wonderful interpretation of 
 the Heracles : if this man handled the story at all, 
 this is the Heracles he would have pourtrayed, and 
 being Euripides, he could not have pourtrayed any 
 other. Indeed, it was, I think, because Verrall thus 
 realised Aeschylus and Euripides as living men that 
 he bestowed so much loving labour on their works.
 
 Memoir Ixxv 
 
 Though the aims of the two poets were so widely 
 divergent, he felt a sympathy, at once moral and 
 intellectual, with both ; he came to know each as 
 being, according to his lights, a man of noble 
 purpose, worthy. In the art of Sophocles, great 
 as was of course his admiration of it, his interest 
 was of a totally different kind, and comparatively 
 weak. Even if the field had not been already 
 occupied by the great scholar whose genius was 
 so completely in sympathy with that of the poet, 
 he would never, I believe, have been drawn to 
 producing an edition of Sophocles. The mere 
 artist, 
 
 eu/coA09 [L^v evoao , euACoAo? o e/cet, 
 
 awakened no enthusiasm ; there was no man to be 
 discovered behind the artist, or at any rate no man 
 whom Verrall would greatly care to know. 
 
 Another predominant trait, in respect of which 
 I find it difficult to imagine that any man could 
 surpass him, was his extraordinary intellectual alert- 
 ness. In the ordinary relations of life it was a 
 characteristic which could not escape notice, so that 
 if Athena (not she of the /on) had chanced to 
 meet him on one of the many likely occasions that 
 Cambridge society affords, she could hardly have 
 helped quoting herself in gracious approbation, 
 
 ovveK iiT'qTy)^ iaori kol dy^^tVoo? /cat e)(€(f)poiV. 
 
 The company would have agreed that each epithet 
 was deserved, but they would have had little doubt 
 that it was the ay^ivoLa which brought the line to
 
 Ixxvi Memoir 
 
 her mind. Of his published work it is one of the 
 most conspicuous features. He seems, as he read, 
 to have missed nothing. No point, unnoticed by 
 others, but which the author must have intended, 
 would pass unobserved (there is a striking instance 
 in the note on vTrriacr/xa at Aesch. Ag. 1263); no 
 text which obscured such a point would remain 
 unchallenged. That he was always right, his most 
 whole-hearted admirers would be the last to contend; 
 but it is his distinction, that in the whole range of 
 classical literature and elsewhere he saw much, very 
 much, that predecessors and contemporaries alike 
 had failed to see. Few men can have raised or 
 discussed more problems in familiar fields, and few 
 can have contributed more to their solution ; and if 
 we cannot always discern what he discerned, well — 
 the eye can only see what it has the power of seeing. 
 Thus a reviewer failed to see, even when it was 
 pointed out, the effect produced by the turn which 
 Agamemnon gives to his term of address at Ag. 905. 
 The following note left him unconvinced. 
 
 Ai^Sas -yc'vceXov : a significant opening. Clytaemnestra was 
 the daughter of one false wife and the sister of another, and 
 her husband, who calls her by no other name or title but 
 this, — neither ' wife,' nor * queen,' nor even ' Clytaemnestra,' 
 — gives her to know that he has not forgotten the fact. 
 
 This would make our Aeschylus too clever ! 
 
 Problems were indeed a meat that Verrall's soul 
 loved ; and if it were the modern fashion to give 
 additional surnames to others than sailors and 
 soldiers, in commemoration of notable achievement,
 
 Memoir Ixxvii 
 
 one might venture to affirm that he would be known 
 to posterity as Problematicus. Leaving out of ac- 
 count the minor questions which confront the editor 
 of an ancient author at every turn, more than half 
 of Verrall's published work, which runs to twelve 
 volumes, is addressed to the solution of problems 
 properly so called. No less than five, from Greek, 
 Roman, and Italian literature, are discussed in the 
 present volume. The whole of his work on Euri- 
 pides, excepting the Medea, centres round one great 
 problem, and we must include under this head the 
 Studies in Horace, and the Introductions to the 
 Septem, Agamemnon, and Eumenides. In The 
 Bacchants of Euripides we have essays on The 
 First Homer, the Mutiny of Idomeneus (a little 
 discovery of his own), the Death of Cyrsilus, and 
 Christ before Herod ; and a problem is the starting 
 point of half the papers now republished in Collected 
 Classical Studies. The variety exhibited by the list 
 is significant : whenever and wherever in his reading 
 he came across what in the language of private life 
 he called a ' boggle,' he could not rest until he had 
 made an eflfort to get to the bottom of it. The 
 origin of the essay on Christ before Herod is typical. 
 He happened, during a holiday in the country, to 
 be reading Loisy's ponderous tomes on the Synoptic 
 Gospels, and discovered that a difficulty of some 
 importance had been raised, but not solved, in 
 connexion with the two Trials. The subject was 
 entirely outside his usual range, but as he said to me 
 with a whimsical air of apology 'there was the boggle.'
 
 Ixxviii Memoir 
 
 Another faculty he possessed, which must have 
 been observed by all who knew him or have read 
 his books : he had the genuine dramatic instinct. 
 He showed it in the way in which he narrated a 
 story or anecdote in conversation, in his lectures 
 (it is noted in Mr Cornford's account), and in the 
 form in which he cast his essays and many an 
 editorial note. He does not jump to his point, 
 but skilfully prepares the ground piece by piece, 
 so that the reader shall grasp the situation as it 
 is in all its bearings ; and when expectation has 
 been sufficiently aroused, and the suspense long 
 enough maintained, then and not till then, he 
 launches his conclusion, with proportionately telling- 
 effect. In his editorial work the faculty proved of 
 special service, and not only in the matter of verbal 
 interpretation. He never forgot — it seems odd to 
 have to note this — that a Greek play is a thing that 
 was once actually pei'-formed — a Bpafxa, and the 
 details of the stage-management were always present 
 to his mind. Yet, as he found it necessary to ob- 
 serve, the ancient dramas have been read and 
 interpreted as though a dramatist who wished to 
 produce a play on the stage, had nothing more to 
 do than write his dialogue and place the MS., without 
 explanation, in the hands of the actors. Even with 
 our own dramatists readers would fare ill if the 
 printed book contained no more than the words 
 to be spoken ; and how much turns on effective 
 stage-management, and sometimes solely on that, 
 needs no saying. In numerous passages of the
 
 Memoir Ixxix 
 
 plays with which he has dealt, Verrall has saved 
 us from error, or enlarged our understanding of 
 the scene, simply by supplying necessary stage- 
 directions. He has pointed out how much could 
 and must have been expressed on the Attic stage 
 by grouping, by gesture, by a mere change of 
 attitude or position, by intonation and emphasis. 
 
 Evidence of yet another fruitful gift is given 
 by five essays in the volume of Collected Classical 
 Studies, and by many an occasional observation in 
 other parts of his works. He had a peculiarly 
 delicate ear for rhythm. The essays referred to 
 are that on Eur. Andr. 655 f.. The Latin Sapphic, 
 The Metrical Division of Compound Words in 
 Virgil, A Metrical Jest of Catullus, and On a 
 Metrical Practice in Greek Tragedy. Each was 
 born of that unerring instinct for musical balance 
 in language which is illustrated by many passages 
 in his own prose and verse, and each is a master- 
 piece of constructive criticism. So imperfectly 
 were the rules for the senarius of Greek Tragedy 
 understood, that though the two lines in the 
 Andromache had been suspected, no one had 
 thought of rejecting them decisively, as Verrall 
 does, on metrical grounds alone, and the essay 
 forms a valuable guide for numerous other passages. 
 The conclusions arrived at in the two last essays 
 must have awakened some dismay in the hearts of 
 not a few who had found delight in writing Latin 
 hendecasyllabics or Greek iambics, and if any such 
 composers have not read them, they would do well
 
 Ixxx Memoir 
 
 to let their Muse rest until they have ! For they 
 will find — what they will find. Besides these essays 
 he wrote the articles on metre in the Companion to 
 Greek Studies and the Companion to Latin Studies. 
 To the latter he also contributed the article on 
 Latin Literature to the end of the Augustan period. 
 Some original and valuable observations on rhythm 
 were also made in the Clark lectures. 
 
 Mr Cornford, who gives expression to the 
 universal verdict, has spoken of Verrall's excep- 
 tionally stimulating power as a lecturer. The same 
 quality is found in his books. It is not merely 
 that he writes with conviction, as many others have 
 written : he does this, and it is part of the secret of 
 his force, but he does more. Some authors write 
 as though chiefly anxious to maintain an opinion, 
 for their own satisfaction, as it were. Most write 
 as though their business were done, as perhaps it 
 is, when they have delivered their message, — with 
 an air of indifference as to whether the message be 
 accepted or not. Verrall wrote as one concerned 
 to convince, to convince you, the individual reader. 
 There is a personal air about it all. It is as though 
 he began by saying, ' Here is something that interests 
 me immensely, and I want to interest you too.' He 
 wishes to do his reader a friendly service : ' Let me 
 introduce you to Euripides ; you will find him worth 
 knowing.' It is an effect which few writers, and 
 very few editors of the ancient classics, manage to 
 produce. In Verrall's case, while even those who 
 have not known him are sensible of the impression,
 
 Memoir Ixxxi 
 
 with those who have, it is reinforced by a pecuUar 
 experience. He wrote easily and naturally, and so 
 vividly does the literary style represent the man, 
 that sentence after sentence produces the illusion 
 of hearing the written words spoken by the living 
 voice, with all the familiar intonations. Vitality of 
 this kind stimulates, and not merely with the stimulus 
 of awakened interest and the sense of refreshment. 
 It encourages, and has already encouraged not a 
 few, to fresh study on the same lines. For Verrall 
 never left the impression that he had exhausted his 
 subject, but rather that there was more left to be 
 done, that the familiar ground is still full of buried 
 treasure. 
 
 The two following extracts from obituary notices 
 refer to his work on Euripides. 
 
 It is largely due to Dr Verrall that the reputation of 
 Euripides has been rehabilitated ; at present owing to his 
 work and to Professor Murray's translations, the last of the 
 three dramatists occupies in the esteem both of the critics 
 and the public a position which, if foreshadowed by Milton's 
 view of him, would have been surprising to many of his 
 readers in the middle of the last century. {The Times, 
 June 19, 1912.) 
 
 The scholars had long considered Euripides' plays un- 
 satisfactory ; but by riveting their attention upon details they 
 were able to hush the fact up, and continued in a mechanical 
 way to acclaim him the equal of Aeschylus and Sophocles. 
 Verrall's first business was to tear aside the veil, and to show 
 that, if the scholars' view of such a play as Ion was correct, 
 honest opinion must pronounce its author hopelessly stupid 
 and incompetent. This, however, led to a dilemma, for such 
 excellent judges as Aristotle had a very different opinion of
 
 Ixxxii Memoir 
 
 Euripides. It is well known how. . . Verrall proposed a solution 
 for this dilemma. Whether it is the correct one is a highly 
 controversial question ; but it may be asserted with some 
 confidence that the correct solution will be found upon 
 Verrall's lines. In any case the dilemma itself remains 
 and can no longer be shirked; and it was this power of 
 forcing a clear-cut intellectual problem upon those who 
 would always prefer not to face one that was the great merit 
 of his mind. {Spectator, June 22, 191 2.) 
 
 I do not quite understand the writer in the 
 Spectator when he says that the correct solution 
 of the Euripidean dilemma will at any rate * be 
 found upon Verrall's lines.' Setting aside certain 
 professedly conjectural suggestions duly marked as 
 such, and which do not concern the main question, 
 Verrall's ' lines ' are not speculative but logical, and 
 it is difficult to see how they could lead to any but 
 his own conclusions. That these conclusions should 
 not yet be generally accepted, need cause no surprise, 
 nor should the fact tempt younger students to mis- 
 trust their own unbiassed judgement of Verrall's 
 arguments. Busy men read books with haste, and 
 so may fail to appreciate their force, and towards 
 middle age most men notoriously find it difficult 
 to change their views on any subject. No doubt, 
 also, there will always be those who cannot see that 
 a door must be either open or shut. Moreover, we 
 British cherish an inborn mistrust of all subtlety 
 of mind and of some forms of originality, and a 
 writer who combines these qualities with what we 
 call 'brilliance,' is likely to find his very merits a 
 bar to the ready acceptance of his message. If
 
 Memoir Ixxxiii 
 
 Verrall had written in France for French scholars, 
 their only hesitation, I fancy, would have been as 
 to which to do first — kiss him on both cheeks or 
 lay wreaths on their copies of Euripides. There 
 is a question which we ought to ask ourselves, and 
 which some of us have not asked, and it is this. 
 If the ancient and (may I add ?) correct estimate 
 of Euripides as a consummate artist was ever to 
 be recovered, was this recovery likely to be made, 
 considering the conditions of the problem, except in 
 a manner at once daring, original, subtle, brilliant, 
 startling or even shocking ? Was the riddle for 
 any chance guesser ? Was less than a Verrall 
 needed, and were zve not to expect to be astonished 
 by the answer f Some critics would seem hardly to 
 have realised the magnitude of the issue, and the 
 fundamental change of view which any solution of 
 the question must involve. The very strangeness 
 of the solution of such a problem is in its favour, so 
 long as the steps by which it is reached are logically 
 sound, — as Verrall's are. The Spectator also speaks 
 of the correctness of Verrall's solution as ' a highly 
 controversial question.' This may be so, but one 
 looks in vain for the controversy. It is now twenty- 
 three years ago that Verrall first blew his trumpet 
 and entered the lists on Ion, and three times since 
 he has sounded his challenge and thrown down his 
 glove. And all have praised his high port, and the 
 beauty of his armour, and the skill of his manege, 
 and some have muttered that bold though he be 
 and ful of sotyl devys, yet are there many weak 
 
 V. L. E. /
 
 Ixxxiv Memoir 
 
 joints in the rich harness, and that his is not to 
 be the victor's garland, but no man has taken up 
 Verrall's gage. Meanwhile the onlookers are 
 drawing their own conclusions, and for myself I 
 take leave to express without reserve the conviction 
 that before this generation has passed away, Verrall's 
 view of the work of Euripides will be the accepted 
 view, and that mere murmurs of disapproval will 
 cease to command attention. 
 
 From 1904 the arthritis remained practically 
 stationary for about five years. He could walk 
 with assistance, and save for this and some other 
 slight physical disabilities, lived the usual life, doing 
 his ordinary work, and going out in his trailer or 
 for drives in a carriage. Journeys by train were 
 accomplished without great inconvenience, and 
 during this period he paid many visits to friends, 
 and travelled to various places to lecture. It may 
 be interesting to note that Aristophanes on Teftnyson 
 in the present volume originally formed part of a 
 lecture delivered at Newcastle. 
 
 In the October term of 1909, besides the ' historic 
 lecture ' on the Wasps already mentioned, and the 
 Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, the substance 
 of which appears in the present volume in the essay 
 entitled The Prose of Sir Walter Scott, Verrall 
 delivered also the first six of the Clark Lectures. 
 Six more were given in the following term. To 
 illustrate his main theme, the Victorian Poets, the 
 following authors were selected : Tennyson, Robert
 
 Memoir Ixxxv 
 
 Browning, Matthew Arnold, D. G. Rossetti, and 
 Swinburne. The lectures were given in a large 
 double lecture-room at Trinity, accommodating 
 about 200 people. The room was always filled 
 to its utmost capacity, and the men among the 
 audience greatly outnumbered the women, 'a fact 
 most rare in the history of Cambridge lectures on 
 English Literature or on Art.' A characteristic 
 feature of the lectures, to which he himself attached 
 great importance, was the reading aloud of a con- 
 siderable number of selected passages. I quote the 
 following from the Cambridge Review : — 
 
 Dr Verrall's method of reading is unique and over- 
 whelming. His voice is under the most wonderful control 
 for shades of pitch, volume, and expression. In Greek we 
 have long known it, we know it in English now. Dr Verrall's 
 reading gives the hearer something, many things, that no 
 criticism in the world, not even Dr Verrall's own, could 
 ever give. The poems are suddenly alive. No one who 
 heard 'Blush it thro' the East,'... will ever forget the 
 experience. 
 
 It is to be regretted that these lectures are preserved 
 only in the memories of those who had the good 
 fortune to hear them, but from their very nature 
 they were incapable of being committed to paper. 
 Verrall himself would make no attempt to give 
 them to the press, for he held that in such lectures 
 the living voice must always play an indispensable 
 part. This opinion he expressed in the Inaugural 
 Lecture delivered from the English Chair in May, 
 191 1. In a report of that lecture the Cambridge 
 
 /2
 
 Ixxxvi Memoir 
 
 Review writes of him as speaking to the following 
 effect : — 
 
 All languages, and English more than most, depend 
 largely upon effects of stress and intonation, which are 
 incapable of reproduction in writing, but in conveying which 
 the viva vox can be of great service : an instance is the 
 much quoted and much misunderstood line, ' We needs 
 must love the highest when we see it.' Especially is this 
 the case with poetry written in an elaborate and difficult 
 metre — for instance, Shelley's Ode to the Skylark. 
 
 The appointment to the King Edward VII 
 Professorship of English Literature, which is made 
 by the Crown, came in February, 191 1. The chair 
 was founded at the end of 19 10 by Sir Harold 
 Harms worth, who expressed a desire that in pro- 
 moting the study of ' English Literature from the 
 days of Chaucer onwards,' the Professor should 
 follow * literary and critical rather than philological 
 and linguistic lines.' Verrall was the first holder 
 of the office. Before accepting the appointment 
 he consulted his medical man and a few friends. 
 There had been some increase of the arthritis in 
 the spring of 19 10, and he was carried upstairs to 
 the two last Clark lectures, after which time he 
 never again walked. In the summer, however, 
 there had been a satisfactory recovery, and the 
 medical verdict was that there was no apparent 
 reason why the present condition might not be 
 maintained for a considerable time. His friends 
 were unanimous in urging acceptance of the ap- 
 pointment. The universal opinion was indeed
 
 Memoir Ixxxvii 
 
 expressed by the Master of Trinity at the * Annual 
 Gathering ' soon after Verrall had passed away ; 
 he said that no one who had heard the Clark 
 Lectures could doubt that Verrall was the proper 
 person to be the first King Edward VII Professor. 
 Twelve lectures on Dryden, the only course de- 
 livered, were given from the English chair in the 
 October term of the same year. They were marked 
 by the expected originality and freshness of treat- 
 ment, and though the difficulties of delivery were 
 considerable, showed no least falling off in power. 
 The notes for the lectures have fortunately been pre- 
 served, and these are so full and in such form as to 
 be suitable for publication. It is hoped that they 
 may soon appear. 
 
 All who have known both Verrall and his books, 
 agree upon one point, that the fascination of his 
 literary work, great as it is, was surpassed by his 
 personal charm. The following is a sample of many 
 letters received by Mrs Verrall : 
 
 Your dear husband had for me an irresistible attraction 
 from the first day I got to know him when I was an under- 
 graduate, and the attraction which he exercised on me was 
 only that which he had for everyone who knew him.... I have 
 never forgotten, nor can I ever forget, his kindness to me in 
 the early years after I had taken my degree. 
 
 It was my own happiness to enjoy the closest 
 intimacy with him in a friendship extending over 
 half a life-time, and perhaps no man knew him 
 better. What such a friendship was to me would
 
 Ixxxviii Memoir 
 
 add to his praise if it could be told, but I can only 
 record here that during all the time that I knew 
 him, I was conscious of an ever increasing admira- 
 tion and affection. To know him was to like him, 
 to know him well was to love him, — and for all 
 that he was. One did not have to make allowances, 
 for there were no contradictions in the character, it 
 was rounded, harmonious, beautiful. The extra- 
 ordinary subtlety of the mind was united to a nature 
 of rare simplicity, utterly devoid of ostentation and 
 pretence, and without the least tinge of vanity. He 
 never even exhibited such a modest pride in his 
 achievements and distinctions as would have needed 
 no excusing, and I am sure he did not feel it. 
 When he was elected to the English Chair, his 
 crowning University distinction, his one thought 
 was of the things he would now have an opportunity 
 of saying. He was also transparently sincere, and 
 few can have known a man so completely unselfish. 
 Easily roused though he was even to excitement 
 when holding forth on some matter which greatly 
 interested him, his usual manner was extremely 
 gentle, the natural outcome of a kindly and affec- 
 tionate disposition. His sympathy was instinctive 
 and peculiarly real, and his interest in the fortunes 
 of his friends seemed greater than in his own, if 
 indeed they had not become his own. If you 
 went to his house on a visit, he would inquire par- 
 ticularly about each member of the family, asking 
 for details, and this not out of mere politeness, but 
 because he wanted to know. Even in the case of
 
 Memoir Ixxxix 
 
 strangers or those who were no more than acquaint- 
 ances, news of a misfortune touched a chord of real 
 feeling, and as his swift imagination vividly pictured 
 how things must be with the sufferers, he actually 
 experienced, I believe, something like what he 
 would have felt had the trouble fallen upon himself. 
 It was a literal cru/u-Tra^eta. I have myself observed 
 this many times, and instances will occur to others 
 who knew him. Thus, in a letter written home 
 from Chamonix, there is a quite long account of the 
 sorrows of a poor man who had lost a mule ; and 
 another letter written from Normandy depicts the 
 desolation of a ' personally conducted ' party of 
 tourists who had missed connexion with their con- 
 ductor, with almost as much concern as if he had 
 been one of them. A letter from Strathpeffer tells 
 how sorry he was for a young bride who was being 
 married, 'Scottish fashion,' in a sort of open shelter 
 in the hotel garden, in full view of the residents, 
 and how relieved he was to learn afterwards that 
 she ' didn't mind a bit ! ' His love for children was 
 uncommon in a man. He understood them and 
 their ways, and found great delight in watching and 
 talking to them. How generous he was of his time 
 and of his counsel, many an old pupil has testified, — 
 how he would 'put himself out ' to do a man a kind- 
 ness. Thus one correspondent recalls an occasion 
 when ' he carried me off to Brighton with him for a 
 change, when I was in bad health before my Tripos'; 
 and few of his friends are not his debtors for some 
 service out of the common.
 
 xc Memoir 
 
 Not the least of his charms was his exquisite 
 courtesy, which was not, as it is so often, just a 
 veneer, but natural and spontaneous. No doubt it 
 was the mark of sincerity which made the following 
 incident live in the mind of the writer. 
 
 ...I have a very vivid recollection of the first time 
 Dr Verrall spoke to me. It was in my second year, and we 
 had rooms on adjoining staircases and shared the same bed- 
 maker. One day he was wanting to call Mrs Chapman and 
 climbed the stairs to the first storey. I was just behind, on 
 the way to my rooms, and as his illness was then beginning 
 to take a firm hold upon him, I was kept waiting a little on 
 the staircase. As I passed him at the first storey landing, he 
 turned and apologized for delaying me, and such courtesy to 
 an insignificant strange youth touched me deeply.... 
 
 One can imagine the winning smile with which 
 the apology was made. It was by these and a 
 dozen other delightful traits that Verrall won men's 
 hearts ; but there was more still behind, for all were 
 combined in a character of singular rectitude and 
 rare purity of mind and heart. 
 
 As Mr Marsh has said, he was a good judge of 
 character. Yet he was never a harsh one ; his 
 broad sympathies were always ready with an excuse 
 for human weakness. But he had more than the 
 insight needed to make a judge of character ; he 
 had the quality of constructive psychological intui- 
 tion which goes to the making of men of the type 
 of Robert Browning, and I have often thought that 
 it needed but a touch to transform him into some- 
 thing out of the common as a dramatist or poet. 
 How near he came to this may be seen if, for a
 
 Memoir xci 
 
 moment, we combine in one view his gift of musical 
 verse and his instinct for the dramatic with the 
 masterly pourtrayal of the Euripidean Heracles. 
 
 'His presence, his voice' (to quote Professor 
 Gilbert Murray) 'were full of inspiration'; and this 
 was true even of the latter years, when the body 
 was a wreck and the voice had lost something of its 
 timbre. There was still the fine head and face — the 
 broad full brow, the harmonious contour of the 
 cheeks and well-proportioned nose, the kindly lines 
 about the mouth, and the large, dark, expressive 
 eyes that spoke with no less eloquence than the 
 compelling voice. During the later lectures he 
 said, ' I could lecture as well as ever, if they would 
 only get my tiresome voice right.' Nor was this 
 far from the truth. So long as the voice, with its 
 clear articulation, and tones according instinctively 
 with his theme, responded not inadequately, one 
 could not fail to feel, through eye and ear, that 
 quickening effect which is justly called inspiration. 
 
 Verrall was not a wide reader, as reading goes 
 among scholars to whom we apply the term 'learned'; 
 but he was something better than 'learned,' and he 
 turned his reading, which was really wide, to better 
 account than many a ' learned ' scholar has done. 
 For mere information he did not care overmuch, he 
 preferred multum legere potius quam multa. What 
 he asked for from serious books was nutriment, 
 and this he got better (if I may pursue the horrid 
 metaphor) by repeated mastication than by the 
 hasty omnivorous feeding which makes assimilation
 
 xcii Memoir 
 
 impossible. Certain books and authors he read over 
 and over again until they became part of him, bone 
 of his bone. Among these, besides some of the 
 English poets, were Shakspeare, Dante, Dryden, 
 Macaulay, Thackeray, Fielding, Scott, Louis Steven- 
 son, Jane Austen, The Egoist, Racine, Bossuet and 
 other famous French orators, on which last he lec- 
 tured in early days at Newnham. Jane Austen was 
 an especial favourite, and it is characteristic that in 
 her works he found abundant room for emendation 
 in the countless printers' errors perpetuated from 
 the first editions to the latest. He published an 
 article on them in the Cambridge Observer {iS>g2)^ 
 and two others reprinted in Tke Book of the Cam- 
 bridge Review. While some of the corrections are 
 obvious enough, many are emphatically not, but 
 needed — well, a Verrall. I regret that there is not 
 room to quote the note on 'his direct holidays might 
 with justice be instantly given to ' [his friends at 
 Mansfield Park] {M. P. vol. i, p. 240, Brimley 
 Johnson's edition). The correction derelict is typical 
 of his skill in this line, and the arguments by which 
 it is justified are another illustration of his remark- 
 able power of reconstructing for himself an author's 
 mind. Shakspeare and Macaulay 's History were 
 never out of his hands for long, and I believe he 
 had read the history from end to end some half-a- 
 dozen times, and many parts much oftener. He 
 had in fact prepared for delivery from the profes- 
 sorial chair lectures on Macaulay 's works considered 
 from a literary point of view. Shakspeare, I suppose,.
 
 Memoir xciii 
 
 he knew as some of us know, or once knew, our 
 Latin Grammar jingles. His memory, and espe- 
 cially his verbal memory, was extraordinary. Scores 
 of times I have heard him quote the very words of 
 long sentences from prose authors, and long passages 
 from poets ancient and modern. Verse in particular 
 he seemed simply unable to forget, and he would 
 often repeat stanzas which he had read only once. 
 There seemed to be nothing for which he could not 
 instantly find a quotation that fitted, and only a 
 week or two before we were to hear the loved voice 
 no more, something — a mere word — called up a 
 stanza of Thackeray's verse which he had not seen 
 for years. He ' boggled ' over the ending of one 
 line, but the rest he declared was correct. 
 
 For dogmatism in every form Verrall had a 
 strong dislike, and in the matter of religious faith 
 the dogmas of orthodoxy and heterodoxy alike 
 failed to appeal to him. He believed that the truth 
 lay deeper. At the same time his reverence for 
 religion was deep, and the life — for ' all that is true, 
 all that is noble, all that is right, all that is pure, all 
 that is loved, all that is fair-speaking, be there 
 virtue, be there praise ' — was such as many who 
 hold a more definite faith might look upon with 
 self-reproach. His was the anima naturaliter Chris- 
 tiana. In politics, in which his interest was keen, 
 he was a strong Liberal, stronger than many friends 
 whose opinions differed, were aware ; for he hated 
 controversy, and while he delighted in a political 
 talk with those who thought with him, he never
 
 xciv Memoir 
 
 himself introduced the subject with those who did 
 not, though he would listen with genuine interest to 
 their expositions of the adverse view. His liberalism 
 was of the true sort. G. K. Chesterton writes, in 
 his book on Browning, — 
 
 A Liberal may be defined approximately as a man who, 
 if he could by waving his hand in a dark room stop the 
 mouths of all the deceivers of mankind for ever, would not 
 wave his hand. Browning was a Liberal in this sense. 
 
 And such a Liberal was Verrall, as he himself used 
 to say. Miss Jane Harrison tells a confirmatory 
 story : — 
 
 I remember saying to him apropos of some scholar from 
 
 , whom I differed, 'It is intolerable that people should be 
 
 f allowed to go on talking and teaching such nonsense ! ' He 
 
 screwed up a whimsical eye at me and said, 'AH right, let's 
 
 ^ have back the Inquisition.' 
 
 He believed in thrashing out things, everything, 
 by the freest and fullest discussion, for only so, he 
 thought, could the ultimate truth, for which he cared 
 supremely, be attained. No established view or 
 theory, on any subject, had for him any claim to 
 acceptance just because it was established ; all must 
 stand the test of examination, and every side must 
 be heard. He would encourage every investigation 
 which gave promise of tangible fruit. Thus he 
 took the liveliest interest in Mrs Verrall's work in 
 psychical research, and in the work of the Society 
 generally, and himself originated and pursued one 
 most valuable and interesting telepathic experiment, 
 the famous one on [xopottoXov e? 'Aa>. And he was
 
 Memoir xcv 
 
 more than content that his daughter should devote 
 her rare intellectual powers, as she has done, to 
 work in the same scientific field. 
 
 To his predominant enthusiasm for literature he 
 added a love of art in any shape, for he had the 
 artist's instinct, and the artist's eye readily respon- 
 sive to beauty of colour or of form. Architecture 
 in particular appealed to him. His knowledge of 
 its principles and developments was considerable, 
 and probably few men were better acquaintanced 
 with the great European churches, either through 
 having visited them or through books and photo- 
 graphs. Music gave him intense delight. He felt 
 it, like all true lovers, in his very marrow. As 
 he listened, he lived in it, totally absorbed, alert 
 to every refinement of expression and responding 
 to every mood. He was a regular attendant at 
 concerts in Cambridge until the physical difficulties 
 made this impossible, and in the last months the 
 skilful and sympathetic interpretations of a friend 
 who used to come and play the pianoforte to him, 
 were among the welcome solaces of that sad time. 
 He loved nature in every aspect. A cycling or 
 walking tour, in England or abroad, was a source 
 of perpetual enjoyment, for he missed no beauty of 
 the scene, however simple, no transforming effect 
 of light. The Alps, Swiss or Italian, he of course 
 loved best, though alas ! he was no mountaineer ; 
 the most moderate precipice made him giddy. The 
 resolute spirit did its best to master the flesh, but it 
 was of little use, and the passage of such places, if
 
 xcvi Memoir 
 
 accomplished, was always attended with anguish. 
 It seems to have been the only thing for which the 
 dear head was no good at all. 
 
 It is needless to add that he was, to an unusual 
 degree, a man of many friends, — real friends, who 
 were much to him, as he to them. 
 
 Of his conversation Professor Murray writes in 
 the Oxford Review : — 
 
 His conversation, even at a time when he had been 
 crippled by years of arthritis and must have suffered great 
 pain, was indescribably brilliant, ranging over politics, lite- 
 rature, classical learning, and often taking refuge in pure 
 nonsense. Seldom indeed can so keen a wit have been so 
 utterly devoid of malice. In a friendship of about twenty 
 years I never heard him tell a story to any one's discredit, 
 nor even defend himself against criticism with any resent- 
 ment or bitterness. I remember nothing worse than a genial 
 
 ' W is an owl,' and then attention to business. His 
 
 style in controversy was courtesy itself. He could make an 
 opponent feel ridiculous and even — experto crede — laugh at 
 himself; but there was not a word to resent, not a phrase 
 that left a feeling of unfair treatment. It is perhaps owing to 
 these qualities, combined with his unflagging love of justice 
 and the extraordinary courage with which he rose superior to 
 his long and terrible illness, that Verrall has left upon those 
 who knew him well an impression of greatness and of 
 nobility, far outweighing the normal admiration due to a 
 famous scholar. 
 
 It remains to say something more of a trait 
 touched upon in this extract and also in the 
 obituary notice in the Spectator, from which the 
 following is taken. 
 
 Though his body was crippled by a painful illness, his 
 mind never seemed subdued by it. It was always active and
 
 Memoir xcvii 
 
 at times irrepressibly gay, as willing to discuss The Mystery 
 of the Yellow Room as a Pindaric ode, ready to break out 
 into a snatch from the Mikado or a tirade from Andro- 
 maque. 
 
 The trait I mean is one that is never absent from 
 a mental picture of the man we loved, — his natural 
 gaiety of heart and love of nonsense for its own 
 sake. His wit was always ready, as for instance 
 when, overhearing on a hot and smelly day in 
 Rome, some tourists asking for the Cloaca Maxima, 
 he quietly observed, ' I should rather have expected 
 them to ask for the Cloaca Minima \ ' Another 
 story, which I tell in Mr Marsh's words, shows his 
 power of extracting amusement from unpromising 
 materials. At a meeting of * revisers ' to the 
 O. and C. Board the Latin verse papers from Eton 
 were produced. ' Now for susurrusl' said Verrall. 
 ' What do you mean ? ' asked a colleague. ' Why, 
 did you ever see a copy of Eton verses without 
 susurrus ? ' Then he looked at the English, and 
 gave up hope ; there seemed to be absolutely no 
 opening for susurrus. He went on sadly to read 
 the first copy till he came to a line in which 'And 
 universal silence reigned alone' was rendered by 
 nullusque susurrusl 'My point is completely estab- 
 lished!' he screamed. 'If there was any sound, it 
 was susurrus ; if there was no sound, there was 
 nullus susurrus ! U-u-ur ! ' 
 
 But the joy of joys was his manner of reciting 
 humorous verse or pure nonsense, and to find (if it 
 was your first experience of him in this vein) that
 
 xcviii Memoir 
 
 he took as intimate a delight in it as you did your- 
 self. ' Tragedy ! ' he once said to me suddenly in 
 the early days ; ' Did you ever hear this ? ' And 
 he proceeded to chant slowly, in rolling, melancholy 
 tones, a once famous song of Toole's (metre strictly 
 dactylic) — 
 
 A norrible tale I 'ave to tell 
 
 Of the sad di-sasters that befell 
 A noble family as once re-sided 
 
 In the very same thoroughfare as I did. (etc.) 
 
 Or it might be Dan Leno's parody of ' The Honey- 
 suckle and the Bee,' in which the Wasp vainly 
 makes love to a hard-boiled ^^^ : — 
 
 And what a silly wasp for 'just a word' to beg, 
 
 For you can^t get any sense out of a hard-boiled egg ! 
 
 It is impossible to give any idea of what Mr Marsh 
 well calls ' the kind of augustness which remained 
 with him in all his wildest nonsense. He seemed 
 always to be a priest of fun, pouring it out with the 
 same power and authority with which he recited 
 the most magnificent poetry.' He seemed indeed 
 at such moments to be literally possessed by the 
 spirit of mirth, and it was enough ' to shake the 
 midriff of despair with laughter.' Scraps from the 
 Ingoldsby Legends would bubble up on the slightest 
 provocation, and it does me good to recall the tones 
 with which he would bring out such things as 
 
 She drank prussic acid without any water, 
 
 And died like a Duke and a Duchess's daughter !
 
 Memoir xcix 
 
 Or 
 
 But is it O Sandissima she sings in dulcet tone, 
 
 Or Angels ever bright and fair ? — Ah no, it's Bobbing Joan ! 
 
 Sometimes some musical rhythm running in his 
 head would seem to have touched the spring, as 
 when he would say without warning, — 
 
 The Callipyge 's injured behind, 
 
 The De' Medici 's injured before ; 
 And the Anadyomene 's injured in so many 
 Places, I think there's a score. 
 
 If not more. 
 Of her fingers and toes on the floor. 
 
 He was also a prolific inventor of extempore 
 comicalities in verse, and this not only in waking 
 moments. He said one morning, only four days 
 before the end, that between sleeping and waking 
 he had been fancying that Charles the First's 
 children were presenting a petition to Cromwell, 
 when he found what he used to call his ' head,' as 
 distinguished from himself (for such experiences 
 were not uncommon) saying — 
 
 And then this strange complaint the list of querimonies 
 
 led off: 
 'We can't get back our poor papa, they've been and cut 
 
 his head off.' 
 I wouldn't listen longer to these slangy little princes, 
 For when the language mocks the rank, the mental palate 
 
 winces. 
 
 As a jest of the Trapa irpoaBoKiav type, or any 
 type, the following dream is, I should suppose, 
 
 V. T.. E. g 
 
 \
 
 c Mernoir 
 
 unequalled. It is of much older date than the 
 preceding. He dreamed he was in a train. The 
 train stopped at a station. Someone in the carriage 
 asked what place it was, and someone else said 
 Miletus. Verrall put his head out of the window 
 and saw close at hand a factory, on the blank wall 
 of which was painted in large letters 
 
 EPIC CYCLE WORKS, LIMITED. 
 
 What remains to tell may be told briefly, and 
 perhaps best so. Although, as has been said, there 
 was a satisfactory recovery after the illness in April 
 1 910, it would seem that the ground lost was never 
 completely recovered. In the late autumn he felt 
 the strain of a great anxiety, lasting for some weeks, 
 about the health of Henry Butcher, and Butcher's 
 death in December was a crushing blow. Never- 
 theless he gradually recovered his usual spirits, and 
 during the early summer was very well, all things 
 considered, and occupied himself in preparing the 
 professorial lectures. In August, however, there 
 was a grave illness, and though he was able to 
 deliver the English lectures in the October term, 
 and although, as those lectures show, the mental 
 vigour was in no way impaired, it was only too 
 clear that the bodily strength was steadily ebbing. 
 The next course of lectures, which was to deal 
 with Macaulay, was indeed prepared, but it was 
 found necessary to postpone their delivery. The
 
 Memoir ci 
 
 May term was looked forward to, and there was 
 reasonable hope that he would then be able to 
 lecture ; but the following months brought no acces- 
 sion of strength, and the proposed May term lectures 
 were in consequence abandoned. 
 
 When, as was the case after the end of 191 1, he 
 ceased to go away from the house and garden, it 
 was a delight to him to be still kept in touch with 
 the outside world by more frequent visits from 
 friends, both from Cambridge and from a distance. 
 The visitors from the neighbourhood were arranged 
 for by a sort of rota for each week, and a few of the 
 most intimate, such as Mr Duff and Dr Parry, came 
 of course with special frequency. During these visits 
 he would talk with the old alertness and something 
 like the old vivacity ; and when at last talking 
 became difficult he would still take pleasure in 
 listening to the conversation of others. During all 
 this period his days were filled up with reading or 
 hearing books read to him. Nor were the books 
 selected light ones : the one in hand at the last was 
 Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellio7i. 
 
 Through all the fifteen years of his illness, he 
 never lost heart or interest. From the time when 
 the physical disabilities first became serious, there 
 was no repining, no complaint, no hint of rebellion. 
 Some momentary uneasiness might call forth just a 
 fretful word, but even this was extremely rare, — 
 and it was all. Each successive infirmity was ac- 
 cepted with calmness and patience, as a disagreeable 
 factor indeed, to be reckoned with and arranged 
 
 <?2
 
 cii Memoir 
 
 for, but then as far as possible ignored. With a 
 resolution that never wavered, the unconquerable 
 spirit, unshaken and at peace within itself, insisted 
 on continuing to live its own separate life. Some 
 of his best literary work was done at times when 
 the least involuntary movement was attended with 
 pain and the general discomfort was continual ; and 
 he lectured when the hands could no longer turn 
 the leaves of a book or lift a glass of water. Years 
 of suffering failed to crush him, and what might 
 remain to be endured he faced without dismay. 
 A condition which would have dulled the intellect 
 and withered the heart of most men, would have 
 soured them and made them peevish or morose, left 
 that rare nature serene, interested, lovable, to the 
 last. It was wonderful and beautiful, but oh, the 
 pity of it ! 
 
 The end came with some suddenness on June i8, 
 191 2. In the morning, after being carried down 
 into the study, he asked the day of the week, and 
 when told, said, 'Ah, Parry's coming.' He then 
 asked the day of the month, and on learning that it 
 was the i8th, said 'Wellington College Day.' At 
 half-past two the pure, noble, steadfast soul passed 
 peacefully to the larger life. 
 
 / 
 
 M. A. B. 
 
 > 
 
 i 
 
 w
 
 Inscription on Memorial Tablet in Anteckapel 
 of Trinity College. 
 
 ARTVRVS WOOLLGAR 
 
 V E R R A L L 
 
 SOCIVS TVTOR PROFESSOR 
 
 LITTERIS ET ANTIQVIS ET NOVIS 
 
 TOTO ANIMO DEDITVS 
 
 IN COLLEGIO PER XXXV ANNOS LECTOR 
 
 MIRO ACVMINE MIRA ELOQVENTIA 
 
 AVDITORES TAMQVAM SIREN 
 
 DEVINXIT 
 
 IDEM SCRIPTIS SVIS 
 
 AESCHYLI ARTEM INLVSTRAVIT 
 
 EURIPIDIS FAMAM VINDICAVIT 
 
 DENIQVE IN ACADEMIA 
 
 LITTERARVM ANGLICARVM PROFESSOR 
 
 PRIMVS INSTITVTVS 
 
 MVNVS FELICITER VIX INCEPTVM 
 
 MORBI MORTISQVE NECESSITATE 
 
 DEPOSVIT. 
 
 IN HOC VIRO 
 
 SINGVLARES INGENII DOTES 
 
 COMMENDABAT MORVM SIMPLICITAS 
 
 COMMENDABAT EA FORTITVDO 
 
 QVA LONGOS CORPORIS DOLORES 
 
 SVI SEMPER IMMEMOR 
 
 AMICORVM MEMOR 
 
 INVICTO ANIMO PERPESSVS EST. 
 
 NATVS NON. FEBR. MDCCCLI 
 
 OBIIT A.D. XIV KAL. IVL. MCMXII.
 
 COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 
 
 delivered before the Academic Committee of the Royal Society 
 of Literature by John William Mackail, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 Arthur Verrall was not, technically and pro- 
 fessionally, a man of letters ; he was a classical 
 scholar and student. In that field, he was an able 
 exponent of the fine and contentious art of textual 
 criticism ; he was a subtle and also a daring inter- 
 preter. On the one hand he was an instance of the 
 old-fashioned scholarship at its best, equal, perhaps, 
 to any scholar of his time in the peculiarly English 
 art of Latin and Greek composition : on the other, 
 he was a potent force in the movement which has 
 transformed scholarship by altering the whole atti- 
 tude of our minds towards the ancient classics. But 
 to the larger circle of those who practise the art of 
 English letters, or who are its critics and historians, 
 he was little known. In his own University, and 
 among scholars, he was known certainly as a brilliant 
 writer, but as a writer of works of scholarship. The 
 master of a graceful, flexible, and lucid pen, he, in 
 fact, wrote comparatively little. His Clark Lec- 
 tures, and those few which he was able to give from
 
 cvi Commemorative Address 
 
 the Chair of English Literature, were not committed 
 to paper. He was not the author of any single 
 great work. The collection of his literary essays, 
 which is now being made, will not place him among 
 the writers who have in this age made English 
 letters illustrious. Yet he was a strength and an 
 ornament to the Academic Council which is now 
 recording his loss : and when he was chosen by the 
 Crown to be the first Professor of English Litera- 
 ture at Cambridge, the choice was recognised by 
 those most competent to judge as not only justifiable, 
 but singularly happy. 
 
 It should not indeed be necessary, if the relations 
 between scholarship and literature were such as they 
 ought to be, to draw a line between men of letters 
 and classical scholars. For the classical writers 
 received and retain that name, because their works 
 represent the highest and best of what has been 
 created in the art of letters. Just as our whole 
 civilisation is based on, grows out of, that created 
 and established by the Greek and the Latin genius, 
 so the whole of modern letters have the ancient 
 masterpieces before them as patterns of excellence, 
 beneath them as a soil from which they draw nutri- 
 ment. But in fact, as we all know — as the opponents 
 of classical education triumphantly point out, and as 
 its defenders must candidly, if not ruefully, acknow- 
 ledge — it is not the case that all scholars have a 
 genius for letters, any more than that all writers of 
 genius are scholars. Education based on those 
 ancient masterpieces, life spent in their study, too
 
 Cofnmemorative Address cvii 
 
 often are an illiberal education, and a wasted life. 
 The creative artist has often never possessed scholar- 
 ship, or has flung away what he possessed of it. 
 What has been his loss, what may have been his 
 incidental gain, by being thus cut away from the 
 traditions of the past, or by cutting them away 
 through his own act, is a large question. But this 
 much at least can be said : that a writer to whom 
 scholarship is meaningless can have no trained sense 
 of the organic continuity of the art of letters : he 
 has forgone, from circumstances which may or may 
 not have been inevitable, for reasons which may or 
 may not be judged adequate, the power of placing 
 himself in the stream of history. It will not, to be 
 sure, profit him to have gained touch with the past 
 if he has lost touch with the present, and sub- 
 merged his own genius. But neither is it to be 
 expected that his own genius can thrive on a 
 sustenance which is of the day only. All live art is 
 a new birth ; but the present is the integration of 
 the past, and the art of the present is but one mani- 
 festation of a single continuous art. On the other 
 hand, it will not be denied that the scholar has often 
 contracted into a pedant, for whom literature is not 
 a living art, out of touch with the creative and 
 imaginative movement of his own time. For scholars 
 of this kind the noblest of all arts has little vital 
 reality, the actual movement of the human mind has 
 but a faint interest. They are linguists, archae- 
 ologists, critics ; but they move like laborious ghosts, 
 out of the daylight, immersed in a dead world.
 
 cviii Conwiemoi'ative Address 
 
 This Verrall was not : we are not following a 
 grammarian's funeral. For him letters, both ancient 
 and modern, were a world crowdedly and intensely- 
 alive. He brought to the study of the classics — of 
 those masterpieces which have been so thumbed 
 and worn by long currency — the fresh mind at whose 
 contact they sprang into fresh vitality. He brought 
 the same fresh interest and enjoyment to English 
 letters and the literary art of his own day. To hear 
 him discourse on modern authors was to realise that 
 they were not separated in his mind from the ancient 
 authors among whom he worked professionally. To 
 both alike he applied the same rapid intelligence, in 
 both alike he felt the same living interest. And 
 that was the interest neither of classicism nor of 
 modernism ; it was the interest of literature as a 
 fine art. 
 
 It is as an exponent or representative of English 
 letters that we have to regard him here. But Eng- 
 lish letters are part of a larger community. A sane 
 literary nationalism not only keeps touch with, but 
 reinforces, the solidarity of the Republic of Letters : 
 just as the living art of the day is rooted in vital 
 appreciation of the no less living art of the past, and 
 in conscious kinship with it. For in literature, as 
 in all the arts of life, art is one thing, and artists, of 
 all schools and periods, are one household. 
 
 In that art he concentrated his study, not on 
 periods, but on qualities ; not on particular writers or 
 particular works for the sake either of their prestige 
 or of their novelty, but for the sake of the artistic
 
 Commemorative Address cix 
 
 quality which he found in them ; not on a single 
 province of letters — poetry, history, oratory and the 
 like — as such, but on all these as literature. That 
 his work, so far as it is recorded and accessible, 
 does deal mainly with certain periods and writers, 
 only means that, having to deal with these in the 
 course of his duties, or finding in them the literary 
 quality, as he conceived it, specially prominent, or 
 requiring special prominence to be given to it, he 
 took them as instances, and turned upon them the 
 critical spirit in which he read not only them, but all 
 that he read. If we can fancy a mind so rapid and 
 alert as his pausing to describe its own operation as 
 a system, we may think of him as saying, whenever 
 he took up a book : This purports to be a work of 
 art ; what sort of art is it ? what is the effect of its 
 art upon my mind ? and what has to be noted in 
 order to elucidate its art, to enable me or others to 
 appreciate the quality of that art, the process by 
 which the work of art came to be what it is, the 
 meaning that was in the artist's mind ? In advice 
 given by him to students entering on a course of 
 modern English literature, this note is struck with 
 emphatic precision. ' Do you honestly enjoy this 
 book, and if so, what in it pleases you ? Does your 
 enjoyment increase as you study it, and if so, through 
 what process of thought .-* Such are the questions 
 which readers should ask themselves.' Such were 
 the questions which he asked himself, and in finding 
 answers to which his study of literature in essence 
 consisted. The word ' enjoyment ' should be noted.
 
 ex Commemorative Address 
 
 For art is, according to the old and sound definition, 
 production with enjoyment and for the sake of enjoy- 
 ment ; and the appreciation of art is the entering 
 into the artist's enjoyment through imaginative sym- 
 pathy, and in some sense thus renewing his act of 
 creation and the joy of that act. 
 
 Art is one thing ; it is the organic synthesis of 
 all the arts. And the art of letters is likewise one 
 thing ; it is the dlan vital incarnating itself in verbal 
 structure. Where one artist in letters will differ 
 from another is in his special pursuit of one or 
 another element in his art ; and where one man's 
 appreciation will differ from another's is in his native 
 or trained affinity for one or another of these 
 elements ; in the measure to which he disengages 
 this from other qualities, traces its workings, and 
 makes it in some sort the test or critical moment in 
 all his appreciations. 
 
 The element in literature to which Verrall's mind 
 had perhaps the greatest affinity was wit, as he 
 himself somewhere defines that ambiguous word. 
 'Wit,'" he wrote, 'or subtlety on the part of the artist 
 in the manipulation of meanings ' ; and with this he 
 went on to connect, on the part of the recipient or 
 critic, ' the enjoyment of such subtlety for its own 
 sake, and as the source of a distinct intellectual 
 pleasure.' 
 
 Subtlety in the manipulation of meanings — this 
 was at once Verrall's distinctive strength in dealing 
 with literature, and in some measure also his beset- 
 ting temptation. His enjoyment in it was almost a
 
 Comniemorative Address cxi 
 
 passion. By its exercise he did much towards the 
 modern revivification of scholarship. His effective 
 work Hes not so much in an)^ published writings as 
 in the impulse which as a stimulating teacher, and 
 even more perhaps as a brilliant talker, he commu- 
 nicated to pupils and friends. He never brought to 
 any book, were it ancient or modern, the dulled 
 mind. He took no orthodoxy for granted. In his 
 reading he was always poised ready for a pounce on 
 some shade of meaning, some implication or sugges- 
 tion ; and he followed out their traces acutely, 
 adroitly, alluringly. Sagacity in its literal sense, 
 the keen scent after things hidden, was the habit of 
 his mind. If, as was once said by a remarkable 
 thinker, imagination is nothing else than the faculty 
 of tracing out consequences fully, Verrall had imagi- 
 nation to a singular degree. 
 
 To this power of scenting and tracing, of quick 
 and continued apprehensiveness, must be added 
 another if work is to be sound. That other power 
 is comprehensiveness ; the power of seeing things 
 in their proportion to one another, and not exag- 
 gerating what is secondary, or losing grasp of the 
 whole plan in curious consideration of some detail 
 or byway. It is, in fact, good sense. Without it, 
 the sagacity of which I have spoken leads straight 
 to paradox. Self-hypnotised by absorption in a 
 certain train of reasoning, the mind insensibly sways 
 aside, and the judgment loses its centre. This is a 
 danger which always attaches to fresh interpretations. 
 The essence of paradox is that, however startling, it
 
 cxii Commemoj^ative Address 
 
 is true ; its vice is that, however true, it is truth 
 placed in disproportion, and thus distorted. 
 
 It may be said of Verrall that he did not wholly 
 avoid this danger. His quick insight into subtleties 
 of meaning, and his delight in tracing them out, led 
 him, more than once, into paradox pursued beyond 
 measure, novelty of view passing into a more or less 
 conscious whimsicality. It made him fond, perhaps 
 too fond, of a fascinating but dangerous occupation, 
 that of rehabilitating names in the commonwealth of 
 letters which had either found or sunk below their 
 due level, and reinterpreting in a new sense works 
 (like the Odes of Horace), upon which the world 
 had formed a settled, and, it might seem, an un- 
 alterable judgment. In this his example has affected 
 a whole school of his pupils, some at least of whom 
 may be thought to have given way to the temptation 
 of reinterpreting everything, to the pursuit of clues 
 spun by themselves, and the finding of hidden mean- 
 inors where he who hides finds. A sentence from 
 one of his essays is very characteristic of his own 
 attitude towards the authors on whom he turned his 
 dancing searchlight : ' What Dante alleges about 
 Statius, he could not have found unless he had 
 sought it with singular determination ; but find it 
 he did.' But any reservation to be made here as 
 regards Verrall's own work would only be just if 
 accompanied by generous recognition of two things ; 
 first, of his delightful love of nonsense, what I may 
 venture to call his attractive and humane impishness; 
 secondly, of the great service he did to literature by
 
 Commemorative Address cxiii 
 
 approaching it always with fresh eyes, by realising, 
 for himself and for others, the truth that all works 
 of genius are alive and possess the mobility of life ; 
 that they lend themselves perpetually to fresh inter- 
 pretation, and have stored in them an unexhausted 
 potential energy. 
 
 To all his favourite authors Verrall brought this 
 vitalising force of a subtle and dexterous intellect. 
 He was an accomplished sophist, in the best sense 
 of that needlessly discredited word. He was a 
 master in the art of exposition and the art of per- 
 suasion. The power of the live voice, a thing 
 nowadays too little enforced and too little cultivated, 
 was an element in his genius. It made him a fasci- 
 nating lecturer, but this kind of accomplishment 
 leaves no written record. The printed page only 
 shows imperfectly with what adroit and ingratiating 
 skill he handled the work of poets and historians, of 
 orators or dramatists or novelists, and showed the 
 live intelligence taking shape in it. His own range 
 of reading was wide, over the whole field of French 
 as well as English letters. His affinity was for the 
 writers, in either language, in whom wit and subtlety 
 are predominant. But he did not pursue these 
 qualities simply for their own sake, or allow them a 
 monopoly in his interest. His two favourite French 
 authors were Racine in poetry and Bossuet in prose, 
 writers of the classical period who renewed, and not 
 as copyists, the authentic classical note. So in 
 English likewise, he found his choicest and closest 
 friends among the writers of the central movement —
 
 cxiv Commetnorative Address 
 
 Dryden, Fielding, Scott, Macaulay — the masters of 
 spacious construction and large sanity. An essay 
 on Dryden, the last work on which he was engaged, 
 would have been a real help towards the appreciation 
 of that fertile and perplexing genius, and of the 
 whole age in English letters to which he has given 
 its name. 
 
 This is not the occasion for personal record, and 
 my task is not that of the biographer. But a friend- 
 ship of more than five-and-twenty years may be 
 allowed a concluding word of more intimate tribute. 
 For what Verrall's friends remember is not so much 
 his fine intellect and brilliant accomplishments as his 
 courtesy and geniality, his kindly nature and winning 
 manners, a natural gaiety and clarity never clouded 
 by circumstance, the total absence in him of jealousy 
 and self-assertion, and, above all, the unconquerable 
 spirit which bore him up through the last years in 
 which, crippled by long wasting illness, he never 
 allowed himself to repine, to be beaten down, or to 
 lose heart. Of the courage, not less than heroic, 
 with which he bore that load of bodily weakness and 
 great pain, the less said the better ; it is a thing to 
 admire, not to praise. If I venture to touch upon it 
 now, it is because in such an example we may see 
 how the art of letters can sustain and reinforce the 
 art of living ; how commerce with great writers 
 may and does kindle in their students some corre- 
 sponding greatness of soul ; and how literature is 
 not a region abstract and apart, but a real thing, the 
 image and interpretation of human life.
 
 
 -t^^A-'" 
 
 A ROMAN OF GREATER ROME 
 
 The proverb would lead us to suppose that for 
 a bad name some dogs have actually been hanged. 
 It is certain that this kind of justice has been exer- 
 cised not seldom by " the judgment of posterity" and 
 at the "bar of history." Such compendious con- 
 demnation has been passed not only on individuals, 
 but on whole states, whole periods, and whole 
 civilizations. And no culprit was ever more unlucky 
 than the Roman Empire in that period which pre- 
 cedes the definite appearance of Christianity in the 
 West. The first century (the second fares rather 
 better) is scarcely known but in denunciation. It 
 has armed with instances all the satirists and all the 
 preachers who have come since, and is commonly 
 described as one vast field of tyranny, servility, and 
 corruption, full of the seeds of a just and scarcely 
 regrettable decay. The mark of Tacitus and of 
 Juvenal is upon it all. It would be useless to ask 
 for a reversal of this verdict, partly because there 
 is truth in it. But we ought perhaps, once in a way, 
 to remind ourselves that there was another side, and 
 spare a word of thanks to benefactors not less real 
 because for the most part anonymous. 
 
 V. L. E. 1
 
 2 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 I In spite of many warnings, it is difficult well to 
 remember the enormous part of accident in giving 
 the colour to historical evidence. Nineteen-twentieths 
 (or some other imposing fraction) of that evidence 
 is literature, so much of literature as is preserved. 
 Speaking generally, it is preserved according to its 
 merit ; and its merit — this is familiar enough, but is 
 often ignored all the same — has scarcely anything to 
 do with its true and proportional value as material 
 for history. There are at any given time a few men, 
 most probably a very few, whose words will stand 
 for the chief monument of the age. Each of these 
 must be capable of giving literary permanence only 
 to a very small part of the life about him. All of 
 them are under the strongest temptation — we may 
 almost say necessity — to copy each other and fall 
 into each other's ways. What does not get into 
 their pages will, not indeed in effect but in the 
 memory of men, soon exist no more than if it had 
 never been at all. We need not go far back or far 
 away for instances. Are not they now complaining 
 in France that their recent literature misrepresents 
 them ; that their writers have been working a certain 
 vein, because they have lighted on it and come by 
 suitable tools, not because it is really wider and 
 deeper than others that lie about ? It is certain 
 that these complaints have truth ; yet it is odds that, 
 as between the literature and the protest, if either 
 has any long life, the literature will have the best 
 of it. We need not even go to France. At this 
 very moment most of what is truly important in the
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 3 
 
 internal history of eighteenth-century England, a 
 history made up of obscure multifarious effort in the 
 direction of social improvement, is fast slipping into 
 the irrecoverable gulf, because it has no attraction 
 for art. The enterprise of treating it truly and 
 effectively becomes daily more difficult; and though 
 it is not for those who have done nothing to speak 
 ungratefully of what has been done, no book exists 
 yet which is likely to make Walpole's England 
 (another hanging name) appreciable by the good it 
 had, and not by the good it wanted. And if we 
 are already in some difficulty with the eighteenth 
 century, how is it likely to be with the first ? 
 
 The fact is that, of the true work, the greatest 
 work, of that time we know scarcely anything, and 
 never shall know anything adequate. I do not now 
 speak of the grave personal limitations and disabilities 
 which affect our chief witnesses; these have been 
 often pointed out and as often practically dismissed 
 from notice. Most of them are professed scandal- 
 mongers, most of them reactionaries, out of temper 
 with themselves and their times. But what is much 
 more damaging is this: almost all their interest is 
 fixed in Rome. It was not in Rome that the work 
 was being done; it was not even mainly in the East, 
 where the seedling of Christianity was preparing for 
 future transplantation. The bed meanwhile was 
 preparing for the flower, and for the moment this 
 part of the labour had the lead. If we could have 
 bargained with the writers of the age, we might well 
 have foregone a great part of their laments over what
 
 4 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 was dead for a glimpse of what was growing, for 
 some picture of Africa, of Gaul, and of Spain. The 
 Romanising of the Western provinces in particular 
 was probably the most brilliant service, as it was 
 certainly one of the most vital, ever rendered to 
 civilization. Our side of Europe was twice saved 
 from moral destruction, and very narrowly saved, 
 by the vigorous Romanism of Gaul. There is some- 
 thing ludicrous, pathetic, and yet consoling at the 
 same time, in the thought that Roman Gaul was 
 being made, and with marvellous rapidity, all the 
 while that morbid and sensational declaimers in 
 Rome were painting the world as a crowd of pro- 
 fligate slaves. At the fall of the Republic, about 
 50 years before Christ, Toulouse was a mere military 
 outpost in the "backwoods." A century later it was 
 a celebrated seat of learning. Cordova, formerly a 
 not remarkable place of trade, rose in even less time 
 to send from a single house three leaders of the first 
 rank to rule the literature of the capital : though 
 Lucan and the two Senecas unluckily learnt in that 
 intellectual society to repeat too much of its futile 
 dreams and spurious cant. 
 
 Little more than half a century from the death of 
 Horace, a Spaniard could at least talk, in a moment 
 of exuberance, of matching him with a Horace from 
 Spain : 
 
 The Tagus dares, in Lucius' praise, 
 Challenge Venusia for the bays. 
 Be Argos praised as Argos will 
 By Argos, Thebes by Thebans still;
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 5 
 
 Be Rhodes renowned by other tongue 
 Than ours, be Lacedaemon sung ; 
 We, Celtic or Iberian born, 
 Of Celtic towns will take no scorn. 
 If Spanish names be rude, they chime. 
 Think we, not ill in Spanish rime. 
 
 And it must be remembered, as this boast reminds 
 us, that Corduba, Tolosa, and a hundred creations 
 like them, were produced in great part not by the 
 destruction, but by the instruction and self-instruc- 
 tion, of the native peoples. All this work, to which 
 we are all deeply indebted this day, was achieved 
 by the early emperors, or rather by the men, mostly 
 unknown, who supported and carried out the imperial 
 policy. It was begun when the sword of Julius 
 opened the senate-house to the foreigner. How it 
 was done so fast and so well is what we really want 
 to know about the first ages of the Empire. It 
 never can be known with any completeness. Most 
 of our informants, belonging to a select circle which 
 greatly mistook its own importance, are occupied 
 with dramas of high life and of personal politics, 
 which seldom touch the vital matter. The greater 
 their art, the more they take our attention from the 
 right place. We have however one writer, who in- 
 directly lets us see something of the spirit which 
 made the work possible — a Roman Spaniard who 
 never forgot that he was a Spanish Roman, who 
 never learnt the false "patriotism" and theatrical 
 "indignation" of the metropolitan cliques, who was 
 a loyal and enthusiastic citizen of the Greater 
 Rome.
 
 6 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 History has scarcely used enough the represen- 
 tative evidence of Martial. Tacitus is a grave 
 personage. Juvenal takes himself somewhat more 
 than seriously. Both profess to instruct us, and 
 both for reasons good and bad are very angry with 
 their contemporaries. It is not surprising that his- 
 torians, who like the rest of us take men at their own 
 valuation and, for accidental reasons, have too often 
 read their "first century" to get up an indictment, 
 let Tacitus and Juvenal give the tone. All the 
 literary men of the same age must be in many ways 
 much alike. They learn their art from each other. 
 Martial and Juvenal illustrate each other at every 
 turn, and have been quoted side by side till they 
 are half confounded, Juvenal being mostly taken 
 for the witness of real importance. But between 
 Martial and all the rest there is a spiritual gulf. 
 Taken as a whole, the literature of the first century 
 leaves for its chief impression — weariness. The 
 spectacle of life seems to give the writers no direct 
 pleasure. They take a sullen satisfaction in endur- 
 ing, and a fierce satisfaction in denouncing. These 
 are the springs of feeling; and writers who cannot 
 live upon these (such as is for the most part Statius) 
 are much in want of something to live upon. With 
 Martial it is utterly different. It would be hard to 
 find another poet, equal in bulk, whose tone is so 
 uniformly cheerful. Never was so bright and so 
 interesting a world! He is ready to touch off any 
 subject, and every subject suggests a not unagree- 
 able contemplation. Trifles do not weary him, nor
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 7 
 
 graver thoughts depress. He enjoys beauty without 
 discontent and ugHness without maHce. His satire 
 is such as one can hardly call by that terrible name. 
 It is thoroughly good-humoured, and carefully 
 guarded from personal application. He enjoys the 
 splendour of the imperial city; he enjoys, but with- 
 out spite, the thousand little embarrassments of a 
 city population. He enjoys the country, not in the 
 philosophic manner of Horace, nor in the artificial 
 manner of Virgil, but rustically and simply, in the 
 way we commonly call modern. In the beneficent 
 destiny of the Roman Empire — and here is the 
 grand distinction, the key to all the rest — he believes 
 heartily and without reserve. He is the only writer 
 of this time who uses comfortably and unaffectedly 
 the language of the genuine imperial religion, the 
 worship of the monarch. 
 
 King of heaven, whose power is proven 
 
 While it guards our prince below ! 
 Though mankind besiege thee, seeking 
 
 What, O gods, ye can bestow ; 
 If for me I ask thee nothing, 
 
 'Tis not, Jove, in scorn of thee. 
 I should pray to thee for Caesar 
 
 And to Caesar pray for me. 
 
 Here indeed Martial, whose religion has naturally 
 something of himself, is playing with the subject, as 
 (to say nothing of the rest) he sufficiently shows by 
 the humorous little reservation "quae dei potestis." 
 The sermons which have been read to him hereupon 
 for his "disgusting adulation" are a sad waste of
 
 8 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 preaching. But he is sometimes serious enough. 
 It is thus that he praises the emperor for repeaHng 
 a sentence of banishment : 
 
 Kinder than bolts from heaven thy thunder's course 
 Turns in mid air and stays the fatal force. 
 Were Jove thus merciful ! Then both alike 
 Should often stint your strength and seldom strike. 
 
 Strong language, but not to be judged as if Martial 
 did or could regard "Jove" as the moral ideal. He 
 only expresses in his way what Dryden, applauded 
 by vast numbers of Christian Englishmen, expressed 
 in his way, when he said of Charles 1 1 : 
 
 If mildness ill with stubborn Israel suit, 
 His crime is God's beloved attribute. 
 
 Such language belongs to epochs (that of Louis XIV 
 in France is another case) when the dearest interests 
 of millions have depended, or seemed to depend, on 
 a strong government, and strong government has 
 demanded, or seemed to demand, the reinforcement 
 of personal power. It would be ridiculous to repre- 
 sent Martial as calling a man "a god," if indeed that 
 could give the man much pleasure, in order to be paid 
 for it, which he was not, and, as far as we know, had 
 no reason to think that he would be. 
 
 This "worship of the emperor " is a matter exceed- 
 ingly hard for us now to approach with sympathetic 
 understanding. We are apt to fancy it mere slavish- 
 ness and profanity. It was most assuredly neither 
 one nor the other, but the best and truest form which 
 religion took in that "inter-religious" period — if we
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 9 
 
 may coin a term. As to the profanity, that is answered 
 by observing that the Roman, had he used capital 
 letters, would still have written "deus" with a little 
 "d." It was not the fault of the provincials that 
 Latin was beggarly in terms of spiritual distinction. 
 When they called the emperor "deus," they took the 
 simplest way of saying that the empire deserved from 
 them, as human beings, gratitude and veneration. 
 And so it did. The disestablishment of the Roman 
 oligarchy at once rescued and vastly extended the 
 benefits of culture. If the rapture of those for whom 
 civil peace was only saved, found natural vent, as 
 with Virgil and Horace, in the language of religious 
 imagination, what was the strength of that feeling 
 among men highly capable of civilization, and swept 
 in the way of it then for the first time ? The altar 
 of Augustus at Lyons, with its solemn annual cele- 
 bration maintained by all Roman Gaul, represented, 
 if ever an altar did, a moral and reasonable zeal. In 
 the capital, mainly for reasons intelligible but not 
 creditable, the enthusiasm soon died away. Juvenal 
 bestows on the altar of Lyons, and on the excitement 
 of those who served it, a brutal sneer. We cannot 
 decently applaud him. It is lucky for us that Lyons 
 did not find the ceremony ridiculous. 
 
 Martial, we have said, is first and last a provincial, 
 a Roman of the Greater Rome, He was born at 
 Bilbilis in Northern Spain, a place celebrated for its 
 ironworks, and one of the thousand places which took 
 life or new life from the consolidation of the provinces 
 with Rome. His silence and his hints alike assure
 
 lo A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 us that, despite his Roman name (which proves 
 nothing), he was a Roman only by name and poli- 
 tical adoption, a genuine Spaniard by blood. Almost 
 all his working life was spent in Rome and Italy. 
 He came to the capital a young man, in the last 
 years of Nero (about 65 a.d.), to make his living by 
 literature, and returned at the close of the century to 
 his native town, being then near sixty years old, to 
 spend his old age and to die. He must have taken 
 with him to Rome an admirable literary education, 
 an education astonishing when we reflect that 
 Northern Spain had only been in a settled condi- 
 tion about sixty years when Martial was born. It 
 is quite possible that his provincial breeding accounts 
 partly for the form of his work. He composes en- 
 tirely in short highly finished pieces, each expressing 
 a single thought, a complete anecdote, an entire 
 picture. (The name of "epigram," given to such 
 compositions in ancient literature, has so changed 
 its sense as to be now misleading.) An author 
 writing in a learnt language (and we know from 
 Martial himself that the exact academic idiom of 
 literary Rome was not often heard in Bilbilis) is 
 safer in a short flight. His danger is much greater 
 if he lets himself go. At any rate Martial never 
 does let himself go. Sometimes it is a little story 
 of the bazaar — how A.B. went from stall to stall, 
 now asking the price of an expensive bronze, now 
 selecting a set of elaborate crystals, calling for this 
 tapestry to be taken down and that piece of furniture 
 set out, and finally took two mugs for a penny, which
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 1 1 
 
 he carried away himself. Often we have the figure 
 of the poor man who strolls the colonnades, the 
 gardens, and the baths for the chance of an invita- 
 tion to dinner. He looks, we are told in one place, 
 so depressed and so seedy, that when he returns as 
 a last chance to the colonnade of Europa, where the 
 heroine was represented upon her bull, the associa- 
 tion of ideas inevitably recalls the scarecrows which 
 were tossed about by the bulls of the amphitheatre, 
 and the looker-on breathes a charitable prayer that, 
 failing all other resources, the wanderer may per- 
 chance be "entertained by the bull." In one piece 
 the poet laments gracefully over the lovely landscape 
 covered by the lava of Vesuvius : 
 
 Is this Vesuvius, late so freshly trimmed 
 With vines, and rich with vats at vintage overbrimmed? 
 
 Are these the hills that Bacchus chose to grace 
 More than his Nysa? This the Satyrs' revelling place? 
 
 Is this the land renowned of Hercules? 
 The haunts to Venus dear more than Cythera these? 
 
 Burned, blasted, overwhelmed ! It is a sight 
 To make the almighty rue the license of their might. 
 
 At another time he laments with deeper feeling 
 over the tomb of a little slave. This child, Erotion, 
 seems to have been born in the poet's household, and 
 was brought up by him as an orphan. He loved her 
 dearly, and was deeply affected by her early death. 
 It would be rash to attempt here either the beautiful 
 verses (v 34) in which he commends the poor little 
 ghost to the protection of her dead parents among 
 the terrors of the unseen world, or those, still more 
 tender (x 61), written years afterwards and in the
 
 12 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 prospect of his return to Spain, in which he begs 
 whosoever might succeed him as the proprietor of 
 his ItaHan plot, not to neglect the little grave. But 
 there is another tribute to her memory (v i"]), of 
 which some general idea may be given. It is a 
 curious piece. The poet's habitual mood asserts 
 itself oddly in the hour of grief. He plays with 
 his sorrow fancifully, and ends with a grimace, as 
 pathetic perhaps in its fashion as tears. 
 
 I had a maid, a little maid, 
 
 More soft than swans or lambkins be, 
 
 More fine, more delicately made 
 Than finest cates, than jewelry. 
 
 Snow, lilies, ivory new, would seem 
 
 Beside her fairness scarcely fair : 
 No fleece or fur of golden gleam 
 
 Could match the golden of her hair. 
 
 Her breath was as the air that smells 
 
 Of roses in the Paestan land, 
 Or honey fresh from Attic cells. 
 
 Or amber from a lady's hand. 
 
 Matched with her poses and her play 
 The graceful peacock wanted grace ; 
 
 The squirrel seemed but clumsy ; nay, 
 The phoenix had been commonplace. 
 
 Erotion ! Six — not six years old, 
 
 And dead, my plaything and my pet ! 
 
 This hour they burned her, and the mould. 
 She mixed with, feels some warmness yet. 
 
 And Paetus chides : " Be brave," says he, 
 
 " / have just carried to the grave 
 A noble dame of high degree — 
 
 And wealth (he sighs), no little slave !
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 13 
 
 "It does not break my heart, although 
 She was my wife. I see you start." 
 
 What courage ! What an awful blow ! 
 A fortune does not break his heart ! 
 
 The way in which the illustrations are here piled 
 up is characteristic. But it is more commonly used 
 merely to make entertainment out of some simple 
 idea. A good specimen is the poem in which a 
 person presented with a garden-farm ^ expresses his 
 disappointment that it is not bigger. "It is a mere 
 window-box. A grasshopper's wing would cover it. 
 A cucumber could not lie straight in it. There is 
 not room for the whole of a snake. The one gnat 
 is dead of starvation. A mushroom in spreading, 
 a fig in swelling, a pansy in opening, would go over 
 the edge. A building swallow takes the whole hay- 
 crop. The corn could be carried in a spoon, and the 
 wine made in a nutshell." This sort of miscellany, 
 set off by phrasing and versification generally fault- 
 less, and everywhere sustained by a frank, unaffected, 
 and impartial human interest, will at any rate just 
 tempt an indolent reader from page to page : and 
 this is Martial's proclaimed ambition. 
 
 The mere delight in a complex and yet orderly 
 existence, in material civilization, has perhaps never 
 been expressed with such force as by Martial. It 
 seldom was achieved so suddenly and so happily as 
 by the men of his country and time. I propose to 
 
 ' It has been supposed that Martial is the donee, and that the 
 circumstances are real. This certainly cannot be proved, and 
 I take them to be fictitious.
 
 14 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 present here, as best I can, a few of those poems 
 which seem to me representative of this feeling. 
 I need hardly say that I do not pretend to give a 
 full equivalent or an exact rendering. This paper 
 is not for those who can read their Martial, and do 
 it. Others will perhaps be indulgent, and then, as 
 Martial himself might say, they may get to the end 
 if they do not stop sooner. 
 
 We will take first a piece (ix 6i) expressing 
 perhaps in the form least liable to modern objection 
 the enthusiasm of the new Romans for the work of 
 the Caesars. All suspicion of flattery is here at least 
 impossible. The Caesar celebrated, the " deified " 
 Julius, was dead more than lOO years ago when it 
 was written. The rivalry of Caesarian and Pompeian 
 was as much a matter of history as it is now. It is 
 impossible to attribute the zeal of the poet to any 
 motive but honest reverence for the creator of im- 
 perial Spain. That his memory should have been 
 worshipped at Cordova is the more noticeable be- 
 cause, when every allowance is made for exaggeration, 
 Cordova must have paid dearly at the moment for 
 the bloody inauguration of the new world. The 
 subject here is a house, which had lodged the divine 
 hero and still showed "Caesar's tree." 
 
 Where golden soil with native richness dyes 
 
 On living flocks the fleece of Western lands ; 
 Where Cordova by generous Baetis lies 
 
 Well-pleased, a mansion monumental stands : 
 
 There Caesar stayed. A plane-tree spreading wide 
 Enfolds the court in shade from side to side :
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 15 
 
 This Caesar planted. From his conquering hands 
 The wand auspiciously commenced to rise ; 
 
 And still, as conscious of his high commands, 
 Aspires with lusty boughs to climb the skies. 
 
 There oft the reeling Fauns at hour unmeet 
 
 With merry pipe scare Silence from her bed ; 
 There oft to baffle Pan's pursuing feet 
 
 Through lone dark fields the woodland fay hath fled. 
 With perfume Bacchus' rout the rooms hath filled; 
 Lush grew the leafage from the wine they spilled ; 
 At morn the grass with pile of roses shed, 
 
 Which no man knew for his, was flushed and sweet. 
 Then, tree of gods, hold high thy deathless head. 
 Fear no profaning steel, no furnace heat. 
 
 Pompeian slips may perish with the name. 
 Thy planter planted for eternal fame. 
 
 We are not going now to pursue this Caesarian 
 topic any further, though Martial offers plenty of 
 illustrations. We have looked at it only to see what 
 faith the writer had in him. Long imaginative 
 labours (and Martial must have worked exceedingly 
 hard) can scarcely be sustained without a belief in 
 something. Martial believed cordially in the empire 
 and its business of civilization. "If you would move 
 my tears, yourself must feel the grief." If you would 
 be interesting, you must be interested. The mark 
 of Martial, as already said, is just this : that the 
 machinery and goings-on of civilized life are so 
 universally interesting to him, and in him become 
 so interesting. Nothing excites him more, nothing 
 lifts him to so high a level, as that special product 
 of material civilization, household comfort. He is 
 perhaps the only writer in whom plate and tapestry,
 
 1 6 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 earthenware and hardware, beds and sofas, become 
 truly poetic, as all deserving readers would allow 
 that they do. This is not to be attributed merely 
 to the man's individual character. It is the result 
 of his time and situation. Convenience of life has 
 a nobler aspect in him than elsewhere, because it 
 was for his time, and relatively to those whom he 
 represented, a nobler and more elevating thing than 
 it commonly is. He delights in pleasant houses. 
 He loves the urban palace; he is not insensible to 
 suburban snugness; but, above all, he loves that 
 highest achievement of comfort, the rich man's 
 fancy-farm. To the honour of this he sacrifices the 
 palace, with its weary ceremony, and the suburban 
 garden, which leaves you after all dependent on the 
 market. Bassus has such a garden. He has been 
 seen on the road near Rome with a whole carriage- 
 full of pleasant things — vegetables, game, and poul- 
 try ; even the running footmen had eggs to carry : 
 
 So plenteous was the freight in every sort 
 Of rural breed and boon. Our friend, in short, 
 Was on his way between his "farm" and town. 
 "Yes, coming up." Oh no, sir; — goitig down! 
 
 Here, as often in Martial, the jest at the close merely 
 serves to frame the picture, the poem being written 
 for the picture itself. This is still more the case in 
 the noble sequel (in 58), where Bassus appears 
 again, and a genuine country-place is described to 
 him by way of contrast. The poet has few things 
 
 better: 
 
 That is no "country" where the myrtle grows, 
 Bassus, in rigid rows.
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome \*j 
 
 And shaven box, and planes without a vine 
 
 In many a useless line. 
 For "country," see Faustinus' acres, tilled 
 
 To the last corner, filled 
 With fruitful corn ; see many a storing-room 
 
 With autumn's rich perfume 
 Replenished yearly, till, November past. 
 
 The raisin's gathered last. 
 Wild in the glen the bull-calves fight and fret 
 
 Their foreheads smooth as yet. 
 The grown bulls bellow free. The feathered train 
 
 Spreads in a roomy plain : 
 There the shrill goose and starry peacock run, 
 
 Flamingoes, like the sun 
 Setting, and many a wing of speck and spot 
 
 And curious-painted blot, 
 Numidian, Phasian, Rhodian. Housed above. 
 
 The pigeon-kind make love, 
 And coo to coo replies. Here, rough and rude, 
 
 The pushing swine for food 
 Follow the farm-wife's apron ; there the lamb 
 
 Looks, helpless, for its dam. 
 The hearth within, where cheery logs abound, 
 
 Shows chubby faces round; 
 No pale and sedentary tapster there ! 
 
 (Your draught is the free air) 
 No foul gymnasium ! Hunt, and fish, and toil, 
 
 And you may spare your oil. 
 The footman in his glory will not shirk 
 
 A little garden-work, 
 And lads who ran from tasks, no more afraid. 
 
 Run willing to the spade. 
 The country "callers" from the neighbouring lands 
 
 Come not with empty hands ; 
 With gift of honey in the comb they come, 
 
 With shapely cheeses some, 
 With dormice half asleep, with this and that, 
 Kidlings or capons fat. 
 
 V. L. E. 2
 
 1 8 A Roman of Greater' Rome 
 
 Eggs in a basket, or such housewife thing, 
 
 The stately lasses bring 
 "With mother's duty." — Hours with labour blest 
 
 Bring supper and a guest. 
 The country table, certain not to fail, 
 
 Saves nothing to be stale ; 
 The menials, with their bellyful at least, 
 
 Contented serve the feast. — 
 See, Bassus, see all this ; then boast me not 
 
 Your mean suburban plot, 
 Some laurels and a scarecrow (this for show, 
 
 To make believe things grow). 
 The porridge of your artificial clown 
 
 Comes from a shop in town. 
 The sum of your " farm-labour " is to cart 
 
 Down from the city mart 
 Eggs, cheese, greens, poultry, fruit. Why drive so far? 
 
 You were in town — and are. 
 
 Strange, in all this modernness, are the occasional 
 touches that tell us the time ; the gymnasium and the 
 "oil" as the type of town-exercise, and the page-lads, 
 slaves in training for various duties in the great 
 household, for whom in town there would be lessons 
 to do, while in the country they are set, to their great 
 relief, at the garden. The "dormice" surprise us in 
 the list; but doubtless there would be enough for a 
 dish, a favourite dish. But no detail is so remark- 
 able as the diffused delight in the apparatus of life, 
 which quickens the whole : if, indeed, I can hope 
 that anything of this survives in the translation. 
 I cannot forbear to quote for their sound just two 
 verses ; this on the pigeon-house : 
 
 Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum, 
 
 and this exquisite description of the rustic girls : 
 Grandes proborum virgines colonorum.
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 19 
 
 The age when this last could be written was assuredly 
 not without its better aspects. 
 
 The poet himself had a country cottage and 
 garden in his wealthier days. He makes a point 
 of sending roses from it to a dear friend, but laments 
 that weightier presents have to come "from the 
 shop." Not but that on occasion he can be enthu- 
 siastic also over the " rus in urbe." He has one 
 particularly famous picture in this style (iv 64), 
 representing what must really have been a charming 
 house and from its situation a show-place in Rome. 
 One Julius Martialis (no relation to the poet, whose 
 family name was Valerius), a man of some distinction 
 in politics and — at least as a patron and admirer — in 
 literature, had a sort of miniature park on the Jani- 
 culan Hill, above the ancient Mulvian Bridge. Lying 
 on the west of Rome, and separated from the mass 
 of it by the winding Tiber, it commanded the most 
 interesting view in the world : the city for foreground, 
 and behind it, right away to the hills, a beautiful 
 country, crowded with legends and memories; all 
 the towns which had fought with Rome when Rome 
 was an ambitious village, now linked to each other 
 by those magnificent roads which were the chief 
 instrument and symbol of the " Roman peace." 
 
 "A little place" — Yet not the blest 
 In the Happy Gardens of the West 
 Could here pronounce their dwelling best. 
 
 Better does Martialis dwell. 
 
 Janiculus with gentle swell 
 
 From low dull air uplifts him well
 
 20 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 To skies more pure. His favoured zone 
 
 Enjoys a climate of its own, 
 
 A heaven brought near for him alone. 
 
 All the Seven Hills of queenly Rome 
 The eye may take from this fair home, 
 To Alba, Tusculum, may roam, 
 
 Fidenae, Rubrae, names of yore, 
 Perenna's orchard (heretofore 
 Mishallowed with a maiden's gore)\ 
 
 Two noble ways you hence may trace 
 And follow there the chariot's pace. 
 By sight not sound ; to this high place 
 
 The wheel is dumb. The boatman's cheer, 
 The bargeman's most vociferous jeer, 
 Are silent to the sleeping ear. 
 
 Yet that's the Mulvian, past a doubt, 
 That's Tiber, with the craft about. 
 "Am I in town?" you say, "or out?" 
 
 And you would find a welcome there 
 So frank and free, so debonnair, 
 As you yourself the master were. 
 
 Alcinous-like he shares his state. 
 Or like Molorchus, grown to great 
 For keeping of an open gate. 
 
 (Odysseus' entertainer, the King of the Phaeacians, 
 is moderately famous still; but as to Molorchus, some 
 
 ^ " Et quae virgineo cruore gaudet, Annae pomiferum nemus 
 Perennae." The legend, apparently of the Iphigetiia type, is not 
 otherwise known in connexion with the old Italian deity, Anna 
 Perenna. For this reason (a poor one, as it seems to me) it has 
 been supposed that there is some error here. The present tense 
 is perhaps "historical"; but it is quite possible that some symbol 
 of the sacrifice was actually kept up.
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 21 
 
 may not disdain to be informed that he made his 
 fortune by entertaining Hercules unawares.) 
 
 Ye that all merit see in size, 
 Whom all a township scarce supplies 
 With one such farm as satisfies : 
 
 Seek where you will your ample space, 
 If only you will give me grace 
 Still to prefer this "little place." 
 
 Martial, we see, like other professional persons, 
 could plead either side of a cause for a proper con- 
 sideration, and was indeed a man genuinely pleased 
 with many different things. But he had his bent all 
 the while. He is never so sparkling and elastic as 
 when something suggests the prospect of Spain and 
 of rest among the iron-forges of Bilbilis. We will 
 put here together, first his good-speed to a fellow- 
 countryman, who, having made a fortune at law, was 
 going back to the West (i 50); and secondly the 
 farewell which he himself, having at length got 
 enough and meaning soon to return, takes of another 
 distinguished Spaniard whom he was leaving in Italy 
 (^ Z1^- (The strangest thing in them, to our eyes, 
 is the "sport." It must be confessed that the Roman 
 gentlemen took their sport in a lazy way. I should 
 not dare, for fear of ruining Martial right out, to pro- 
 duce here certain expostulations which he addresses 
 to a friend, who had a habit of hard riding after the 
 hare.) The first of these pieces is among the earliest 
 work, the second among the very latest, of Martial's 
 career at Rome. The places are mostly mere names 
 now, but they have a quaint and interesting sound.
 
 22 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 Good-speed ! 
 
 O theme for Celtiberian lays, 
 
 O worthy name for Spaniards' praise ! 
 
 And are you, are you bound for Spain, 
 
 To see high BilbiUs once again 
 
 (For stream and stithy a town of pride)? 
 
 Old Gaius' snows, and the mountain side 
 
 Whence breaks Vadavero, sacred flood ! 
 
 Boterdus' screen of fragrant wood, 
 
 The garden-goddess' loved retreat ! 
 
 Shall it be yours, 'twixt cold and heat, 
 
 To bathe where Congedus invites 
 
 Soft Naiads to his soft delights? 
 
 That softness then to brace and cool 
 
 In steely Salo's tempering pool? 
 
 Then in Voberca's teeming chace 
 
 To make your bag from the lunching-place ! 
 
 Or break the summer's sultry powers 
 
 In the deep dark of Tagus' bowers, 
 
 With fresh Dercenna and Nutha's drench 
 
 Better than ice your thirst to quench ! 
 
 When enters with December hoar 
 
 The bellowing North-wind, fierce and frore, 
 
 You'll seek the Tarraconian coast 
 
 And "lang-syne" Laletanian host. 
 
 There for your nets are fallow deer. 
 
 Boars "on the premises" for your spear. 
 
 And dodging hares to breathe your horse 
 
 (The stags your rustic best may course). 
 
 Almost the forest lays its logs 
 
 (So near it grows) upon the dogs. 
 
 The household gathers in the hall 
 
 Easy and happy ; just a call 
 
 Will bring the huntsman. — Lay aside 
 
 The gown, the badge of irksome pride;
 
 A Roman of Greater Rome 23 
 
 Its purple stinks \ You need not here 
 Go shivering to some lev^e drear. 
 You wake not here to meet forlorn 
 Pale business ghastly as the morn, 
 The pauper's drone, the lady's scorn — 
 Sleep on. Let others tear the laws 
 For the sweet poison of applause. 
 You, in the triumphs of your boy, 
 Find a more pure, more wholesome joy. 
 When most of life is paid for fame, 
 Life claims the rest — a modest claim. 
 
 As we follow the traveller from region to region 
 of this Roman province, so interesting but for the 
 most part so dim to us, we must wish once more 
 that he had somewhere given us more full and more 
 precise descriptions. Writing almost wholly in Italy, 
 and for a gay pleasure-loving public, it is commonly, 
 as here, for its material ease and abundance that he 
 contrasts his unexhausted country with the "struggle 
 for existence" in the region of the capital. But he 
 could have told us many curious things, if he would. 
 Once (iv 55) he runs over a list of Spanish places, 
 just to laugh (for the benefit of Italians) at their 
 strange sounds, but maintaining at the same time 
 with proper pride that they are very good names, 
 and that Italy had worse. Some of the touches 
 with which he adorns his catalogue must be pain- 
 fully exciting to a Celtic archaeologist. What was 
 the sanction, religious or secular, which "protected 
 the dances of Rixamae" ? In whose name and with 
 
 ^ This literal fact (for the Tyrian dye was apt to be very 
 unsavoury) is here used with pungent effect.
 
 24 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 what ceremony did the folk assemble for "the holi- 
 day banquet of Carduae " ? What mysteries did 
 Burado cover in its "grove of oaks," and for what 
 mysterious reason must every traveller, however 
 little disposed to walk, dismount or diverge so as 
 to pass through it ? What, above all, was there at 
 Rigae, for which Martial takes the nearest Roman 
 term to be " our fathers' antique theatre " ? A 
 "theatre" in the common sense, such as the Romans 
 copied from the Greeks, his fathers had certainly not 
 built there. Was it perhaps a "ring" of banks, or 
 of great stones, after the Celtic fashion known else- 
 where ? But we must leave these disquisitions for 
 others, and return to our business of seeing Martial 
 himself to his Spanish home, and of presenting in 
 English his happy 
 
 Farewell. 
 
 King of the Courts, whose lips maintain 
 By honest truth their legal reign, 
 What orders, friend and fellow-townsman, 
 What orders, hey ! for the Spanish main ? 
 
 Why care you here to pull the line 
 For dog-fish (if your chance be fine). 
 While there they fling the mullet, wanting 
 
 His full three pounds, to his native brine? 
 Why choose to swell a meagre bill 
 With sapless whelk or tasteless squill. 
 While Spain has oysters, such profusion, 
 
 The very lackeys may eat their fill? 
 
 Why this halloo a fox to scare. 
 Stinking and snapping, to the snare? 
 My nets in Spain, ere yet from ocean 
 The hemp be dry, will be round a hare.
 
 A Roman of Greater Roi7ie 25 
 
 Here comes your fisher — nothing ta'en ; 
 Your huntsman — of a weasel vain. 
 The town must keep your seaside table. 
 What orders, hey ! for the Spanish main ? 
 
 Naturally the poet, when he had got his will, 
 did not find all that he hoped. Who ever did ? 
 Nothing proves that he ever regretted his return. 
 But he felt more keenly what he had left behind. 
 Doubtless the disadvantages of Bilbilis told more 
 in reality than in fancy. His Roman taste had 
 become more fastidious ; and — he was getting old. 
 Some of his last verses come as near melancholy as 
 any of his bright and equal writing. It could not 
 be otherwise. It is pleasant, however, to know that 
 he got a garden, and was able to call himself, as he 
 had called his friends in the capital, " as happy as 
 Alcinous and the Hesperides." He even married 
 a garden, the dower of a certain Marcella of Bilbilis\ 
 and thanks her gracefully for the gift. He was able 
 to thank her also for nobler consolation. We cannot 
 end better than with the little poem (xii 21) in which 
 he praises her, not without pathos, for her Roman 
 culture. It ought to be remembered, when vials 
 
 ' Whether he had ever been married before is uncertain. 
 Some of his poems mention a "wife," but she is never named, 
 and it is impossible to say in his writings how much is literary 
 fiction. Marcella certainly did not become his wife till after his 
 return. It should, perhaps, be noticed, that she has been sup- 
 posed to have been the poet's patron, and not his wife. The 
 evidence is chiefly contained in the above poem, which, I confess, 
 leaves little doubt in my mind. She was in any case his best and 
 most intimate friend, and the question scarcely concerns us here.
 
 26 A Roman of Greater Rome 
 
 of wrath are poured upon the Rome of Nero and 
 Domitian, that a man, certainly not without keen 
 sensibilities of mind and heart, when he wanted to 
 show how highly he valued the companion whom 
 he had chosen to be with him till death, could 
 think of no words higher than these — "You, and you 
 only, bring me Rome ! " 
 
 Who could believe that such as thou couldst grow 
 In this our burgh, by this our iron stream? 
 
 Thy thoughts make other music than we know, 
 And, heard in Caesar's court, would native seem. 
 
 No child of the mid City is thy peer; 
 
 To thee the Capitol's best daughter yields; 
 To win a Roman heart, for many a year 
 
 No worthier flower shall bloom in foreign fields. 
 
 Thou, only thou, dost soothe my fond regret 
 
 For that fair Queen. I have something Roman yet.
 
 ■•-**^ 
 
 AN OLD LOVE STORY 
 
 About twenty years before Christ, while the 
 first Augustus of the newly established empire, sick 
 in body and sorrowing for the recent death of his 
 only heir, was gone with his legions to set in order 
 the still unquiet East, and to vindicate the national 
 honour by recovering from his Parthian neighbour 
 the standards lost, a generation earlier, at Carrhae, 
 there appeared at Rome, in complete and final 
 shape, a book of verse, destined to exercise through 
 remarkable vicissitudes of fortune a long, and yet 
 unexhausted, effect upon literature. It was divided 
 into Three Parts, and comprised some eighty poems, 
 varying in length from near a hundred lines to six. 
 It was written in the couplets traditionally appro- 
 priated to the tender passion, and presented, in the 
 form of a personal confession by the poet, the 
 beginning, consequences, and end of a censurable 
 and unhappy attachment. 
 
 Both the author and his Cynthia were already 
 well known to the public. The First Part, complete 
 in itself, had come out under the same title before, 
 and the fame of it had spread, we are told, to the
 
 28 An Old Love Story 
 
 I steppes of the Dnieper, to the obscure limits of the 
 I civilized world. The author, Sextus Propertius, 
 belonged, with Virgil and Horace, to the high court 
 i of letters, the circle of the minister Maecenas. And 
 J over his pensioned compeers, the son of the farmer 
 and the son of the freedman, he had considerable 
 temporary advantages. By birth he was probably 
 at least the equal of the minister himself, whose 
 pedigree was of the kind suspiciously antique ; and 
 in fortune he was independent. He belonged to 
 " what we should call a good county family^ " of the 
 neighbourhood of Perugia. While he was a child 
 his father died, and he was deprived in some way of 
 a large estate ; but he can still speak of himself as 
 " not very rich," and his story requires us to suppose 
 that, in one way or another, his circumstances were 
 easy. If, as it seems, he was not on good terms 
 with Horace, we can easily account for friction 
 between two literary rivals moving in good society, 
 one of whom had the usual passports for entering 
 there, while the other was often reminded un- 
 pleasantly that he had not. Of Virgil he speaks 
 with profound deference ; but Virgil had written the 
 Georgics, and thus placed himself practically beyond 
 competition, before Propertius entered the field. 
 
 ^ I take this opportunity of acknowledging my debt, as a 
 i reader of Propertius, to my friend Dr Postgate. There are 
 I naturally points in this article on which he or others might not 
 ' agree with me, but these pages are not a suitable place for dis- 
 cussion. My references are to the text edited by Prof. A. Palmer, 
 a delightful little book.
 
 An Old Love Story 29 
 
 It would seem strange, and perhaps absurd, to 
 say of a man whose reputation is not of the first 
 order, and whose chief work was contemporaneous 
 with the Odes and the Aeneid, that he was in any 
 sense the best poet of his time. And yet, without 
 defiance of common opinion, this might be said of 
 Propertius. We have only to choose appropriately, 
 among the various qualities which go to "poetry," 
 the quality which we will regard as essential. It is 
 a not uncommon view, that the vivid and apparently 
 spontaneous expression of feeling is of the essence 
 of poetry, and that no subtlety of linguistic art can 
 compensate for the want of it. For such a taste 
 Roman literature supplies small satisfaction, and 
 Augustan literature very small indeed, a fact put 
 bluntly by the accomplished critic who said that, 
 after Catullus and Lucretius, the Romans had no 
 I poetry at all. The only writer of the Augustan 
 age for whom on these principles much could be 
 said, is Propertius. If he and his rivals could be in 
 some way represented by equivalents of our own 
 time, it is quite possible that by the majority the 
 modern Virgil and the modern Horace would be 
 much more admired than loved ; it is certain that the 
 i modern Propertius would become rapidly popular 
 1 wherever English is read. But the world, now 
 supplied with many good literatures, naturally goes 
 to each for what it offers best ; and has long sought 
 the Roman not for passion at all, but for " lo bello 
 stile che I'ha fatto onore." The Aeneid wdiS turned 
 into a school-book the moment it was written, and 
 
 !
 
 30 An Old Love Story 
 
 a school-book of the human race it has been, and 
 
 will be. For such purposes there could not well 
 
 I be anything less suitable than Cynthia. Signs, 
 
 I however, indicate that the long tutelage of mankind 
 
 I by Latin may soon end or be interrupted. Should 
 
 this take place, one result may be that those who do 
 
 go to Latin will go to it more for pleasure and less 
 
 for literary training ; and in that case, though Virgil 
 
 and Horace will not descend, the reputation of 
 
 Propertius will relatively rise, as in fact it has lately 
 
 risen. Meanwhile we may at all events spend a 
 
 few minutes over a book which has made great 
 
 poetry again and again, and could "spur an imitative 
 
 zeal " in no less a mind than that of Goethe. 
 
 We will look first at the original Cynthia, now 
 represented by Part L It is supposed to have been 
 published near the year 25, when the real Propertius 
 was about twenty-five years old. How much in it was 
 fact and how much fiction we do not and need not 
 know. At the conclusion the poet, after a common 
 Roman fashion, makes a few brief statements about 
 his origin, just sufficient for personal identification. 
 In the rest of the book, as in the two later Parts, 
 there is, for a work of the kind, a remarkable want 
 of detail in place, time, and circumstance. It was 
 plainly never intended for a roman a clef. The 
 hero is a youth without occupation, whose first 
 serious love, when the work opens, has lasted a 
 year : he may be supposed, according to Italian 
 ideas, perhaps twenty years old, not more. His 
 story might be that of any such youth. Equally
 
 An Old Love Story 31 
 
 typical is the description of the heroine. It was be- 
 lieved in the second century a.d., that she answered 
 to an original in real life, whose name was Hostia ; 
 but the statement, if true, is of no importance. The 
 Cynthia of the poems is a woman without position, 
 family, or connexions (except a mother) of any 
 kind, sustaining by her beauty and accomplishments 
 an extravagant life. Her accomplishments include 
 a fine taste in literature, or at least such is the 
 persuasion of the enamoured poet. About her 
 character her lover is never deceived, except wilfully 
 by himself. His very first words are a lament that 
 in the pursuit of her he has become utterly im- 
 provident, and has lost the taste for honest society. 
 Around the principal figures are grouped three or 
 four other youths — a Tullus, Gallus, Bassus, Ponticus 
 — such friends as a gentleman and a poet would be 
 likely to have, young, passionate, and literary, but 
 not characterized with much distinctness. Ponticus 
 is at work on an epic, and looks with much contempt 
 on lesser ambitions. His elegiac friend thinks the 
 epic equal to Homer, but warns him that he will 
 find hexameters of little use when he falls in love, 
 which presently comes to pass. Bassus is a lyrist 
 in the " Adeline " and " Madeline " stage, but cannot, 
 with his gallery of beauties, distract the devotee of 
 Cynthia. Gallus seems to be a relation, as ardent 
 as the poet himself, and exchanges with him 
 rapturous confidences ; while Tullus, a calmer and 
 not active personage, is his monitor, and his auditor 
 when he bewails his folly or talks about his family.
 
 32 An Old Love Story 
 
 The machinery is of the simplest kind, and might 
 have been perfectly uninteresting. 
 
 But, such as it is, it is enough for Propertius. 
 Those who, for a study in grammar, have been 
 conducted for some time up and down the undula- 
 tions of Ovid, would be astonished to find what the 
 compass of the couplet is, when touched by a poet 
 of earnest and delicate feeling. Propertius has all 
 sorts of faults. He is often obscure, he is sometimes 
 dull. He strains his language, brusques his transi- 
 tions, and twists his thoughts. But there is one 
 word that never applies to him, a word that haunts 
 disagreeably the reader of much Latin literature. 
 He is never vulgar. Every thought, we are sure, 
 has really been thought by this particular man. 
 Even the commonplace, of which he has plenty, is 
 Propertian, and not the commonplace which is 
 common. His grain is grain, and there is no 
 "vacant chaff." Such a man can but very imper- 
 fectly speak for himself in translation. But we must 
 do our best when there seems to be a chance. 
 
 The remorseful introduction already mentioned 
 
 is followed by a gentle expostulation with Cynthia 
 
 upon her needless finery : 
 
 Thou canst not mend thy face : Love, going bare, 
 Loves not that beauty should be made with art. 
 
 In the third poem the full splendour of the poet 
 breaks out. Deep in the night Cynthia is found 
 asleep, and the youth, from experience, is afraid to 
 awaken her. The picture, in the realism of its 
 grace, was probably then an entirely novel thing.
 
 An Old Love Story 33 
 
 Neither has it, in its kind, been superseded by the 
 innumerable imitations. 
 
 I gazed, with Argus' fixed and wondering look 
 
 At lo guised with horns. Anon I took 
 
 And softly set on Cynthia's marble brow 
 
 The wreath that was upon mine own, and now 
 
 Raised the loose hair, and shaped the scattered strands, 
 
 Or slipped sly gifts into the open hands, 
 
 A fruit, a flower. Dtill slumber took them all, 
 
 Nor thanked me, and too oft the lap let fall. 
 
 And if she stirred or sighed, at every turn 
 
 My folly still a meaning would discern, 
 
 And thought perchance, my Cy?tthta, thou didst seem 
 
 To fly sotne lover shown thee in a dream. 
 
 The moon from window on to window crept. 
 And teased at length the eyes that lingering slept, 
 With gentle ray the seal of slumber brake. 
 Upon her pillowed arm she rose, and spake : 
 "At last thou art dismissed, at last I see. 
 Turned from some other door, thou com'st to me ! 
 Where hast thou been this weary while, that I 
 Have watched the stars go slowly, slowly by? 
 To know thy cruelty, thyself must spend 
 Such long dark hours, and sicken for the end. 
 How oft, how long, my needle did I tire, 
 How often wake, for change, the unwilling lyre ! 
 Sometimes, in pity of my lonely state, 
 I did lament of others' happier fate, 
 A little, and but gently. Ere I slept 
 This was the latest thought on which I wept." 
 
 I have marked here the passage which I think 
 most characteristic. Nothing surely can be more 
 exquisitely subtle than this half-conscious "folly," 
 which interprets trifles first instinctively, according 
 
 V. L. E. X
 
 34 '^'^ Old Love Story 
 
 to what it knows to be true, and then wilfully, by 
 what it chooses to believe. And how superb are 
 the secure falsehoods of the confident beauty ! 
 
 Perhaps no other poem in the First Part comes 
 up to this. The next four poems, as well as the 
 ninth and tenth, are addressed to the friends, and 
 something has been said of them already. The 
 feeling of them all (and it is their chief merit) is 
 delightfully young and fresh. In the sixth, Tullus, 
 the monitor, has made the reasonable suggestion 
 that the narrator should go with him for a voyage 
 in the East, and has tried the effect of impeaching 
 his courage. He replies that, as far as that goes, 
 he would accompany Tullus to the world's end ; but 
 that not for all the sights in the world would he see 
 Cynthia so miserable as she threatens to be : 
 
 What should I gain to see fair Athens' arts, 
 
 If Cynthia cursed me while the ship was launched? 
 When tears of blood ran down her visage blanched, 
 
 What should I care for Asia's ancient marts? 
 
 language which long afterwards he was bitterly to 
 remember. In the eighth poem, with a certain 
 irony of contrast, it is found that Cynthia is on the 
 point of leaving with a wealthy suitor for Greece, 
 but she is dissuaded by the poet, who attributes his 
 success wholly to the power of his verse, and flatters 
 himself that after this proof of his strength he is 
 sure for ever. He is soon taught, however, that his 
 Muse can by no means dispense with the material 
 aids of the purse (xi — xv). Cynthia is gone to 
 the great watering-place of Baiae, the Brighton or
 
 An Old Love Story 35 
 
 Scarborough of the day, whither the poet has not 
 followed her. This seems at first strange, as there 
 is no hint of a quarrel, and he is extremely doleful 
 at the separation ; but it is explained when we 
 discover, certainly without surprise, that his affairs 
 are in disorder. This disclosure is made with much 
 humour. In xiv the poet, with some heat, assures 
 Tullus, who would appear to have been improving 
 the occasion, that really he does not care for wealth,* 
 being possessed of love : 
 
 Unenvied you, the rich, by Tiber's side, 
 Quafifing your priceless cup, may lie at large, 
 
 And wonder that the skiffs so swiftly "glide, 
 Or wonder that so slowly stems the barge. 
 
 These opening lines may be noted in passing for 
 their delicate description of utter indolence. But, 
 alas! the "peril of my fortune" is announced at 
 Baiae, and Cynthia, instead of hurrying back, does 
 not seem to understand that the danger is "ours," 
 and continues to study her daily toilet, unmoved 
 by the poetic assurance that none of the faithful 
 heroines of Greek legend, neither Calypso, Hypsi- 
 pyle, Evadne, nor Alphesiboea, would have behaved 
 so, and that she is forfeiting the prospect of an 
 equal renown. After this the lover is forced to open 
 his eyes (xvi). He seeks solitude both on sea 
 and on land (xvii, xviii), and is discontented with 
 himself for seeking it. He repeats the beloved 
 and unworthy name to the woods, carves it on the 
 trees, and generally conducts himself in the expected 
 manner. Finally (xix) he falls into an expectation 
 
 3—2
 
 36 An Old Love Story 
 
 of death, and builds some hope of reconciliation on 
 this pathetic subject. There the book ends, so far 
 as Cynthia is concerned. The last two poems form 
 the personal epilogue, and, taken together, suggest 
 the relationship of the author to Gallus. Before 
 these two is put a piece unconnected either with 
 Cynthia or with Propertius, a charming and often 
 imitated version of the story of Hylas carried away 
 by the water-nymphs. It seems intended as a 
 specimen of the author's power in narrative proper, 
 and by an address to Gallus is loosely tacked into 
 its place. 
 
 Such in very brief outline is the First Part of 
 Cynthia. As will have been seen, though the pieces, 
 where connected by allusion, are naturally placed in 
 the order of time, the whole can scarcely be called a 
 story. There is but slight development, and after 
 the year supposed to have elapsed at the beginning 
 there is no hint of date. The time allotted to the 
 proceedings may be whatever the reader thinks 
 suitable. We may note also of this part that it 
 really is, what it calls itself, a book in praise of 
 Cynthia. The lover's expostulations are extremely 
 moderate, and his tenderness is rather increased 
 than diminished. A more curious point is this. 
 The introductory poem is full of self-reproach ; the 
 speaker knows himself to be in the way to ruin and 
 degradation, and would thankfully be rescued, were 
 it possible. Nothing of the sort occurs in this Part 
 again ; and it may well be suspected that when 
 Cynthia was expanded to its present form, the
 
 An Old Love Story 37 
 
 introduction was modified to suit, as it does, not the 
 First Part, but the entire work. 
 
 For, whatever Propertius may have intended, 
 circumstances did not leave him perfectly free. His 
 reputation opened to him the official circle, and he 
 entered it. The Second Part begins with an address 
 to Maecenas, and we soon discover that we are in 
 an altered atmosphere. He was told, though he 
 did not need to be told, that his new patron had 
 taken him not for performance but for promise. He 
 has defined his position neatly by reference to the 
 rise of Virgil. The minister and the emperor are 
 pressing for a historical Roman epic, for something 
 parallel to the growing Aeneid, and Propertius can 
 only answer that he has not risen even to the 
 Georgics yet, but is still in the amatory region of 
 the Idylls^. But indeed he was something worse 
 off than this. His Cynthia, so far as it went, went 
 the wrong way. Augustus wanted a reform of 
 manners, and wanted above all to repeople desolate 
 Italy with soldiers and citizens. He was already 
 struggling to legislate in favour of marriage, and 
 against precisely the sort of connexion which 
 Cynthia celebrated. How peremptorily he could 
 deal with literature, both Horace and Ovid ' in 
 different ways were to prove. Evidently, either 
 Propertius must forgo the obvious path of ambi- 
 tion, or Cynthia must stop, or Cynthia continued 
 must take a new turn. We can easily understand 
 
 ^11 I, and II 10, particularly 11 10, 25, 26. See Georg. 
 II 176.
 
 38 An Old Love Story 
 
 why the rising author decided on the third way, and 
 added to his first picture of enchantment a second of 
 disillusion, and a third of deliverance. The Second 
 Part expressly promises the Third, and the two, 
 though perhaps published separately, were projected 
 together. 
 
 It is of course impossible here to examine the 
 whole, and we must be content with a glance at the 
 principal groups. The Second Part, as it is the 
 longest, is also in my judgment the most interesting. 
 The mental and physical charms of Cynthia still 
 exert their full force, and the lover, without real 
 effort, remains her servant. But he can deceive 
 himself no longer. A few pieces of eloquent de- 
 scription are followed (v, vi) by a fearful outburst 
 of rage and denunciation, recurring in various forms 
 at frequent intervals. The reproach of himself, 
 which after the introductory warning disappears 
 from the First Part, is now frequently upon his lips. 
 But against pressure from without he is fiercely 
 defiant. A social enactment enforcing marriage has 
 lately been put forward by the Emperor. The 
 lover declares that he would sooner die than wed 
 (for a marriage with Cynthia, it should be observed, 
 would not have satisfied the law). They rejoice 
 together when the law is withdrawn, a scene of 
 telling irony, for in fact the moment is one of the 
 few glimpses of happiness in this division of the 
 story, and it is clear that Cynthia, who for the most 
 part keeps no measures with her victim any longer, 
 has really been frightened by the proposal into
 
 An Old Love Story 39 
 
 a passing gentleness. Two other reconciliations 
 occur. The poet, with the same complacency so 
 amusingly presented in the earlier part, attributes 
 each to an artistic success. We will try to show 
 something of both the poems so distinguished, for 
 the opinion of Propertius on his own work is not 
 to be despised. The first time (xiii, xiv, xv) he 
 tries again the familiar pathos of foreseeing his 
 death, a way, as he says with delicate satire, so 
 obvious that he ought not to have missed it. He 
 now goes the length of arranging his funeral : 
 
 No masked procession show my pedigree. 
 
 Nor let the trumpet wail (what use?) for me. 
 
 Lay not the corpse upon an ivory bed, 
 
 No broidered coverlet beneath me spread. 
 
 Give me no train of mourners, give me just 
 
 The meanest following of a pauper's dust. 
 
 A train of Three shall satisfy my pride — 
 
 My Books, a royal gift for Pluto's bride. 
 
 But thou shalt follow there, and beat thy breast, 
 
 And call my name, and call, and never rest ; 
 
 Kiss the cold lips, aye, kiss them, till the pyre 
 
 Is crowned with spices and awaits the fire. 
 
 Then let me, all to dust and ashes turned, 
 
 In vessel small and earthen be inurned. 
 
 And where they burned me, as memorial due, 
 
 Set me a bay for shade, and verses two : 
 
 "The slave, whose relics this is set above. 
 
 Had but one only Lord, whose name was Love." 
 
 Posterity has confirmed the poet's judgment, and 
 has given this poem a wide and perpetual fame. It 
 has also generally agreed with him in admiring still 
 more the other professedly successful piece in the
 
 40 An Old Love Story 
 
 book, a desperate effort which follows the dead 
 failure of an allusion to the old topics of death and 
 poetic immortality (xxiv, xxv, xxvi). He tries a 
 different pathos. 
 
 I dreamed. Ah, dearest ! near a sinking ship 
 I saw thee faintly beat the drowning sea. 
 
 Drenched was thy heavy hair, and ah ! thy lip 
 Confessed the falsehoods it hath told to me. 
 
 Thus Helle, when the golden beast she rode, 
 Tossed on the waves, thought I in deadly fear. 
 
 Like Helle, Cynthia too, my thought forbode. 
 May name a sea, and ask the traveller's tear. 
 
 I cried to heaven, to Neptune, Leda's Twain, 
 
 Leucothea too, a woman once as thou. 
 Thy hands are lifted feebly from the main. 
 
 Thou criest on me, and thou art dying now ! 
 
 Had but the merman king beheld thine eyes, 
 
 Thou must have been his queen. The whitest face, 
 
 The bluest locks in ocean, with surprise 
 
 And jealous murmur, must have given thee place. 
 
 But see, a dolphin darting to thy side ! 
 
 (The same Arion, harping, rode upon?) 
 I would have flung me in the waves; I tried, 
 
 I struggled, agonized — the dream was gone. 
 
 The reader may find here, as high as it can be 
 traced, the beginning of many a fertile stream of 
 poetry. There is a detail which, though not im- 
 portant in the piece itself, affords afterwards a 
 curious illustration of the variety of Propertius in 
 working up his topics. One would scarcely suspect 
 anything personal to Cynthia in the " blueness " of 
 the sea-nymphs' tresses ; for Cynthia's hair was
 
 An Old Love Story 41 
 
 brown. But a new light is thrown back on it after- 
 wards, when in another mood the lover twits the 
 lady with her small success in a whimsical attempt 
 at black : 
 
 If one I know will turn her tresses i>/ue, 
 Say, does that prove it a becoming hue? 
 
 But beautiful as are these golden threads in the 
 Second Part, they are far more effective in the web. 
 The last in particular comes as a delicious relief 
 after a frantic episode (xxii — xxv), in which the 
 narrator plunges low indeed in search of dissipa- 
 tion, with the only result of deepening his disgust 
 and self-contempt. It is well worth notice that this 
 incident and all the like element in the book is, so 
 far as we know, entirely original, a new thing in 
 literature. Certainly it was not taken from the 
 Greek. The moment was critical. The Dipsychus 
 was becoming conscious of his two souls, and the 
 breach was before long to be widened into an agony 
 which re-created the world. The mental dialogue 
 which begins thus, 
 
 I, that should have disdained the common road, 
 Now drink, delighted, of its very pools ! 
 
 is worth volumes of declamatory satire. 
 
 From the triumph which rewards the "dream" 
 we pass, by a singularly skilful transition, into a 
 wholly fresh episode. The dream leads naturally 
 to the thought, that a death at sea, with Cynthia, 
 would not be unacceptable, and this to a little piece 
 of false rhetoric on the theme, that among the 
 uncertainties of life he alone knows the destined
 
 42 An Old Love Story 
 
 manner of his death, who will live or die by the 
 kindness or cruelty of his mistress ; when suddenly 
 truth avenges itself upon affectation by illustrating- 
 the uncertainty of life in another way. Cynthia falls 
 •dangerously ill. In a poem of prayer and pity the 
 familiar legendary names, the poet's Greek stock-in- 
 trade, lo, Leucothea, Andromeda, Callisto, Semele, 
 defile past with a strange and helpless effect. But 
 the danger grows ; the last efforts of witchcraft are 
 exhausted ; the lover throws away his learning and 
 breaks into the simplicity of despair : 
 
 The wheel runs slack, the spell said o'er; 
 
 The ashes in the lembic die ; 
 The moon will be bewitched no more, 
 
 I hear the night-bird's boding cry. 
 
 If death for her, then death for me 
 
 Must set his sail of funeral hue. 
 I'll be with her, or cease to be. 
 
 Is one life nought? Yet pity two. 
 
 Ah, God ! If you would save my sweet, 
 The hymn that I would make for you ! 
 
 And she should sit before your feet 
 And tell you all her peril through ^ 
 
 Cynthia recovers, and things return to the accus- 
 tomed track. The hero, if such he can now be 
 called, cannot sink much lower ; but lower he does 
 sink at the end of this Part (xxxii, xxxiii), where 
 he actually endeavours to propitiate his tyrant by 
 artfully defending her offences. 
 
 ^ The magic rhombus was not a " wheel," as Mr Andrew Lang 
 has discovered for us ; but we cannot well call it a " bull-roarer."
 
 An Old Love Story 43 
 
 Scattered in this division, of which the above is 
 the merest sketch, runs a topic which takes a larger 
 development in the next. With the revolt of the 
 lover's new feelings mixes very naturally and artisti- 
 cally the stirring of ^ new literary aspiration. In the 
 address which opens Part II, when first discussing 
 the proposals of Maecenas, he declined, as we saw, 
 the task of national poetry as beyond his strength. 
 But it continues to suggest itself as a true ideal, and 
 begins to take the shape of a duty. It touches 
 with a shade of remorse even the commands for 
 his funeral. He has reasons for renouncing so 
 emphatically the last honours of a Roman citizen. 
 
 Nor let the trumpet wail (what use?) for me. 
 
 He recalls himself to the subject sharply a little 
 later (x), registers a promise to undertake it some 
 day, and actually addresses to the emperor a few 
 couplets in praise of his triumphs, excusing himself 
 from attempting more at present with a graceful 
 apology : 
 
 The garland, if the head men cannot touch 
 Of some tall statue, at the feet they lay ; 
 
 So we poor poets, when the theme too much 
 Exceeds us, bring such incense as we may. 
 
 In the heat of the moment he even gets so far as to 
 dismiss, or pretend to dismiss, the topic of Cynthia's 
 praises (xi). His temporary farewell to it is a 
 finished miniature : 
 
 Praise thee who list, if any care, and sow 
 His laboured verses in a barren ground.
 
 44 -^f^ Old Love Story 
 
 All shall be buried with thee, all shall go 
 With thee into the low forgotten mound, 
 
 Which men shall pass, nor say, beholding it, 
 "This earth was once a woman and a wit." 
 
 But the tone of the protest beHes its words. 
 He persists in the old manner, and even declares 
 (xxv) that he shall persist in it to the end. How- 
 ever, in the closing poem of Part H, which upon a 
 slight pretext is devoted entirely to his literary hopes, 
 other views are again distinctly seen. Returning 
 to the thoughts of the opening poem, he praises en- 
 thusiastically the rising Aeneid, and while he takes 
 Virgil himself to witness that it is something to 
 have attained a glory in the parallel of the Idylls, 
 asserts with emphasis the superior greatness of the 
 national theme and of the "glories of Actium." It 
 is among such thoughts that Propertius first cites 
 as his model the significant name of Callimachus. 
 Callimachus of Alexandria, himself an elegiac poet, 
 was famous particularly for a work in which he had 
 turned the form of elegy to the service of Greek 
 legendary history. The Roman project which this 
 connexion suggests is henceforth always in view 
 till we lose sight of Propertius, and with an appeal 
 to the precedent of Callimachus the Third Part 
 opens. 
 
 Before we dismiss the Second we must notice 
 that Cynthia, enlarged into three successive pictures, 
 became something very near a story, and as such 
 now required marks of time. We hear now first of 
 the lapse of months, then of the lapse of years.
 
 An Old Love Story 45 
 
 Two dates are furnished, each denoted by a great 
 imperial event. Near the end of the Second Part 
 is placed the dedication of the new Palatine temple 
 of Apollo (b.c. 28), towards the end of the Third the 
 death of the emperor's nephew and heir Marcellus 
 (b.c. 23). The former poem is tacked to the main 
 subject of Cynthia, and is in no sense a poem for 
 the occasion ; indeed, it was probably written long 
 after. It is brief, and (except to an archaeologist) 
 of little interest, and is evidently inserted chiefly 
 for the sake of marking the date. The latter is a 
 quasi-official elegy and, we need hardly say, does 
 not mention Cynthia, who indeed by that time is 
 relegated to a colder distance. It was probably 
 composed at the time, and followed before long by 
 the publication of the whole work. 
 
 With the Third Part we must be brief. In it 
 are wound up both the threads of the previous part, 
 the amorous and the literary, the two still entangled 
 as before. 
 
 In the degraded condition disclosed at the end 
 of the Second Part, in the condition of "slavery," a 
 word of terrible sound to a Roman ear, the narrator 
 spent, as he tells us in the last poem of all, five 
 years. The limits, as already seen, are roughly 
 marked by the two dates, 28 and 23. Of the rela- 
 tions between him and Cynthia we hear directly 
 very little more, some five poems only out of twenty- 
 five being given to it. But this little is significant. 
 Knowing that he is utterly weary, that he is now 
 bound to her, however securely, only by inveterate
 
 46 An Old Love Story 
 
 habit, the woman had begun to make him scenes. 
 One such occurs in the Second Part (xx), when 
 he represses her laments with a peevish tenderness. 
 But in VIII of Part III, a powerful poem, we have 
 the further stage, when love itself is turned into a 
 sort of malice, and the lover ruminates with bitter 
 gusto the enjoyment of yesterday's spectacle — 
 Cynthia in the paroxysms of a jealous fury. In 
 XV the storm is actually raging. But if these 
 poems present with force the last phase of his 
 miserable pleasure, the others (vi and xvi) show 
 with humour, not less artful, the abject facility with 
 which he went back to it. In vi a message of 
 reconciliation from Cynthia (for Cynthia in this part 
 for the first time has to summon) is brought by her 
 slave, Lygdamus, a name to be linked hereafter with 
 a tragic mystery. The lover assumes a sceptic air, 
 and solemnly adjures Lygdamus, "as he hopes for. 
 freedom, '\ to tell him the truth. But instead of 
 waiting for an answer, he shows his resolution not 
 to be deceived by a series of leading questions, 
 which put into the messenger's mouth a touching 
 picture of Cynthia sitting sadly at her modest work, 
 with not so much as a mirror to be seen, and tear- 
 fully complaining to Lygdamus of the cruel deserter. 
 If this is true, let Lygdamus bear from him at once 
 the tenderest reply, and "as he hopes for freedom" 
 procure an instant cessation of hostilities! In xvi 
 he makes himself utterly ridiculous, not indeed for 
 the first time, but with a consciousness of his 
 absurdity which is ominous. In the middle of the
 
 An Old Love Story 47 
 
 night a message calls him from Rome to Tibur, a 
 distance of near twenty miles. He goes, but full 
 of tremors, which he vainly endeavours to make 
 pathetic. What if he should be murdered ! Will 
 Cynthia bring garlands to his grave ? He is obliged 
 to confess that this much-abused "grave" is likely 
 to receive anything but respect from people in 
 general, and hopes (oh contemptible " grave " !) that 
 at any rate Cynthia will put it somewhere out of the 
 way ! From this time he sets steadily to the work 
 of his deliverance. 
 
 One only glimpse of anything resembling the 
 old happiness this Part contains (x)\ The con- 
 nexion, now a thing of years and habit, has become 
 also a thing of anniversaries. The birthday of 
 Cynthia will afford, hopes the lover, at least a day's 
 respite from the fatigue of her tempers. Long 
 before, when this fatigue was a new feeling, he had 
 flatteringly compared her eternal complaints to the 
 mourning of the nightingale and the tears of Niobe'. 
 Now, by a dexterous allusion to this, he discreetly 
 cloaks his request for a brief intermission. The 
 piece is exceedingly celebrated for poetic grace, and 
 dramatically also it represents, I think, the author's 
 highest level. One might spend some time (if the 
 
 ^ I do not here forget hi 20, but I think it plain, for many 
 reasons, that this poem is not addressed to Cynthia, but to a 
 person utterly different, and celebrates the marriage, or at least 
 the ** honourable addresses," of the narrator. It is in fact a step 
 in the course of his deliverance. 
 
 2 II 20, 5—8.
 
 48 An Old Love Story 
 
 task were not better left to the reader) in studying 
 
 its sharp and delicate delineation. 
 
 Surprised I saw, while yet the sun was red 
 
 This morn, the Muses standing by my bed. 
 
 Three times their joyful hands they clapped, to greet, 
 
 As then I knew, the birthday of my sweet. 
 
 Oh cloudless let it pass, the winds give o'er, 
 
 The waves break gently on the threatened shore ! 
 
 Far from my sight this day let sorrow keep. 
 
 Not marble Niobe be seen to weep. 
 
 The halcyons hush their plaint, and she, whose lay 
 
 Mourns for lost Itys, mourn him not to-day! 
 
 And thou whose prospered life this day was given, 
 
 Arise, and pay thy grateful dues to heaven; 
 
 Wash thee from sleep with water pure, and fair 
 
 With moulding fingers set thine ordered hair. 
 
 The robe thou hadst, when first thou didst subdue 
 
 Propertius' eyes, put on, a garland too : 
 
 Then pray that still those potent charms may last. 
 
 And still in thy subjection hold me fast : 
 
 The altar wreathe, the atoning incense light. 
 
 Till the glad flame make all the chamber bright. 
 
 Then speed the time till eve : prepare the board, 
 
 The wine, the sense-entrancing perfume poured : 
 
 Tax the hoarse pipe, till night be tired with dance; 
 
 Free be thy jest, and loosely let it glance ; 
 
 Banish dull sleep with riot ; let the rout 
 
 Fill with its echoes all the street without. 
 
 While we will ask the dice, as others do, 
 
 What hearts Love's leaden wings are beating through. 
 
 Last, when the cups have measured many an hour, 
 
 The Priestess shall disclose the mystic bower. 
 
 With annual rite the feast shall duly close, 
 
 And this thy birthday finish in repose. 
 
 Meanwhile the great literary project grows in 
 firmness and fixes in outline. (Fragments of it
 
 An Old Love Story 49 
 
 were written and are extant, and perhaps it was 
 already commenced before the Cynthia came out.) 
 We are told distinctly that the Cynthia detains the 
 author only for a while (11), and more precisely 
 that with encouragement from Maecenas, whose 
 admired modesty the author feels constrained to 
 imitate, he will certainly enter on the poetic history 
 of Rome, from the earliest legends of Romulus to 
 the overthrow of Antonius at Actium by Augustus 
 himself (ix). The next and decisive step is 
 masterly. Turning from the birthday picture placed 
 here, the poet tries to palliate his servility in the 
 eyes of some censor by excuses from mythologic 
 precedent. And indeed he can plead much nearer 
 precedent. If an Antonius could be slave to Cleo- 
 patra — "may not I," he was going to say, "be 
 pardoned } " But the name of Antonius, so lately 
 mentioned with such different hopes, lights like a 
 spark the long prepared train of literary and personal 
 motives. His apology is forgotten, and the Roman 
 poet breaks indignantly into that very "theme of 
 Actium " which he had formerly resigned to Virgil. 
 This piece again, familiar as an extract, surpasses 
 itself when read with the context : 
 
 She asked, for price of her profaned hand, 
 
 Rome and Rome's Senate subject and enslaved ! 
 
 Oh guileful Alexandria, guilty land ! 
 
 Oh Memphian fields, with blood of Romans laved ! 
 
 Too deep upon our souls, when Pharos' strand 
 Despoiled thrice-victor Pompey, was it graved, 
 
 That better in the field had Pompey died 
 
 Or 'neath the heel of Caesar laid his pride. 
 
 V. L. E. A
 
 50 An Old Love Story 
 
 And dared she then, Canopus' harlot-queen, 
 That sperm of Macedon, our branded shame, 
 
 With dog Anubis front the Thunderer's mien, 
 With threats of Nile the Tiber think to tame? 
 
 With rattles chase our trumpets, and our keen 
 Swift barques with galleons of Egyptian frame? 
 
 On Rome's high rock set up her tented seat, 
 
 And bid the Roman eagles to her feet? 
 
 We feel that the Roman CalHmachus has actually 
 commenced work, and that, the Cynthia finished, a 
 Roman " Scenes of Story " may be with some 
 confidence expected. 
 
 The rest of the poems we must pass lightly. 
 Various in subject, they are variously and some- 
 times very adroitly shaped to the purpose, as where 
 an elegy on a death at sea, after blaming much the 
 rashness of men's enterprise, concludes with this 
 unexpected turn : 
 
 I shall not brave you, winds. I cannot choose 
 But lie at Cynthia's steps, sans fame or use. 
 
 All is now ready for the end ; and after experi- 
 menting on one or two other methods, the rebel 
 recurs after all to the very expedient recommended 
 and rejected years ago — a voyage to Athens and to 
 the cities of the East. To point the parallel and 
 round the whole work, Tullus, the original author 
 of the suggestion (with this exception, the friends 
 of Part I disappear in the continuation), is found 
 resident in Asia Minor, and the poet has the satis- 
 faction of lecturing him on the folly of preferring 
 Asia to Italy, which he lauds in language thoroughly
 
 An Old Love Story 51 
 
 proper to the official school of poetry, and in fact 
 adapted freely from a memorable passage of the 
 Georgics, — Italy, whose honourable history is so 
 much more respectable than wild Greek romance, 
 ** Italy, Tullus, your natural home, to which you 
 ought at once to return and get married ! " Thus 
 Propertius, and we feel that he is changed indeed. 
 
 A Roman story could scarcely conclude without 
 a symbolic portent, and here the love-poet loses 
 his professional tablets. As for Cynthia, nothing 
 remains but to dismiss her, with costs, if possible : 
 
 Trust woman, trust the charms no more 
 Which cheated once my humble eyes. 
 Love lent, I see, the poor disguise : 
 
 I blush to read my verses o'er. 
 
 Love, Cynthia, gave each heavenly grace, 
 And showed me things that never were, 
 And could to rosy morn compare 
 
 The brilliance of a painted face. 
 
 My fond disease no medicine moved ; 
 
 Kind seniors sermoned me in vain. 
 
 I would to sea. Alas ! how fain 
 I own the perils I have proved. 
 
 Love's cruel dungeon have I tried, 
 
 The stake, the cauldron, and the chain. 
 Yet have I 'scaped that Afric main, 
 
 And see in port my vessel ride. 
 
 My wounds begin to close, my wits 
 
 Return; and I myself consign, 
 
 By Jove neglected, to the shrine. 
 If such there be, where Reason sits. 
 
 This may be all very well, but we could now 
 wish that the ransomed captive had stopped here, 
 
 4—2
 
 52 An Old Love Story 
 
 and not thought it necessary to hold up to Cynthia 
 the probable miseries of her future. However, such 
 a close is truly Roman and perhaps, if it comes to 
 that, not untrue. If there were any obstinate lovers 
 of " Greek romance " who were inclined to murmur, 
 they were destined to receive an ample satisfaction. 
 Besides the Cynthia, Propertius left a small 
 number of poems and fragments, now subjoined as 
 "Book IV." This numbering, though convenient 
 for reference, is misleading and not a little absurd ; 
 for the collection is not a " Book " at all, still less a 
 part of Cynthia. Indeed, the "arrangement" of it, 
 if the word applies, is so careless that it can scarcely 
 be attributed to the author^ One piece is evidently 
 the opening of that poetic history the projection of 
 which has been traced above, and for the same work 
 most of the others seem to have been intended. 
 Three or four refer to the facts (or fictions) of 
 Cynthia. Like the rest of the posthumous collection 
 they are disconnected and without order. They are 
 all distinguished from Cynthia by a very different 
 style, and an examination of them shows that (with 
 perhaps one exception)^ none could have found a 
 proper place in it. But there is one most remark- 
 able poem (not that just excepted), which is in a 
 
 ^ Dr Postgate rightly insists upon this. 
 
 ^ IV 8, which might possibly have stood in Part iii, though 
 it is very different in style. Like the other posthumous poems, 
 it shows a great multiplication of dramatis personae and scenic 
 details. The absence of these is the characteristic of the Cynthia^ 
 the defect indeed, as the author would seem to have thought.
 
 An Old Love Story 53 
 
 certain sense a sequel to Cynthia, and cannot be 
 omitted from the briefest notice of it. It is plain 
 that, whatever additions Cynthia might have re- 
 ceived within, if the story were to proceed at all, 
 one only further stage had a chance of interest. 
 The deserted woman might die ; and Propertius 
 determined to kill her. Her ghost revisits the lover. 
 The scene has a sort of realistic romance quite 
 startling in Latin, and shows, I think, that had 
 Propertius lived or worked longer, he might have 
 changed considerably the course of literature. It is 
 night. It is a very short time after Cynthia's death. 
 I The poet has heard of it, and has been somewhat, 
 not very deeply, affected. From the conclusion of 
 Cynthia it would be inferred that after the dismissal 
 the lover interested himself in his former mistress 
 no more. The present poem starts from the same 
 assumption. He has heard of her funeral, but was 
 not there, and indeed he does not know (for he has 
 to be told) where she is buried. Of her recent life 
 we must suppose him absolutely ignorant. His 
 mind is wandering in a selfish regret for his departed 
 youth, when — but I will try to give in his own form 
 the manner of the waking : 
 
 There is a life beyond the grave. A shade, 
 A pallid wraith escapes the conquering flame. 
 
 / have seen Cynthia. She was lately laid 
 
 Beneath the whispering wayside : yet she came. 
 
 (It may be well to remind the reader that Roman 
 graves were made by the roads as a regular practice, 
 and that the words here mean no more than "she is
 
 54 ^^ Old Love Story 
 
 buried, ' though they have doubtless a very different 
 poetic effect.) 
 
 To me, who drowsed upon a funeral thought 
 
 Of love dethroned, came Cynthia from the grave; 
 
 Her hair, her eyes as from the bier she brought. 
 But on her flesh the charred vesture clave. 
 
 The gem (I knew it) of her ring betrayed 
 The fire; her blank lips had a Lethe look. 
 
 She sighed and spoke, as though with breath, but made 
 A bony rattle as her hand she shook : 
 
 " False that thou art and false must ever be 
 To woman, canst thou sleep? So quick forgot 
 
 The things that once were done 'twixt thee and me. 
 And all the tender past as though 'twas not ! " 
 
 She adds a few vivid touches of reminder, and then 
 she tells him that she died without a friend, without 
 anyone who cared to use the strange (but then 
 accredited and common) means to detain a little 
 the parting soul. The call of a beloved voice was 
 supposed to have some power ; his would have 
 given her one more day. She died, and he knew 
 it ; yet he paid not the slightest tribute to her 
 memory : 
 
 "Who at my burial saw thy sunken head. 
 
 Thy warm tears falling on thy garb of woe? 
 Thou couldst not (if no further to be led) 
 Bid to the gate my bier more slowly go ! " 
 
 He sent no precious spices, no inexpensive flowers. 
 And hereupon, as if to put beyond question that she 
 died not only quite friendless, but also (for a reason 
 which she leaves him to guess) quite weary of life,
 
 An Old Love Story 55 
 
 she suddenly discloses these horrid facts. She was 
 poisoned by two of her slaves , 7nale and female ; she 
 let herself be poisoned ; and the murderers, married 
 together, are, without question, enjoying her property, 
 holding in subjection the rest of her household, and 
 stifling her memory by horrible cruelties. 
 
 Let Lygdamus be tried with fire and brand 
 (I knew the wine's fell colour when I took), 
 
 Let guilty Nomas wash her guarded hand 
 And, if her soul be clear, the ordeal brook. 
 
 She, she, the refuse of the public walk, 
 Now trails in dust a golden train of state, 
 
 And if a handmaid of my beauty talk, 
 With double task-work silences her prate. 
 
 For garlanding my grave old Petale, 
 
 Fond, faithful wretch, was loaded with the stocks; 
 For begging in my name was Lalage 
 
 Scourged, while she hanged upon her twisted locks. 
 
 The murderess, in her brutal rapacity, actually 
 stole the gilt statuette from the dead, and has melted 
 it down, as an addition to her " marriage portion." 
 Yet Cynthia is not come to reproach Propertius 
 (she acknowledges her debt to his genius), but only 
 to assure him that she is faithful to his memory. 
 She offers a proof, which the poet by his own 
 practice might certainly be estopped from disputing : 
 she has gone to the company of the good women of 
 legend, and in the consoling converse of Elysium 
 gives a report (alas ! partial) of Propertius to such 
 admired wives as Andromeda and Hypermnestra. 
 She requests him lastly to take under his protection
 
 56 An Old Love Story 
 
 two specially dear to her, and to render a small 
 service to her grave : 
 
 If thou art touched, if Chloris, she whose spell 
 Can hold thee now, permit a thought of me — 
 
 My nurse is palsied; and she used thee well; 
 Let her not starve, my old Parthenie ! 
 
 And ah ! my darling " Maid " (the name was fit ; 
 
 She held a mirror to me), let her be 
 Maid to no other ! And thy verses writ 
 
 On Cynthia, burn them ; keep no " praise " of me ! 
 
 This, however little we may care for Andromeda 
 and Hypermnestra, we shall hardly deny to be real 
 pathos. It is but too easy to comprehend the wish 
 that Cynthia's child (for there can be only one 
 meaning in the explanation added to the name) 
 should, if possible, never read Cynthia. 
 
 So tight with ivy cords my grave is bound, 
 My bones are aching : let me lie at ease. 
 
 In the white clime of Tibur is the mound, 
 Where brooding Anio feeds the orchard trees. 
 
 Set me a pillar there, with praises just 
 And brief, that posting travellers may see, 
 
 "Here lieth golden Cynthia, one whose dust 
 Adds something, Anio, to the praise of thee." 
 
 Of the " ivy " I have seen no explanation, and should 
 gladly find one. That it is not supposed to have 
 grown on the grave is evident. The circumstances 
 make this manifestly inconceivable. I imagine that 
 the cords are used, as hazel and other wood is 
 sometimes used now, to hold together the new 
 heap ; and I strongly suspect that the tightness of
 
 An Old Love Story 57 
 
 the binding is connected with the murder, and was 
 a superstitious device for holding down the ghost. 
 "Soon," she tells him, at the last moment, "soon 
 I, and no woman else, shall have thee, keep thee, 
 press thee, mix with thee bone in bone\" The 
 prophecy would seem to have been before very long 
 so far advanced towards fulfilment that Propertius 
 died. At least this is the simplest way of explaining 
 the state of the later collection, and the fact that of 
 his magnum opus there is nothing but a few cut 
 stones. These fragments indeed are, many of 
 them, of rare beauty. Perhaps I may return to 
 them another time, and even say something more 
 (I should like to say much more) of Cynthia. It is 
 not at all the book to be easily exhausted by selec- 
 tions. Enough if I may have revived some reader's 
 former pleasure, or possibly even directed one to a 
 source of pleasure untried. 
 
 ^ [The poem is iv 7].
 
 THE FEAST OF SATURN 
 
 Should we like to see sixty thousand people 
 immensely happy ? Could we resolve to do it 
 without scolding or grudging ? Could we rise to 
 this, even if the president of the feast were to be 
 a traditional villain of the children's story-books — 
 one of those upon whom satire and tragedy, dabbing 
 away in alternate streaks of black and white, happen 
 to have put such a tarry smear as history will never 
 get off? Even if the scene of the feast were a 
 building raised with more blessings and ruined with 
 more curses than any pile of stone in Europe ? If 
 so, let us have the pleasure of the spectacle. Let 
 us go back just eighteen centuries. Let us suppose 
 ourselves the subjects of that generous and popular 
 prince (no irony) the Emperor Domitian. We are 
 resident in the capital. It is the middle of De- 
 cember. Let us go to the Coliseum, some fifteen 
 years old, shining white in the sun ; let us forget 
 (for to make this Roman holiday no one shall be 
 butchered), let us forget for once to be inviting 
 the Goths to glut their ire (at the cost of what 
 little means of happiness the civilized races have 
 painfully scraped together), and let us, under the
 
 The Feast of Saturn 59 
 
 guidance of the poets Statius and Martial, attend 
 a revival of the Great Saturnalia. 
 
 We must first use our minds a little to the 
 surrounding atmosphere, political, popular, and lite- 
 rary. We must dissociate all the objects round us 
 from the thoughts which long habit has attached 
 to them. We must teach ourselves the socialistic 
 principles of the Roman populace, the true prin- 
 ciples, as they held, of the Roman state, vindicated 
 against the rapacious oligarchy by the revolution 
 which founded the Empire, vindicated again against 
 a line of Caesars, false to the democracy through 
 which they rose, by the revolution which threw 
 down the tyrant Nero. Through the work of 
 Vespasian and his sons, particularly under the 
 brilliant reign of the young Domitian, " the Roman 
 people " seemed to themselves to be entering again 
 into their own. The magnificent buildings, most 
 of them destined to popular use, with which the 
 Flavian princes covered the city, were regarded 
 by the citizens of the capital, through whose eyes 
 we are proposing to look, not as bribes for their 
 support, but simply as repayment to them of that 
 " property of the Roman people " which was theirs, 
 but had been treacherously seized and misspent by 
 the degenerate heirs of the deified Julius. 
 
 Most strongly, as was natural, did this feeling 
 attach to the buildings and the festivals erected 
 and celebrated within that great area of the city 
 which Nero had occupied with his monstrous 
 palace and park, within the site of the infamous
 
 6o The Feast of Saturn 
 
 "Golden House." In the midst of this area, as a 
 crowning monument of popular pleasure substituted 
 for selfish luxury, lay the great Flavian amphitheatre, 
 known later, and by us, as the Coliseum. 
 
 It is scarcely possible for a modern to appre- 
 ciate the sentiment with which this building was 
 regarded at the time. That it should be praised 
 as an all-surpassing "wonder of the world" is 
 intelligible. We can tolerate Martial when he 
 writes : 
 
 Boast no more your builded mountains, Memphis ! Babylon, 
 
 be dumb ! 
 Delos, hide your horn-built altar; Ephesus, your conqueror's 
 
 come. * 
 
 Mention not your Mausoleum, Caria, hanging in the sky. 
 What is great? The rest be silent. Says the Coliseum, "I." 
 
 But this is nothing. Martial distinctly speaks 
 of the amphitheatre (the arena of the lions !) as a 
 " sacred " edifice. And he accompanies the word 
 with explanations which, for the moment, we must 
 try to make our own. It was the strong impression 
 left on the Roman mind by the gigantic greed of 
 Nero which made so keen the sense of renovation 
 for the world when his grasp was unclosed and his 
 prey recovered. Rome seemed at one and the 
 same moment both to be given back to herself 
 and also, by the closer union with the distant 
 provinces, which was the effect of the improved 
 Flavian administration, to become more universal, 
 more worthy of her great enjoyments and splendid 
 popular pomp. There is another piece of Martial
 
 The Feast of Saturn 6i 
 
 which compresses into a few lines the whole spirit 
 of the Flavian age, and centres it upon its true 
 centre, the amphitheatre. He supposes himself to 
 stand on the site of the " Golden " palace near the 
 colossus of the Sun, and to be surveying the chief 
 buildings of Domitian and his family. 
 
 Where midway in the street the scaffold climbs, 
 Raising nigh heaven yon giant crowned with rays. 
 
 One tyrant house devoured in other times 
 The city round, and spread a baleful blaze. 
 
 One lake, one private water, yielded room 
 For all that sacred Circle. Where you mark 
 
 Yon swiftly-building Baths, there Nero's doom 
 Made thousands homeless for a single park. 
 
 Last to the place of yon fair Colonnade 
 
 He grasped, still craving. — Caesar, thanks to thee, 
 
 Rome is once more for Romans. Thou hast made 
 The enslaver's pleasance free unto the free. 
 
 It was impossible that in any time which pos- 
 sessed a poet at all, or the capacity for poetic 
 feeling, this union of the world should fail to 
 kindle the imagination. If in the enumeration of 
 Gibbon the long defile of races obedient to the 
 Caesars makes a stately and impressive show, what 
 must have been the effect of actually seeing the 
 vast unity, typified in the varied crowd of the 
 streets, of the colonnades, and, above all, of the 
 amphitheatre ? Possibly this may be read by some 
 who were present at the opening of the Great 
 Exhibition in 1851. I was not there myself (for 
 good reasons), but I have heard it said by men 
 who were, and who are well entitled to speak on
 
 62 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 such a matter, that it was the most "poetic" ex- 
 perience they had ever known or could easily 
 conceive. I am not ashamed to say that I find 
 our various "Inventories" and " Colinderies " in 
 ' London more poetical than most poetry, and have 
 .always wondered a little that scarcely anything of 
 the picturesque and imperial suggestiveness to be 
 found there, and in modern London all over and 
 at all times, has found its way into the later 
 Victorian literature. It has not happened to suit 
 the genius of those among us who have the faculty 
 of expression. We have not for this purpose found 
 our man. Rome did. Among the crowd in the 
 Coliseum sat Martial, noting and translating, in 
 a thousand sharp touches, the thoughts presented 
 by the successive figures. It is true that the unity 
 was much more real and the variety of surface 
 much more striking than in the English " empire " 
 as represented in our capital. Through the same 
 passage of the theatre would pass, in a few minutes, 
 wild horsemen from the Steppes, whose looks at 
 least seemed to authenticate the grossest barbar- 
 isms recorded in Herodotus ; a group of majestic 
 Arabians, excited for once into something like 
 haste ; Germans who had but once seen the 
 Rhine ; Africans who had possibly drunk the 
 springs of the Nile — all more or less subjects of 
 Rome, all entering at Caesar's door, and sprinkled 
 as they entered with his cloud of saffron perfume. 
 Among them sometimes would be a mountaineer 
 of Thrace, pale and pensive, who, seeing the press.
 
 The Feast of Saturn 63 
 
 takes from his wallet a little roll of parchment and 
 holds it tight in his hand as he goes. Martial might 
 well look at him and wonder. He is an ascetic, a 
 brother of the Orphean mystery. He and his like 
 have for centuries preached and practised strange 
 precepts of self-suppression and renunciation. Their 
 little river is at the very point to join and swell 
 a mighty world-stream. What will it not sweep 
 away! Him and all did Martial note. Here is 
 one scrap from his note-book. 
 
 \ Is there a race so rude, 
 
 So bare of art and nude, 
 ; That comes not, Caesar, to thy glorious show? 
 
 ; See yon Sarmatian ! Think ! 
 
 \ He hath bled his horse for drink ! 
 
 ; Yon^Haemian reads his Orpheus 'mid the snow. 
 
 ; This one, it may be, dips 
 
 I In Nilus' fount his lips, 
 
 j That hears the breakers of the encircling Main. 
 
 I Arabia comes, not last, 
 
 Sabaea hastens fast, 
 Cilicia finds her saffron here again. 
 See the Sygambrian there. 
 Known by his knot of hair ; 
 The Aethiop, knotted too, but diversely. 
 A thousandfold their speech ; 
 Yet this attuneth each, 
 They hail a common father, Sire, in thee ! 
 
 In a city and age presenting such rich material 
 for the imagination in the walks of daily life, it is 
 not strange that some should have regarded this 
 material as exclusively proper for literature, and 
 should have contrasted with it contemptuously what 
 
 \ 
 
 \
 
 64 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 could be got by treating over and over again the 
 well-worn topics borrowed from Greece. This was 
 the choice : for to the faculty of invention scarcely 
 any school of Roman poetry would pretend, cer- 
 tainly none of those which divided the city under 
 Domitian. The difference of tendency rose to the 
 height of a formal controversy, and is represented 
 to us chiefly by the names of Martial and Statius. 
 But into this controversy we must not now enter 
 very far, nor shall we attempt to estimate the merits 
 of Statius' work on the traditional Greek lines, his 
 epic upon the orthodox epic subject of Thebes. 
 It has had some effect at various times, and may 
 have again. At the present moment, though slightly 
 alive in the schools, in the world it is practically 
 dead, and it has been in this condition for a great 
 part of its existence. A work whose whole motive 
 is borrowed from times in which the writer had 
 only a fictitious interest, has generally something 
 unhealthy in its constitution. There are plenty of 
 English parallels ready to hand. Martial had no 
 doubtful opinion on the subject. He held that, 
 under the Flavian dynasty at all events, the proper 
 subject for Romans was Rome. Despite of civili- 
 ties, there was evidently friction between Martial 
 and Statius ; and the matter is of interest to us 
 here because we are presently to have before us, 
 from the gallery of Statius, perhaps the largest 
 picture remaining of a Flavian festivity. Now this 
 picture is evidently a challenge-piece. It is the 
 chief of Statius' essays in the manner of the rival
 
 The Feast of Saturn 65 
 
 school, and probably owes some energy to the 
 writer's eagerness in proving that he too, when 
 he chose, could touch off the humours of the town. 
 A glance, therefore, at these rivalries is a proper 
 prelude to the subject. Martial offers satire in 
 abundance ; of which here is a specimen. It should 
 be remembered, as a help to fixing the point, that the 
 legends of Thebes and Argos, typified by the names 
 of Oedipus and Thyestes respectively, make the 
 whole of Statius' Thebais, and that Statius was, 
 beyond comparison, the chief writer of his school. 
 
 ' Thyestes and Oedipus, folly all that is ! 
 
 j Your Scyllas, Medeas, what good do they do? 
 
 i What's Hylas, or Parthenopaeus, or Attis? 
 
 I Endymion sleeping, what says he to you? 
 
 I The pinions of Icarus melted, the slighting 
 
 I Of amorous rivers by swains they pursue, — 
 
 1 What help can you get from such pure waste of writing? 
 
 • Here's verse to which Life may write under '"Tis true!" 
 
 No Centaurs, no Gorgons, will here be presented, 
 No Harpies ! 'Tis man, sir, man only that speaks. 
 
 If you don't like your portrait, and feel discontented 
 At seeing yourself, sir — why, go to the Greeks ! 
 
 A sharp cast of the literary javelin this, at a 
 time when the favourite poet of culture had "fixed, 
 O Muse, the barrier of his song at OedipusT It is 
 clear that to turn aside these and other like missiles 
 was one object of Statius when, imitating osten- 
 tatiously the manner of Martial, he wrote his very 
 interesting piece on " The Saturnalian Feast of 
 Domitian." 
 
 V. L. E. q
 
 66 " The Feast of Saturn 
 
 Of all the feasts by which, as it was held, the 
 " sovereign people " enjoyed their own, the most 
 widely popular, the most typical, was the feast of 
 the Saturnalia, held in mid- December, and lasting, 
 in the time of Domitian, five days, of which one 
 was principal. The connexion of the feast with 
 Saturn — the Italian god of the field, honoured 
 when the seed was sown, that in due time he 
 might give the increase symbolized by his sickle — 
 had of course long before Flavian times become 
 merely nominal. To suit the facts of the time the 
 Sowing festival of Rome must have then been 
 adapted to the agriculture of Egypt, Pontus, and 
 where not ? But the old winter-feast of the farmers 
 fell, for Rome and Italy, at a time of year very 
 well suited to public merry-making. It is other- 
 wise with us. Our Christmas, closely connected 
 in history with the Saturnalia, is made miserable, 
 ; three years in four, by the weather, and for united 
 I public festivals on a large scale it is quite impos- 
 sible. Our real Saturnalia have long ago migrated 
 to Easter, and from Easter tend constantly to fix 
 themselves practically in our brief summer and 
 delightful autumn. But at Rome, as everyone 
 knows, there is a really enjoyable Christmas for 
 the general public, and there was a really enjoy- 
 able Saturnalia. As at our Christmas so at the 
 Saturnalia, public manners required of everyone to 
 make those in his power as easy and comfortable 
 as might be during the five days. Particularly, as 
 with ourselves, this remission was claimed on behalf
 
 The Feast of Saturn Sy 
 
 of the poor and the oppressed. The State con- 
 tributed to the general rejoicing a relaxation, which 
 is to us odd enough and affords a lesson to the 
 historic imagination. Of gambling the business- 
 like and economical Roman felt a great horror ; and 
 at ordinary times both law and public sentiment re- 
 l pressed all games of chance with an extravagant 
 ' and doubtless self-defeating severity. But both 
 gave way to the imperative desire that everyone 
 in his own fashion should be happy at the Satur- 
 nalia, and for five days the Roman might get drunk 
 (which for the most part he did not want to do) 
 and might shake the dice-box (which he wanted 
 very badly indeed), without fear of interference 
 from the aediles. The sentiment, indeed, of the 
 graver sort held out when law had given way. It 
 is laughable, a fine instance of the local humours 
 of Puritanism, to read that Augustus, half a cen- 
 tury earlier than our Flavian period, and when the 
 Roman Empire, the "corrupt," the "dissolute," 
 etc., etc., was already established, incurred grave 
 reproach because he, being the guardian of public 
 morals, and bound to set a good example, went so 
 far in Saturnalian licence as to join in a round game 
 for points with his family! Pro pudor inversique 
 mores ! 
 
 To the Roman mind, therefore, a general per- 
 mission to play in public for stakes seemed to be 
 the seal and assurance of general liberty, and the 
 Feast of Saturn is seldom mentioned without some 
 allusion to this characteristic mark. And it is 
 
 5—2
 
 68 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 mentioned often. To Martial in particular, as a 
 caterer for amusement, the season was especially 
 dear. There is some evidence that for a time he 
 published regularly at the Saturnalia — by way of 
 Christmas numbers as it were — special volumes of 
 light verse suited to the holiday reader. He is 
 always pleading the general absolution of the feast 
 as an excuse both for offences against the moral 
 taste, which, to say the truth, are frequent, and for 
 supposed laxities of literary workmanship, which 
 are pretended merely, as a show of humility ; for 
 a more exact artist never put stylus to wax. Very 
 delicate and graceful are his excuses for rudeness, 
 and very various ; this, for example, where he in- 
 geniously deduces from Saturn's sickle, once used 
 for other purposes, a suggestion of fleeting life and 
 an injunction to make the most of our time : 
 
 When the greybeard with the scythe 
 Bids the dice to keep us blythe 
 
 Days five-fold : 
 Merry Mob-cap, Madam Rome, 
 Poets for a careless tome 
 
 Scarce you'll scold. 
 
 Will you ? No ! your smile replies. 
 We may write without disguise. 
 
 Care's man's curse ! 
 Freedom ! Let the casual thought, 
 As it ought not, as it ought. 
 
 Just run verse. 
 
 I have myself taken here a certain Saturnalian 
 liberty (as perhaps elsewhere) in the rendering of 
 pileata Roma ; for to call the pileus, properly the
 
 The Feast of Saturn 69 
 
 cap of liberty, a mob-cap, might well be stigmatized 
 by the severe as nothing more than a bad pun. 
 But I appeal to the poet. Martial, if any one, must 
 listen to the excuse that "Christmas comes but 
 once a year." We will quote yet two more of his 
 preludes to the Saturnalia. Nowhere is better seen 
 the spirit of the Hellenized imperial festival — com- 
 mon, nay gross, humanity, frank and unashamed, 
 exposing itself in forms of singular severity, the 
 heritage of Greece, and leniently rebuked by public 
 conscience, the great gift of Rome. Here is a 
 strange little piece. The tune (if I could catch it) 
 is the tune of Milton. The thought is — well, not 
 exactly Miltonic. (It will be seen that the date is 
 after Domitian, but that does not matter.) 
 
 Hence, sullen Frown, stern rustic heritress 
 
 Of Cato and Fabricius, come not nigh ! 
 Go, mask of Pride and mannered Moralness, 
 
 All things that fall from us in darkness, fly ^ ! 
 
 " Hail, Feast of Saturn ! " 'Tis a happy cry 
 And honest (Nerva giving leave and cause). 
 
 Grave airs, I give you warning. It is I. 
 Leave me ; and read your Digest of the Laws. 
 
 And here is the other mood, the Roman thought. 
 Who " Varro" was, whether he really existed, is no 
 matter. He serves here for a mere type of the mind 
 to which the holiday is an offensive interruption, 
 and its harmless game of forfeits an unpardonable 
 expense of working hours. Impertinent in the 
 
 ^ Qiddquid et in tenebris non sumus, ite foras, an epigram, in 
 its kind, not to be surpassed in Latin or otherwise.
 
 70 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 former piece, here Martial chooses to be respectful. 
 The two moods please. 
 
 Varro^ whom Sophocles had not disowned 
 
 For tragedy, nor Horace for the lyre, 
 Lay work aside awhile ; be Farce postponed, 
 
 Trim Elegy her hair forget to tire. 
 The verse I send, to a December taste, 
 
 May pass, when smoke and folly seem the rule : 
 Regarded, Varro, simply as a waste 
 
 Of time, you cannot find them worse than pool. 
 
 Freedom then for those who would enjoy, com- 
 pulsion almost, if need be, for those who would not, 
 was the key-note of this formidable merry-making. 
 But the general good-will signified itself in one 
 way, which, as a corruptio optimi, is perhaps the 
 very worst nuisance which ancient or modern man 
 has wilfully invented — a mutual giving of presents. 
 It is true that in Rome, as among ourselves, a cer- 
 tain convention was found, whereby the extreme of 
 tiresomeness was mitigated. Tablets and napkins 
 (both doubtless decorated with various "designs") 
 supplied in Flavian Rome the place of Christmas 
 cards ; and the methods of lighting in use per- 
 mitted as a third simple usage the handing about 
 of presentation-tapers. It was thought scarcely fair 
 to send tablet, napkin, or taper at any other time. 
 But, as may be supposed, the ingenuity of human 
 beings in self-annoyance was not to be so easily 
 balked ; and all sorts of other objects, as well as 
 these three, continued to circulate from house to 
 house, to flow in with absurd abundance upon those 
 who were worth courting, and to flow out (for the
 
 The Feast of Saturn 71 
 
 Romans managed the matter after their fashion, 
 plain and business-like), to flow out again to the 
 class from which they came, as a cheap kind of 
 liberality, everyone knowing the whole process, and 
 all secretly willing to get as much or give as little 
 as they could. Endless are the varieties of humour 
 which this pernicious and long-lived custom (for it 
 goes on merrily) furnished to the painter of Flavian 
 society. I quote one or two, not for themselves, 
 but because, in order to appreciate the great scene 
 we are presently to see, we must figure to our- 
 selves first the Saturnalia as specially the season 
 of "presents all round." Here is one of many 
 variations on the same fertile theme of the disap- 
 pointed giver. Very comic when written down in 
 black-and-white are the natural reflections of the 
 hunter for "presents" who has missed his game, 
 and receives, instead of repayment with interest, 
 only satirical assurances that the patron would have 
 been delighted to pass on any little thing he had 
 received, only that, his supply of "gifts" having 
 failed, his generosity is without means. It is the 
 best of the joke, that the man does not in the least 
 feel the absurdity of his anger : 
 
 I sent you a trifle ; and, alack ! 
 Ne'er a trifle has it brought me back. 
 Now the Feast is over. Times are bad. 
 Say you. Ne'er a present have you had. 
 Ne'er a client brought a pot of pickle. 
 Coif, or kerchief, pennyweight of nickel? 
 Ne'er a grumbler, to assist his suit. 
 Backed it with sardines or candied fruit,
 
 72 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 Case of shrivelled figs or olives rotten? 
 
 You're so sorry I should seem forgotten ! 
 
 Keep this cheap benevolence for those you 
 
 Still can cheat — and not for One who knovv^s You. 
 
 Here is another tragedy of the same type, but 
 less deeply moving. A gentleman, to whose finances 
 this commerce of society is important, has failed in 
 his speculation upon the accustomed bounty of a 
 certain lady, and ungallantly promises himself to 
 make things straight next first of March, the Ladies' 
 Day of the Roman Year : 
 
 Now ushers call the unwilling lad 
 
 From nuts and marbles back to school. 
 
 The gambler, if his luck be bad. 
 
 Chased from the public, drunk and sad, 
 Tempts the police again, poor fool ! 
 
 The Five Days gone ! Yet, Galla, you 
 
 Have sent me nothing. Less I had 
 
 Foreseen. But nothing, Galla ! Phew ! 
 
 Ah, well ! December's for the men, 
 
 And March for women. Wait till then. 
 
 How shall you like it, Galla, when 
 
 You get your nothing back again? 
 
 But though the presents might be tiresome 
 enough, and though Martial, as his business is, 
 may gaily turn out this and that seam on the 
 inner side of the popular motley, the Saturnalia 
 represented feelings real, deep, and sacred. Then, 
 as at Christmas now with us, was the assembly of 
 the family for the prearranged evening of festivity, 
 doubtless difficult sometimes to make "go," but not 
 to be sneered out of the grateful memory of any
 
 The Feast of Saturn 'j'ii 
 
 people who know the meaning of " family " and of 
 " home." What store the Romans set by it is well 
 seen in a device of their great historian, or rather 
 tragedian, Tacitus, apt for our present purpose as 
 if it was made for us. The popular brilliance of 
 the Flavian house is constantly shown to us against 
 a background of Neronian horror. It was seen 
 so by contemporaries. And the blackest of the 
 Neronian horrors is the horror of murder — that 
 chain oi parricides which began when the Emperor's 
 rival, cousin, and heir, the orphan son of Claudius, 
 was taken off with poison. And how does Tacitus 
 think best to make us feel the unkind murder of 
 the boy Britannicus ? By dating the inception of it 
 from the family feast of the Saturnalia. 
 
 At the supper of the imperial family, Nero, 
 Britannicus, and other young friends were met. 
 The dice, the dice of the Saturnalia, having raised 
 Nero to a temporary throne as *' king of the for- 
 feits," he laid upon each guest his playful duty to 
 perform, observing nevertheless the respect due to 
 each. But when he came to Britannicus he com- 
 manded the lad to sing, thinking that he could not 
 but come off ill, having little experience in gaiety, 
 and in drinking still less. However, the boy put 
 him out of countenance, for he came forward, 
 nothing daunted, and sang a sad enough song, 
 showing how he who sang was put out of his 
 own, and oppressed, and had no help. Whereat 
 the company were much moved (and ashamed, we 
 will hope), as was easily seen, for the wine made
 
 74 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 them free of their looks and words. But the poor 
 wretch paid dearly for showing his spirit ; for the 
 tyrant, alarmed and angry, resolved to be rid of 
 him without delay. And so it was. Such had 
 been the family feast of the Emperor Nero, and 
 such a story was Tacitus telling about the time of 
 the particular festival to which we now proceed. 
 
 We have now in our minds the chief facts and 
 thoughts which Statius supposes us to bring to 
 the reading of his " Great Saturnalia." We are 
 ready, putting ourselves in the place of the average 
 Roman at the time, to see in the Emperor not a 
 bloody tyrant and persecutor but the liberator of 
 the people ; in the Coliseum not a torture-chamber 
 for martyrs but the revered monument of the great 
 liberator; in the Saturnalia not a soft name for an 
 orgy of beasts, but a specially humane ordinance of 
 public religion, commanding general gladness, wide 
 benevolence, and summing up, like its successor in 
 modern times, the charities of the family life. We 
 can for the moment persuade ourselves to see how 
 appropriate it was that on the great day of the Five 
 the "common father" of nations should gather the 
 people to a common table in the great amphitheatre 
 and scatter to them his indiscriminate gifts. We 
 can feel why on such an occasion the poet of arti- 
 ficial Hellenism should have quitted his Parnassus. 
 It is worth while to make the effort of imagination, 
 for whatever may be the merits of the verse, very 
 seldom upon earth has been witnessed a scene more 
 splendid than Statius has to describe, seldom one
 
 The Feast of Saturn 75 
 
 more interesting to a sympathetic mind, not often 
 one more pleasant to an understanding heart. 
 
 Apollo, Pallas, let me play; 
 Ye strict and stern, not yours the day. 
 Grave Muses, with the opening year 
 Return, but leave us. Now and here 
 Assist me, Saturn, fetter-free, 
 
 And gay December, deep in wine. 
 Help, wanton Wit and grinning Glee, 
 
 To picture how our prince benign 
 Kept, morn to evening, long and late 
 His public Saturnalian state. 
 
 The hospitality offered by this giant monarch 
 to his colossal court was nothing less than to feed 
 and amuse, from dawn until far beyond the end of 
 the winter's day, "the people of Rome," that is to 
 say a representative gathering selected from all 
 ranks, which must have numbered some fifty or 
 sixty thousand at the very least. The scene of 
 the entertainment was the amphitheatre, to which 
 the company were doubtless admitted as usual by 
 distributed tickets. How the building was arranged 
 for the particular occasion cannot be ascertained in 
 detail. It is a problem of the antiquary how at 
 ordinary times the awnings were fixed and moved 
 over its vast internal oval of (roughly) 500 feet by 
 400 feet. But we shall see that for this particular 
 festival the lighting of the building after dark in the 
 manner described would require temporary internal 
 structures on an extensive scale, useful also for other 
 purposes ; nor can the expense of such structures, 
 great as it must have been, have told for much in
 
 76 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 such a "Christmas bill" as must have been pre- 
 sented to Domitian when the feast was over. The 
 assembHng and placing of the multitude began in 
 early morning, and must itself have occupied some 
 hours. Meanwhile they were kept in good humour 
 by the scattering of confectionery, itself in its variety 
 a symbol of the power which commanded the whole 
 resources of the world from far east of the Bosporus 
 to far west of Gibraltar. 
 
 The day broke showery — such a pour 
 Of sweetmeats ne'er was seen before. 
 Nuts! All the nuts that Pontus knows, 
 All kinds that Idumaea grows; 
 Fruits of Damascus, grafts of price, 
 
 Force-ripened sweetness of the cane 
 From Ebusus, the choice, the nice 
 
 Of East and West, a Uberal rain; 
 And all that's baked beneath the sun 
 Of comfit, biscuit, cake, or bun. 
 
 Dates fell as thick, as if unseen 
 Some palm-tree overhead had been. 
 Not Pleiads shed so loose a shower, 
 Nor Hyads in their wildest hour. 
 As then from skies unclouded broke 
 
 Upon the vast theatric throng. 
 The storms of Jove, for Roman folk. 
 
 May waste the earth, yet do no wrong, 
 While such peculiar bounties flow 
 Provided by our Jove below. 
 
 Amid these agreeable preliminaries, with much 
 crunching and munching, doubtless also much push- 
 ing, squeezing, and "Where are you a-shoving to?" 
 the circle was filled, the arena remaining empty for
 
 The Feast of Saturn yj 
 
 a future use. The dinner which followed, Statius 
 expressly tells us, was the same for all ; we are, no 
 doubt, to understand that the various ranks were 
 distinguished as usual by their places, and the 
 Emperor's own immediate circle seated on his 
 private platform. The uniformity of the repast is 
 a guarantee that it was good, amazingly good for 
 the quantity. Many illustrious senators must have 
 been cross enough at having to come there at all 
 (for they hated his Majesty), but I would not waste 
 on them one grain of sympathy. The Emperor 
 could not have served them with anything but 
 decent wine, and what he served to them he 
 served to all — not a bad example of taste in a 
 society which is constantly represented as the type 
 of vulgarity. 
 
 The seats are full, in every rank, 
 From floor to crown, no single blank; 
 When, lo ! the attendants mount the tiers. 
 And twice as great the crowd appears. 
 Like Ganymedes for gest and grace. 
 
 The cates, the napkins white and fine, 
 The viands choice for all they place. 
 
 And freely pour the mellowed wine. 
 Like the round world, this princely treat 
 Like that is vast, like that complete. 
 
 The "Ganymedes" we are to figure dressed in 
 respectable white, the Roman equivalent for the 
 swallow-tail and shirt front; the company in all 
 the garments worn within the four corners of the 
 earth, even the aristocracy togaless, for the toga was 
 a bore and gladly cast aside, so that the discarding
 
 78 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 of it is frequently mentioned as an assurance of 
 Saturnalian freedom. Where was Martial ? There, 
 for certain ; perhaps in the Emperor's party, en- 
 joying himself greatly, and making endless mental 
 notes of figures, costumes, remarks — sighing, per- 
 haps, a little for native Spain and some quiet rustic 
 pig-sticking, and an evening by the fire telling Celtic 
 stories under the mistletoe. Well, he would have 
 it all soon. Where was Statius ? In the imperial 
 party, for certain, from his complacent manner of 
 assuring the public at large that they were equally 
 well off; not enjoying himself, I suspect, as much 
 as Martial, though he does seem on this day to 
 have been shaken into an unusual state of genuine 
 excitement. That simile of the world is very 
 good ; at least, it stirs me strongly. And his next 
 is better. 
 
 Gigantic Trade of modern time, 
 Feigned plenty of the golden prime, 
 All, all are in conception less 
 Than this concentred bounteousness. 
 Rome at one feast ! Sex, ages, ranks 
 
 Unclassed; none more, none less than free; 
 And last, to beggar prayers and thanks, 
 
 The giver's sacred majesty; 
 That so the least of us may say, 
 "I with the Prince have dined to-day." 
 
 Not sated yet with new delight, 
 Taste passes sudden into sight — 
 
 We have finished our victuals and wine, we in 
 the outer rows ; a good deal better (as the poet 
 elegantly but not altogether gracefully reminds us)
 
 The Feast of Saturn 79 
 
 than most of us get every day. We have gone 
 back to our dates, figs, ratafias, "cakes of Ameria 
 squashy in the middle," etc., of which in the hours 
 of waiting we collected a little heap, being good 
 at catching. We ruminate peacefully upon these 
 joys; till suddenly even "cakes of Ameria" no 
 longer keep our attention — 
 
 For, lo ! the arena fills. A horde, 
 By nature soft, and for the sword 
 Not formed or fashioned, here forget 
 
 To fear like women, and display 
 Their Amazon battalions, set 
 
 In order for a manly fray. 
 Hippolyta could scarce have sent 
 Such lasses to a tournament. 
 
 Now, we are Romans ; and it is not one century 
 yet from the birth of Christ. We should not be 
 horrified if these trained girls fell on and did real 
 execution with their swords and javelins. But they 
 are not going to do anything very bloody. From 
 the account of the poet it is clear that this army 
 of women, and the army of dwarfs (amazing proof 
 of organization, when we come to think of it) 
 which enters presently, are sham armies, and that 
 the whole contest is no more than a contest pour 
 rire — a laughable Saturnalian parody of those only 
 too real encounters which this gorgeous circle has 
 seen. It is an elaborate mockery of gladiators' per- 
 formance. They act all the incidents of battle, and 
 the joke of the thing lies in the incongruity of these 
 soft limbs and stunted forms with the horrors and 
 feats which they recall to the imagination. Not a
 
 8o The Feast of Saturn 
 
 refined pleasure, but for this time not brutal ; and 
 such were the spectacles of Rome more often than 
 is sometimes supposed. 
 
 These challenge next a tiny sort, 
 Whom nature, knotting them too short, 
 Finished as dwarfs. Heroic rage 
 Urges the minions to engage. 
 Great is the show of little strokes, 
 
 Small deaths, and miniature despairs. 
 Mars laughs ; his grisly partner jokes ; 
 
 While wondering at such pygmy airs 
 The cranes above them (see the sequel) 
 Allow the pygmy for their equal. 
 
 Of these "wondering cranes," who seem to 
 have prompted Statius with a learned comparison 
 between the dwarfs and the crane-fighting Pygmies 
 of Homer, the poet in the sequel gives an expla- 
 nation not too clear for our modern understandings, 
 and assuredly not made much clearer by the modern 
 expositors. We shall come to it in a moment, and 
 must hasten on : for the dinner, the dwarfs, and the 
 Amazons have occupied some time, and already the 
 winter light is fading. 
 
 Now, for the day was closing in, 
 'Twas time the scramble should begin. 
 "The scramble!" At the exciting call 
 Enter the famous beauties, all 
 Whose charms of person or of art 
 
 Possess the stage j the rounded forms 
 Of Lydia here, and there apart 
 
 Lithe limbs of Spain with timbrels; swarms 
 Of Syrians, coming still and coming, 
 Exclaiming, clapping, dancing, drumming.
 
 The Feast of Saturn 8i 
 
 The " scramble " was exactly what the name 
 implies to our ears — a scattering of gifts among 
 a crowd, partly for the benefit of the receiver, 
 partly for the amusement of the lookers-on. But 
 what a scene ! What a moment, when the hollow 
 ellipse of brilliant and varied colours was filled by 
 a centre of greater brilliance, variety, and beauty ! 
 The beauty of the world, literally chosen, gathered, 
 and collected ! For mere splendour, for popular 
 splendour (the most admirable sort and the most 
 useful), the world has seen nothing like it before 
 or since. 
 
 Complete at length the motley rout, 
 Supers and match-girls not left out. 
 All on a sudden from the sky 
 Birds, flocks of birds unnumbered, fly ! 
 The fowls of every climate known, 
 
 From sacred Nile to freezing Phasis, 
 Blown southward from the frigid zone, 
 
 Blown northward from the warm oasis, 
 All kinds but one — no birds of prey, 
 Lest they should take the rest away. 
 
 These birds, whatever they may have been to 
 the ladies, are a very considerable surprise to us, 
 and a puzzle too. The commentators are nowhere, 
 so to speak. They tell us that these birds were 
 only tickets, scattered among the crowd, each repre- 
 senting a specimen of game or poultry, and entitling 
 the possessor, on application at some place indicated, 
 to the actual bird. Such a method was certainly 
 practised in these amphitheatrical scrambles — the 
 bird, as Martial puts it, preferring the hazard of 
 
 V. L. E. 6
 
 82 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 the ticket to the certainty of being torn in pieces. 
 But it is simply impossible that what Statius here 
 describes was a mere scattering of tickets, con- 
 vertible into chickens ! To say nothing of the 
 absurd irrelevance of his imagery, the question is 
 clinched and settled, so far, by the foregoing refer- 
 ence to the cranes. The cranes, says the poet in 
 plain terms, plainer even than my version shows, 
 were some of the birds which descended in the 
 scramble, and these "cranes" were astonished to 
 see the exploits of the pygmy paladins in the arena 
 below. And yet these cranes were only tickets ? 
 Not a bit of it. The reader, knowing his or her 
 Statius, has no doubt a solution of the puzzle. But 
 " birds " of some sort these birds must have been, 
 and of course not real, or many a lady would have 
 been slain on the spot. Privately I guess them to 
 have been some sort of toy-birds made of rag, tow, 
 and what not, suspended above, lowered at the 
 proper time near to the arena, and then allowed 
 to flutter down. Nothing would make a better 
 scramble or a more amusing. To each would be 
 attached the Emperor's gift, that is either the 
 "ticket" for it or, much more likely, the gift itself. 
 Objects highly attractive to the assembled fair, and 
 quite costly enough for a distribution by hundreds and 
 thousands, could be easily attached to a toy-bird. 
 
 Now all content compare their gains; 
 No pocket empty, none complains. 
 Then all at once the myriad throats 
 Join in one shout their countless notes.
 
 The Feast of Saturn 83 
 
 " Hail to the Prince," their sound proclaims, 
 "And Feast of Saturn, princely-free ! 
 
 Hail to his name, to all his names. 
 
 Our Prince — our Master ! " " Nay," said he, 
 
 And put the flattering phrase away, 
 
 " What else ye will ; but master — nay ! " 
 
 It is hard that, in spite of this, Domitian — who 
 has fared worse for less reason than ahnost any- 
 character in history, and who is frequently abused 
 from pulpits and otherwise by people who hardly 
 care to know whether he was or was not the same 
 as Diocletian — that Domitian should be scolded for 
 the servility of address which he permitted. He 
 was a hard master to the Roman nobility, who 
 perhaps wanted one ; but he was a real king and 
 not a fool. After this last interchange of compli- 
 ments between him and his company, he had 
 doubtless had quite enough of the proceedings and 
 withdrew, we may presume, by his private passage 
 to a well-earned evening without any round game, 
 the grandees generally following suit. Nor is it 
 likely that the fastidious Statins, though the fun 
 was but just beginning, saw very much more of 
 it. The arena was lighted up (how, it is hard to 
 learn from the raptures of the bard), and a sort of 
 Bartholomew Fair, with shows, stages, and drinking- 
 bars free, seems to have gone on there ad libitum. 
 Hours afterwards Statius declares himself too sleepy 
 with the Emperor's wine to tell any more. He had 
 more probably worked himself out over a first draft 
 of his poem ; which if the reader does not allow to 
 
 6—2
 
 $4 The Feast of Saturn 
 
 have some real fire and flavour in it, let the fault 
 be mine and not the Roman's ; for in the original 
 I find a great glow of pleasure and glory. And 
 thankful to remember, in this air of mud and smoke, 
 that ever a multitude was so bright, so happy, so 
 splendid as were these sixty thousand Romans in 
 the year Ninety-blank Anno Domini^ I would con- 
 duct the poet, in Roman fashion, most respectfully 
 to his bed : — 
 
 Scarce night begins to mount the sphere, 
 When — see a sun of flames appear ! 
 Brighter than Ariadne's crown, 
 Through gathering shades it settles down 
 In mid arena. Heaven is thick 
 
 With fires, and darkness banished quite. 
 Dull sleep and sloth fled, strangely quick, 
 
 To other cities at the sight, 
 Perceiving that this sun portended 
 A feast not easy to be ended. 
 
 But how describe the enormous jest 
 
 Of shows and farces and the rest? 
 
 The suppers heaped, the streams of drink — 
 
 I cannot sing, I cannot think. 
 
 Spare, generous Prince, and let me sleep ; 
 
 The memory of this wondrous day — 
 Not while thy Rome and river keep 
 
 Their places, shall it pass away; 
 Not till, new given to man by thee, 
 Yon Capitol shall cease to be !
 
 k ' 
 
 A TRAGI-COMEDY AND A PAGE 
 OF HISTORY 
 
 A SATIRIST in search of an example by which to 
 show the invincible repugnance of individual tastes 
 in matters of art, and the consequent futility of 
 critical discussion, could scarcely desire a better 
 case for the paradox than the estimate of the poet 
 Euripides. From his own time to the present 
 day it has been the fate of his works to raise a 
 strange and complicated discord of opinions. He 
 was scarcely cold in his grave when Aristophanes 
 hastened to set up the jousts for a tournament of 
 letters, and devoted the most brilliant of his national 
 dramas to a question such as never perhaps before, 
 and seldom since, has been so pompously debated 
 — whether the dead poet had or had not a right 
 to his accredited place as a master supreme in his 
 kind. 
 
 And where the question is left by Aristophanes 
 in the Fi^ogs, there in effect, and in spite of all 
 changes, it now remains. That vast popularity and 
 influence which the comedy presumes to exist, have 
 never been withdrawn, nor ever ceased to provoke 
 from time to time the same sort of scornful rage
 
 86 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 which they provoked in the comedian. By the side 
 of Aeschylus and Sophocles he was compelled to 
 place Euripides, and Euripides only ; and yet he 
 would gladly have converted the throne to a pillory. 
 So now, in a list of the world's greatest poets, the 
 ducal rank of the literary baronage, no one could 
 omit the name of Euripides without being conscious 
 of the gap. And yet in a general history of Attic 
 drama, it is possible for a scholar to bestow on 
 Euripides a chapter of venomous depreciation, and 
 to back it with respected names \ Among the living 
 poets of England one has eloquently defended the 
 unity of the great tragic triad, while another has 
 declared, with something more than his habitual 
 emphasis, the impossibility that anyone worth at- 
 tention should ever put Euripides in the same class 
 with the other two. 
 
 Such a disagreement of doctors might well stop 
 our mouths, if in these few remarks we were aiming 
 at any decision. But the very disagreement is a 
 temptation to ask the cause of it, and why, when 
 most writers who have made a venture for the first 
 rank have been speedily fixed to their places, within 
 or without, by something like a general consent, 
 Euripides alone (for I believe he has no parallel) 
 should be crowned indeed, but with such an uneasy 
 and disputed crown. The fact I take to be that 
 Euripides wrote at a moment in the history of 
 literature not merely, like all moments in history, 
 
 ^ See the criticism of Schlegel, as reproduced and endorsed 
 by Donaldson in his Theatre of the Greeks.
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 87 
 
 unique, but egregiously and inimitably unique. He 
 swam in the swirl of two strong currents, which, 
 taking their rise in the mind of the same inventor, 
 flowing, clashing, and mixing diversely ever since, 
 threw up around Euripides the spray of their most 
 bewildering conflict. 
 
 When Aeschylus, in the phrase of Aristophanes, 
 " first reared the pomp of tragic style," a date which 
 may be put about level with Euripides' birth, his 
 work had two effects, one of which he planned and 
 consciously accomplished, while the other he cer- 
 tainly did not design, nor in its full consequences 
 even comprehend. He perfected the sublime and 
 he made realism inevitable. As for sublimity, it 
 is the essence of him. For the type of his art, 
 antiquity rightly chose the stately and unfamiliar 
 costume by which he strove to raise his personages 
 literally above and out of the common level. He 
 had the faculty of greatness, in theme, style, words, 
 everything. It belonged in part to his age ; his 
 contemporary Pindar has it more perhaps than any 
 other except himself. But Aeschylus has it most, 
 and for the exquisite pleasure of elevation there is 
 none like him. To sustain this height he made 
 (we have express, though perhaps needless, testi- 
 mony that he was the first maker) an extraordinary 
 diction ; he borrowed and adapted a peculiar lyrical 
 music ; he chose and developed all that was morally 
 grandest in the grotesque abundance of myth and 
 legend ready to his hand. Now in all this there 
 is nothing exclusively proper to the stage ; and
 
 88 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 though Aeschylus was assuredly one of the very 
 greatest of theatrical artists, though his actual work 
 is essentially theatrical, it is nevertheless not in its 
 theatrical quality that his genius as a poet consists. 
 Of which the best proof is that in later literature 
 the most Aeschylean poetry is to be found not in 
 dramas at all. Milton is much more Aeschylean 
 than Shakespeare, and not in scenes quasi-dramatic 
 merely, but in his ordinary narrative. 
 
 Nor is this so merely because Milton knew 
 Aeschylus profoundly, and Shakespeare, we may 
 say, not at all ; for Dante, who knew not a line 
 of him, is often Aeschylean nevertheless. It is 
 easily conceivable that, under other circumstances, 
 Aeschylus might have applied his unequalled power 
 of elevation to poetry not dramatic in form, and 
 had he done so, he would have been Aeschylus still. 
 But without his sublimity of manner there would 
 have been no Aeschylus, not if he had kept ever 
 so strictly to the form of dialogue and always 
 written for the purpose of recitation from a stage. 
 Indeed the mere spectacular form of tragedy, so far 
 as it was ever invented at all, was invented rather 
 by Athens than by Aeschylus, and was certain to 
 arise, as it did, whenever there should first exist a 
 large free population desiring and able to command 
 the luxuries of the mind. 
 
 Nevertheless it was a vital matter, that the 
 strong new spirit of Aeschylus went to raise and 
 to popularise the new form of serious drama. For 
 this form was an instrument not likely, once made,
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 89 
 
 to lie idle for want of hands. Through action and 
 speech, as combined in conversation, we learn the 
 greater part of what we know about each other. 
 It was therefore a prodigious step in the art of 
 showing man to men, when poets took up seriously 
 the composing of dialogues to be recited with ac- 
 tion. But Aeschylus, though he took the initial 
 and decisive step, went but a little way himself; 
 and could he have foreseen where the way led and 
 where others soon would go, he would have been 
 but little disposed to congratulate himself upon his 
 lead. In the latest and most developed of his works 
 there is scarcely a sign that the poet feels in his 
 grasp a new tool for carving the likeness of common 
 humanity. His dialogue is but little applied to 
 exhibit the play of thought and emotion as only 
 dialogue can show it. The spectacular possibilities 
 of the drama he grasped completely, but its possible 
 subtlety he did not comprehend or care for. It 
 was indeed alien from his mind. To preserve that 
 noble air of grandeur requires a treatment broad not 
 subtle. You cannot be, at least no one ever has 
 been yet, gigantic in outline and minutely human 
 in detail. However ingeniously the two qualities 
 may be combined, something of the one must be 
 sacrificed to the other. 
 
 But the step was taken and was not to be 
 taken back. The realistic analysis of character is 
 a pleasure too keen to be tasted and not to provoke 
 appetite. In the drama of Sophocles it assumes 
 such new proportions as to be really a new thing.
 
 90 A Tragi-Co7nedy and a Page of History 
 
 The working of a virtuous mind under temptation, 
 as it is shown in the Philoctetes, and could not have 
 been shown without the aid of the dramatic form, 
 offers a kind of intellectual pleasure fertile ever 
 since in literature, but no more to be found in 
 Aeschylus than it is in Homer. Our present 
 space and purpose will not allow us to dwell upon 
 Sophocles, or to consider the skill with which he 
 contrived to hold in combination for a time the 
 discordant elements that were combating for the 
 stage of tragedy. But this we have to remember, 
 that for the conciliation which he effected there 
 was a price to pay. The process of permeating 
 tragedy with the spirit of realistic analysis, without 
 destroying that elevation given to it by Aeschylus, 
 was a process of limited possibility. This is re- 
 cognised explicitly in the contrasted criticism of 
 Sophocles and Euripides, which is attributed to 
 Sophocles himself; that Sophocles represented 
 humanity according to the requirements of art, 
 while his successor painted it as it is. But what 
 if men should care for the reality more than for 
 the requirements of the Aeschylean art ? Or, to 
 put the question more fairly, what if they insisted on 
 having all kinds of intellectual pleasure, a realistic 
 drama as well as the elevated and remote.-* Even 
 Sophocles is held to have succeeded least in those 
 of his plays (such as the Philoctetes and the Women 
 of Trachis) where the new element has most part. 
 Who should forbid it then to declare itself altogether 
 independent ?
 
 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 91 
 
 Such was the state of things when Euripides 
 came. Everything was ripe for a tragedy, or 
 comedy, or tragi-comedy of manners ; and if there 
 might be a question what it should be called, 
 Athens was not likely to wait, any more than we 
 need delay ourselves now, for a mere scholastic 
 question of classification. Such a tragi-comedy 
 Euripides did in truth create, and if he could have 
 started it frankly in what would now seem the 
 obvious way, half the pother which has vexed his 
 renown might have been avoided. The drama of 
 Euripides, if we look at the essential parts of it 
 and neglect the accidental, is concerned wholly with 
 the life which he actually saw around him. And 
 it ought in the nature of things to have dealt 
 nominally, as well as actually, with common per- 
 sonages and ordinary incidents. Half the criticism 
 of Aristophanes and of many since would cease to 
 apply, if the plays were furnished with a new set 
 of dramatis personae, fictitious names without any 
 traditional association. And it is amazing with 
 what facility this could be done, how slight is often 
 the connexion between a play of Euripides and the 
 old-world legend which serves for the scaffolding. 
 With the change of a few verses here and there, 
 the Medea might be cut loose from the tale of the 
 Argonauts, with which it has in truth nothing what- 
 ever to do. The life of it comes not from romance, 
 but from the homes of Athens, Hippolytus is slain 
 by a miraculous monster ; but if he had been killed 
 by the commonest carriage-accident, the play might
 
 92 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 still be much what it is, and might have made as 
 deep a mark in literature as it has. The names of 
 Theseus and Phaedra, nay even the very human 
 deities of Aphrodite and Artemis, might all be 
 exchanged for other names and persons, and the 
 drama in its essence would still be there. There 
 is not a single play of Sophocles which could be 
 subjected to such a process without utter dissolu- 
 tion, and as to Aeschylus, the very thought seems 
 I a profanity. The legends of mythology are the 
 very warp and substance of their compositions ; 
 they are for the most part the mere frame to 
 those of Euripides, and a frame too often imper- 
 fectly suited to the texture. 
 
 Why the tragi-comedy of Euripides and his 
 contemporaries did not (with exceptions too few 
 to signify) take what now seems the plain road, 
 and strike into independent fiction, is probably to 
 be explained by the quasi-religious character of 
 theatrical performances at Athens. Probably neither 
 the authorities who licensed and financed the exhi- 
 bition, nor the audience themselves, would have 
 tolerated all at once so bold an innovation. The 
 fourth century might have witnessed it ; but the 
 fourth century produced only a Menander and no 
 Euripides. Serious thought had turned elsewhere, 
 and the great age of Greek poetry was over. Nor 
 has the true lover of Euripides any reason to regret 
 what actually was done. The elements of the 
 Euripidean drama, the romantic or religious legend 
 which is taken for base and the story of common
 
 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 93 
 
 life which is built upon it, stand indeed not seldom 
 in the sharpest and, it may be, the crudest oppo- 
 sition. But this very contrast gives to the reality 
 of what is real a strange and fascinating relief. It 
 is often as if the figures of some quaint tapestry 
 were suddenly to walk and talk from the canvas. 
 Nor is there the least doubt that the poet knew 
 I \ \ well what he was doing. He loves to startle his 
 reader with the very bareness of sheer life thrusting 
 I I itself upon the artificial scene. High art has never! \ 
 \ forgiven him, but mankind have never given him 
 I up and never will. | V 
 
 11^ I propose for our present amusement, and on 
 the chance that others may turn to use an expe- 
 rience of many years in the great poet's peculiar 
 ways, to illustrate what has been said by a brief 
 review of his Andromache. This play is classified, 
 with all his works, as a tragedy, and some are pleased 
 to call it a second-rate tragedy. No Euripidean is 
 concerned with this nomenclature nor bound to 
 defend the play as a tragedy at all. 1 1 is no tragedy. 
 The only tragic incident lies outside of the main 
 action, and merely serves the poet for a piece of 
 brilliant narrative. In the time of Elizabeth we 
 might have called it a comedy ; now we have no 
 word for it at all. But call it what we please, it is 
 an admirable piece of work, full of reality, and in 
 the central scene subtle and yet simple in the play 
 of character after a fashion which Euripides has to 
 himself 
 
 Interested above all things in the complications
 
 94 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 of domestic life, an interest stimulated by the great 
 social and material improvements of his century, 
 Euripides has centred the Andromache upon a 
 problem such as our modern civilization happily 
 does not admit. The Greeks were in one sense 
 monogamous : that is, a man could not in Athens 
 be married to more than one legal wife. But, as 
 in all slave-owning communities, ambiguous rela- 
 tions, regular though not matrimonial, were common. 
 And as the slave- women of Greece were often, in all 
 respects but status, fully as fit to be the wives of 
 their masters as the true-born burgess-ladies whom 
 they formally wedded, there was constant tempta- 
 tion to risk the double household, to " marry " one 
 for love and one for position. This situation, with 
 all its perils, was exciting to the eye of the poet and 
 of the philanthropist: and Euripides was both. He 
 sought within the prescribed circle of tradition for 
 an opportunity to place such a situation by a little 
 adapting of the legendary data, and he found it in 
 the legends of the house of Peleus. 
 
 After the capture of Troy the captive Andro- 
 mache, formerly the wife of Hector, was assigned 
 to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles and grandson to 
 Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis, by whom she 
 became the mother of Molossus. According to an- 
 other story, probably in origin quite distinct from 
 that of Andromache, this same Neoptolemus wedded 
 Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus of 
 Sparta, which Hermione was nevertheless bestowed 
 as wife by yet another independent tradition upon
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 95 
 
 her cousin Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, and 
 hero in that fearful story of murder and revenge 
 which Aeschylus has made generally known. Again, 
 among the many legends told by the priests of 
 Delphi in honour of Apollo, it was related that 
 this Neoptolemus, having attempted to plunder the 
 sacred place, was slain by the deity, and buried at 
 Delphi, where his grave was shown. Out of these 
 materials Euripides, using the romantic element 
 after his habit as a background, and adjusting the 
 social facts, if we may term them so, to his purpose, 
 has constructed his play of The Rivals, for so it 
 might have been appropriately called in the modern 
 style. In the house of Neoptolemus Euripides 
 establishes both Andromache and Hermione side 
 by side — Hermione, the princess, as the rightful 
 wife, Andromache, the slave, though princess too, 
 as a wife in everything but name, first in the 
 husband's love, and superior also in the possession 
 of a son. He gives them contrasted characters — 
 Andromache, the woman, all tenderness, Hermione, 
 the girl, all pride ; Andromache unable not to cap- 
 tivate the captor whose dominion she abhors, 
 Hermione unable to condescend even where she 
 is desperately eager to please ; and lastly, both 
 women all through, both jealous not so much of 
 love as of place, and neither able to forgo the 
 delights of a triumph, whatever pang may be paid 
 for it. 
 
 Such is the bed which Achilles' son has made 
 for himself. Meanwhile the distractions of the
 
 g6 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 household are observed by a watchful enemy. 
 Taking up the story which made Hermione wife 
 to Orestes, the dramatist supposes her to have 
 been promised to him, but given nevertheless to 
 Neoptolemus by her father Menelaus, a weak and 
 crafty man (here comes out the Athenian hatred of 
 Sparta), when Orestes had compromised his posi- 
 tion by that unfortunate matricide, and the heir of 
 Achilles was the most desirable ally among the 
 Greek youth. Orestes, false and crafty as Menelaus 
 his uncle, but strong in purpose, waited his time, 
 and aided by the self-willed folly of Neoptolemus 
 did not wait in vain. Neoptolemus had pleased 
 himself by taking Hermione in spite of Orestes* 
 better right ; he had pleased himself still by not 
 putting Andromache from the home to which he 
 brought the princess ; and he pleased himself once 
 too often by venting against Apollo his anger for 
 the death of his father Achilles and going so far 
 as to demand satisfaction of the deity. Reminded 
 of his weakness by the ill success of his domestic 
 plans, he repairs to Delphi on an errand of apology. 
 And now his errors come home. Hermione, with 
 the support of Menelaus whom she summons from 
 Sparta, determines, in the absence of her husband, to 
 be even with the slave-rival once for all. Andromache 
 flies for refuge to the sanctuary of Thetis, but is 
 tempted to leave it by a stratagem of Menelaus, 
 who discovers the hiding-place of Molossus her 
 son. Menelaus and his daughter are about to put 
 both mother and child to death, when they are
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 97 
 
 saved by the spirited interference of Peleus, the 
 boy's great-grandfather, before whom the cowardly 
 Spartan finds it convenient to retire "upon a sudden 
 and a pressing cause," leaving Hermione to extricate 
 herself as she may. 
 
 Then follows a scene of exquisite humour and 
 force. The princess, like the spoiled child that she 
 is, passes in a moment from the height of arrogance 
 to the depth of terror. She tears her magnificent 
 and priceless robes, declares that her husband will 
 kill her, that she will never meet him alive, and 
 struggles with contemptible despair in the arms of 
 the attendants who soothe her and scold her like 
 a rebel of the nursery. Here arrives Orestes, who 
 has surveyed if not guided the whole working of 
 the machinery which is accomplishing his ends. He 
 arrives pretending to know nothing of the situation. 
 In reality his cousin has never ceased to correspond 
 with him, and though he has politicly stood off from 
 her appeals while there was no fair chance of suc- 
 cess, he has been, during the last critical days, in 
 the very neighbourhood of the house, and presents 
 himself at this moment ready to receive her, should 
 she throw herself, as she does, into his arms. For 
 her husband he has already provided otherwise. 
 Using the jealousy of the Delphians against one 
 under suspicion of enmity to their god, he has 
 arranged that Neoptolemus shall be assassinated 
 (Apollo conniving and aiding !) in the sacred pre- 
 cinct itself. So ends all, not more unhappily than 
 things are apt to end when foolish men choose, as 
 
 V. L. E. 7
 
 98 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 they will, to act as if they might safely defy the 
 feelings and beliefs of the world and the course 
 of nature. Intelligent selfishness carries the day 
 against reckless selfishness. Orestes, cold-hearted 
 and wary, regains his native rank and promised 
 bride, while Neoptolemus, gallant in a sort of 
 blundering fashion, lies in his grave among the 
 Delphians, to the "eternal opprobrium," puts in 
 the satirist, of their cruel and revengeful deity. 
 And the moral of it all, if the moral signifies, is 
 that young men should be very careful how and 
 whom they marry ! This maxim Euripides, mocking 
 with a sympathetic smile the romance of mythology, 
 puts twice into the mouth of Peleus and illustrates 
 lastly from the case of Peleus himself, who having 
 allied himself so particularly well (with a goddess 
 of the sea, no less) is rewarded by his Thetis, who 
 appears at the close of the piece, with an everlasting 
 home in the ocean-caves. Thence the immortal 
 pair may now and again come up to behold their 
 Achilles enjoying his happy days upon a mystic 
 island far in the Euxine Main. Andromache is 
 dismissed finally to a new husband of her own 
 race, and left, as happy as she may be, with her 
 boy Molossus in Molossia. 
 
 Hero or heroine the piece has none. It is 
 proper to tragi-comedy, which is the antithesis of 
 tragedy rather than a species of it, to avoid these 
 elevations. But the climax is the success of Orestes, 
 and it is to the scene between him and Hermione 
 that the drama advances. After this it is merely
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 99 
 
 wound up. Let us put ourselves then at this point of 
 view, and look at a pair of scenes with Euripidean 
 eyes. The first important moment is the entrance of 
 Hermione. Her character is a piece of the crudest 
 realism, and Euripides prepares for it in his fashion 
 by a delicate contrast of poetic romance. An un- 
 rivalled linguist, he had every style at command, 
 and the beauty of this passage has won praise from 
 the most unwilling. I must apologise, indeed, for 
 the attempt to reproduce it. 
 
 When the play opens, Andromache is found in 
 sanctuary. A slave, once hers, now level with her 
 in subjection, brings her word of the new plot laid 
 by Hermione and her father against Molossus, and 
 is sent, the last of many messengers and the only 
 one found faithful, to summon Peleus. Left alone, 
 Andromache is bewailing herself in tones which 
 echo the old, old music, older than memory, of 
 Homer and the poets of Ionia, when she is visited 
 by some Thessalian women of the place, led by 
 their sympathy to steal, as they hope, a moment 
 when the jealous vigilance of Hermione is averted, 
 and to approach the sufferer with consolation and 
 advice. Thus sings to herself the widow worse 
 than married : 
 
 Death and doom it was he wedded when in Ilium's royal tower 
 
 Paris led his Helen to the bower. 
 Troy, for Helen thou art wasted; Troy, for Helen swiftly came 
 
 Ships a thousand fraught with sword and flame. 
 Aye, for her my Hector died in death dishonoured, dust-defiled 
 
 'Neath the chariot-wheel of Thetis' child. 
 
 7—2
 
 lOO A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 Me they took from Hector's chamber, haled me to the sounding 
 shore, 
 
 Veiled in slavish weeds — a queen before. 
 Tear on tear I wept to leave you, Hector, with the dying town, 
 
 Dying, Hector, all in ashes down. 
 Woe is me, what profit had I more of living? I, a slave 
 
 To the Spartan ! Better were a grave 
 Than to fly before a tyrant to these marble arms and pour 
 
 Fountain-tears, until I waste no more ! 
 
 Thus she sings, and thus in her own mood and 
 measure answer to her the secret visitors, softly 
 steaHng in, while one after another they take up 
 the burden of the song : 
 
 Lady, listen, where thou clingest to the goddess of the waves, 
 
 Faithful to the shrine that saves. 
 Fear us not ; though thou wast bred in Asia, though in Phthia we, 
 
 Yet in love we come to thee. 
 Might compassion 
 
 Something lighten of thy misery ! 
 
 And here other voices put in : 
 
 Caged, alas, and with the rival cribbed, as in a narrow room, 
 
 Must thou battle 
 'Gainst the bride, poor mistress, for her groom? 
 
 And here yet others again, repeating the rhythms 
 of the first : 
 
 O advise thee, O consider of thy helpless, hopeless case ! 
 
 Wilt dispute a royal place? 
 Troy and Lacedaemon, slave and princess, what a match to play ! 
 Ah, content thee, come away ! 
 
 Let submission 
 Win thee respite while it may. 
 Why increase the certain torture, lengthen out the appointed pain ? 
 She is sovran. 
 She will reach thee; tempt her not in vain.
 
 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History loi 
 
 Then others, with a quicker step and a livelier 
 urgency : 
 
 Come, descend, forgo thy refuge, quit the Nereid's holy fane; 
 See what thou art and where, 
 
 Nor think it gain. 
 Humble and friendless, to disdain 
 The proffer of a little care. 
 
 Aye, we love thee, captive lady, pity thee, in this too wise 
 That we have feared to speak. 
 
 We feared surprise : 
 Hermione hath jealous eyes, 
 And queens are mighty, subjects weak. 
 
 And now the realist has laid the train for his 
 effect. At this very moment, breaking harshly 
 upon the spell of the sustained and soothing lyric, 
 Hermione herself, who has watched the unsus- 
 pecting women upon their errand of mercy, and 
 enjoyed, with what feelings may be supposed, the 
 proverbial reward of the listener, steps out, splendid 
 in person and apparel but mean in act and gesture, 
 upon the astonished circle, and addresses them in 
 words like these : 
 
 If I am pleased to bind my brows with gold, 
 And robe myself in gorgeous broideries. 
 Not Peleus nor Achilles first bestowed 
 Upon the Spartan bride her proper state. 
 My father dowered me with the royal right, 
 Purchased and richly paid, to speak my mind. 
 So, you are answered, ladies ! As for thee. 
 Prisoner and slave and — mistress, thine intent 
 Is to expel me, to usurp my place.
 
 I02 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 Thou with thy witchcraft, thou, hast made my spouse 
 
 Mislike me, cursed my womb with barrenness. 
 
 Being, like all your passionate Asian breed, 
 
 Adept in this love-magic. But I mean 
 
 To end both it and thee ; nor sanctuary. 
 
 Sea-nymph or shrine, shall rescue thee from death. 
 
 Or let thine angel, for thy one last hope, 
 
 Bend thee to quit thy greatness and thy pride. 
 
 And crouch, and grovel, and fling thee at my feet, 
 
 Sprinkle my floors and sweep them (I will find 
 
 Thee gilded vessels for the menial task). 
 
 And learn the simple truth that this is Greece ! 
 
 Here is no Hector and no Priam. Here 
 
 We practise not thy shameless savagery. 
 
 To woo the embrace of hands that have on them 
 
 Thy dearest blood, be mother of a child 
 
 Whose grandsire slew thy husband ! But your East 
 
 Is all for such abhorred accouplements. 
 
 No cross of kin, no soul-dividing feud 
 
 Bars like from like, or farthest hate from hate. 
 
 Bring not thy fashions here. Foul sin it is 
 
 To yoke two women in one governance; 
 
 He that would 'scape a miserable home 
 
 Let him content his amorous heart with one. 
 
 Detractors might say what else they would, but 
 could not deny that here was breathing, staring life. 
 Neither in Aeschylus certainly nor in Sophocles (let 
 those smile who will) is there anything like it. Even 
 to us, on whose ears the comparison of Asia and 
 Hellas must needs fall as something foreign and 
 far-away, and who must use our imaginations before 
 the household of Neoptolemus can rise before our 
 minds as a fact, even to us (I speak at least for 
 myself) this formidable girl gives a startling im- 
 pression of real presence. I wish there were time
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 103 
 
 to spend over the rest of the scene, and the admir- 
 ably contrasted figure of Andromache, sorrowful and 
 majestic, yet not less exasperating- than Hermione 
 herself, pathetic and yet dealing wounds with every 
 appeal : 
 
 O Youth and Self! What peril is in youth, 
 In youth that nothing loves beyond herself!... 
 No spell of mine procures thy husband's hate, 
 But thou thyself, wanting one wifely charm, 
 The magic of companionableness. 
 
 Hermione however has in her hand for the moment 
 the strong card of force, and plays it, but loses the 
 game, as we have seen, by the collapse of her pitiful 
 partner, King Menelaus. And so we pass to the 
 best scene of the play, where Orestes reaps the 
 benefit of his calculations and meets the dishevelled 
 beauty in the moment of attempted flight, sobbing 
 helplessly at the gate in the arms of her duenna. 
 The feigned surprise of the successful plotter, the 
 vain attempt of the queen to perform with dignity 
 the part of throwing herself on the protection of 
 a discarded suitor and to cover the shame of her 
 unkingly parent, the angry explosion of her repent- 
 ance, which positively stops for a time the offer 
 which is ready on Orestes' lips, the contempt of 
 her Thessalian subjects, the prudent chivalry of 
 Orestes himself, who is not too much in love to 
 see his strength, and lastly the sudden reassump- 
 tion of the lady's dignity when she sees that she 
 is sure of her object — all this makes an episode 
 which tickles the fancy at every turn.
 
 I04 A Tragi- Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 Orestes. 
 
 A Lady. 
 Or. 
 
 Hermione. 
 
 Or. 
 
 Herm. 
 Or. 
 
 Herm. 
 
 Or. 
 
 Herm. 
 Or. 
 
 Herm. 
 
 Or. 
 Herm. 
 
 Or. 
 
 Ladies, inform me, of your courtesy, 
 
 Is this the palace of Achilles' son? 
 
 Aye, sir. And thou, the questioner, who art thou ? 
 
 Orestes, lady, Agamemnon's son 
 
 And Clytaemnestra's. Being in pilgrimage 
 
 Unto Dodona and being come so far 
 
 As Phthia, I have thought to ascertain 
 
 The health and happiness of my kinswoman, 
 
 Hermione of Sparta, dwelling now 
 
 Far from our love, but not forgotten — 
 
 Saved ! 
 A haven, a haven ! O Orestes, see — 
 See where I kneel, and answer for thyself 
 Thy loving question of my happiness. 
 Thus with mine arms I bind me to thy feet. 
 And clasp mine altar. Pity me ! 
 
 Gracious Powers ! 
 Do I mistake, or do I see indeed 
 The princess' self? 
 
 Menelaus' daughter, sole 
 Born of his queen, of Helen : doubt it not. 
 Then heaven be merciful and mend thy woes ! 
 But what, but what ? Come they from heaven at all 
 Or fault of man? 
 
 By fault of man, of him 
 Who is my lord, and yet from heaven, from all. 
 Thou hast no children, and thou art aggrieved ! 
 Shrewdly I doubt where lies the jealous grief? 
 Well doubted; there it lies. 
 
 Thy lord hath ta'en 
 Some other to his bosom. 
 
 Her who being 
 The wife of Hector fell to be a slave. 
 It is a wrong indeed. 
 
 It was a wrong ! 
 And therefore did I try to right myself. 
 By woman's vengeance on a woman ?
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 105 
 
 Herm. Aye, 
 
 On her and on her bastard, by their deaths: 
 But— 
 
 Or. Reached them not? Who balked thee of thy 
 
 will? 
 
 Herm. Peleus was pleased to lend his gravity 
 
 Unto the baser cause. 
 
 Or. But thou, thou hadst 
 
 No helper? 
 
 Herm. Aye, my father: he had come 
 
 Express from Sparta. 
 
 Or. But was overpowered 
 
 By the old grandsire, was he? 
 
 Herm. Over-awed 
 
 He was, and left me, left me here behind. 
 
 Or. I take thee; thou art fearful of thy husband, 
 
 Seeing what has passed. 
 
 Herm. Thou hast read my fear indeed. 
 
 Why, he will take my life; and wherefore not? 
 Now, for the dear sake of our cousinhood. 
 Take me away; farthest from here is best; 
 Take me to my father's. For indeed I think 
 The very palace cries me to be gone, 
 And the land loathes my presence. If my lord 
 Return from Delphi hither ere I go, 
 I die a death of shame, or live to serve 
 The slave, his mistress, that I ruled before. 
 "Why was I such a fool?" Because of fools 
 That had free access to me, tongues of women, 
 Prompting me still with fool suggestions. " So ! 
 You have the patience to endure a slave, 
 Free of the house, free of the bed ! I' faith. 
 Madam, let me say, if bed and house were mine. 
 The interceptress soon would lack her eyes ! " 
 I heard the siren voices, listened to 
 The reckless gossip, learned the subtle cant. 
 And swelled with sentiment. — What need had I
 
 io6 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 To be my husband's jailer? Did I want? 
 Had I not wealth in plenty, queenly state, 
 Children, if I should bear them, noble lords 
 Of the base issue from the rival couch? 
 Ah never, say I, never I say again, 
 Will reasonable men, wedded to wives, 
 Suffer the spouse to entertain at home 
 Women ! The women it is who teach the harm. 
 For one will serve temptation for a bribe, 
 And one, being fallen, to bring her sister down, 
 And more for wantonness. Thus house from house 
 Takes the infection. Therefore lock your doors. 
 Bolt them, and bar them up, and set a watch 
 To keep the women out, whose visiting 
 Is purely profitless and mischievous ! 
 A Lady. This is too loose a libel on the sex. 
 
 In thee excusable, though woman's part 
 Is more to gloss the frailties of her kind. 
 Or. It was a wise advice that someone gave 
 
 To be a listener and let others speak. — 
 I was apprised of the domestic war 
 Between the Trojan rival and thyself, 
 And lay in truth watching the chance. Belike» 
 Sooner than fray it out thou would st retire, 
 Quitting possession to the doughty slave, 
 And though I came without a call to come, 
 Wouldst license me (and so thou hast) to offer 
 My convoy hence. Thou wast already mine 
 When thy false father wedded thee away. 
 His plighted word, before the siege of Troy, 
 Gave me that hand, which afterwards, to buy 
 Thy husband's aid therein, he pledged to him. 
 To Achilles' heir. I, at their coming home, 
 Sparing thy father, begged the son preferred 
 To yield thee, pleading my unhappy state 
 And how, an exile and for such a cause. 
 Failing to wed the daughter of my kin.
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 107 
 
 I scarce might hope to win a wife at all. 
 
 Whereon he scorned me for a matricide, 
 
 Haunted (what fault of mine?) by bloody fiends. 
 
 I bowed my head (the sorrows of my house 
 
 Had humbled me) but did not feel the less, 
 
 Because compelled, the losing of thy hand. 
 
 And now the wheel hath turned, now thou art fallen 
 
 Hapless and helpless, I will be thy guide 
 
 Hence to thy sire in safety. Cousinship 
 
 Is a mysterious bond, and at a need 
 
 Where should one lean but on a kinsman's arm? 
 
 Herm. How I should marry, till my father have 
 
 Reflected on it, lies not in my choice. 
 Only make haste for our departing, lest 
 My lord step in upon me ere I go. 
 Or Peleus learn that I am fled the house 
 And charioted pursue us. 
 
 Or. Fear him not; 
 
 He is old; and Neoptolemus, fear not him. 
 This hand, which owes him for his insolence, 
 Hath knotted him a sure and deadly snare 
 And set the same — but I anticipate; 
 Time will reveal the sequel, in the doing. 
 To Delphi, where, unless my Delphian friends 
 Fail to perform their oaths, "the matricide" 
 Will read my lord a lesson on the risk 
 Of wedding my betrothed. He shall abide 
 The wrath of Phoebus, whom he called to account 
 For slain Achilles, nor shall save himself 
 By his repentance and submission now. 
 The god will be his death, and I, his foe, 
 Have laid a train of rumour thereunto. 
 Fate in a quarrel lets the advantage poise 
 Alternate, for the chastisement of pride. \Exeunt. 
 
 Such or such-like is the chief scene in the 
 Andromache of Euripides. By what scholastic
 
 io8 A Tragi-Coniedy and a Page of History 
 
 name the work should be ticketed is not a pressing 
 question. But if it is not admirable work, so clever 
 in conception, so delicate and humorous in detail, 
 if it is not first-rate work, then by all means let us 
 have second-rate, and be thankful. Tragedy is good 
 and so is tragi-comedy. There remains, I think, of 
 Euripides, but one single work (the Bacchae) which 
 the Muse of Tragedy should acknowledge or claim 
 as exclusively her own. All the rest have been 
 marred or mended by her sisters named and name- 
 less, and all their gifts we may have without cavil 
 or contention. Indeed it is an ill use of eternal 
 literature to dispute over it ; and therefore, lest the 
 reader should disagree after all with my estimate 
 of such scenes as the foregoing, I will ask leave to 
 try once more with a piece about which there is, 
 I believe, no difference. That Euripides could tell 
 a story with spirit is granted by those who like him 
 least, and it happens that the Andromache contains 
 one of his best, the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi, 
 related to Peleus by one of the servants who bring 
 home the body. The narrator witnessed the scene, 
 but was prevented with his companions from bearing 
 a hand in it by the ritual practices of the place. It 
 will be seen that Neoptolemus at the critical moment 
 was divided from his defenders, as the enemy fore- 
 saw and intended, by the impassable wall of the 
 sacred close. From the high ground outside they 
 saw what was done, but could not help. The 
 archaeological interest of the story, enacted upon 
 one of the most famous sites in the world, is very
 
 A Tragi'Comedy and a Page of History 109 
 
 great ; but except in the points noticed it will 
 sufficiently explain itself. So I give it without 
 more preface. 
 
 Arrived at Phoebus' far-renowned see, 
 
 We spent the golden hours of three full days 
 
 In feasting with the show our curious eyes, 
 
 And stirring (innocently) suspicion so. 
 
 This grew and gathered, while from knot to knot 
 
 Orestes wandering whispered to the folk 
 
 His fell suggestions : " See him, how he goes 
 
 With careful survey through your treasure-close 
 
 Rich with the whole world's wealth, 'Tis the old grudge 
 
 To Phoebus brings him here this second time 
 
 For plunder." So he whispered, they believed, 
 
 Until the chartered keepers of the store. 
 
 After due conferences had and held. 
 
 Set private watch about the pillared courts. 
 
 At length, of all this coil unconscious, we 
 Took victims, petted on Parnassian lawns, 
 And waited at the high gate solemnly 
 With Delphians to present us and direct. 
 Then said the questioner, "Your purpose, sir? 
 What is the prayer that we shall make for you 
 To Phoebus?" Said my lord, "To be forgiven; 
 To make amends that for my father slain 
 I sinned so far to ask amends of him." 
 
 And now was seen to what malign effect 
 Orestes had possessed them with the fraud 
 Of our ill meaning. When my lord had passed 
 Within the boundary to address his prayer 
 In the oracular presence, there were set 
 Swordsmen in ambush, covered by the bays. 
 With the arch-plotter, Clytaemnestra's son. 
 And while my lord, intent upon the rite,
 
 no A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History 
 
 Faced toward the god communing, even then 
 They stabbed my brave lord in the open back, 
 But not to death. He wrenched the dagger out, 
 Backed to the colonnade, and snatched therefrom 
 The hanging armour, clad himself, and stood 
 Tremendous on the stair. "And why," he cried, 
 "Slay ye a pious pilgrim, Delphians? Why? 
 Tell me the charge that I must die upon." 
 Whereto from all their numbers never one 
 Made answer but with hail of stones, that beat 
 Upon him furiously, the while his shield 
 With ineffective ward to right and left 
 Made shift against the shower, now arrows, now 
 Knives, javelins, creases, all an armoury, 
 Growing to a heap of steel about his feet, 
 Which kept a dance, you never saw the like. 
 So strange and horrible, to escape the fall. 
 
 But when the crowded ring began to close 
 Towards him, respiteless, and taxed his breath, 
 Down from the altar-step the gallant knight 
 Leaped, as he leaped upon the foe in Troy, 
 The victim turned assailant. And they turned. 
 Like doves that see a hawk, they turned and fled. 
 And many fell, pierced in the coward back 
 Or jostled in the strait and cumbered port, 
 Rending the silence of the sanctuary 
 With yells that echoed from the cliffs. 
 
 My lord 
 Shone in his harness for a passing while. 
 An orb disclouded. 
 
 Then from the unapproachable 
 And holiest a mysterious thrilling call 
 Rallied the fliers ; and my noble lord. 
 Struck through the body by a Delphian, 
 Whom with a many more of them he slew.
 
 A Tragi-Comedy and a Page of History in 
 
 Fell; and thereon, when he was down, oh, then 
 Was ne'er a hand but had a hack at him, 
 Stoned him or stabbed, until his comely form 
 Was utterly disgraced with ghastly wounds. 
 Then, lest the nearness of the corpse offend, 
 They flung it o'er the censer-sacred pale. 
 We, on our shoulders lifting it with haste. 
 Have borne it hither, my lord, my father, to thee 
 For grace of tears and honour of the grave. 
 
 But oh ! the Teacher of the world, the Judge 
 Of all mankind, so foully to abuse 
 The fair submission of Achilles' son ! 
 This unforgiving malice, base in man. 
 Doth it consist with goodness in the god? 
 
 Long ago the injured mortal has had his 
 revenge of the false deity. The pen of the poet 
 was writing against Apollo the irrevocable sen- 
 tence even then. The spade of the explorer, 
 when it turns the soil of Castri, will scarce find 
 the tomb of Neoptolemus, and of Phoebus never 
 a ghost. Let us part from them all in peace.
 
 
 ^ 
 
 LOVE AND LAW 
 
 "It makes a man despair of history." — R. Browning 
 
 If Macaulay was right, as he obviously was, in 
 insisting on the historical importance of the mutual 
 relations between the sexes, there is no age for which 
 these relations are of greater moment, or perhaps 
 so great, as for the cardinal period of European 
 development, in which the original Roman Empire 
 of the West was formed and transformed, and in 
 which the dominant religion of Europe took its rise. 
 The successful enterprise of Augustus is the basis 
 upon which political and social Europe was built. 
 And if there is any limited proposition which, in the 
 complication of causes, we can make with practical 
 truth as to the cause of any one event, it is that 
 Augustus succeeded because he professed and really 
 aspired to be the regenerator of Roman society, the 
 purifier and protector of the Roman family. This 
 is indeed a familiar and even a commonplace truth. 
 The interdependence of cause and effect is here no 
 matter of subtle analysis or calculation ; it lies before 
 us upon the record, material and palpable. The 
 military forces, with which Augustus conquered, all 
 but failed him in the crisis of his fate from the vulgar
 
 Love and Law 113 
 
 want of money. They would actually have failed 
 him but for the direct support in cash of the better 
 classes in Italy. And the support given then, and 
 given in other forms before and afterwards, was 
 tendered upon the ground put forward repeatedly 
 by the Emperor himself and by his literary inter- 
 preters — that morality must be rescued ; that the 
 family, as the source of population and strength, 
 must be reconstituted ; and in particular that the 
 institution of marriage must be restored to its 
 primitive honour and power. 
 
 By what means it was attempted to redeem these 
 promises, how inadequate was the conception both 
 of the evil and of the remedy, and how it befell that 
 civilization actually died of its distemper, hastened 
 fearfully in the close by external violence, is partly 
 known, and may be better known by the labour of 
 our historians present and to come. It need hardly 
 be said that I do not now propose to follow the 
 story. My present concern is merely with the time 
 of Augustus and the attitude of his supporters 
 towards this particular problem ; and our considera- 
 tion will be further limited to a certain part of the 
 literary evidence, the more important to us as the 
 total evidence available is miserably inadequate. 
 
 Primarily, we must observe, it is not, and it was 
 not in the Roman world, by libertinism, as that word 
 is commonly understood, that the framework and 
 efficiency of the family were brought into danger, 
 and the whole foundation of popular strength de- 
 stroyed. Against mere libertinism, mischievous as 
 
 V. L. E. 8
 
 114 Love and Law 
 
 it is, the forces of society fight, I believe, at least 
 on fair terms, if not with advantage. Far more 
 insidious and far stronger are those adversaries which 
 fight against family life with weapons imitated, if not 
 borrowed, from its own armoury. It was the faux 
 mdnage (to borrow a term from the sinister voca- 
 bulary of our neighbours) which honeycombed the 
 ancient nations of the Mediterranean. The facility 
 of ambiguous connexions, quasi-permanent and 
 quasi-licit, must in the ancient world have been 
 something difficult to conceive under the wide- 
 extending and regular administration of our great 
 modern states. The purely Roman law of burgess- 
 marriage was in itself a model of various uncertainty, 
 while in the Roman dominions at large there existed 
 no general law at all, but a vast complication of 
 what we should call " international " regulations 
 between the hundreds of municipal atoms out of 
 which the Graeco- Roman nation was produced. A 
 lawyer of the provinces in the time of Augustus 
 would probably have been puzzled to say with regard 
 to many a couple whether they were married or not, 
 and if so, from the point of view of what law ; and 
 if the matter were to be judged not by strict law 
 but from social sufferance and convention, the doubt 
 would have been still greater. Most curious in- 
 dications in this direction, so far as relates to the 
 centuries preceding the Roman revolution, are to be 
 found in Graeco- Roman comedy; but these must wait 
 for another time. We turn to the Augustan age, and 
 to the special character of the Augustan literature.
 
 Love and Law 115 
 
 The poets of the official circle which was formed 
 around Maecenas were scarcely less a part of the 
 Emperor's government than the ministers and other 
 political personages themselves. They were spokes- 
 men of the Imperialist ideals to the people, and of the 
 enthusiasm of the people towards the Imperial office. 
 They are represented to us by three great names, 
 those of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius — Horace 
 chiefly in his Odes, which were for his own age by 
 far the most important part of his work. In the 
 case of the first two poets the effect produced upon 
 their writings by the Imperialist programme is justly 
 represented in common estimation, though as to 
 Horace there are misconceptions still to be removed, 
 especially as to the matter of which we are now 
 speaking. But with regard to Propertius the pre- 
 valent estimate is less satisfactory. For want of 
 sympathy with the ideas of the time, and under the 
 vast traditional prejudice piled up in ages when 
 Propertius and his contemporaries were thought of 
 chiefly as "heathen," the meaning of the poet has 
 been misrepresented in a vital matter. The error 
 has practically broken into confusing fragments one 
 of the most interesting and best-constructed books 
 of antiquity, and has entirely destroyed its value, 
 which is not small, as a piece of historic evidence. 
 
 The problem which I am going to propose 
 belongs, it will be inferred, to a class which it is 
 usual, and usually right, to leave in the hands of 
 professional scholars. It is, however, most desir- 
 able that now and then the light of our common 
 
 8—2
 
 ii6 Love and Law 
 
 understanding should be let into these places, and that 
 questions habitually studied under the pre-occupa- 
 tions of grammatical detail should be disengaged for 
 a moment for the consideration of our less erudite 
 faculties. I do not at all despair of interesting the 
 most "general " reader, if he will indulge me with a 
 little patience. Indeed, in this "learned age" we 
 are all of us dabblers in criticism more or less. 
 
 In a preceding essay in this volume^ is sketched 
 an outline of the story told by Propertius in the one 
 work which, so far as we know, he ever completed, 
 the poem (in three parts) of Cynthia. The story, 
 of which the poet himself is the supposed hero, 
 represents the beginning, the disasters, and, after 
 many struggles, the end of a disreputable connexion. 
 There is reason to suppose that the present scheme 
 of the poem was to some extent an after-thought. 
 The First Part, published before the poet became 
 connected with the Imperial court, shows no trace 
 (except in the prologue, which we may reasonably 
 regard as having been added or modified later) of 
 the subsequent development. The First Part alone 
 merely represents, in lively fashion, the somewhat 
 stormy happiness of a very young man, who in the 
 hallucination of passion believes, or tries to believe, 
 in the fidelity and affection of a vicious woman by 
 whom he has been enslaved. 
 
 But the Second and Third Parts, which carry on 
 the story over a period of five years, exhibit both 
 the hero and his fortunes in quite another aspect. 
 ^ "An Old Love Story," p. 27.
 
 Love and Law 117 
 
 The Second Part, one of the most striking works of 
 antiquity, shows him to us in all the varied miseries 
 of a disenchanted slavery ; while the Third repre- 
 sents his self-rescue, achieved partly through the 
 call made upon his nobler nature by honest ambition, 
 and the desire to do some service to his country as 
 a national poet, partly by the prudent resolution, 
 to which under this stimulus he manages to bring 
 himself, of improving his chances by absence from 
 the seat of danger. His final "restoration to sanity," 
 in his own words, is effected by a voyage among the 
 distracting wonders of Greece and Asia. The two 
 latter parts of the poem are avowedly written under 
 the official inspiration of the Emperor's minister and 
 his literary adjutants. 
 
 Now, although I was not there writing, any more 
 than here, for Latin scholars as such, it did not seem 
 right to conceal what was indicated therefore in a 
 foot-note, that this account of the book Cynthia 
 was not altogether supported, or rather in its main 
 outline not supported at all, by received authority. 
 In the works of the best writers on the subject, the 
 construction and plot of the book are so far from 
 being made principal or prominent that the book is 
 scarcely treated as one poem at all, or regarded as 
 having a plan. We find in our " Propertius " the 
 three books of Cynthia printed, without distinction, 
 side by side with an appendix of fragments, for the 
 most part wholly unconnected with it. And within 
 the Cynthia itself no notice is commonly taken of 
 any interdependence between the separate poems of
 
 ii8 Love and Law 
 
 which the books are composed. They are read as 
 mere units without any thread, save that most of 
 them relate in some way to the poet's love. 
 
 Now, seeing that the three parts of Cynthia^ 
 are beyond all question in their general character 
 respectively such as I have described them in the 
 former essay and here, it may be thought, and it is, 
 remarkable that their mutual relations should be 
 thus set aside as not important to the reader. For 
 this however there has been one single, simple, and 
 sufficient cause. There is one poem of the series 
 which, interpreted as it is, destroys altogether the 
 scheme of the work, and makes it impossible to see 
 in it any plan or series whatever. It is upon this 
 poem, interesting and beautiful in itself, that I now 
 propose to fix our attention. 
 
 What of thy features can his memory keep 
 Who left thee, having won, to sail the deep? 
 Oh, cold of heart, to weigh his love with gain. 
 These tears with all the wealth of all the Main ! 
 He lies belike in other arms; and thou 
 Dreamest the while, too fond, of oath and vow. 
 Brave beauty, chaste accomplishment, a name 
 Gilt by thy grandsire with a scholar's fame — 
 All these thou hast, and wealth. Thy missing part 
 Of bliss, oh, find it here, a loyal heart ! 
 
 My night is near, my first. Retard thy pace 
 Swift moon, for that first night, and give it space. 
 Thou sun, that wheelest wide thy summer way, 
 Abridge thy circle and defer the day. 
 
 ^ Propertius, Books i, ii, and iii. See Professor Palmer's 
 edition.
 
 Love and Law 119 
 
 Time I must have to seal, to sign, to draw 
 
 Love's new indenture in his forms of law, 
 
 Which Love himself shall certify beneath, 
 
 As witness Ariadne's starry wreath. 
 
 What hours of parley I must interpose. 
 
 What long assay before we fairly close ! 
 
 Love without such preamble, full and clear, 
 
 Lacks power to castigate his mutineer. 
 
 Fancy binds quick, breaks quickly. Slow and sure 
 
 Let love begin between us and endure. 
 
 Then if the plighted spouse, forsworn and vile, 
 The altar of his faith should dare defile. 
 All plagues be his that ever love hath bred : 
 Let hissing scandal pelt upon his head ! 
 Wild at his lady's window let him yearn. 
 In utter darkness, lost beyond return ! 
 
 With due deference to the correction of any 
 Latinist in details, I will venture to say that this 
 translation represents with accuracy in all material 
 points the 20th poem of the Third Book of Pro- 
 pertius. If the reader is not familiar with the 
 commentaries on the poet, he will, I think, hear 
 with a shock of surprise that this poem is commonly 
 supposed to be addressed to a scandalous person- 
 age of notorious ill-fame, and to commemorate the 
 beginning of a degraded attachment, which has 
 previously been deplored in every key of repentance 
 by the self-confessing author of the book in which it 
 is found. 
 
 Now it would seem that, if this is really so, 
 Roman society was the strangest institution, and 
 Latin the oddest vocabulary, that ever was known 
 among men. That law and that language were, it
 
 120 Love and Law 
 
 appears, utterly indifferent to the most vital distinc- 
 tion in human affairs. They had no fixed and 
 ascertained expressions which marked beyond mis- 
 take what we know as an honourable love and a 
 legitimate union. For if the language of Propertius 
 here does not mean this, there were no words which 
 did. A husband in Rome could be called nothing 
 better than maritus, nor the ritual by which he 
 became such anything more august than sacra 
 marita, nor the religious altar which sanctioned his 
 troth by any term more sacred than' ara. If the 
 engagements of undisciplined caprice were not 
 stigmatised by the word libido, there was no way 
 in Rome by which the reproach could be expressed. 
 If the image of a legal covenant, "drawn, signed, 
 and sealed," did not then express real solemnity and 
 obligation, those ideas were beyond the range of 
 Roman thought. If this poem were written about 
 any society of which we have a present conception, 
 as of a real human fact, any one who tried to 
 persuade us that such language as Propertius here 
 uses really meant nothing definite, and that though 
 the poet talked in the forms of matrimony, he never 
 dreamed of being so understood, would be laughed 
 at. Surely these presumptions are as good for the 
 Romans as for any other people. Surely no society 
 in which they were not true could possibly have 
 held together at all. If this poem was accepted by 
 Augustan readers as a natural address to such a 
 person as "Cynthia," it is hard to see whither, below 
 where it had already fallen, the Roman Empire
 
 Love and Law 121 
 
 could possibly decline. If it was so, history ought 
 to reckon with the fact. 
 
 But it was not so. To interpret this poem as 
 addressed to Cynthia not only makes the poem 
 itself inconceivable, but also ruins the sequence, and 
 with it half the interest, of the book. We find it 
 close to the end of the story, surrounded by other 
 poems which describe the last determined effort of 
 Cynthia's lover to escape from his thraldom. A 
 little before (in 18) he is trying, very unsuccess- 
 fully, to drink himself free. Immediately afterwards 
 (hi 21) he declares that, having now tried every 
 means of escape (many have been enumerated 
 before), every means consistent with remaining in 
 Rome, he will take the one remaining hope of a 
 distant journey. This occupies two poems. The 
 author comes home completely cured ; Cynthia is 
 dismissed with scorn ; and the story comes rapidly 
 to the due and respectable conclusion. 
 
 All, therefore — the poem itself and the place 
 where we find it — points to the natural conclusion, 
 that it represents the marriage of the hero, or at 
 least his immediate intention and expectation of 
 marriage. This he thought proper to try as one 
 of his remedies. But with some judgement and 
 humour, Propertius leaves it to our imagination to 
 fill up the details of the story. Whether the pro- 
 posing husband really married, but the marriage was 
 a failure, as under the circumstances it well might 
 be ; or whether, after all, the engagement (for it is 
 clearly an engagement) was broken off, which also
 
 122 Love and Law 
 
 it might be, on either part, without violence to 
 probability, we are to determine as we please. The 
 poem is addressed to a lady of position and good 
 family. All her virtues and social advantages — her 
 fortune, literary grandfather, and all the rest — are 
 usually transferred and handed over to Cynthia, and 
 this in the teeth of the whole book, which tells us 
 that Cynthia had not a known relation, except a 
 mother, in the world, and paints her always in 
 colours with which the addition of "chaste accom- 
 plishment " will on no terms combine. Whether the 
 too commercial admirer by whom the lady had 
 been deserted, was a husband already or a favoured 
 suitor, is not exactly determined, nor does it matter. 
 If the lady was married to him, release under the 
 circumstances would not have been difficult. 
 
 If nothing were here at stake but the meaning 
 of this single poem, it would scarcely be worth while 
 to say so much of the matter. But the truth (which- 
 ever way it lies) is of importance to the whole 
 purport of that Augustan literature upon which 
 many of us, willy-nilly, spend not a little of our 
 time, and from which are imbibed, for good or ill, 
 more notions than are expressed by schoolmasters 
 or put down in examination-papers. Cynthia is 
 self-advertised as an official book, appearing under 
 ministerial and practically under Imperial sanction. 
 Both Augustus and his ministers wrote very disre- 
 putable verses, and sometimes omitted to burn them. 
 The practice was common then and at no time alto- 
 gether unknown. But it is a total misconception,
 
 Love and Law 123 
 
 as it seems to me, to infer from this and like 
 facts that a poet of the ministerial circle would 
 have pushed his court by producing a book really 
 dedicated to Cynthia, or dealing with Cynthia at all 
 otherwise than as a delusion and a snare to the 
 well-intentioned young Roman. At the opening of 
 the Second Book, the hero, then still in his bondage, 
 deliberately and ostentatiously defies the new legis- 
 lation in favour of marriage, which the Emperor, 
 with the best designs but under much mistake as 
 to means, was straining his powers to carry and to 
 enforce. "Not Caesar," he says, "shall tear him 
 from Cynthia." Was this defiance real, and not 
 atoned for ? Are we to understand that while 
 Horace, at the command of Maecenas, was de- 
 ploring the decay of the Roman family and was 
 celebrating the matrimonial happiness which the 
 new rdginie would make universal among succeeding 
 generations, Propertius, by the like command and 
 with the same sanction, was filling with Cynthia a 
 whole book, unredeemed in official eyes by any 
 compensating moral ? The truth is that Cynthia, 
 such as the book became by the addition of Parts 1 1 
 and III, is a poetic manifesto against all Cynthias, 
 a novel, as we may almost call it, with a purpose. 
 
 It is true that in this case, as in many others, 
 the purpose has not very much to do with the merit 
 of the work. The interest of it as a work of art 
 lies primarily in the picture of man and of human 
 feeling, much of which remains unaltered if w^e erase 
 or ignore the moral altogether. But as a historical
 
 124 Love and Law 
 
 document the book of Cynthia is totally changed, 
 and, as I think, totally distorted, by a reading which 
 conceals the purpose and dissolves the connexion 
 of it. 
 
 One little question, historical in a certain sense, 
 though not important, we may dismiss. Did the 
 marriage, or proposal of marriage, represented in 
 our poem really take place in the life of the real 
 Propertius .>* It is impossible to say, nor does it 
 signify. It was open to him, having made himself 
 the hero of his book, to coin for himself what 
 adventures he pleased. Our modern feelings might 
 suggest various arguments for or against the reality 
 of the circumstances. But then we cannot be sure 
 how far they are a safe guide. 
 
 Much more interesting and more instructive is 
 the light thrown by the poem upon the position of 
 literature at the court of Augustus, especially in the 
 early years of his reign. The Second and Third 
 Parts of Cynthia were written to make good the 
 position of the author in the ministerial circle. They 
 answer in the work of Propertius to the Imperial 
 Odes in the work of Horace, more exactly, perhaps, 
 to the Fourth and strictly Imperial Book of Odes, 
 which Horace added under the Emperor's command 
 and compulsion ; only with this difference, that 
 Propertius seems to have executed himself with a 
 good will. He may indeed have intended from the 
 first to make of his Cynthia a " Lover's Progress " 
 and an example to youth, though, as I have said, this 
 does not actually appear in the first and originally
 
 Love and Law 125 
 
 sole part of the work. At any rate as an adherent 
 of Maecenas he plainly felt that this was his cue and 
 his text, and to much edification does he preach 
 upon it. His crowning sermon is contained in the 
 22nd poem of the Third Part. The 21st (the next 
 after the marriage) takes him, flying from the sight 
 of Cynthia, to the far East. In the 22nd he meets, 
 at Cyzicus, in Asia Minor, an old friend and mentor, 
 who had been accustomed in early days to lecture 
 him on his aberration. In the confidence of his 
 recovery he now repays the lecture, and scolds 
 Tullus, in his turn, for so long neglecting the duty 
 of a Roman to fill his place in Rome or Italy and to 
 carry on his family. 
 
 What ! couldst thou thus content, my Tullus, bide 
 These many years by cold Propontis' side?... 
 If storied Helle's strait have charm for thee. 
 Charm to beguile regret for such as me,... 
 If fancy tempt thee still to follow back 
 To Colchis Argo's legendary track,... 
 What marvels hath the world, however far, 
 To rival those on Roman earth that are? 
 Her legends raise no blush ; her soil is made 
 To breed nought baser than the soldier's blade. 
 Not here Andromeda was chained, not here 
 Was Pentheus chased, Thyestes fed not here. 
 She is thy mother, Tullus, and thy home; 
 The honours thou art heir to seek in Rome, 
 Speak Latin to thy peers, and give thy life 
 To the dear babes of some sweet Roman wife. 
 
 This very brilliant and charming piece (of which 
 I have given here but an outline, reproducing closely 
 only the conclusion to which it all leads) loses half
 
 126 Love and Law 
 
 Its beauty and all its substantial meaning if it be 
 made to follow close on a rapturous proposal to 
 Cynthia. But this is the way we sometimes deal 
 with the literature of old times, upon which we have 
 chosen to put the general stigma of a presumed 
 indecency. 
 
 These and other lines we may follow another 
 time, or the reader at once, if he has patience. 
 I hope I have not tired him so far. The theme at 
 least deserves the hour. Charity and candour are a 
 duty between age and age, not less than between 
 man and man.
 
 A VILLA AT TIVOLI 
 
 Brown Lycoris, hearing Tibur's air 
 Turns the brownest ivory (so they swear) 
 
 Fair, 
 Tried the breezy climate. But alack, 
 Very shortly came Lycoris back 
 
 Black ! 
 
 The unlucky brunette of Martial's epigram is 
 one of the few recorded persons in ancient or 
 modern times who have had reason to disparage 
 the boasted attractions of Tivoli. From the time 
 when Catullus noted it as a mark of distinction 
 between his friend and his enemy, that the one 
 called his dubiously situated villa Tiburtine, while 
 the other "would bet anything that it was Sabine," 
 from that time, and from long before, even to the 
 present day, no haunt of pleasure has had a wider 
 and steadier reputation. The very tea-gardens of 
 our own suburbs will recommend their ponds and 
 their gravel and their shrubless bowers by in- 
 scribing themselves with the name of Tivoli. To 
 the Roman the sound was sweetness. The clime 
 of Tibur signified a celestial region, a symbol of 
 peace and white purity. The towers of Tivoli
 
 128 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 beckoned, says the poet, through the night with 
 a singular whiteness, and the graves of the beloved 
 dead who slept in Tivoli, seemed to speak more 
 than other graves of Elysian happiness, of wrong 
 forgiven and stains for ever taken away. 
 
 I do not here propose to detain the reader with 
 any long description of the place. Innumerable 
 writers and painters have made known the site, 
 lying upon the front of the Sabine hills in full 
 view of Rome, and have told how the Anio or 
 Teverone, forcing its desperate way out of the 
 mountains behind, plunges into the gorge which 
 half encircles the town ; how, not content with its 
 main channels, both natural and tunnelled by man, 
 it breaks under and through the mass of the fortress, 
 and flows back into its main self by a thousand 
 miniature falls, making of the hillside an orchard 
 " fruitful with shifting streams." We, out of the 
 wealth of poetry which the Latin poets by their 
 lives and writings have bequeathed to Tivoli, will 
 but take at random a few pieces for the minute's 
 amusement, choosing them so as to illustrate both 
 the charm and the pathos which for different rea- 
 sons attached to the town in Roman remembrance. 
 Tibur was to the Romans the place of retreat, in 
 all times, earlier and later, republican and imperial, 
 the place of chosen retreat, the land of delightful 
 homes, but in republican times also the place of 
 enforced retreat, the place of exile and of half- 
 consoled regrets. We shall see it in both these 
 colours, but chiefly in that which it oftenest and
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 129 
 
 longest wore, as a city and country full of de- 
 lightful homes. Such it was, above all, in the not 
 yet fading prime of the empire victorious and at 
 peace. 
 
 Of the moderate Roman villa, no palace but 
 a house of some dignity, as it was to be found in 
 Tivoli when Roman society had come to its full 
 splendour, we have one fairly complete and highly 
 interesting picture from the hand of Statius. It 
 is one of his poetic Studies (Silvae), and is found 
 in the same book with that upon the Saturnalia, 
 of which some account has been given in a 
 previous essay entitled The Feast of Saturn. The 
 owner of the house bore the name of Vopiscus, 
 to English ears not happy in sound, though to a 
 Roman poetic and pathetic enough, if, as they say, 
 it signified properly the survivor of twin babes, 
 the one left when the other was taken. Nothing 
 whatever is known of him now, nor does the poet, 
 who was not the man to hide under a bushel the 
 glories of himself or his friends, say anything to 
 suggest that Vopiscus was a man of uncommon 
 mark. He was not even, and this is noticeable, 
 a man of extraordinary wealth, but merely an 
 independent gentleman, with a taste for literature 
 and literary society, and able to indulge his taste 
 by collecting about him the sort of people that 
 he liked. All the more significant is the tone of 
 splendour "in the air" with which the verses of 
 Statius are filled and suffused. 
 
 The piece was apparently the offspring of 
 
 V. L. E. Q
 
 130 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 genuine gratitude on the part of the writer, not 
 for any mercenary service, but for a boon more 
 precious than money. Like Maecenas in that 
 summer when Horace reminded him with remon- 
 strance that 
 
 The untilted cask of mellow wine, 
 And roses in thy hair to twine, 
 
 had long been ready for him in the Sabine hills, 
 Statius had been kept by the claims of society on 
 a subordinate man of fashion far into full summer 
 at sweltering Rome. In the gorge of the Anio, 
 an easy stage from the capital, he enjoyed a brief 
 breathing, and begins to record it in a rapture of 
 regret. 
 
 With eloquent Vopiscus have ye been, 
 
 Where as the caverned ice his bower is cool 
 
 In Tibur with the Anio rolling through? 
 
 Or seen his chambers, that from bank to bank 
 
 Answer each other and dispute their lord? 
 
 Oh then, though Sirius howled, ye did not feel 
 
 His dog-star hot, nor suffered, though the whelp 
 
 Of Nemea's forest glared. The frost within 
 
 Is obstinate against the powerless sun, 
 
 And still in Pisa's month the halls are fresh. 
 
 Thoroughly Roman, and pleasing in its way 
 to an acquired taste, is this enthusiastic pedantry. 
 What is "Pisa's month".'' Without any shame a 
 man might give it up, and probably some of the 
 company who were with Vopiscus at the first reci- 
 tation looked it out privately in the library, and 
 got into trouble with their dictionary over the
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 131 
 
 resemblance between Pisa and the much better 
 known Pisae. As a fact, this Pisa was the place 
 of the Olympian festival ; and as this festival was 
 held just after the summer solstice, to say " the 
 month of Pisa," when you mean "July," is as 
 natural and obvious as to put the "whelp of 
 Nemea," or Nemean lion, for the corresponding 
 sign of the zodiac ! To Statins at least all this 
 erudition was alive with poetic suggestion, as he 
 very quickly proceeds to prove. 
 
 'Tis said that Pleasure drew with softest touch 
 The ground-plan; Venus touched the battlements 
 With perfume of Idalia from her hair, 
 Which trailing on them left so sweet a trace, 
 The sparrows bred thereon will never quit. 
 
 Any one who has dabbled in mortar knows that 
 the coping-stone must be "wetted " with something, 
 commonly beer ; but champagne of course is better, 
 and scent of ambrosial Cyprus in some ways better 
 still. For the same reason, whatever it may be, 
 the bottle of champagne is broken on the prow of 
 a ship at the launching. It is pleasant, when you 
 pay the bricklayer for " drinking your health," to 
 remember these sparrows of Statins, which surely 
 are treated with an exquisite feeling. Very like, 
 and yet with a deep difference, is that martlet, the 
 " guest of summer," which commends the pleasant 
 castle of Macbeth, and 
 
 does approve 
 
 By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath 
 
 Smells wooingly here. 
 
 9—2
 
 132 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 Indeed the writer of Banquo's speech should 
 have furnished our translation. As it is, we must 
 get on as we can. 
 
 Oh memorable hours, oh pleasant thoughts 
 Which I have brought away ! My eyes are tired 
 With marvels. What advantage in the ground, 
 How artfully improved ! Not anywhere 
 Has nature been more liberal to her taste. 
 Over the rapid stream the high woods stoop, 
 Reflected leaf for leaf; the water seems 
 A moving avenue. Fierce, full of rocks 
 Above and lower, Anio here is calm. 
 Nor foams nor murmurs, as in fear to break 
 Vopiscus' days, given to the quiet muse, 
 His dreams, poetic with remembered song. 
 
 Habentes carmina somnos, "sleep retaining song," 
 says the poet more exactly, but I find it necessary to 
 sacrifice his terseness. 
 
 Both shores alike are home; — 
 
 That the house was in two parts, one on each bank, 
 we have already seen in the opening description. 
 Whether this fanciful arrangement increased its 
 convenience may be doubted, particularly as there 
 seems to have been no bridge ; but it is certainly 
 striking to the imagination, and the painter makes 
 more than the most of it. 
 
 Both shores alike are home; the gentle stream 
 Seems no division, and the fronting towers 
 Feel themselves one, despite the flood between. 
 How poor a pride was his who passed, they tell, 
 By dolphins drawn across the Sestian strait ! 
 Here is eternal calm, all storm forbid
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 133 
 
 To chafe the waters. Eye to eye may speak 
 Across, or voices join, or almost hands. 
 So small a barrier Euripus is 
 To Chalcis, or the sea that sunders off 
 Pelorus from the gaze of Bruttian coasts. 
 
 Here we have, half in burlesque, and plainly 
 so intended, that ancient and specially Roman 
 pomposity of decoration, huge comparisons and 
 thundering names, which so deeply affected the 
 ear of Milton. The most famous waters of the 
 old world, and the greatest figures in old history, 
 Hellespont and Messina, Agamemnon, Xerxes, and 
 Hannibal, all serving to illustrate a bit of garden ! 
 It is a style which easily passes into the tawdry, 
 and among the innumerable writers of the three 
 last centuries who have tried to catch the trick of 
 it from the Romans, very few have quite succeeded. 
 However, upon these heroic stilts the poet rises 
 to the height of his subject and in a like rapture 
 continues : 
 
 Where should my song begin, what progress take, 
 And to what close? The gilded architrave? 
 The Moorish piers? 
 
 that is to say, pillars of the coveted stone " hewn 
 in the heart of Africa," which Horace condemns 
 for an insolent luxury ; so rapid was the progress 
 of wealth between the first of the twelve Caesars 
 and the last. 
 
 The Moorish piers? The polished marbles veined 
 With lace? Or should I praise the founts that flow 
 In every room?
 
 134 ^ Villa at Tivoli 
 
 To the modern ear this seems a transition fit only 
 for the " Treatise on the Bathos." Water laid on 
 to all parts of the premises ! What a noble idea ! 
 But here is just the lesson to the historic imagi- 
 nation. The comforts of the splendid Roman were 
 in some ways extremely modest ; the water-supply 
 of Vopiscus, though by no means remarkable, so far 
 as we can see, if judged by the present standard, 
 seems to have passed for a wonder of completeness, 
 and Statius will conduct us to the pipes more than 
 once in the course of his survey. 
 
 Distracting beauties call 
 My thoughts, my roving eyes ; the reverend trees ; 
 The court which overlooks the stream below; 
 Or that which looks toward the quiet woods. 
 Where your repose is safe, no tempests vex 
 The silent night, and so much sound there is 
 As whispers you to sleep. — What of the bath? 
 
 What indeed ! We are prepared for a special effort 
 on the part of the poet, when he comes to this 
 all-important adjunct to the Roman establishment. 
 The bath, properly and permanently warmed, is 
 the one thing about the Roman residence, which 
 in the midst of much that served rather for display 
 than for real satisfaction of life, the dweller in our 
 English homes may notice with envy. The reader 
 expects to hear something particular of the bath and 
 of the rock in which it will be cut ; but assuredly 
 he does not expect what he will find, a piece of 
 coarse and grotesque vulgarity, standing in sharp
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 135 
 
 contrast with the delicate lines upon the night and 
 
 quiet bedchamber. 
 
 What of the bath, 
 That steams in a green basin, where the fire 
 So heats the cold rock of the river bank. 
 That Anio, neighbour to the furnaces. 
 With laughter sees the water-fairies pant ! 
 
 Here is the Roman mind in another phase, the 
 native grossness and crudeness breaking suddenly 
 through the Hellenistic surface, as it does now and 
 then in the Odes of Horace. Put this amazing 
 piece by the side of that about Venus and the 
 nesting birds, and we have a remarkable lesson 
 in the history of taste. However the house of 
 Vopiscus was after all a Hellenistic house, full of 
 laborious culture, and the poet, almost as if con- 
 scious of his lapse, hastens from the bath to the 
 galleries. 
 
 There too is wondrous work of ancient hands. 
 Metal of various mould — it were a toil 
 To tell the list, the gold, the ivories, 
 The gems fit for the finger, chisel-work 
 In silver or in bronze, on lesser scale 
 Practised at first, and thence essayed in size 
 Transcending human. 
 
 Here again we might feel envious, when we 
 think what glorious figures, now lost for ever, 
 were doubtless reproduced for the decoration of 
 these rooms, and how, if one or two of these imi- 
 tations could now be found, the capitals of Europe 
 would quarrel for the possession, and copies would
 
 136 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 go out everywhere into palace and cottage. But we 
 are soon reminded again of our compensations. 
 
 While my lifted eyes 
 Strayed over all, my feet on wealth below 
 Were treading heedless, till from overhead 
 Poured through translucent panes the blaze of day 
 And pointed to the floor, the ground whereof 
 Was rich and gay with such invented maze 
 Of pattern on it that I feared to step. 
 
 If our busts and our statuettes are inferior, we can 
 at least see without difficulty such ornaments as we 
 have ; we need not make our passages nearly dark 
 in order to keep out the weather, and do not start 
 with astonishment at the brilliant apparition of a 
 skylight. And be it remembered once more that 
 this was a great mansion. 
 
 Rooms of unbroken space there are, and rooms 
 Parted in triple aisle. And midst of all, 
 Above the roofs, among the pillars, soars 
 Into the bright air, reverently spared 
 (Another would have cut it down), a tree, 
 Which there shall live until with kindly close 
 The native genius ends its peaceful days. 
 
 Here the modern mind echoes readily to the 
 poet's feeling, to his delicate sympathy with nature, 
 which is not the less true and direct because, 
 speaking the language of his age and school, he 
 figured the indwelling spirit under a multiplicity of 
 bodily forms. A Wordsworthian would prefer to 
 present to his imagination the life of the tree with- 
 out the interposition of a Naiad or a Hamadryad ; 
 but this is pure matter of form, and we know that
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 137 
 
 Wordsworth himself sighed sometimes for the help 
 of "a creed outworn" and the audible music of 
 "old Triton." 
 
 Two mounds with tables set alternately, 
 Pools of white water and deep-flowing springs, 
 These might have mention, — 
 
 It would be more convenient for us if they 
 had had a little more, for as it is, we are much 
 puzzled to say what is meant. The "white pool" 
 was probably filled from sulphur-springs ; and the 
 " mounds " would seem to have been connected 
 with some arrangement, symmetrical on the two 
 banks, for taking meals in the open air. 
 
 Or the pipe that runs 
 Boldly athwart the river's self and brings 
 The Marcian through the Anio. Thus the tale, 
 How Elis' rivulet to Etna's coast 
 Came under sea, is not unparalleled ! 
 
 •'The Marcian," which in this mythology plays 
 the part of Arethusa, is of course the great aque- 
 duct of that name, whose arches are still one of 
 the celebrated sights of the Campagna, and remain 
 here and there in the neighbourhood of Tivoli 
 itself. The water of it was held excellent for 
 purposes of luxury. From the Marcian were sup- 
 plied, when it was possible, the elaborate and costly 
 grottoes affected by Roman landscape gardening 
 and absurdly imitated in some of our own old parks. 
 It was the Marcian which filled a splendid bath, 
 
 ^ A pretty view through one of these arches will be found on 
 p. 1 1 of Burn's Rome and the Campagna.
 
 138 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 described by Martial, with water not less wonderful 
 than the precious stones, 
 
 So clear, that you would boldly swear, 
 Seeing the slabs below, that there 
 Nought intervened but empty air. 
 
 To be supplied from the Marcian was a coveted 
 privilege, for which Martial in another place peti- 
 tions the emperor : 
 
 Sweet, sire, and rich it were to me. 
 Thy gift, as founts of Castaly, 
 Or raining Jove to Danae- 
 
 Not therefore without purpose are we informed 
 that the privilege had been secured at some trouble 
 by Vopiscus, who, having got his " Marcian," used 
 it naturally among other purposes for such garden 
 grottoes as we have mentioned above. The taste 
 of the Romans for this kind of luxury is one which 
 we can with difficulty feel to the full. It is not 
 merely a question of climate ; to the Roman, under 
 the influence of Alexandrian arts derived from the 
 Museum of the Ptolemies, the pleasure of the grotto 
 was tinged with intellectual associations now hardly 
 to be comprehended. The persistence of the meta- 
 phor, by which spiritual influences of all kinds were 
 likened to fountains and the source of inspiration 
 set among the rocks, created, after the habit of all 
 familiar language, a sort of reality corresponding to 
 itself. Nothing in Roman literature is more curious 
 than the elegiac poet's^ description of the Muses' 
 
 ^ Propertius, III (IV) 2 (3), Visus eram, etc.
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 139 
 
 cave, gemmed with precious spar and carved with 
 quaint rococo decoration in the native rock — a fit 
 dwelling-place for the genius of Alexandria. We 
 should have it in mind as we read the description 
 that follows in Statius, which, pretty as it is itself, 
 conveys also in familiar allegory the compliment of 
 the poet to the scholar : 
 
 Grottoes there are, for which the god himself, 
 Anio, will quit his streams ; in secret night 
 Stripped of his vesture blue he leans his breast 
 Upon the yielding moss, or flings his bulk 
 Into the pools and beats the liquid glass 
 Swimming. The god of Tiber in the shade 
 Lies there, and Albula is pleased to bathe 
 Her sulphur-laden hair. 
 
 The presence of Albula is more, we may suppose, 
 
 than a fancy, for this medicinal spring was at no 
 
 great distance, and its water, widely distributed for 
 
 sanitary purposes, probably went to whiten the 
 
 mysterious pools of which we were previously 
 
 informed. 
 
 Here is a hall 
 To tempt fair Phoebe from Egeria's grove. 
 To bring the Dryads hither, one and all. 
 From cool Taygetus, to summon Pan 
 From groves Lycaean. Nay, if the oracle 
 Of the Tirynthian here would but agree. 
 The very Sisters of Praeneste might 
 Remove to Tibur ! 
 
 A flirt of the sceptic pen is this, warning us in 
 time that we must not be too gravely religious with 
 these half-symbolic divinities. The temple of the
 
 I40 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 Tirynthian Hercules at Tivoli and the temple of 
 Fortune, or rather of the Foriunae, at the neigh- 
 bouring Palestrina or Praeneste were, together 
 with the shrine of the Sibyl at Cumae, the most 
 fashionable places of oracular consultation. The 
 Roman lover complains that the carriage of his 
 superstitious and volatile mistress is always running 
 to one or other of these tempting resorts. To 
 the patron deity of the burg Vopiscus doubtless 
 paid a prudent respect, but plainly "with some 
 private scholarly reservations," such as those of 
 Mr Casaubon ; so that his friend expects the ap- 
 preciative nod when he gravely notes the difficulty 
 of accommodating in one town two oracles whose 
 responses were different. 
 
 And now having got a taste of his favourite 
 mythology, the poet flings himself upon the feast. 
 
 Here we need not praise 
 Alcinous' fruit twice-harvested and boughs 
 Which never were divested of their pride. 
 Telegonus is beaten and the fields 
 Of Turnus by Laurentum, Lucrine halls 
 And shores of fell Antiphates; o'er-matched 
 The enchanting hills of Circe falsely fair, 
 Where howl Dulichian wolves ; o'er-matched the height 
 Of Anxur, and the home which he of Troy 
 Bestowed upon the gentle dame his nurse; 
 O'er-matched is Antium, which will tempt you back 
 When days are short and skies with winter dim ! 
 
 Here the Englishman, even if fairly read in his 
 classics, begins to gasp a little, and to fumble for his 
 Gradus ad Parnassum. The reader would hardly
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 141 
 
 thank me for so long a commentary as would be 
 wanted to make all clear. If in this catalogue he 
 has managed to recognize the towns of Tusculum 
 and Formiae, Circeii and Caieta, and if he knows, 
 without stopping to think, who the Dulichian wolves 
 were and where they came from — why then he could 
 graduate iyi artibus with considerable credit. In the 
 first century a.d., and in " society " at and about 
 Rome, these things were in all the primers. 
 
 It is only natural that now we should not know 
 them, but it is perhaps worth asking why it is that 
 our own language and literature is so poor in all 
 such mechanism of pleasant remembrances. We 
 may come back to this again in this paper, or 
 hereafter. Even Statius for the moment has had 
 legend enough, and with good effect becomes sud- 
 denly serious in a Roman strain of admiration and 
 friendship. 
 
 Such is the study, where that righteous soul 
 Solves duty's problem ; such his garden-plot, 
 Planted with virtues, frownless gravity 
 And sober elegance, and neatness not 
 Luxurious overmuch; a soil for which 
 Gargettus' moralist^ would fain have left 
 His own Athenian Garden. 'Tis a port 
 From every wind and under every star. 
 Better seek safety here, than run the ship 
 Around the Cape of Storms or through the Race. 
 Why do our eyes esteem a pleasure less 
 Because the hand may reach it? 
 
 ^ Epicurus.
 
 142 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 Vopiscus appears to have missed or neglected 
 the road of ambition even in literature, practising 
 it only, after the fashion of all Roman gentlemen, 
 for himself and his friends. 
 
 Here the Fauns 
 Enjoy thy music, and Alcides' self, 
 Catillus too, theme of a greater lyre; 
 Whether courageously thou dost assay 
 To strike the string with Pindar, or to rise 
 High as the feats of Epic, or to put 
 The smirching tint on Satire, or to smooth 
 The bright Epistle with an equal care. 
 The wealth of Midas, Croesus, Persian Kings 
 Thou dost deserve; the better wealth of soul 
 Thou hast. The Hermus, gilding where he flows, 
 Or Tagus' bullion clay were well bestowed 
 Upon thy peaceful meads. Hereafter still 
 People, as now, thy haunts with learning; still 
 As now (I pray to heaven) with cloudless heart 
 Live on beyond the term of Nestor's years. 
 
 Excellent work this is of its kind, though the 
 fashion of it is gone, not so very long ago, out of 
 date. Whether it ever will or should come back 
 is an open question ; but one thing is not open to 
 question, that modern literature loses greatly in 
 power, as compared with ancient, from the fact that 
 readers have now scarcely any common mythology, 
 any general stock of associations, to which poetry 
 can appeal, and in particular scarcely any local 
 associations well enough known to be serviceable. 
 For Scotland something in this way has been done 
 and has been made public, mainly by Walter Scott, 
 whose verses, without any other great merit, and in
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 143 
 
 spite of many obvious defects, hold and will hold 
 the common ear by this one delightful spell of asso- 
 ciation alone. A Scottish catalogue not unworthy 
 to compare with the brilliant Latin catalogue of 
 Statius, might be without much difficulty composed 
 by an able hand. But where are the local legends 
 of Southern England ? Who but an antiquary 
 knows them or cares for them ? Could any one, 
 however able, adorn an English "epistle" with 
 a catalogue after the manner of Statius, which 
 .should not seem to most of us a piece of tiresome 
 pedantry ? Such it might actually be ; but where 
 these things cannot be done, there one Muse, and 
 not the unsweetest sister, is silent. Since the 
 Reformation religio loci has had a hard time, and 
 in no way has the anti-catholic movement cost more 
 to the arts than in this. Catholicism, at least before 
 the Reformation, was for this purpose thoroughly 
 pagan ; the spirit of Chaucer's Prologue — 
 
 And specially, from every schires ende 
 
 Of Engelond, to Canturbury they wende, 
 
 The holy blisful martir for to seeke 
 
 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. — 
 
 the spirit of these lines is exactly the same for poetic 
 purposes, with a change of names and symbols, as 
 that of Statius — 
 
 Hie tua Tiburtes Faunos chelys et iuvat ipsum 
 Alciden dictumque lyra maiore Catillum. 
 
 "Catillus too, theme of a greater lyre." Among all 
 the merits which English poetry has and Latin has
 
 144 -^ Villa at Tivoli 
 
 not, one beauty in which Latin is rich we cannot 
 count, and we shall not, until (which doubtless will 
 be long first) we can believe or feign belief in such 
 fancies as those of Catillus and Tiberinus. 
 
 The Argive hero Catillus, or Catillus, or Catilus 
 (for the " great lyres " of Rome who harped upon 
 him could not quite agree how he should be called) 
 was, under Hercules, of whose divine blood he came, 
 the accredited founder and patron of Tibur. That 
 such an actual person of mysterious lineage did 
 actually lead a wandering band of Greeks to the 
 stream-encircled fortress on the Sabine hills, was no 
 doubt believed by Statius, and is quite credible. 
 That his spirit did and does veritably haunt his 
 beloved towers, the servants of Vopiscus' house- 
 hold and the hinds upon his farms would have 
 asserted even more positively. Vopiscus himself 
 would probably have said that it was in no way 
 disprovable, nay, on some grounds likely enough, 
 and anyhow a pleasant thing to suppose — and who 
 is prepared to go further, or to show any very 
 good reason for not going so far .-* To this name 
 of Catillus, and that of Coras his brother, faith and 
 genius had linked such glories that the very sound 
 of it was delightful. They rode, says Virgil, at the 
 head of the Argive chivalry 
 
 Like unto Centaurs twain, sons of the cloud, 
 Down shooting from the snowy mountain-top 
 Of Homole or Othrys : from their path 
 The great trees break away, and the under woods 
 Part with a mighty crash.
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 145 
 
 At great moments in the Aeneid, as at that 
 supreme moment of all when the Trojans are 
 pouring across the hills and the last plan of battle 
 is concerted between Turnus and Camilla, it is on 
 the horsemen of Tibur, on Coras and his brother, 
 that the Italian prince relies\ Catillus was in fact 
 a sort of St George for the Latins, one of many- 
 such champions (for each burg had its own patron), 
 but known as well as Virgil to every one who read. 
 What figure of like interest, half poetic and half 
 religious, could one of our own writers have intro- 
 duced as sharing from local attachment the simple 
 social pleasures of an English country town ? In- 
 deed what like presence has been seen in English 
 affairs at all, since Milton, in his earlier and half- 
 catholic mood, saw St Peter and the deity of the 
 river Cam come in procession to the mourning of 
 Mr Edward King ? Somewhere about that time 
 a certain element of the poetic spirit evaporated 
 from our world ; nor is it clear, however modern 
 poetry may flatter itself upon its depth and height, 
 that any sufficient balance or equivalent (of course 
 in a merely poetic point of view) has been found 
 for that loss, or will be. 
 
 It will be noticed, and the point is vital to the 
 lover of poetry, that though to Statius the spiritual 
 significance of these religious and legendary figures 
 has doubtless become very thin and shadowy, it is 
 not altogether gone, and what is left of it is essential 
 to his conception. Venus is not a mere abstraction of 
 
 ' Virg. Aen, xi 464, 519. 
 
 V. L. E. 10
 
 146 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 beauty, who as such makes beautiful an architectural 
 design : she is still truly the life of the world, and the 
 memory of her presence is linked as cause and effect 
 with this solid natural fact, that the living birds do 
 veritably love to breed upon the fabric. The Fauns 
 and the god Tiberinus are not so utterly banished 
 into the realm of mere story, that they cannot in 
 imagination mix with the living society of the music- 
 loving Vopiscus. If any one indeed were to observe 
 that Milton could bring Camus into company with 
 his own self, and with the " Pilot of the Galilean 
 lake," and that yet the spirit of the Cam was to 
 Milton a mere fiction, I could only answer that of 
 this last point I am not at all sure, and on the other 
 hand am very sure indeed of this : a mind which 
 cannot for one moment suppose that there is an 
 angel of an English river just as real as any saint 
 in the Calendar, had much better let Lycidas alone, 
 and with it most of the better poetry written before 
 the eighteenth century. 
 
 There is indeed fiction of the ancient world 
 which may be enjoyed without any faith, mere story- 
 telling, excellent in its way, but without heart. The 
 prince of this poetry is Ovid ; an exquisite writer 
 but a most contemptible and mischievous man, who 
 has trained the ear of many a great composer, 
 but in matters of feeling can teach us only to 
 despise him. 
 
 It happens that Ovid himself has given us in 
 one of his Amoves^ a legend of Tiberinus, one of 
 
 1 III 6.
 
 A Villa at Tivoli i^y 
 
 the divine company who haunted the nights of 
 Statius at the villa. The figure of Tiberinus had 
 to the Roman populace of the Augustan age a 
 spiritual significance especially profound. To this 
 deity was espoused in her distress, after the birth 
 of the founders of Rome, the Vestal Ilia, and it 
 was believed that the horrible floods of the Tiber 
 by which Rome in the early days of the empire was 
 repeatedly devastated, were a penalty for the sin 
 committed in the murder of Julius, the descendant 
 of Ilia herself. The vengeance of the "uxorious" 
 river is commemorated by Horace in a passage 
 which is not indeed of his happiest. This is the 
 figure, and this the story, which Ovid chooses as 
 the adornment of a trivial adventure in which he 
 supposes himself, the accident of his being delayed 
 by a stream in flood in the course of a journey. He 
 tells the story exquisitely, and I am much more 
 afraid to put my imitation into his mouth than into 
 that of Statius. Nevertheless I will say that in 
 any fairly faithful version it may soon be seen that 
 Statius has the root of high poetry in him, and that 
 Ovid has not. Here is the legend of Ilia and Tiber- 
 inus, which I shall give without further remark : — 
 
 There as she wandered barefoot in the wild 
 Mourning her blasted fame, her cruel wrong, 
 
 The god himself to woo her she beguiled 
 And heard the pleading murmur of his song. 
 
 " Daughter of Ida, why so woeful ? Why 
 
 Beside me strayest thou so all forlorn, 
 So mean-attired, and no protection nigh, 
 
 Of all thy sacred glory shent and shorn? 
 
 10 — 2
 
 148 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 "Why mar the beauty of thine eyes with tears 
 And beat thy bosom bare, a foul disgrace? 
 
 Stern is his spirit, steel the heart he bears, 
 Who softens not for tears on such a face. 
 
 " Oh Ilia, fear no more, oh fear no more ! 
 
 Mine hall shall welcome thee, the queen of waves : 
 And all the hundred nymphs, that do adore 
 
 My river's royalty, shall be thy slaves. 
 
 "Daughter of Troy, do thou but deign consent. 
 My gifts beyond my promise shall appear." 
 
 But still her shamefast eyes were downward bent 
 And still upon her vesture fell the tear. 
 
 Thrice she essayed to fly ; thrice rose the flood ; 
 
 Her terror-palsied feet refused to run. 
 At length she plucked her hair in deadly mood, 
 
 Compelled her quivering lips, and thus begun : 
 
 "Oh, had they buried me, a maiden yet! 
 
 How should I wed, or pledge a Vestal's faith? 
 Full on my face the brand of sin is set; 
 
 They point at me and hiss. Oh hide me, Death ! " 
 
 With that her straining eyes she covered o'er 
 
 And plunged. The god, to save her desperate life, 
 
 Upon his loving hands her bosom bore 
 And, for his mercy, won her to his wife. 
 
 Such were the fancies and such the pictures 
 commonly associated with Tivoli in the Roman 
 imagination. It was a place of refuge, of calm 
 retreat and soothing beauty. But as in all shade 
 there is darkness, so had this place of refuge its 
 darker memories and more grave associations. More 
 especially to the strenuous Roman was it natural to 
 think of retreat, however delightful, with a certain 
 melancholy and aversion. It is for his last days
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 149 
 
 and failing powers that Horace desires ** the city 
 of the Argive immigrant " ; the same conception 
 enters deeply into the allusions both of Horace else- 
 where and of other poets, nor in any notice, however 
 slight, of Tibur as it appears in literature, can we 
 properly pass over this characteristic phase. 
 
 The beginning of it lay far in prehistoric times, 
 when Tibur was the independent neighbour of infant 
 Rome. In the ancient world of little burgs, when 
 government was but feeble to control the powerful 
 man, and when on the other hand the most powerful 
 man and the wealthiest, if compelled to change his 
 habitation and go out into a land of "the enemy," 
 suffered loss and danger scarcely conceivable in our 
 society, it was a common practice to compromise 
 with the strong criminal by sparing other penalty 
 on condition of his departure into exile. The ac- 
 ceptance of this practice, which has sometimes an 
 almost absurd appearance to minds familiar with our 
 "extradition," was really not so unreasonable. As 
 things then were, the expelling government gained 
 much more and the expelled offender suffered in- 
 finitely more than would be the case with a first- 
 class delinquent who took train for Venice or the 
 Riviera. The Roman exile of the old Republic, 
 whatever comforts of climate or situation he might 
 find in the cities of the Sabine hills, was never- 
 theless a broken man, much less than nothing, 
 without status or legal existence, without any certain 
 protection for his goods or even for his person. 
 Indeed the tradition of Roman lawyers preserved
 
 150 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 the memory of times when even nearer to Rome 
 than the Sabine hills lay land that was not Roman, 
 where the Roman man was already in exile. Under 
 the Imperial Government, when exile was meant to 
 be inflicted as a severe penalty, the shores of the 
 Black Sea did not to the eye of justice seem too 
 distant. And Ovid, who received and, so far as can 
 be judged, had well deserved such a sentence, in 
 one of the lamentations which he wrote from his 
 Scythian retreat, contrasts with point the old and 
 the new doctrines as to the proper limit of deporta- 
 tion : 
 
 So mild our fathers were in banishment, 
 Their furthest cruelty to Tibur sent. 
 
 This conception of Tibur as a sort of asylum 
 lasted on like other such, with lessening reason, till 
 it was a mere abuse ; so that the name of the 
 beautiful town is coupled with some of the darkest 
 tales in Roman history. Thither, when the Republic 
 was struggling to be full-born, retired the worst 
 instrument of that Appius Claudius, whose half- 
 legendary cruelty is now proclaimed to all English- 
 speaking children in the brilliant ballad of Macaulay ; 
 thither, when the Republic was agonizing between 
 desperate disease and desperate remedies, protection 
 for the moment from the fury of the Caesarean 
 populace was sought by some of those who had 
 dipped their daggers in the blood of Julius. There, 
 in many a miserable abode of luxury, after the final 
 fall of the senatorial party, the remnant of the 
 nobility brooded over a world ill lost. It is to one
 
 A Villa at Tivoli 151 
 
 of the most splendid and the most dangerous of 
 their number that Horace addresses himself, when 
 with his fine touch of grave gaiety he bids inoppor- 
 tune remembrance to lose itself in such enjoyment 
 as the time affords. 
 
 Whether amid the shining pomps of war 
 
 Thy lot is laid, 
 Or shall be hid from these afar 
 
 In Tibur's private shade. 
 
 I was the more anxious to touch, before ending, 
 upon this aspect of Roman Tivoli, because it will 
 give me a chance of making some restitution to 
 Ovid, whose merits in his own kind I am not so 
 foolish as to deny. In general the stories which 
 relate to it as a place of exile and fallen greatness 
 are naturally sad. Many a native and many a 
 foreign victim of Roman pride there found an in- 
 glorious close. The death of the Numidian king 
 Syphax, a prisoner awaiting the final degradation 
 of the Roman triumph, is tragedy itself; and even 
 the cloister of Zenobia, once empress of the East 
 and rival of Rome, would not be a theme for light- 
 ness and laughing. But among the stories of Roman 
 exile there is one for which no pen could be too 
 merry ; and Ovid, who is always light in season and 
 out of season, had never a better subject than the 
 tale of the pipers which makes an episode in his 
 poem on the " Calendar," and which now shall serve 
 us for a conclusion. 
 
 The pipers or flute-players, a privileged company 
 of foreign artists, whose services were of no small 
 importance to the ceremonies of state and religion,
 
 152 A Villa at Tivoli 
 
 came somehow into collision with the jealous authori- 
 ties of the republic. Whether they were expelled 
 in anger, or whether they withdrew in anger, is a 
 historic doubt ; but exiled at any rate they were, 
 and to Tibur as exiles they went. But the glory 
 and independence of art were nobly revenged upon 
 the tasteless minions of office who had procured 
 their departure ; and when there had been time for 
 them to be well missed, an involuntary resident in 
 Tibur, who for some little misfortune in his previous 
 career had undergone a period of slavery, procured 
 their restoration (and probably his own at the same 
 time) by an appropriate feat of diplomacy, which as 
 Ovid relates it in Latin, either Chaucer or Dryden 
 chaucerizing would best have related in English. 
 
 The banished troupe their way to Tibur went 
 (For Tibur counted then as banishment). 
 The stage, the altar missed their usual cheer, 
 And dirgeless to the burial went the bier. 
 
 There was a quondam slave in Tibur, free 
 By lapse of time, as he deserved to be; 
 He to a banquet in the country bade 
 The artists; they the artful call obeyed. 
 'Twas dark, the guests were flustered, when a post 
 By pre-arrangement came to warn the host : 
 "Your master (he that was)" he said "is near; 
 Break up the feast, or he will catch you here." 
 They stumbled up, but doubted in dismay 
 Whether their feet would carry them away. 
 " Nay, go you must " exclaimed the host " for sure ! " 
 And popped them in the cart which brought manure. 
 Night, drink, and motion aiding, soon they dreamed, 
 And travelled on to Tibur, as it seemed. 
 So dreaming still they passed, ere morning broke, 
 The gates of Rome, and in the Forum woke.
 
 -A' 
 
 J / / / ' "^f (/ J 
 
 "TO FOLLOW THE FISHERMAN": 
 A HISTORICAL PROBLEM IN 
 DANTE 
 
 It was a natural, perhaps a necessary incident, 
 in such a personal progress through Purgatory as is 
 related by Dante in the Second Part of the Divina 
 Commedia, that once at least we should witness the 
 actual release of a soul, the discharge of one who 
 has completed his purgation and ascends to the 
 place of everlasting bliss. The choice of a person 
 to be so discharged, involving as it did the exact 
 appraisement of delinquency and equation of penalty, 
 was delicate enough to tax the courage even of a 
 Dante ; nor is it surprising that he has made such 
 a choice as to extend the supposed period of punish- 
 ment to the possible maximum. The sinner released 
 in the year 1 300 is one who, if he was a Christian 
 at all, and as such capable of purgation, belonged to 
 the very earliest generation of the Roman Church. 
 To prove his Christianity was an affair of evidence, 
 as Dante, a strict historian according to his lights, 
 well knew and admits. The manner in which the 
 poet has treated the question vividly illuminates, not 
 only the quality and limitations of his own passionate
 
 154 ''To Follow the Fisherman^ 
 
 intelligence, but the general mind of that most 
 remarkable age. 
 
 Statius, the most successful among the imitators 
 of Virgil, was living at the date of the Neronian 
 persecution and martyrdom of the Apostles, and 
 during the alleged persecution of Domitian ; in the 
 last quarter of the first century a.d. he was the 
 fashionable poet of Roman society. Down to a 
 \ recent date, until in fact Latin ceased to be general 
 \ reading, he might be called fashionable still. Though 
 I his poems, as we know, were not in stock at 
 ' St Ronan's Well, it could still be supposed, in the 
 time of the Peninsular War, that a lady at a watering- 
 place might want them. Vogue of this sort he will 
 hardly recover ; but references, allusions, and imita- 
 tions in half the writers of Europe will long preserve 
 \ to him a certain interest. For Dante and his con- 
 temporaries he was perhaps, after Virgil, the most 
 interesting figure in literature. His works, as then 
 known, consisted of two legendary narratives, the 
 Thebais, complete in twelve books, upon the famous 
 expedition of the Seven against Thebes, and the 
 Achilleis, or story of Achilles, a fragment. The 
 collection of fugitive pieces, or Silvae, since dis- 
 covered, was evidently and fortunately not known 
 to the author of the Purgatorio ; it would have 
 embarrassed his charity not a little. Each of the 
 two epics comprises a small portion giving personal 
 information about Statius : the Thebais an introduc- 
 tion and an envoi, the Achilleis an introduction. 
 To these Dante, as we shall see, refers explicitly
 
 " Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 155 
 
 and minutely. He also refers us indirectly to the 
 satirist Juvenal as an authority on the subject of 
 Statius ; for he makes Virgil, the companion of his 
 journey through Purgatory, claim to have heard of 
 Statius from Juvenal himself, when Juvenal came 
 after death to that Limbo of the lower region 
 where the pagan poets habitually dwelt. What can 
 obviously and certainly be learnt from these sources, 
 what has been here stated, is fully and accurately 
 stated, even to such a detail as that the Achilleis is 
 unfinished, in the autobiography which Statius is 
 made to give\ One particular is added, which we 
 now know to be false : Statius calls himself a native 
 of Toulouse, whereas in fact he was born near 
 Naples. The origin of this error is not positively 
 known, though it has been plausibly conjectured ; 
 all that need now be said of it is that Dante, who 
 makes no use of the allegation, certainly did not 
 invent it. 
 
 But it is otherwise with the large and surprising 
 revelations which Statius makes about his moral 
 character and spiritual history. He was converted, 
 Dante informs us, to Christianity, and at some time 
 before the completion of the Thebais was actually 
 baptized, though he had not the courage to acknow- 
 ledge his new faith, which remained always a secret 
 — a circumstance which naturally whets the curiosity 
 of the reader as to the source of the relator's in- 
 formation. The conversion was begun by suggestive 
 passages in the works of Virgil himself, notably the 
 
 ^ Purg. XXI and xxn.
 
 156 " Zl? Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 prophecies of Christ in the Fourth Eclogue, and 
 completed by admiration of the martyrs and con- 
 fessors who suffered under Domitian. Besides the 
 cowardice of thus concealing his opinions, Statius 
 attributes to himself a sin so subtle that he has 
 some trouble in defining it, a sin of which he justly 
 says that it is apt to escape notice ; it is a kind of 
 prodigality, yet by no means that which is ordinarily 
 so called, but rather a sort of defect in avarice, an 
 insufficient estimate of wealth, a want of attention 
 (such appears to be the meaning) to proper economy 
 as the necessary basis of independence and the 
 upright conduct of life. Upon these allegations, for 
 which no warrant whatever appears prima facie in 
 the documents proffered by Dante, depends never- 
 theless the whole position of Statius in Dante's 
 » narrative : the conversion admitted him to Purga- 
 tory, the cowardice and the neglect of economy 
 I have confined him there, and determined his place, 
 j for the greater part of the twelve centuries inter- 
 vening. 
 
 What then is the base of these allegations ? 
 Did Dante invent them, or did he draw them from 
 some source to us unknown and other than those 
 documents which he elaborately specifies, or thirdly, 
 did he by some process of construction extract them 
 from those very documents ? It is proposed to 
 show that this third supposition is, upon Dante's 
 own statement of the matter, alone entertainable ; 
 and further that there is no difTficulty in following, 
 up to a certain point, the process by which he was
 
 '* To Follow the Fisherman'^ 157 
 
 convinced. The question has an interest more than 
 curious, for the light which it throws upon the state 
 of Hterature and upon the poet's mind, a mind not 
 less loyal to truth than fertile in legitimate imagina- 
 tion. He boasts of his accuracy in matters of fact, 
 and not without reason. Passionately eager to 
 know, he could make much, too much, of his data, 
 but could not pretend, like a historical novelist, to 
 have data where in fact he had none. What he 
 alleges about Statius he could not have found, unless 
 he had sought it with singular determination ; but 
 find it he did. That Statius was a bad economist 
 and compromised his independence, this Dante got, 
 or perhaps pressed, out of JuvenaP. So much has 
 been seen and proved before, and nothing will be 
 said of it here. The fact that Statius became a 
 Christian, and the history of his conversion, he 
 inferred from the introduction to the Ackilleis, to 
 which, as his authority, he has actually directed his 
 readers. And right it was that he should. 
 
 For the truth is, Dante in this matter has taken 
 a position which, unless evidence, solid evidence, for 
 the "concealed Christianity" of Statius had been 
 in his opinion extant and ascertainable, would be 
 absurd. The account which Statius gives of his 
 conversion is elicited by a question, or rather a 
 critical objection, put into the mouth of Virgil. 
 Statius has already implied, as indeed his purgation 
 
 1 Juv. Sat. VII 82—92. The facts stated really do imply 
 what Dante asserts, though to notice it was not the purpose of 
 the satirist.
 
 158 ''To Follow the Fisherman'^ 
 
 of itself implies, that he was of the true faith. 
 Whereupon Virgil very pertinently observes that the 
 introduction to the Thebais (he marks the precise 
 passage which he has in view) does not exhibit the 
 writer as a Christian \ It does not; in fact it 
 shows, as Virgil himself, under the polite form of 
 his negative, intimates plainly enough, that the 
 writer was at that time not a Christian of any sort, 
 professed or concealed. But why this distinction of 
 the Thebais ? Dante alleges Statins to have been 
 a Christian. He indicates correctly what were in 
 his time the sources of trustworthy information about 
 Statius and his opinions. He then insists on point- 
 ing out that a part, a comparatively large part, of 
 that evidence, so far as it goes, disallows and con- 
 tradicts his allegation. Why does he do this, or 
 rather, how dares he do it, if no evidence equally 
 good were producible and produced in favour of his 
 allegation .-* Such a proceeding would be absurd 
 and unintelligible. 
 
 That the affirmative document is the later poem 
 of Statius, the Achilleis, we must suppose ; if there 
 were no other reason, because Dante had no other 
 relevant document, and shows that he had none. 
 But this reference is actually given by the form and 
 wording of Virgil's question : "Now when thou didst 
 sing the bloody war of Jocasta's twofold sorrow, it 
 appears not, by that touch of the string in which 
 Clio there joins with thee, that thou hadst yet been 
 
 ' Furg. XXII 55 ; Stat. Theb. i i — 40, especially 22 — 31.
 
 " To Follow the Fisherman' 159 
 
 made believer by that faith, without which good 
 works are not enough. If this be so, what sun or 
 what candles so dispelled thy darkness, that thou 
 didst thereafter set thy sails to follow the Fisher- 
 man!'' The "war" is that of Jocasta's sons, the 
 theme of the Thebais. The invocation of the Muse 
 " Clio " marks the conclusion of the prelude to the 
 Thebais and the commencement of the narrative \ 
 The " touch " or tuning of the lyre^ is the prelude 
 itself, and especially the latter part of it, which is, as 
 shall presently be shown, essentially anti-Christian. 
 " The Fisherman " is St Peter, founder, bishop, 
 martyr, and patron of the Church of Rome, whose 
 ship (in a certain sense) Statius followed when he 
 entered that Church. But why this metaphor of a 
 voyage ! Why should the converted Statius " set 
 his sails " } Nothing prepares us for this figure, 
 nor is it commonly appropriated to such religious 
 experiences. But the readers of Dante were ready 
 for the figure, and knew what it meant ; for they 
 were all readers of Statius. The sailings of Statius 
 are his two poems. At the conclusion of the Thebais^ 
 a pretty verse^ once familiar to all, and still repre- 
 sented by many imitations (for example, that of 
 Spenser at the end of the First Book of the Faerie 
 Queene) compares the vast poem to a laborious 
 voyage ; his ship is now in port. That ship set sail 
 
 ^ Stat. Theb. i 41. 
 2 Theb. 133" tendo chelyn." 
 
 * Theb. xn 809 " et mea iam longo meruit ratis aequore 
 portum."
 
 i6o "71? Follow the Fisherman^' 
 
 again when he commenced another story ; and the 
 question of Virgil, construed as it would be by those 
 versed in the literature of the subject, means not 
 " How did you become a Christian ? " but, " How 
 came you to write as a Christian ? " Seeing that 
 the prelude to the Thebais is pagan, how came it 
 to pass that the prelude to the Achilleis is not ? 
 That there is Christianity there, a "concealed" 
 Christianity, Dante assumes as notorious. Notorious 
 however his construction of the passage no longer 
 is ; but it should be, one would suppose, not beyond 
 the reach of discovery. 
 
 But first, what sort of evidence shall we expect ? 
 The prelude to the Thebais is not Christian, is anti- 
 Christian. Why ? The question is answered at a 
 glance. Because Statius there acknowledges and 
 proclaims the essentially anti-Christian doctrine, the 
 test of orthodox paganism, as it perhaps already 
 was in those days and certainly soon afterwards 
 became — the deity of the Roman Eviperor. To 
 Dante, with his cardinal tenet of the distinction 
 between the temporal and the spiritual powers, this 
 doctrine was abominable for personal reasons, as 
 well as on Catholic grounds ; and he has noted it, in 
 the case of Virgil himself, as decisively damnatory. 
 I Not he, says Virgil sorrowfully, may conduct Dante 
 " into Paradise; "the Imperator (Imperador) who 
 reigns above permits it not, because I was dis- 
 obedient to his laws\" The sting of the reproach 
 
 ^ Inf. I 124.
 
 ''To Follow the Fisherman' i6i 
 
 is pointed by the use of the poHtical term. It was 
 another Emperor whom Virgil, to the best of his 
 power, exalted to heaven ; and the plain fact is, 
 whatever moral or religious reprobation may justly 
 be attached to it, that no one did more than Virgil 
 to spread and fortify the strange new worship of the 
 Augustus. He foresaw (so Dante thought) the 
 religion of Christ ; but he preached the religion of 
 Christ's adversary. What Dante could not think 
 pardonable even in Virgil, he would still less have 
 forgiven, if unrepented and not retracted, to Statins, 
 who, in addressing the Thebais to the Emperor 
 Domitian, declares the divinity of his patron in the 
 amplest and plainest terms\ For this reason, and 
 for no other, the preluding of Statius and his Clio is 
 noted as not the work of a Christian. It is, for a 
 Christian, blasphemous. 
 
 And now let us hear the later utterance of his 
 Muse. The comparison is easy, for the two preludes 
 are parallel, and that of the Achilleis, though much 
 briefer than the other, concludes also with an address 
 to the Emperor. It is in these terms : " O Thou, 
 whose high primacy astonishes all excellence alike 
 of Italy and of Greece, in whose praise contend both 
 laurels, the Poets' wreath and the Captains' (long 
 doth the one of them grieve to be surpassed) ; grant 
 me Thy pardon, and, because of my fear, suffer me 
 yet awhile to sweat in this labour of dust. To Thee, 
 preparing long and not trusting yet, my labour 
 
 ' ' Theb. I 2 2 — 31. Domitian is entreated to remain upon 
 earth, and leave heaven for the present to Jupiter. 
 
 V. L. E. II
 
 1 62 " Z(? Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 tends, and the praise of Achilles is the prelude to 
 Thine\" 
 
 Now this is a reverent address, and a flattering 
 address, but blasphemous it is not. From a theo- 
 logical point of view it is unexceptionable ; it 
 attributes to Domitian nothing not proper to man, 
 nothing which has not often been attributed to 
 Christian princes by Christian divines. From the 
 scandal of the Christians, the deity of the Augustus, 
 it is absolutely free. Let it be put beside the 
 address in the Thebais, or the many addresses of 
 Martial and other contemporary writers, and the 
 broad difference will be instantly perceived. 
 
 This difference, change, omission, the modern 
 critic, applying coolly the laws of scientific inter- 
 pretation, will attribute to haste, weariness, want of 
 finish, study of variety, to accident, or to some 
 cause, at all events, other than scruple and intention. 
 Let this opinion be right. But it is not demonstrably 
 right. Very plausible reasons might be advanced 
 against it, reasons of a kind with which Dante and 
 the Latinists of his day were familiar. To omit the 
 Deity from a public and formal address to Domitian, 
 is a thing which might have been done by chance, 
 but was not at all likely to be so done. As easily 
 
 ^ Stat. Achill. 114: 
 
 "At tu, quern longe primum stupet Itala virtus 
 Graiaque, cui geminae florent vatumque ducumque 
 Certatim laurus (olim dolet altera vinci). 
 Da veniam, et trepidum patere hoc sudare parumper 
 Pulvere : te longo necdum fidente paratu 
 Molimur, magnusque tibi praeludit Achilles."
 
 ^^ To Follow the Fisherman'' 163 
 
 would the framer of an address to one of the Tudor 
 princes have omitted or inserted by chance the 
 description " Head of the Church," or a modern 
 composer forget the designation " His Majesty." 
 Domitian was punctiHous in this matter beyond all 
 his predecessors and many of his successors ; nor 
 was he a man with whose rules it was safe to trifle. 
 His very secretaries headed their despatches " From 
 His Deity our Master^"; nor without some such 
 form, we are told, was anyone permitted to approach 
 him. This is from a hostile source", and is probably 
 an exaggeration, but the usage of the time supports 
 it as true in the main. It is not therefore extra- 
 vagant, or unreasonable, or improbable at all to 
 suppose, especially if we approach the subject, like 
 Dante, with an affectionate interest in Statius and 
 his character, that his omission of Deity was not 
 accidental but scrupulous. Dante, or the expositor 
 whom he followed, did so suppose, and drew the 
 necessary inference, that between the Thebais and 
 the Achilleis Statius had undergone a change of 
 feeling and opinion for which, in the circumstances 
 of the time, no explanation would be so likely as a 
 conversion to Christianity. There were Christians 
 about the court of Domitian ; his own cousin seems 
 to have been something like one ; many doubtless 
 were "concealed Christians," and among these 
 Dante, upon the evidence of the Achilleis, would 
 include Statius. 
 
 ^ " Dominus Deusque noster." 
 ^ Suetonius. 
 
 II — 2
 
 164 ''To Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 But out of this bare fact, even if established, 
 Dante would not have made the circumstantial narra- 
 tive which we read in the Purgatorio. At least such 
 is not his practice. His history, though not scien- 
 tific, is honest ; and since he tells us positively that 
 Statius was convinced by the testimony and courage 
 of the martyrs, he must have found evidence, or 
 what he took for such, of this admiration. And so 
 he did. He got it from this same passage of the 
 Achilleis, by a process which (given the first step, 
 that the language of Statius here betrays the mind 
 of a Christian) would not be illegitimate, or would 
 not appear so to one passionately anxious to read 
 the beloved poet in a saving sense. Once initiated, 
 a comparison between the dedicatory addresses in 
 the two epics of Statius will soon reveal another 
 difference, scarcely less remarkable than their dis- 
 agreement about the deity of the Augustus. The 
 address in the Thebais, like other such composi- 
 tions, declares for whom it is meant. No one but 
 the Roman sovereign, and no other person but 
 Domitian, the brother of Titus, ** defender of the 
 Capitol," "conqueror of the North, the Rhine, and 
 the Danube," would satisfy the terms of the descrip- 
 tion \ The address in the Achilleis contains no 
 such terms, nor any terms of personal appropriation 
 whatsoever. The Man, admired by all that is 
 excfellent in the world, the summit of all virtue in 
 mind or in action, warfare or poetry — this may be 
 the Roman sovereign, and Domitian, to judge by 
 
 ^ Theb. I 17 — 24.
 
 " Zb Follow the Fisherman' 165 
 
 the date, was meant to appropriate it ; but after all, 
 he must take it himself, and the dedicator is not 
 committed. This is not usual. Nor is it usual that 
 an artist, even for the purpose of turning a compli- 
 ment, should depreciate his work by such expressions 
 of disgust as Statius here employs, and describe 
 himself as " sweating^ in this labour of dust." More- 
 over his language is obscure. " Both laurels, the 
 Poets' wreath and the Captains' {long hath the one 
 of them grieved to be surpassed) " — scholars will 
 explain ; and the reader doubtless knows what, as 
 addressed to Domitian, this parenthesis means ; but 
 a phrase more ambiguous it would be hard to make. 
 Now surely from all this, if we suppose ourselves 
 already to know that the words we read are those of 
 a concealed Christian, rendering, or pretending to 
 render, unwilling homage to a persecutor of the 
 Church, we might not unreasonably conceive the 
 suspicion of a latent intention, a meaning other 
 than at first appears. " Here," we should say to 
 ourselves, '* is what purports to be a courtier's 
 compliment to a certain prince. It neither names 
 nor describes him. It offends by omission against 
 a stringent rule of etiquette, a rule which the same 
 writer upon a previous occasion has zealously 
 observed. It is in one part strangely worded, in 
 another part obscurely. In short, with the supposed 
 application, it cannot be satisfactorily explained. 
 Why then do we not seek another application ? It 
 is the work of a Christian. Should it not then be 
 susceptible of a Christian sense ? "
 
 1 66 " Zb Follow the Fisherman^ 
 
 And it is susceptible of a Christian sense. The 
 meaning of its terms, as they would, on that hypo- 
 thesis, be interpreted by Dante, can be ascertained 
 from Dante himself, and leads directly to the 
 inference which he states. Statius will be thinking, 
 not of the earthly Rome, the City of the Seven 
 Hills, but of "that Rome" (as Dante pregnantly 
 calls it) "whereof Christ is a Roman" — the Christian 
 Church. The Imperator addressed will be He 
 against whose laws Virgil was rebellious when he 
 gave his worship to the first Augustus, and Statius 
 had been rebellious, but was now rebellious no 
 longer. Christ's, not Domitian's, will be the Virtue, 
 which astonishes all that, in mind or act, is excellent 
 in the world, the Goodness which surpasses praise. 
 The conception of Christ as the true spiritual 
 Sovereign, which we shall thus attribute to Statius, 
 is no casual fancy : it is the essential conception 
 upon which the Church Catholic, Apostolic, and 
 Roman, was actually built, and which was for Dante 
 the corner-stone of theology and politics. The whole 
 Contmedia, the Paradiso especially, is based on it. 
 
 It is the praise of Christ then, which will be 
 celebrated in rivalry by the Christian laureates of 
 both kinds, by poets and by soldiers alike. But let 
 us observe that of these symbols one will have a 
 new and a totally different meaning. The Prince, 
 whose kingdom is not of this world, is praised by 
 the same poets as other princes are, and " the laurel 
 of poetry " means in the court of Christ (if we may 
 use without offence the characteristic language of
 
 " 7"(? Follow the Fisherman'" 167 
 
 the ParadisoY just what it meant in the court of 
 Caesar. Nor was the thing, for Dante, a metaphor 
 at all, but a familiar reality. It was for "the laurel," 
 an actual, visible wreath, that he laboured in his 
 vocation as a Christian poet upon the Divina Corn- 
 media. He won the wreath and wore it, and hoped, 
 but in vain, to receive it some day, with far happier 
 glory, in and from his beloved Florence, as we shall 
 presently read in a passage intimately connected 
 with our subject. For Statius then also, speaking 
 as a Christian, "the laurel of the Poets" would have 
 the same meaning as for a pagan ; it is still an 
 emblem of his own art, however differently he might 
 conceive his poetic duty, when it was to be paid to 
 so different a Prince. But it is otherwise with the 
 laurel of the soldier. Not by such soldiers, as serve 
 the princes of this world, is served the Imperator, 
 the Supreme Commander, of the Church Militant. 
 What is meant by "a soldier of Christ" is known 
 to all who know anything of Christianity ; though 
 the correlative conception of Christ Himself, as a 
 military sovereign, is no longer very familiar to 
 a large part of the Christian world, and even to 
 those of the Roman communion is perhaps not quite 
 so familiar as it was to Dante, or as it was in those 
 primitive times when it was formed, when the 
 Church was, in more literal truth than she has been 
 
 ^ See especially Par. xxv, where the parallel is pursued to the 
 utmost detail : St James is a " Baron," and speaks of Dante's 
 introduction to the "secret chamber" of the "Emperor" and to 
 His "Counts."
 
 1 68 " To Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 since, a militant power, warring against the world 
 to win her place. So deep in her literature, her 
 liturgy, her most sacred formularies, was this 
 thought engraved, that it has passed to heirs who 
 scarcely know their inheritance. Millions are aware 
 that their baptism was an enlistment, the taking of 
 a soldier's service, and that they were signed with 
 the sign of the Cross " in token that thereafter they 
 should not be ashamed manfully to fight under 
 Christ's banner," who, if they were asked to explain 
 why this was so done, would give an answer not 
 historically adequate. Millions more, who never 
 heard the formulary, shape their religious thoughts 
 by that figure, and this not only, as they may 
 suppose, because it may be used by St Paul, but be- 
 cause it was adopted by the Vatican. The soldiers 
 of Christ are the Christians, and His "laurel" is the 
 emblem of the Christian warfare. 
 
 And if it should be said that the metaphorical 
 soldiership of the Christian is not parallel to the 
 literal hardship of the poet, and that, though each 
 separately may have its laurel, we could not properly 
 speak of them as "the two laurels," nor couple the 
 substance of one thing to the shadow or simile of 
 another ; it will be answered that so we may think, 
 but so did not think Dante. For he not only makes 
 the conjunction himself, but uses it as if it were in 
 itself natural and obvious, intelligible and familiar, 
 founding upon it a peculiarly impressive utterance 
 of his inner feelings and personal aspirations. In 
 Paradise he figures himself, as a first step towards
 
 " To Follow the Fisherman' 169 
 
 his participation in the highest mysteries, to be 
 catechised upon his faith by St Peter, who finally 
 approves his answers by crowning him thrice\ 
 What is the reflexion which this act suggests to 
 him ? Any modern, not already informed, might 
 guess in vain for ever. It reminds him of the hopes 
 which he may entertain from the success of his 
 poem, the Divi7ia Commedia : admiration of his 
 work may possibly procure at Florence the repeal of 
 his exile, and he may be re-admitted, as an approved 
 poet, to the city of his youth. And what then ? 
 What conceivable connexion is there between this 
 patriotic desire and his celestial graduation (the 
 figure is Dante's own) by the Apostolic Examiner ? 
 Because then, as a sign of his triumph, he will 
 receive and put on "the wreath," the poet's laurel ; 
 and this ceremony will be performed at the church 
 of his baptism, " because into the Faith, which 
 maketh souls known of God, 'twas there I entered, 
 and afterwards Peter, for that faith, did so encircle 
 my brow." The literary career and the Christian 
 profession, art and churchmanship, poetry and 
 baptism, these are ideas which an average man of 
 the modern type could not easily connect if he 
 would, nor perhaps would if he could. But to 
 Dante, nursed in the two great traditions of Rome, 
 the Catholic tradition and the Classic, those ideas 
 are, as it were, two aspects of one thing, so that he 
 
 ' "Tre volte cinse me" Par. xxiv 152, but more precisely 
 "ji mi girb la fronte" in the subsequent allusion, Par. xxv 
 12.
 
 170 " 7"(9 Folloiv the Fisherman" 
 
 turns from one to the other almost without sense of 
 transition. And the Hnk is a laurel wreath. His 
 art and his faith, his poem and his baptism, each 
 promises and confers "a laurel"; this the laurel of 
 Christian scholarship and inspiration, and that the 
 laurel of Christian warfare and triumph. Branches 
 of one service, duties to one Master, they bring the 
 like, or rather the same, reward. And he presumes 
 as of course that Statins, when he had become a 
 Christian and a Catholic, must have thought in the 
 same terms. 
 
 Since then the military laurel signifies for Statins 
 the crown of the faithful Christian, what is "the 
 laurel of the Captains " or " Leaders " (duces) ? For 
 it is of this specially that he speaks. The soldiery 
 of Christ being, as Dante says again and again, the 
 Church Militant and Triumphant, who in that host 
 are the leaders ? And in particular, who would be 
 so regarded and described by a Roman Christian, 
 writing towards the close of the first century a.d. ? 
 Who else but that " noble army " of martyrs and 
 confessors, who at that very time were inaugurating 
 by their triumphant sufferings the Sacred City of 
 Christendom? Who else but ''that soldiery who 
 followed Peter," the companions and successors of 
 the Martyr-Apostles, they of whom "the Vatican 
 and other the elect parts of Rome are the burial- 
 place\" the victims of the persecution commenced 
 by Nero and continued, as Dante believed, by 
 
 ' Far. IX 139.
 
 " Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 171 
 
 Domitian ? These events, for the Roman Church 
 historically important beyond all others save that 
 of Calvary, fill such a place in the mind of Dante 
 himself, that he can actually designate St Peter, 
 upon this ground simply, as "the high Centurion," 
 " the great Leader of the File " (/' alto primipilo) ; 
 and indeed the Commedia, especially the Pa7'adiso, 
 everywhere illustrates them and the conceptions of 
 which they were the base. How should they not 
 have been all-important to a Christian contem- 
 porary, such as Statius, or how should he speak 
 of them otherwise than as Dante himself had been 
 taught ? 
 
 And if Statius, having thus naturally brought 
 together the laurel of the Poets and the laurel of the 
 Martyrs, goes on to say that of these two " one hath 
 long grieved to be surpassed," do we not easily 
 understand him ? Well might a great poet who 
 was also a concealed Christian, writing in the last 
 days of Domitian, thirty years after " Peter and his 
 beloved brother had put Rome on the right track," 
 describe the laurel of Christian poetry as ashamed 
 of her representative, and grieving to be so long 
 and so far behind the sister wreath, the laurel of 
 Christian soldiership. Well might such a Statius as 
 Dante figured, eager and yet afraid to confess his 
 faith, and to devote his talents to the service of his 
 spiritual Prince, grieve while he set himself wearily 
 to celebrate a mere Achilles, while he postponed to 
 this poor task the noble theme of Christ and His 
 triumphant Church, while he cautiously trimmed the
 
 172 ''To Follow the Fishe7"man'^ 
 
 ambiguous phrases which, under the disguise of a 
 compHment to the anti-Christian persecutor, should 
 express and yet hide his ineffectual remorse. Well 
 might he grieve to compare himself with the victors 
 of the arena, the Captains of the Host, who sealed 
 with their lives the testimony by which he had been 
 convinced. " Grant me Thy pardon, and because 
 of my fear, suffer me yet awhile to sweat in this 
 labour of dust. To Thee, preparing long and not 
 trusting yet, my labour tends, and the praise of 
 Achilles is the prelude to Thine." It may be and 
 is a strange effect of chance, but it is none the less 
 fact, that these words are far more appropriate to 
 the secondary sense put upon them by Dante, than 
 to the primary and sole sense for which they were 
 really written. Domitian, if he read them, must 
 have read with a sneer. The Thebais opens with 
 similar excuses : the exploits of Domitian are a 
 theme for which Statius is not yet fit ; let him 
 practise first upon Thebes, and then he will venture. 
 Twelve books of practice, published successively in 
 about as many years, had followed this declaration ; 
 and now " he dares not yet," but starts instead, by 
 way of further preparation, upon an unlimited story 
 of Achilles. The insincerity is so transparent, the 
 uneasy emphasis so plainly false, that silence, one 
 would think, might have better pleased. But the 
 Christian interpretation makes all simple. Between 
 the times of the two compositions, suppose the poet 
 converted to the Christian faith ; and then his second 
 plea, as addressed to the neglected Majesty of his
 
 " To Follow the Fisker^nan" 173 
 
 secret homage, becomes a real thing, new, natural, 
 and expressive. 
 
 In brief then the matter stands thus. If Dante 
 had been in the situation which in Purgatorio he 
 attributes to Statius ; if Dante had been livino- in 
 Rome about the year 90 a.d., a poet baptized but 
 unprofessed, a proselyte of the martyrs, but a prose- 
 lyte silent and ashamed ; if he had designed to 
 relieve his oppressed feelings by uttering them in 
 the form of symbol and enigma, a form which he 
 loved for its own sake, as a species of art, and uses 
 constantly in his own work ; then he would naturally 
 have written in just such words as Statius actually 
 employs. Therefore he did not hesitate to infer 
 the situation from the words. This argument was 
 indeed fallacious ; because the notion of one Catholic 
 way of thinking and one Catholic language, the same 
 in all ages and for all persons, in the first century 
 and the thirteenth, is not sound ; because there is 
 such a thing as evolution. The precise coincidence 
 and conformity upon which Dante founded his con- 
 clusion, really disproved it. Statius, if he had had 
 Dante's thought, would doubtless have expressed it 
 otherwise. But if Dante had been capable of seeing 
 such an objection as this, he would not have made 
 the Divina Commedia. According to such laws of 
 interpretation and proof as he had learnt, the 
 authority upon which he went was perfect ; and 
 there is no reason to think that he has broken his 
 general rule by putting forth as history what he did 
 not believe to be demonstrable.
 
 1 74 " To Follow the Fisherman " 
 
 When he makes Statius say that, even after his 
 conversion and baptism, 
 
 ^^ per paura chiuso Cristian fu' mi, 
 Lungamente mostrando paganesmo:^" 
 
 'through fear I concealed my Christianity and 
 tediously pretended paganism," he is translating the 
 trepidum ("in my fear") and the olim dolet ('Mong 
 have I grieved ") of the Achilleis. The trepidmn 
 indeed he has translated twice ; for the sound of 
 it, or perhaps an alternative reading tepidum, has 
 suggested the next words, 
 
 " E questa tiepidezza il quarto cerchio 
 Cerchiar mi fe' pii ch'al quarto centesmo." 
 
 This lukewarmness cost the sinner more than four 
 centuries of purgation. 
 
 Two facts Dante alleges, for which if he had 
 express authority, we have still to find it : that 
 Statius was disposed to Christianity by the prophetic 
 hints which he found in the Bucolics of Virgil ; and 
 that he was baptized. Both facts, the Christianity 
 itself being once established, might fairly be pre- 
 sumed. To Dante, himself accustomed to regard 
 the Fourth Eclogue as a Messianic prediction not 
 less clear and scarcely less sacred than those of 
 the Bible, it was impossible that, in the situation 
 supposed, the true sense could escape Statius ; and 
 it was inconceivable that the penitent of the Achilleis 
 I should neglect the rite necessary to salvation. But 
 
 ^ Purg. XXII 90.
 
 " To Follow the Fisherman'' 175 
 
 in each allegation there is a particularity of circum- 
 stance, an exactness of detail, which points to 
 something more than presumption. Dante will tell 
 us what words in the Fourth Eclogue Statins laid to 
 heart ; he knows when Statins was baptized, that is 
 to say, how much of the Thebais had been written 
 when the rite was performed. 
 
 " Before I brought the Argives in my poem to 
 the rivers of Thebes, I myself had received baptism^" 
 What does this mean .'* " Before I described the 
 expedition of the Seven," before the composition of 
 the Thebais as a whole ? Impossible. Dante has 
 just said and proved that Statins, when he began 
 the Thebais, was a pagan. " Before the poem was 
 finished " ? Impossible. The story, which Dante 
 knew minutely, is so far from ending with the 
 arrival of the expedition at Theban waters, that 
 there rather, after too many preliminaries, it may be 
 said to begin. The point, fixed by a reference quite 
 explicit and almost reproducing the words of Statins, 
 is the entrance of the invaders upon the territory of 
 the hostile city*. And the assertion is, that what 
 follows from this point, the latter half of the story, 
 which takes place at Thebes, was written after the 
 author's admission to the Church, but the preliminary 
 portion before it. Are we then to suppose that 
 Dante invented this ? Were he liberal of spurious 
 history as any Dumas, this statement, from its very 
 
 ^ Purg, xxn 88. 
 
 '^ Boeotaque ventum flumina, Stat. Theb. vii 424 ; a' fiumi di 
 Tebe, Dante, Purg. xxn 88.
 
 176 " Zb Follow the Fishei^man'' 
 
 nature, he could not have made, except as a scholar 
 and upon documentary evidence. 
 
 Evidence for this, to him satisfactory, he must 
 have found, and probably also for the Christian 
 studies of Statius in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue ; 
 though it by no means follows that his researches 
 are now traceable by us. 
 
 Yet as to Virgil and his prophecy the evidence 
 is obvious, in that same preface to the Ackilleis, and 
 in the first lines of the poem. The poet's address 
 to his Emperor (that is, to Christ), is preceded by a 
 brief passage in which he declares his theme, appeals 
 for inspiration in the conventional form, as Dante 
 himself and his Christian brethren did, to Apollo, 
 and claims favour as the author of the Thebais. 
 "Tell, Muse," he begins, "of the great-hearted 
 Achilles, and of that Offspring whom the Thunderer 
 feared and would not suffer to iiiherit his native 
 heaven'' 
 
 " Magnanimum Aeaciden, formidatamque Tonanti 
 Progeniem et patrio vetitam succedere caeloy 
 Diva, refer." 
 
 Now the Virgilian words which Dante makes 
 Statius quote for Christian are the famous 
 
 "ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo,... 
 lam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto'." 
 
 "Now comes the birthday of ages n&^N . . .2.xv6. from 
 high heaven a new Offspring is sent down'' These 
 
 ^ Virg. Ed. IV 7 ; Dante, Purg. xxii 72, "e progenie discende 
 dal ciel nuova."
 
 " To Follow the Fisherman''' 177 
 
 words, out of much else similarly interpreted, Dante 
 might no doubt have chosen for their celebrity, and 
 by conjecture only. But not so. Statius, he thought, 
 alludes to them. How should he think otherwise, 
 when he found Statius presently saying to Christ : 
 " To Thee my labour and preparation tends, and 
 the praise of Achilles is the prelude to Thine " ? 
 How should he not think that Statius saw an 
 analogy between the prelude and the sequel, saw in 
 Achilles a type of the Christ to be, and suggested 
 this connexion in such terms as a student of Virgil 
 naturally would ? We of the North do not habitually 
 think of Christ as the enemy, the terror, and the 
 dethroner of Jupiter, as the Prince whom the devil- 
 deities of the pagan Empire imprisoned and fain 
 would have kept in Hell, whom, even after He had 
 ascended to His Father's heaven, they excluded 
 long from His lawful prerogative. All this never 
 had much hold, even as a figure, upon our exotic 
 Romanism ; and now, when we meet reflexions of 
 it in our imitators of the Italians, it has a foreign 
 and not very congenial air. But to a mediaeval 
 Italian, loyal both to the Holy Empire and the 
 Holy See, this was reality, the chief reality ; was 
 history, and the very core of it. Nor is it now 
 natural to seek Christian parables in pagan legend, 
 or to celebrate the Saviour of mankind as a greater, 
 a victorious Achilles. The world has unlearnt that 
 language, and we Teutons the faster, as we had 
 some pains in learning it. Jupiter never reigned 
 here, and Achilles is not our compatriot. But to an 
 
 V. L. E. 12
 
 178 " Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 Italian Latinist of the thirteenth century this was 
 the native voice of religious imagination, the Catholic 
 speech as it had been spoken always, or should have 
 been spoken, since the new birthday of Time. How 
 then should Dante not suppose that the Christian 
 Statius, who joins in one project the themes of 
 Achilles and Christ, remembered Virgil's prophecy 
 of " the Offspring from heaven sent down," when 
 he wrote of " the Offspring whom Jove would not 
 suffer to inherit His Father's heaven"? 
 
 Much more difficult, and probably not now 
 answerable, is the question why the latter part of 
 the Thebais, the Theban part, is alleged to be 
 Christian work. The evidence should lie in the 
 Thebais itself, in some change of tone, some 
 allusions to Christian thought, language, rites or 
 symbols, appearing at or after the point of division. 
 But the field of search is wide, and the object 
 vague ; I have found nothing which seems worth 
 notice\ That Dante was more successful we need 
 not doubt, and meanwhile we can see what put him 
 on the track. In the prelude to the Achilleis Statius 
 says that this beginning of a new poem is not his 
 beginning in poetry : " this brow has worn the 
 wreath before, as witness the land of Thebes'' We 
 have seen how closely in the mind of Dante his 
 office as a Christian poet is connected with his 
 baptism, two gifts of the Spirit joined by the 
 common symbol of the laurel crown. With such 
 feelings he would find it only proper that a poet 
 p But see the next essay, written five years later.]
 
 " To Follow the Fisherman " 1 79 
 
 speaking as a convert to Christianity, should date 
 his true beginning in poetry from his birth to 
 God. Now Statius here associates his previous 
 work with the land, or more exactly, with the terri- 
 tory of Thebes [Dircaeus agery. By this limitation 
 he doubtless means nothing particular ; he is no 
 precisian in words : " the territory of Thebes " is 
 "Thebes," and "Thebes" means generally the 
 Thebais. But Dante, one of the most precise writers 
 that ever was, if he had used such a limitation, 
 would probably have meant what he said, and would 
 have referred only to that part of the poem which 
 really is connected with Theban soil. Here was 
 enough, not indeed to prove that Statius was a 
 Christian " before he brought the Greeks to the 
 rivers of Thebes," but to prompt the search for 
 proof; and a search conducted with such good will 
 as Dante brought, was not likely to be disappointed. 
 Not that this or any part of the investigation 
 must have been made for the first time by Dante. 
 The contrary is to be supposed from the way in 
 which he uses the results, treating them, and the 
 process by which they were attained, as known and 
 accepted. He went over the ground for himself, 
 we see ; and so always, to the best of his power, 
 he did. But the lines must have been laid before, 
 probably by some one of the ardent Latinists who 
 were his friends or teachers. Like almost all con- 
 temporary work of this kind, the speculation, if ever 
 it was put into written form (which is by no means 
 
 ^ Achil. 112. 
 
 12 — 2
 
 i8o " Zb Follow the Fisherman'' 
 
 presumable), has doubtless long ago irretrievably 
 disappeared. Dante took the proof for granted. 
 The earliest commentators on Dante were concerned, 
 naturally and reasonably, with other things, which 
 they supposed to be more perishable, and perhaps 
 more interesting. But this has an interest too.
 
 i/^ t 
 
 r 
 
 DANTE ON THE BAPTISM 
 OF STATIUS 
 
 All readers of Dante will remember his strange 
 problem concerning the position in Purgatory as- 
 signed to the poet Statius, and the historical ex- 
 planation, elaborate and confident, by which that 
 position is justified and defended^ Statius, one of 
 the most successful and celebrated among the 
 followers of Virgil, lived and wrote in the second 
 half of the first century a.d., chiefly under the 
 Emperor Domitian. According to Dante, his soul, 
 for various oflences, had continued in Purgatory 
 from his death to the year 1 300, the date of Dante's 
 journey through the three worlds, and was at that 
 very time released, — the sole example of such an 
 event which the poet of the Purgatorio exhibits. 
 Now, to be qualified for Purgatory, it was of course 
 necessary that Statius should have been a Christian. 
 This he might possibly have been ; but of the fact 
 there is not the least record, nor any trace of a tradi- 
 tion to that effect. On the other hand, the work of 
 Statius, or at least his principal work, the Thebaid, 
 contains unquestionable evidence that the author was 
 
 ^ Purgatorio xxi and xxn, especially xxn 55 foil.
 
 1 82 Dante on the Baptism of Statius 
 
 not a Christian, and (most remarkable of all) this fact, 
 apparently fatal to Dante's assumption, is clearly and 
 emphatically indicated by Dante himself. It is an 
 inevitable and an interesting question, upon what 
 grounds Dante thought himself justified in over- 
 ruling this evidence, what answer he made, or 
 supposed himself able to make, to the initial ob- 
 jection which he has raised against his own 
 narrative. 
 
 This question has been discussed fully in the 
 immediately preceding essay \ It was there shown 
 that, as we might faitily expect, the evidence upon 
 which Dante relied as favourable to the Christianity 
 of Statius, was evidence of the same character, and, 
 if valid, of the same authenticity, as that which he 
 has himself adduced on the other side. It was 
 evidence from the work of Statius himself. The 
 argument, which is sufficiently indicated by Dante 
 in the Purgatorio, and fortified by references to the 
 relevant passages, turns upon the difference between 
 the poetical prefaces prefixed by Statius to his earlier 
 and complete poem, the Thebaid, and to the later 
 and incomplete Achilleid. Both these prefaces 
 comprise, according to the fashion of the day, a 
 complimentary address to the reigning Emperor, 
 Domitian. The custom of the time demanded that 
 the Roman Emperor, who claimed a divine character, 
 should be recognized in this character by those who 
 addressed him: he must be addressed as a "god." 
 In the preface to the Thebaid Statius complies with 
 ^ To follow the Fisherman^ p. 153.
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 183 
 
 this requirement fully, and with apparent enthusiasm. 
 In the preface to the Achilleid there is not the least 
 reference to this aspect of the monarch, and the ad- 
 dress, though respectful, contains nothing which might 
 not be said by a Christian. Dante, or the authorities 
 whom he followed, assumed that this change of tone 
 and style was not (as it probably is) accidental, but 
 deliberate. If it were so, it would indeed go far to 
 show that the author, before he wrote the second 
 address, had adopted the Christian view upon this 
 vital question, the test-question, as will be remem- 
 bered, by which Christianity, under the pagan Em- 
 pire, was commonly proved. The assumption of 
 deliberate change, and the argument from it, though 
 not justified by sound criticism, is by no means 
 absurd ; and it is not strange that Dante, for whose 
 poetical purpose in the Purgatorio a Christian Statius 
 was extremely and uniquely suitable, should have 
 found the theory convincing. 
 
 For the details of the supposed proof, which are 
 curiously illustrative of the scholarship and methods 
 of thinking prevalent in Dante's time, and can be 
 pursued far by the indications of his text, the reader 
 is referred to the preceding essay. Our present 
 purpose is to elucidate a point which was then left 
 in some doubt, — upon what grounds Dante held 
 himself warranted in his strangely precise statement 
 respecting the baptism of the supposed convert. 
 For this purpose we shall assume from the previous 
 discussion only the main results, that the Christianity 
 of Statius, according to Dante, is demonstrable and
 
 184 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 demonstrated by reference, chapter and verse, to the 
 works of Statius himself, and in particular to the 
 prefaces of his earlier poem, the Tkebaid, and of 
 his later, the Achilleid\ the first of which prefaces 
 is, as Dante admits, the composition of a pagan, 
 but the second, as he implies, is the composition 
 of a Christian. 
 
 The subject of the Tkebaid — this also it will be 
 convenient to recall — is the invasion of Thebes by 
 a body of confederates, chiefly Argives, who support 
 the claims of Polynices against the alleged usurpation 
 of his brother Eteocles. The contest is the theme of 
 the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus, and, chiefly 
 through Statius, became the subject of frequent 
 allusions in modern literatures, as in our own from 
 Chaucer downwards. With these preliminaries, we 
 may come to our special point. 
 
 Having established, to his own satisfaction, that 
 Statius was a Christian when he wrote the com- 
 mencement of the Achilleid, Dante might well 
 assume, without further proof, that, before that time, 
 the convert had actually joined the Church, and had 
 privately received the initiatory rite, which could not 
 without deadly peril be deferred. He might even 
 perhaps assume, though the evidence did not go 
 quite so far, that the conversion and the baptism 
 were accomplished at some time during the twelve 
 years which, as Statius himself tells us, were occu- 
 pied by the composition of the Thebaid. And if 
 Dante were content so to limit his statement about 
 the performance of the rite, if he merely said that
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 185 
 
 Statius received baptism during the composition of 
 the Tkebaid, there would be, on this head, no par- 
 ticular observation to make. 
 
 But as a matter of fact, Dante goes far beyond 
 this. He has the audacity — that is the word which 
 naturally presents itself — to date the event, the bap- 
 tism, by a particular passage, a definite point in the 
 Tkebaid, which no one, familiar with the poem, could 
 fail to recognize. " I had received baptism," so he 
 makes Statius say, " before, as a poet, I had brought 
 the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes." 
 
 It is not surprising that the expositors of Dante 
 have tried to relieve their author of responsibility for 
 this startling precision, and to persuade themselves 
 and others, that by " the bringing of the Greeks to 
 the rivers of Thebes " Dante describes the whole 
 story of the Tkebaid, and means no more than that, 
 at some time during the relation of this story, the 
 baptism took place. But this interpretation, how- 
 ever well meant, could not for a moment impose on 
 any one familiar with the Tkebaid. The arrival of 
 the Greeks (that is to say, of the Argive invaders) 
 at the rivers of Thebes is not a conceivable phrase 
 with which to mark the close of the Tkebaid or to 
 sum up the story. To one who knew the poem at 
 all — and Dante knew it well — such a description 
 could not possibly occur. The arrival is a con- 
 spicuous and cardinal point in the middle of the 
 poem, dividing it into two nearly equal parts, which 
 differ broadly in contents and theme. The pre- 
 ceding portion contains the preliminaries to the war
 
 1 86 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 (together with much else of doubtful relevance); the 
 sequel, more continuous and coherent, relates the war 
 itself and the fates of the Argive leaders, concluding 
 of course with the internecine duel of the rival 
 brothers. With as much, or as little, propriety 
 might Milton be made to describe the whole story 
 of Paradise Lost as " the bringing of Satan through 
 Chaos," or Scott to mark the end of Guy Manner ing 
 by the phrase "before I had brought my hero to 
 the landing-place at Ellangowan." " Before Sophia 
 Western reached London," — " before I had got Mr 
 Pickwick into prison," — "before Jeanie Deans ar- 
 rived at Richmond," — "before Queen Guinevere 
 fled from the court to Almesbury" : these phrases 
 mark conspicuous points within the respective stories, 
 and could not possibly be otherwise meant or under- 
 stood. The last example illustrates the phrase of 
 Dante in this significant detail, that it marks the 
 intended point by reference to the very words of 
 the narrator — 
 
 "Queen Guinevere had fled the court..." 
 
 So also Dante ; for in his words " to the rivers of 
 Thebes," '' 2l fiumi di Tebe," the noticeable plural 
 is a literal, rather too literal, reproduction of Statius, 
 who writes, at the place indicated^ — 
 
 " lam ripas, Asope, tuas Boeotaque ventum 
 flumina.''^ 
 
 And further, the necessity of a definite reference, 
 the impossibility of a loose and vague interpretation, 
 
 ^ Statius, Thebaid, vii 424.
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 187 
 
 is much stronger in the phrase of Dante than in any 
 of the various parallels above suggested. For the 
 arrival at the rivers, so far from being the close and 
 sum of Statins' story, is much rather the beginning 
 of it, the point at which, after long, too long, post- 
 ponement, he takes up at last the narrative of the 
 war, the subject announced in the opening. This 
 defect of construction, the extension of the prelimi- 
 naries by episodes more or less irrelevant, until they 
 actually cover one-half of the entire composition, is 
 a conspicuous feature of the Tkebaid; and the phrase 
 of Dante "before I had brought the Greeks to the 
 rivers of Thebes " recalls, and must be intended to 
 recall, not only the point fixed, but the tardiness, the 
 excessive tardiness, of the narrator in reaching that 
 point. We may illustrate this also by an appropriate 
 parallel. In R. L. Stevenson's story of Tke Wrecker, 
 the subject proper, the dealings of the hero with a 
 wreck, emerges late, and is deferred, like the Theban 
 portion of the Thebaid, by episodes for which Steven- 
 son, like Statins, might perhaps have made a defence, 
 but for which he, like Statins, admits that a defence 
 might be required : they contributed, he tells us, with 
 humorous self-criticism, to build up " the story of the 
 Wrecker — a gentleman whose appearance may be 
 presently expected." Similarly Statins, after de- 
 voting two large books and more, in his "Story of 
 Thebes," to the foundation and performance of the 
 Nemean Games, informs us at the beginning of 
 Book VII, that the delay of the Argive army in 
 commencing operations has provoked the impatience
 
 1 88 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 of Jupiter. It has certainly tried, if not exhausted, 
 the patience of the reader, a reflexion so obvious that 
 it cannot have escaped the author. He had probably- 
 received hints to proceed without further delay — 
 possibly from the Imperial critic, Domitian himself; 
 for when a writer of that age speaks of "Jupiter," it 
 is always legitimate to consider whether it is not the 
 earthly "Jupiter" whom he has in his eye, — but at 
 all events from some quarter ; and he excuses him- 
 self, like Stevenson, by a side-stroke of self-criticism. 
 When therefore Statius is made to speak of the time 
 "before I brought the Greeks, in my poem, to the 
 rivers of Thebes," it is inevitable for us, if we know 
 the poem, to subjoin the tacit remark, " where, as 
 you very well know, you would have done better to 
 bring them sooner." We shall see presently that 
 this aspect of the matter is material, and indeed 
 vital, to the meaning of Dante. For the moment 
 we will merely note that it enforces, with special 
 stringency, the true and only possible interpretation 
 of the phrase, as a reference, not to the Thebaid 
 generally, but to the particular passage, the arrival 
 at the Asopus, which Dante signifies and actually 
 cites. 
 
 The question then arises, Upon what evidence 
 does Dante build ? Manifestly it must be evidence 
 in the Thebaid. Here perhaps most plainly we see 
 what, for any one familiar with the poems of Statius, 
 is plain enough throughout the whole account which 
 Dante gives of him. Whatever hint for it Dante 
 may have found in tradition — we know nothing of
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 189 
 
 any such hint, but it is of course possible, — the sub- 
 stance of the account is not based on tradition, but 
 on the supposed evidence of the documents, the 
 poems of Statins themselves. The repeated and 
 specific references to the words of Statius prove 
 this ; and most of all, perhaps, this particular refer- 
 ence. The statement of Dante here is such as could 
 not, from its nature, be made otherwise than upon 
 the evidence, real or supposed, of the Thebaid. 
 
 Nor would any evidence be sufficient, which did 
 not at all events include an inference from the par- 
 ticular passage to which Dante directs us. It would 
 not be enough, even if it were true, that in the sub- 
 sequent half of the poem there were traces of Christian 
 knowledge or sentiment, such as do not appear in the 
 preceding half. I have actually tried this track, but 
 with no success; nor did I enter it with much hope, 
 because, after all, no such collective inference would 
 really satisfy the language of Dante. He states 
 precisely, that the baptism of Statius preceded the 
 composition of a certain passage, definitely marked 
 by reference to the wording of its first sentence. 
 Manifestly, if we consider, nothing could prove this, 
 except the assurance of Statius given in the passage 
 itself. Dante supposed, he must have supposed, that 
 in this place Statius alludes to his baptism ; that he 
 here uses language which, coming from a person 
 known to have been a Christian not very long after- 
 wards (that is to say, at the commencement of the 
 Achilleid), implies that he had received the initiatory 
 rite. And he must also have supposed that, to the 
 readers whom he contemplated, the grounds for this
 
 190 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 supposition were either known or sufficiently indicated 
 by himself. Nothing short of this, it seems, could 
 account for his statement at all. It by no means 
 follows that the indications are sufficient for us. But 
 the thing must be there; and it is worth our while, 
 if only as matter of curiosity, to look for it. 
 
 And our first step should be, to examine minutely 
 the context of the statement in Dante, on the chance 
 that the exact sense of it, or some part of it, may 
 have escaped us. The agreement, says Statius, 
 between the Christian preachers and the prophetic 
 language of Virgil in the Fourth Eclogue, so far 
 impressed him that he began to visit them. The 
 rest, his conversion, was the work of their virtues : 
 
 "They then became so holy in my sight, that, 
 when Domitian persecuted them, their wailings were 
 not without tears of mine. And while by me yon 
 world was trod, I succoured them, and their righteous 
 lives made me despise all other sects; and ere in my 
 poem I had brought the Greeks to Thebes' rivers, 
 I received baptism ; but through fear I was a secret 
 Christian, long time pretending paganism." 
 
 "Vennermi poi parendo tanto santi, 
 che, quando Domizian li perseguette 
 senza mio lagrimar non fur lor pianti. 
 
 " E mentre che di la per me si stette, 
 io li sovvenni, e lor dritti costumi 
 fer dispregiare a me tutte altre sette; 
 
 " e pria ch' io conducessi i Greci a' fiumi 
 di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo ; 
 ma per paura chiuso Cristian fu' mi, 
 
 "lungamente mostrando paganesmo." 
 
 Furg. XXII 82 — 91.
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 191 
 
 So the passage is presented in the faithful prose 
 of the Temple Classics. And here is a portion of it, 
 the piece with which we are specially concerned, in 
 the version, even more close, of Mr A. J, Butler : 
 "And whilst there was a station for me in that 
 world, I aided them, and their upright fashions made 
 me hold all other sects of small price. And before 
 I brought the Greeks to the rivers of Thebes in my 
 poem had I baptism, but through fear " etc. 
 
 Now both versions assume, and it appears to be 
 universally assumed, that in the words nientre che di 
 la per me si stette, that is, literally, while I stood (or 
 stayed) on the other side, the description di la, on the 
 other side, means "the other side of the earth," the 
 world of living men, as regarded from the Mount 
 of Purgatory, situated, according to Dante, at the 
 Antipodes ; so that " while I stayed on the other 
 side" means "while I lived" or "before my death." 
 The assumption is natural, for di la is not only so 
 used in the Purgatorio constantly, but occurs twice, 
 with that sense, in speeches of Statius. 
 
 Nevertheless there is more than one reason for 
 doubting whether that sense is admissible here. 
 The first reason is a point of language, a doubt 
 whether, in the Italian of Dante, per me si stette, 
 or per me with any impersonal verb, could be 
 applied, as the current interpretation here assumes, 
 to a fact or circumstance, in which the speaker of 
 the per me was purely passive, in which he exercised 
 neither will nor even permission. Such a fact — if 
 we disregard the irrelevant case of suicide — is the
 
 192 Dante on the Baptism of Statius 
 
 standing or staying of a man in this life. He stays 
 while he is left, and goes when he is taken. How 
 then can it be said that the staying happens "by" 
 or rather "along of" him .-* In Latin, at all events, 
 such a use would seem to be impossible : per me 
 stabatur, per me statum est, must imply that the 
 speaker was at least permissive, not passive, in the 
 matter. In both the versions above cited will be 
 noticed a desire to modify the language in this 
 respect : in "while by me yon world was trod'' the 
 sense of stette is a little forced, and in " whilst there 
 was a station ybr me in that world" we might demur 
 to the rendering of per. This scruple can perhaps 
 be removed by illustrations from Dante or else- 
 where. Meanwhile it may count with graver and 
 more conclusive objections, which are founded upon 
 the whole context. 
 
 For let us suppose that mentre che di la per me 
 si stette may, so far as the words go, mean "while 
 I lived," "before I died." Statius is then made to 
 say this : " Before I died, I had conceived, from the 
 good morals of the Christians, a disesteem for all 
 opinions except theirs. And before my Thebaid 
 had reached [a certain place in Book vii], I had 
 joined the Christian Church." Is it possible that 
 the story should be told so preposterously and per- 
 versely, with such disregard of progress and order ? 
 If Statius actually sought baptism, in spite of his 
 fears, before he wrote the seventh book of the 
 Thebaid' s twelve, and at a time which, upon the 
 evidence of the Thebaid itself, must have been
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 193 
 
 years, six years and more, before his death, what 
 need is there to tell us, as a preliminary to this 
 information, that, all those years after his baptism, 
 he had come so far on the road to Christianity as 
 to conceive a distaste for paganism ? Can any other 
 passage be produced, in which Dante is guilty of such 
 an inversion ? 
 
 And further, the context not only excludes the 
 interpretation of "while I stayed on the other side" 
 by "while I lived," but imposes another interpreta- 
 tion — namely, "while I abstained from joining the 
 Church and receiving baptism." Let us illustrate 
 the matter by an example from familiar English. 
 The phrase "while he remained at the bar" is in 
 itself ambiguous. But it is not ambiguous in the 
 following: "While he remained at the bar, he had 
 become weary of the excessive labour, and before 
 1908 he accepted a place on the Bench." Nor again 
 in the following : " While he remained at the bar, 
 his head had begun to feel very uncomfortable, and 
 before ten o'clock he left the hotel and went to bed." 
 In each case the commencement is interpreted by 
 the conclusion. Exactly similar is the relation of 
 the clauses in Dante : "While I stayed on the other 
 side, I had come to dislike paganism ; and before [a 
 given date] I was baptised and entered the Christian 
 Churchy The last words relate to the words before, 
 and require them to mean " before I entered the 
 Church." 
 
 The question then arises, by what thought or 
 metaphor Dante is led to describe the delay or 
 
 V. L. E. 13
 
 194 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 hesitation of the convert, his abstention from the 
 decisive step of receiving initiation, as a staying 
 " on the other side." On the other side of what ? 
 The context again furnishes the answer, about which 
 indeed we could hardly doubt, even if we were left 
 to conjecture. The comparison of baptism to a river 
 is, for obvious reasons, so well established and 
 familiar, that in this connexion it would be almost 
 sufficiently signified by "on the other side" itself. 
 But Dante explicitly gives us the "river" — 
 
 " e pria ch' io conducessi i Greci a' fiumi 
 di Tebe poetando, ebb' io battesmo : " 
 
 " And before, as a poet, I brought the Greeks to the 
 rivers of Thebes, I had myself received baptism." 
 The emphasis on of Thebes, given by the position 
 of the words in the verse, and on myself given by 
 the inversion " ebb' io," imply an antithesis or com- 
 parison between Statius and the Greeks of the poem, 
 between the " rivers " to which they came and that 
 to which he came, the river, according to the familiar 
 figure, of baptism. This river he long hesitated to 
 pass ; he " halted on the other side," as a man who 
 was no hero might, when to be baptised was to be 
 in danger of death, — though, as he tells us, the delay 
 cost him centuries of expiation upon the purgatorial 
 mountain. But before he brought his Argives to the 
 Asopus, he himself had made his passage. 
 
 Now if this be the true meaning of Dante's words, 
 plainly then it is, or should be, no hard matter to 
 discover, in the place to which he refers us, the
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 195 
 
 grounds of his inference, or, at all events, the in- 
 terpretation which he adopted. He has told us 
 implicitly what we are to look for, precisely as he 
 implies, in the same canto, where we are to go for 
 the proof that Statins did in fact hold the opinions 
 of a Christian. We are to find, he says, in the 
 immediate context of the words Boeotaque ventuni 
 flumina, "they arrived at the Boeotian rivers,'' an 
 illustration of Statins' own position in reference to 
 Christianity, so exact that we must suppose it in- 
 tentional, and such as to imply that, before composing 
 it, he had taken the decisive step and had undergone 
 the initiatory rite. 
 
 Let us then read on from the words marked : 
 "Now see them come to the banks of Asopus, to 
 the rivers of Boeotia." There was a halt there. 
 The unfriendly stream, we are told, then chanced 
 to be swollen by a formidable flood, and the Argive 
 horsemen hesitated to pass. 
 
 " Then the daring Hippomedon forced down the 
 bank his shrinking steed, a great piece of earth roll- 
 ing beneath them, and dashing on to the mid water, 
 called, as he hung between bridle and shield, to those 
 behind : ' Gallants, come on ! As here I show you 
 the way, so will I at the wall, and will break you a 
 passage through the rampart of Thebes.' Then 
 plunged they all into the river, ashamed to be not the 
 first. So, when a herdsman would drive his herd 
 through a stream they do not know, the beasts 
 dismayed tvill hesitate. How far the other side, 
 how broad is the terror between ! So doubt they 
 
 13—2
 
 196 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 all. But when a leading bull goes in, when he 
 has made a ford, then gentler seems the flood, the 
 leaps not difficult, and the banks less distant than 
 before!' 
 
 " The beasts dismayed will hesitate " : stat triste 
 pecus. Dante, in his "per me si stette^' is transcrib- 
 ing the actual word of the Latin poet, and marks, 
 beyond mistake, the analogy which he read in the 
 whole incident, and especially in the concluding 
 simile. Nor would this reading be unreasonable, 
 if we could believe, as Dante believed and implies 
 in the same canto, that the Christianity of Statins, 
 and the fact that he was shamed into Christianity 
 by admiration of the martyrs, is demonstrable from 
 the exordium of the Achilleid. On this supposition, 
 the suspicion of an autobiographical reference in the 
 passing of the Asopus would be legitimate, from the 
 aptness of the parallel, even if there were no external 
 indication that the Argive soldiery here stand, by 
 allegory, for the soldiery of Christ. 
 
 But such an indication there is ; or at least Dante, 
 with his general views, would be likely to think so. 
 The arrival at the Asopus is preceded by a hasty and 
 violent march upon Boeotia — the poet being appa- 
 rently determined to show that he has done with 
 digressing, and means to quicken the pace. The 
 movement excites a desperate protest from the 
 oracles of the gods, which are against the Argive 
 enterprise, — although, let us observe, it is promoted 
 and stimulated by Jove. The oracles then protest, 
 not articulately, but by desperate disorder; and the
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 197 
 
 chief of them all, the oracle of Delphi, protests by 
 silence, by ceasing to speak — 
 
 "tunc et Apollineae tacuere oracula Cirrhae." 
 
 But the failure of the oracles, and in particular the 
 silence of Delphi, was universally held to have been 
 among the signs by which decadent paganism pro- 
 tested, and protested in vain, against the victory of 
 Christ and of Christianity. Milton has made the 
 thought familiar to Englishmen in his Hymn on the 
 Nativity — "The oracles are dumb;... Apollo from his 
 shrine can now no more divine." 
 
 With these ideas, it is at least not unnatural to 
 see a symbol of the Christian army in an army which 
 is thwarted by the silence of Delphi, and urged to 
 advance by that "Jove" whose name Dante actually 
 uses as a synonym for the crucified God. 
 
 It should however be observed, that Dante draws 
 a distinction between his reading of this place in the 
 Thebaid and his preceding inferences from the Achil- 
 leid, from the definitely Christian language (as Dante 
 held it to be) which Statins there uses, and from his 
 supposed reference to the Messianic prophecy of 
 Virgil. The passage of Dante now before us, the 
 passage which cites for authority the fording of the 
 Asopus, is introduced by these words : " That thou 
 mayst better see that which I outline," says Statins to 
 Virgil, '' I will stretch my hand to put i?i the colours'' — 
 "a colorar distender6 la mano." 
 
 It is but fair to suppose that this distinction is signi- 
 ficant. Dante means that his interpretation of the
 
 198 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 Thebaid is an imaginative interpretation, which might 
 be ventured without indiscretion, upon the assump- 
 tion that the "outline" of the history, the main fact 
 of Statins' Christianity, is, as he held it to be, estab- 
 lished. 
 
 So far then for the general meaning and main 
 purpose of the connexion which Dante makes, be- 
 tween the fording of the Asopus and the baptism of 
 the poet who describes it. But we have by no means 
 yet exhausted the significance, for Dante, of the words 
 " mentre che di la per me si stette," while I stayed 
 on the other side. We have already observed that 
 the arrival at the Theban river is, merely from a 
 literary point of view and in its relation to the story, 
 the end of a long, a too long, halting on the part of 
 Statius. Whatever may have been the history of his 
 opinions and his conduct as a man, it is certain and 
 obvious that, as composer of the Thebaid, he comes 
 too late to the Theban river, and stays too long on 
 the wrong side of it. No one, as we said, who is 
 familiar with the Thebaid, could read the words of 
 Dante, without perceiving this personal application 
 to the Latin poet's " conduct" of his story. 
 
 And since this is so, since the " staying " of 
 Statius is represented by Dante as doubly charac- 
 teristic, both of the composer and of the man, and 
 since Dante is at the pains to mark this trait by 
 the very word of Statius himself, one can hardly 
 escape the suspicion that Dante supposed a special 
 and personal connexion between Statius and this 
 particular word — stat.
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 199 
 
 It is certain that Dante did suppose such a con- 
 nexion. He held, and clearly implies, that the name 
 of the Latin poet, or rather the name by which he 
 was commonly known, was not a proper name but 
 a nickname, significant, and derived from stare in 
 the sense of "standing" or "staying." He implies 
 this necessarily, when he makes the Latin poet say 
 of himself: ''Statins I am still called by the folk on 
 the other side [of the world] " — 
 
 " Stazio la gente ancor di Ik mi noma." 
 
 It is surely unnatural, not to say impossible, that 
 a man should so speak of his proper and only 
 name. With no propriety, with no sense, could the 
 spirit of Shakespeare be made to say: " Shakespeaj'-e 
 I am still called." Why should the name have 
 been changed, and what other name could have 
 been substituted ? Such a way of speaking implies 
 that the name in question might, or even should, 
 have been dropped : that there is another, and this 
 other more strictly appropriate. Just so the author 
 of Middlemarch might properly and significantly 
 say : " By the living world I am still called George 
 Eliot,'' meaning that her literary reputation persists, 
 and that, in this connexion, her literary name is still 
 preferred to designations personally more proper. 
 
 And the same thing is implied when Statius 
 speaks of a "more honourable" and "more durable" 
 name which, by a certain date, he bore. At the 
 time of the destruction of Jerusalem, in a.d. 70, he 
 was, he says, "with the name which more lasts and
 
 200 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 more honours, famous enough." The name, say the 
 expositors of Dante, is that of "poet"; and this is 
 so far true, that it must be a note or mark of the 
 poet as such. But whether the mere word poet could 
 properly be so indicated, one may well doubt ; and 
 when we compare the subsequent and more explicit 
 reference to the name "Statius," we must conclude 
 that this, and not merely "poet," is the name by 
 which he was " famous enough." This last expres- 
 sion, famoso assai, is noticeable, since it suggests at 
 once, by its colour, that the name in question was 
 not an unqualified compliment, but was at least 
 susceptible of an interpretation not laudatory. And 
 this accords well with the obvious fact that Dante, 
 though he admired Statius, did not over-rate him : 
 "Without the Aeneid',' he makes Statius say, " I 
 should not have weighed a drachm." This is a 
 strong, perhaps too strong, acknowledgement of the 
 later poet's imitative dependence ; and we might 
 presume therefore, and we have seen, that Dante 
 was not blind to what else may be alleged against 
 him, and in particular to his longueurs, the marked 
 tendency of the Tkebaid, especially in the earlier 
 part, to be "halting" and dilatory. He connected 
 this quality, we have seen, with the word stare, and 
 would naturally connect with it the name Statius, 
 on the assumption that this was a literary nick- 
 name. 
 
 But what in the world, it may be asked, should 
 lead Dante, or those whom he followed, to suppose 
 that Statius was in fact such a name, — that it was
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 201 
 
 not the poet's proper name ? Let us not however 
 be impatient. Like every other part of the theory 
 respecting Statins and his history, which the scholars 
 of the thirteenth century seem to have extracted 
 from their data, this conjecture about his name, 
 though not true, was by no means without plausible 
 grounds. It is even true, in a certain way, that 
 " Statins " was not the name of the poet, not in that 
 sense which might most readily be supposed. If 
 the present reader were only a little less learned 
 than he doubtless is, one might easily prove this 
 point. The name Statins has the form and appear- 
 ance of a Roman family- name, a name like Vergilizcs, 
 Horatius, Propertius, Tei^entius, Livius. We our- 
 selves at this day, if we did not know the contrary, 
 should certainly assume that Statins was such a name, 
 the poet's family-name. It is even not unlikely that 
 some persons who hear it do so suppose. Yet in 
 fact, we know, this is not the case. The poet's 
 family-name was Papinitis ; and his full name, P. 
 Papinitis Statiiis, has the unusual appearance of 
 containing two family-names, and no personal name, 
 or cognomen, at all. As a matter of fact, Statius 
 was, it seems, one of the very few names of this 
 form (names in -ius), which were used, even from 
 early times of Roman history, in place of a cognomen. 
 But of this the scholars of the thirteenth century, 
 without disgrace, might not be aware. It was not, 
 then, by any means an absurd conjecture, that the 
 name Statitis was a fiction, an artist-name or poet- 
 name of the sort familiar to Italians, which in
 
 202 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 
 
 common currency had replaced the proper name 
 Papinius. 
 
 As for the significance of the name, if it were 
 fictitious and therefore significant, about this there 
 could be no doubt. The author of the Thebaid 
 himself, in his brief epilogue, dwells upon the enor- 
 mous time over which the production had extended 
 — twelve books in twelve years — the consequence 
 of his slow and scrupulous habit of work. He 
 himself there betrays some doubt whether this 
 laborious and dilatory method had been altogether 
 favourable to his art. When we take with this 
 the fact that the story so told is marked, more 
 deeply perhaps than any composition of equal fame, 
 with the fault of suspensory interludes and deferred 
 progression, it is obvious to suppose that the name 
 Statins, if it were bestowed upon him for his literary 
 quality, referred to his stationes or halts. It marked 
 the impatience with which the eager and admiring 
 audiences of Papinius attended upon the too leisurely 
 progress of their favourite epic. The eagerness of 
 the Roman audiences is noticed by Dante, who cites 
 for it, by a verbal allusion \ the solitary passage 
 where Statius is mentioned by Juvenal, — the only 
 sound material for the life of Statius, except the 
 Thebaid and Achilleid, which the thirteenth century 
 would appear to have possessed. Even the impati- 
 ence might not unfairly be inferred from the same 
 passage, since we are told by Juvenal that Roman 
 
 ^ Purg. XXI 88, dolce . . .vocale spirto, compared with Juvenal 
 vii 82 vocem iucundam.
 
 Dante on the Baptism of Statins 203 
 
 society "ran" to the delights of the Thebaid, "when 
 Statins had promised a day." With all this, if it 
 were once assumed that the name of Statins or 
 "Stayer" was a literary nickname, bestowed upon 
 the poet in the quizzical familiarity of fondness, no 
 one could doubt what it meant ; and this obvious 
 interpretation is what Dante has in view when he 
 contrasts the time, during which Statins stood, 
 stayed, or halted, with the moment when, at last, 
 he brought his Greeks to the river of Thebes. If 
 the name of Stayer, and the disposition to be hesi- 
 tating and dilatory, were also appropriate, as Dante 
 implies, to the moral character of a man who, after 
 he had become in opinions a Christian, abstained 
 long, for want of courage, from the reception of 
 baptism, and who deferred the actual confession 
 of his new religion until death made confession 
 impossible, — then all the more justifiable and the 
 more interesting was it to insist upon the history 
 of the name, and to make it, as Dante does in fact 
 make it, the main pivot of the poet's autobio- 
 graphy.
 
 / 
 
 THE BIRTH OF VIRGIL 
 
 (Dante, Inferno i 70) 
 
 Nacqui sub Julio, an cor che fosse tardi, 
 e vissi a Roma sotto '1 buono Augusto, 
 al tempo degli Dei falsi e bugiardi. 
 
 " I WAS born tinder Julitis, though it was late ; 
 and lived at Rome under the good Augustus, at 
 the time of the false and lying gods." — With these 
 words the shade of the great Mantuan poet, the 
 founder of the Roman Imperial literature, introduces 
 himself to Dante at the outset of his journey through 
 Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, as the guide destined 
 to accompany and direct him through so much of 
 his journey as was terrestrial, and lay within or upon 
 this earth. For the first two stages, for the passage 
 through the Underworld, and for the ascent of the 
 Mount of Purgatory at the Antipodes, Virgil, as 
 he announces, will be a sufficient and authorised 
 director; but for Heaven another and worthier guide 
 will be provided ; " for that Emperor, who reigns 
 above, because I was rebellious to His law, wills 
 not that entrance into His city should be made by 
 means of me."
 
 The Birth of Virgil 205 
 
 The symbolic purpose of this distinction between 
 the present and the promised guide, is transparent 
 and universally recognised ; and equally transparent 
 is the propriety, from Dante's point of view, of the 
 function assigned to Virgil. Truth is attained partly 
 by human intelligence, but the highest truth only 
 by divine grace and revelation. Virgil, the inheritor 
 and consummator of the intellectual efforts which 
 preceded the Christian revelation — Virgil, who gave 
 a final form and a new beginning to that language 
 and poetry of the Roman Empire which was for 
 Dante the eternal language and poetry of the 
 world — Virgil, who forefelt, indeed, and foreshowed 
 (as Dante believed) the coming of Christ, yet was 
 himself the first and most powerful preacher not of 
 Christ but of Anti-Christ, the first to salute effectively 
 that new deity of the Roman Caesar which, embodied 
 in the successors of Julius and Augustus, fought 
 successfully for three centuries against the accession 
 of the Messiah to His rightful sovereignty upon 
 earth — Virgil, both by his achievements and his 
 limits, represented exactly, for Dante, the culmi- 
 nation and the defects of Man not yet enlightened 
 by the self-revelation of God. 
 
 The brief biographical particulars by which 
 Virgil is made to disclose his identity, have, in all 
 respects but one, that close and precise relevance 
 to the purpose, which is perhaps the most remark- 
 able feature of Dante's style and way of thinking. 
 We are told, first, that he was an Italian, a full- 
 born native of the Imperial state; secondly, that he
 
 2o6 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 celebrated the "coming of Aeneas," that is to say, 
 the foundation of Rome, and more particularly, the 
 foundation of Rome as a spiritual state, the seat 
 prepared for the Vicar of Christ. This significance 
 of Aeneas' enterprise, though not here stated by 
 Virgil, is expressly and fully set forth by Dante in 
 the following discourse between the two poets ; and 
 we are correctly referred for it to the Sixth Aeneid 
 in particular, the account of Aeneas' journey to the 
 Underworld, and the revelations there made to him, 
 " the causes of his victory and of the Papal Mantle\" 
 We are thus shown precisely in what respect the 
 Divina Conmiedia depends historically and poetically 
 upon the Aeneid, and why Virgil, and no other, 
 should hold in the later poem, in the Aeneid of a 
 better Rome, that large but limited place which he 
 actually does. Thirdly, we are told that the life of 
 Virgil coincided with "the time of the false and 
 lying gods," that is to say, with the establishment 
 under Augustus of the Imperial pretensions to deity. 
 And lastly^ Virgil informs us that he was himself a 
 rebel against the true and heavenly "Emperor"; 
 that is to say, he recognized, acclaimed, and promoted 
 those false pretensions of deified men, by which the 
 spiritual Governor of the World, the veritable God- 
 Man, and his appointed representatives, the Pontiffs, 
 were unlawfully debarred from their terrestrial throne. 
 All this is perfectly true and exactly appropriate ; 
 the biographical statement could not possibly be 
 
 * Inf. II 13 — 27.
 
 The Birth of Virgil 207 
 
 improved, with regard to its intention, by any 
 omission or addition whatsoever. 
 
 But with these statements Dante, to the amaze- 
 ment of his expositors from earHest to latest, combines 
 one assertion which, taken in the prima facie sense, 
 is not only false, but would, if it were true, destroy 
 the very basis of all the rest. " I was born," says 
 Virgil, '' wnd&r Julitcs, although it was late," "Nacqui 
 sub Julio, ancor che fosse tardi." This is held, not 
 unnaturally, if we take the sentence alone, to mean 
 that Virgil was born when Julius Caesar was monarch 
 (48-44 B.C.), but very near the end of his life and 
 reign, that is to say, in or not earlier than the year 
 45 B.C. 
 
 Now in the first place, this date is enormously 
 wrong, too late by twenty-five years or something 
 near a generation, the true date being 70 b.c. And 
 further, if the alleged date were right, the rest of 
 the biography, though it might be in some sort true, 
 manifestly could not bear the significance which 
 Dante here and elsewhere assigns to it. On both 
 grounds, error and incongruity, the statement would 
 be surprising if found in Dante anywhere, and is 
 especially surprising in this place. 
 
 On the mere question of error, the probability 
 or improbability that Dante should be wrong by 
 twenty-five years respecting one of the chief dates 
 in the first century before Christ, we need not dwell 
 at any length. Among his expositors, one of the 
 most positive in pronouncing the error, merely as 
 an error, impossible, is one of the nearest to the
 
 2o8 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 poet's own time, and the best qualified, so far, to 
 estimate his general equipment. Nor is it easy to 
 refute Benvenuto upon this point. The age which 
 witnessed the establishment of the Roman Empire 
 was more interesting to Dante than any except (if 
 we should except) his own. He possessed, and 
 claims and proves himself to have deeply studied, 
 books which gave a general outline of that age, 
 sufficient to exclude utterly a statement so absurd 
 as that the birth of Virgil nearly coincided with the 
 death of Julius Caesar. Nor, so far as I am aware, 
 has any error of his, comparable in matter and 
 gravity, ever been cited by way of illustration. It 
 would require us, for instance, to suppose that 
 Dante had not got the faintest notion, even at 
 second-hand, of the contents and historical bearing 
 of Virgil's Fifth Eclogue. The supposition is perhaps 
 not disprovable by chapter and verse, but few readers 
 of Dante will venture to call it likely. And even if 
 we assume the possibility of the error, there would 
 still remain the incongruity, the irrelevance, and 
 worse than irrelevance, of the statement in this 
 particular place. The whole account of Virgil here 
 given comes briefly to this, that he was the originator, 
 the founder, of Roman Imperial literature, the leader 
 in the production of poetry framed and governed by 
 the conception of the Roman Empire as a sacred 
 world-state, — the first of the Augustans. This is 
 fact ; and all that Dante here says of Virgil, and 
 the whole propriety of the place assigned to Virgil 
 in the Divina Cofnmedia, depends upon the fact.
 
 The Birth of Virgil 209 
 
 " Art thou then that Virgil, and thcit /ountain which 
 pours abroad so rich a stream of speech ? O glory 
 and light of other poets ! — " Such is the salutation 
 with which Dante, blushing with humility and delight, 
 receives the Great Leader's description of his career. 
 What is signified by these figures oi fountain and 
 light is plain enough here in their context, and is 
 made still plainer in the Fourth Canto. There 
 we see Virgil (and Dante with him) rejoining his 
 compeers, the group of Roman and Imperial poets 
 with whom, in the Limbo of the Underworld, is his 
 eternal abode. Homer is included in the group, to 
 represent the preparatory work of Greece ; Dante 
 himself is adopted into it, to represent heirs and 
 successors. The rest are the Augustan poets in 
 the large and political meaning of the word, the 
 Latin poets of the Empire — arranged, we may note, 
 correctly in order of date — Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. 
 Approaching these, Virgil is none the less saluted 
 as the highest Poet {Taltissimo poetay. He is the 
 chief, the leader, the prince of human language and 
 thought, as estimated by the standard of a Christian 
 Imperialist, by Dante, a true and loyal subject of 
 the Holy Roman Empire. All this is intelligible 
 and true, if we assume the true date of Virgil and 
 his work, its true relation in time to that cardinal 
 change of Roman ideas and of the Latin language 
 which bears the name of Augustus. It is not true, 
 unless we assume, as the fact is, that the decisive 
 operation of Virgil preceded the whole Imperialist 
 
 ^ InJ. IV 80. 
 
 V. L. E. 14
 
 2IO The Birth of Virgil 
 
 movement in literature, and set the pattern of it ; 
 that all the work of Ovid, and all the vitally 
 significant work of Horace, is subsequent to the 
 decisive entrance of Virgil ; that all the body of 
 Augustan poetry is later than the Bucolics and 
 Georgics, most of it later than the Aeneid\ that it is 
 all in various ways not only Augustan but Virgilian, 
 and could not have been what it is, if Virgil, first 
 and long before, had not sounded his new and 
 inaugurating note. 
 
 But how is this conceivable, if, as Dante is 
 understood to say, Virgil was but just born when 
 Julius Caesar fell, if Virgil was an infant at the time 
 when Augustus achieved power? If this was so, 
 then one of two things — either Virgil, as a poet, 
 instead of being the leader of the Augustan age, 
 must have been one of its latest products ; or else, 
 if the Augustan movement in thought and language 
 really began with Virgil, then all the Augustans 
 were junior by a generation to Augustus himself, 
 and some of them, Ovid for instance, would be 
 junior by two generations. 
 
 Such is the palpable absurdity, the plain con- 
 tradiction, of which Dante is guilty at the very 
 outset and foundation of his systematic poem, if, 
 when he made Virgil say — 
 
 Nacqui sub Julio, ancor che fosse tardi, 
 
 he meant that the birth of Virgil preceded indeed, 
 but barely preceded, the death of the first Roman 
 Emperor. The offence would be aggravated, we
 
 The Birth of Virgil 2 1 1 
 
 may remark, by the ostentation of exactness. We 
 are particularly asked to note, as if it were not only 
 true but specially important, that though the birth 
 of the poet did precede the death of the sovereign, 
 it was not by much — and this although what follows 
 cannot be properly appreciated, unless we know and 
 realise that Virgil, as an adult and accomplished 
 poet, was the first who proclaimed effectively to the 
 world the deity of the deceased Julius, and asserted 
 the devolution of that sacred character to the in- 
 heritor of his name and power. 
 
 To call this hypothesis impossible would be 
 perhaps too much. In the way of human error, 
 nothing perhaps is strictly impossible. But more 
 improbable no hypothesis could be, and as a basis 
 of interpretation it is inadmissible. Any supposition 
 must be preferable, or in default of any, none — the 
 abandonment of the verse as hopelessly obscure. 
 And to try first the positive and more comfortable 
 way, we should consider exhaustively, what are the 
 conditions to be satisfied by an interpretation really 
 acceptable. 
 
 Three things such an interpretation must do, 
 none of which the primary interpretation does. 
 First, it must show some significant and interesting 
 connexion between the birth of Virgil and the 
 person of the first Emperor in his character as a 
 pretended god. For this, and this only, is the 
 aspect in which Julius is here introduced : he was 
 one, and the first, of the "false and lying gods." 
 We have hitherto assumed, without remark, that 
 
 14 — 2
 
 212 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 this description signifies the Roman Emperors, and 
 especially the two who are mentioned, the founders 
 of the cult, Julius and Augustus. But as com- 
 mentaries on Dante seem to be generally silent 
 about this, it should perhaps be further explained. 
 There is nothing, except the Roman Emperors, to 
 which the description, " false and lying gods," can 
 be here referred, if we duly regard the context and 
 the opinions of Dante. He could not so describe, 
 for instance, the gods of Roman mythology, Jupiter 
 and the other Olympians. Milton might have so 
 described Jupiter, and indeed does use very similar 
 language about him ; because Milton held the view 
 that the pagan gods were really devils, who deceived 
 their worshippers into accepting them for deities. 
 But Dante held the view, totally different and at 
 least equally defensible, that the figure of Jupiter 
 was an imperfect adumbration, a human and partly 
 erroneous conception, of the true Deity, God himself. 
 He actually speaks of Christ as the crucified Jove 
 {Giove crocifisso) ; and this way of looking at the 
 matter is not only well-founded in history, but 
 absolutely necessary to Roman Catholicism as appre- 
 hended by Dante. Moreover, even if Jupiter and 
 the rest had been, for Dante, "lying gods," it would 
 still be pointless to distinguish the time of Virgil 
 as the time of those gods — who were worshipped 
 for centuries after Virgil exactly as they had been 
 for ages before. The worship of the Augustus, on 
 the other hand, was the essential and characteristic 
 novelty of Virgil's time. To this therefore clearly
 
 The Birth of Virgil 213 
 
 Dante here refers, borrowing his sarcasm upon 
 the Imperial pretensions from such authors as his 
 favourite Lucan, who, in his treatment of the subject, 
 fluctuates between pompous flattery and scathing con- 
 tempt. Lucan's "dead gods of Rome" (Romanorum 
 manes deor^m) signifies the same thing as Dante's 
 bugiardi Dei^ and puts it much more strongly. 
 Moral distinctions between different Emperors may 
 of course be admitted — and Dante does admit 
 them by making Virgil call his patron "the good 
 Augustus" — without prejudice to the condemnation 
 of all the Emperors, in respect of their claim to 
 deity, as liars. As a deity, then, a pretended deity, 
 Julius is here brought in ; and the first problem for 
 our interpretation is to find some real and interesting 
 connexion between Julius, in this character, and the 
 date of the birth of Virgil. 
 
 Further, a satisfactory explanation of the words 
 " I was born sub Julio " must show why " under 
 Julius" should be expressed not in Italian but in 
 Latin. Latin is little used by Dante in his Italian 
 poetry, and when it is, there is commonly an obvious 
 reason or necessity for the licence. A Latin psalm, 
 hymn, prayer must of course be indicated by its 
 proper words — Te Deum, Veni Creator, In exitu 
 Israel; and a poetical quotation, if sufBciently im- 
 portant, may be similarly distinguished — nianibus 
 date lilia plenis. But no literary offence is more 
 displeasing to a delicate taste than gratuitous poly- 
 glot, an alien idiom inserted arbitrarily or to save 
 the trouble of speaking correctly. If, then, Dante
 
 214 1^^^ Birth of Virgil 
 
 means no more than that Virgil was born in the 
 reign of Julius, why does he not say it in the 
 vernacular ? 
 
 Lastly, and above all, we should require some 
 real justification for the strange and enigmatical 
 words ancor eke fosse tardi, " though it was late.'' 
 " I was born sub Julio, though it was late," is no 
 proper way to express the sense hitherto assumed, 
 " I was born late in the time of Julius." So clumsy 
 and pointless a periphrasis is not fairly attributable 
 to the composer of the Divina Commedia. 
 
 Let us, then, start again without prejudice ; and 
 since the supposition of Dante's ignorance or care- 
 lessness has proved so unfruitful, let us start by 
 supposing on the contrary his complete knowledge 
 and profound study of the subject. For really this is, 
 in the present matter, the more natural supposition. 
 All the material which we have for the life of Virgil, 
 with insignificant exceptions, was extant in the time 
 of Dante, and might naturally be open to his inves- 
 tigation. What historical documents he had, he 
 studied, and so did his contemporaries, with a 
 passionate and scrupulous thoroughness which no 
 age has surpassed. Let us suppose, then, that he 
 knew and had considered all that there is to know 
 about the birth of Virgil ; that the learned readers, 
 whom he desired to satisfy \ knew it all too ; that 
 
 ^ This should always be carefully borne in mind in considering 
 a problem in Dante. He assumes learning in his readers, all the 
 learning of his time, and makes no attempt to meet the popular 
 intelligence.
 
 The Birth of Virgil 215 
 
 he assumes their knowledge, and might naturally 
 write whatever such readers could interpret. And 
 let us then ask, what is known or knowable about 
 the date of the birth of Virgil ? 
 
 Tradition places it in the year 684 of Rome 
 (70 B.C. by our era), in the month of October, and 
 on the Ides or 15th day of the month. From the 
 year (as has been only too completely ascertained) 
 we can deduce nothing which throws any light upon 
 Dante. The year had no special association what- 
 ever with the name or the fortunes of the first 
 Emperor. Let us, then, next try the month. At 
 first sight this looks equally unpromising : the 
 Emperor is not, and never was, associated with 
 the month of October. He has, indeed, a month 
 of his own — a month which, bearing his name, has 
 eternalised (so far as it is possible for man) the 
 memory of his unique and almost superhuman great- 
 ness. But it is the month oi July. And it is scarcely 
 too much to say that, if any event is to be associated 
 through its date with the name of Julius, it is 
 through the month of Quintilis, converted into 
 Julius in honour of his deity, that the link of 
 association must be sought. 
 
 In this embarrassment we go back to Dante; 
 and we may now observe, not without hope, that 
 he appends to his sub Julio the exception or 
 qualification, "although it was late." What was 
 late ? We have assumed hitherto that the subject 
 of this remark is the birth of Virgil. But Dante 
 does not say so ; he says that something was late,
 
 2i6 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 and so far as the words go, may perfectly well 
 mean that it was the date, that is to say, the month, 
 and not the infant that was belated. And this, as a 
 matter of fact, it certainly was. In 70 B.C. all the 
 true months — the months of the natural year — were, 
 and long had been, in consequence of accumulating 
 error, behind the nominal calendar. The accumu- 
 lated error amounted to almost exactly three months, 
 and persisted, as all the world knows, until Julius 
 Caesar, in 46 B.C., rectified it by inserting ninety 
 days (three months) in a single year, and took 
 means to prevent the error in future ; whereby it 
 came to pass that his name, as that of a deity, was 
 given to the month in which he was born. 
 
 Consequently, a child whose birth was recorded, 
 in the year 684 of Rome, as occurring in the middle 
 of October, was really born in the seventh (not the 
 tenth) month of the true year, in the height of 
 summer, not in the autumn ; and if the birth had 
 been properly recorded, according to the true calendar 
 as afterwards established by the Emperor, would 
 have been described, and should now properly be 
 described, as born sub Julio, in the month and under 
 the auspices of Julius. But the true and proper 
 name of the month was then "late," "lagging," 
 "behindhand," by a whole quarter: Quintilis, or 
 Julius, which should have been present, lay nominally 
 three months in arrear ; and Virgil therefore figures 
 in history, though falsely, as born in the middle of 
 October. 
 
 This, then, I venture to think, is what Dante
 
 The Birth of Vwgil 217 
 
 means by his terse but correct observation. Deeply- 
 interested as he was in astronomical and calendric 
 studies, and in the history of the age which witnessed 
 the foundation of Imperial Rome, he might very 
 naturally have observed the error respecting the 
 season and true character of the time, which pre- 
 sumably lies in the statement that Virgil was born 
 on the Ides of October. Nor would he think it 
 pedantic or irrelevant, as perhaps we might, to 
 introduce a notice of this error, and of the fact as 
 corrected, into his poetical biography of the Augustan 
 poet. It is irrelevant only upon the assumption that 
 there cannot be any real significance in the true fact, 
 the birth of the first Imperial poet in that portion 
 of the year which was to bear the name of the first 
 Emperor. But Dante of course would not have 
 admitted this. As a sound astrologer, he would 
 have maintained, on the contrary, that the fact was, 
 or probably might be, a sign of destiny ; and more 
 than a sign, an actual element in the natural and 
 spiritual influences which contributed to mould the 
 nascent soul of the Imperial poet and prophet, and 
 to fit him for his appointed work of revealing and 
 worthily celebrating the evolution of the Roman 
 world-state, from the beginning by Aeneas to the 
 new beginning by Julius and Augustus, — the build- 
 ing of Imperial Rome, of a throne for the Vicar of 
 Christ. 
 
 It is true, as Dante sadly acknowledges, that 
 Virgil did not perceive (and perhaps, when we 
 consider how much was revealed to him in his
 
 2i8 The Birth of Virgil 
 
 Fourth Eclogue, was guilty of rebellion in refusing 
 to perceive) that the throne of Rome, the spiritual 
 throne, was not really destined, and could not law- 
 fully be given, to the head of the political Empire. 
 In making Julius and Augustus into gods, in an- 
 nexing the spiritual headship to the political, the 
 poet did the very same wrong which was done 
 reversely by those of the Popes who strove to 
 annex the political supremacy to the spiritual — the 
 error and crime against which the whole Divina 
 Commedia is designed to protest. But it was none 
 the less true that Virgil, by the will and providence 
 of the Almighty, powerfully aided to build the 
 throne. For this reason chiefly he holds his place 
 in the story and symbolism of Dante ; and for this 
 reason Dante thought fit to introduce him with the 
 statement that he "was born sub Julio'' — Italian 
 could not give the point — '' sub Julio {though Julius 
 was belated), and lived at Rome under the good 
 Augustus, at the time of the false and lying gods."
 
 / 
 
 ) 
 
 THE ALTAR OF MERCY 
 
 
 When Gibbon, preparing the foundations of his 
 history \ distributed the views of religion which pre- 
 vailed in the Roman Empire before it was invaded 
 by Christianity, under the triple division of the 
 magistrates, the philosophers, and the people — 
 defined respectively as those to whom all religions 
 were equally useful, equally false, and equally true — 
 how did it not occur to him that his enumeration 
 was singularly defective ? He repeats his epigram 
 in various forms again and again, and bases his 
 whole account of the conditions with which the 
 invading doctrines had to deal, upon the assump- 
 tion that the action of the State, the speculations 
 of theorists, and the practices of the populace, 
 include between them all those aspects of religion 
 with which the historian is concerned. It is not 
 surprising that the outcome of this procedure is to 
 represent the evolution of the Graeco- Roman world 
 into its Christian shape as a sort of cataclysmic 
 puzzle. A rival epigrammatist might say, with at 
 least equal truth, that the historian's catalogue of 
 
 ^ Chapter ii.
 
 2 20 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 mankind omits just all the ** people " whose feelings 
 are most important. And similarly, in the neatly- 
 numbered list of causes by which the enigmatic 
 phenomenon is to be explained \ we note that the 
 preparations and approaches upon the pagan side 
 count apparently for little or nothing. It hardly 
 seems to be thought worth mentioning that, in 
 various ways, that vast and influential part of 
 society which is neither official, nor scientific, nor 
 superstitious, had been long in training, when the 
 new preachers came, to receive just such a gift 
 as they brought. 
 
 This exaggerated sharpness of division between 
 Christians and Pagans is characteristic of historical 
 study in the times which follow the rupture of the 
 Catholic world in the seventeenth century; and it 
 attained its height in the eighteenth. The tendency 
 is not confined to the sceptical side. Johnson, who 
 roundly asserts that Horace, when he says — 
 
 parcus deorum cultor et infrequens 
 insanientis dum sapientiae 
 
 consultus erro, nunc retrorsutn 
 vela dare atque iterate cursus 
 cogor relictos : 
 
 is merely playing with the idea of an awakened 
 conscience, was as little disposed as Gibbon, his 
 adversary in the Literary Club, to recognize that 
 between "religion" and "the classics" there could 
 be any material connexion or affinity. It is strange 
 to go back five centuries, to an age of comparative 
 
 ^ Chapter xv.
 
 The Altar of Mercy 221 
 
 ignorance, and to see how the students of the 
 thirteenth century, with their scanty apparatus and 
 defective method, could nevertheless read the records 
 of the transition to Christianity in a reasonable way, 
 simply because it had not occurred to them that the 
 cause of Catholicism could be either fortified or im- 
 peached by misrepresenting the manner of its growth, 
 or by arbitrarily severing it from some of its natural 
 and necessary antecedents. When Dante says that 
 the poet Statius, by his studies in Virgil, had been 
 led so far towards the coming revelation that he 
 promptly recognized its truth, and was actually 
 > initiated by baptism into the religion which he had 
 \ not the courage openly to profess, Dante asserts, 
 I no doubt, much more than is likely to be true, and 
 I his proofs (which in their general outline are not 
 I beyond the reach of a fair guess) would have been 
 rejected, and rightly, by a better critic of documents. 
 But he has the root of the matter. He sees what 
 to any simple and unprejudiced mind is obvious, 
 ' that the Thebaid of Statius is a document of the 
 first importance to the history of European religion. 
 It does not, indeed, represent any of Gibbon's cate- 
 gories : it is neither political thought, nor philosophic, 
 nor popular. But it stands for something not less 
 significant, as a prognostic of development, than any 
 of these — the vague aspirations of classes disposed 
 to think, but not disposed, or indeed able, to think 
 with rigour. To represent such aspirations is neces- 
 sarily the chief business of poetry which asks to be 
 taken seriously and to achieve a permanent place.
 
 222 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 In a picture of the society into which Christianity 
 came, to leave out the Thebaid, or not to put the 
 Thebaid well in the foreground, would be like 
 describing the England of the eighteenth century 
 without notice of the Essay on Man, or the England 
 of the nineteenth without In Memoriam. 
 
 Every age has its own way of error, and we, 
 no doubt, ours. But our way is not the Voltairian. 
 If we do not read our Aeneid exactly as Dante 
 read it, we are at least aware that, when Dante 
 described the visions of Virgil as a main contri- 
 bution to the establishment of Catholicism, when 
 he wrote that the journey of Aeneas to Hades was 
 "the occasion of the Papal mantle," he stated a fact, 
 and a fact of vital significance. How we read the 
 Thebaid, it were perhaps best not to inquire. One 
 cannot read everything ; and it would appear that, 
 in the whole repertory of important European lite- 
 rature, no part just now lies more in the shade than 
 the "minor" Latin epics. The Thebaid, indeed, does 
 not deserve that epithet in any sense worth notice. 
 But at present it goes with the rest ; and for this 
 reason a reminiscence, even of its main aspects, may 
 have freshness enough to hold attention for a few 
 minutes. If it should even convey the impression, 
 that to read the poem continuously from beginning 
 to end is a thing not impossible or unprofitable or 
 unpleasant, that is no more than may be very fairly 
 affirmed. 
 
 The immediate purpose of the poem — a purpose 
 which it completely achieved — was to satisfy the
 
 The Altar of Mercy 223 
 
 taste of fashionable audiences at Rome during that 
 precise period, the latter part of our first century, 
 when the stir of the Christian movement began to 
 be felt there. It is in form a descriptive romance, 
 and doubtless depended upon its romantic qualities 
 for a first hearing. But the author aspired to more 
 than this, and believed, before his work was com- 
 plete, that he might modestly expect more. In 
 the brief epilogue, which records his ambition and 
 forecasts the future of his enterprise, he desires for 
 his poem a place upon the same line, at however 
 humble a distance, as the Aeneid itself. To rival 
 that "sacred" book the Thebaid will not pretend; 
 but it does pretend to be of the same kind, and 
 to have a post in the sacred procession. And in 
 partial confirmation of this claim, the author adds 
 that not only has his work obtained the notice of 
 Caesar, but — what he justly estimates as more 
 significant for his pretension — it has already made 
 its way, like the Aeneid itself, into the schools : 
 already, he says, it is an instrument of education. 
 No mere romancer, no mere story-teller, could have 
 ventured to use such language. We cannot con- 
 ceive the Lay of the Last Minstrel — a poem which 
 presents, as a romance, some actual resemblance in 
 type and method to the work of Statius — we cannot 
 conceive even the Idylls of the King, put forward 
 by Scott or by Tennyson as following, however 
 distantly and respectfully, in the wake and track 
 of Paradise Lost. They have not the " sacred " 
 character. This character Statius attributes of
 
 224 "^^^ Altar of Mercy 
 
 course, as any one of that age would do, to the 
 Aeneid\ and for the Thebaid he claims that it is 
 in kind the same or similar ; the Thebaid also (to 
 translate his phrases into our language) is, he thinks, 
 or may be, in some sort a gospel. 
 
 It would have been strange if he had thought 
 otherwise. The Thebaid attempts not only to 
 latinize, but also to expand and deepen into larger 
 significance, a story which for several centuries had 
 held a chief place in the religious symbolism of that 
 Hellenic or Hellenistic world to which Statius by 
 birth belonged. 
 
 This story, which here we need not tell, descends 
 originally from a source not now open to investi- 
 gation, the " Theban cycle," — that portion of the 
 ancient poetry passing under the name of Homer, 
 which had Thebes for its centre of interest, as 
 another portion, the " Trojan cycle," revolved about 
 Troy. Whatever may have been the artistic merits 
 of the Theban cycle — we have no reason to suppose 
 them small — its moral interest seems to have been 
 great from the first, superior probably to that of 
 the Trojan. In that chapter of the epic narrative 
 which forms the substructure of the Thebaid, the 
 subject was the doom of unlawful war, the defeat 
 and condign punishment of a wicked confederacy, 
 resolved, in despite of warning, to prosecute an un- 
 holy quarrel. In the earliest version which we now 
 possess, the Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus, the 
 ethical and humane sentiment is already powerful, 
 much more so than in the Iliad or even in the
 
 The Altar of Mercy 225 
 
 Odyssey ; nor does it seem likely that this element 
 is entirely assignable to the Athenian dramatist. 
 
 But into these early developments we need not 
 enter, because in the fifth century B.C., and in the 
 latter part of it, later (that is to say) than Aeschylus, 
 a totally new colour was given to the story by the 
 establishment, if not the first invention, of a sequel, 
 devised in honour of Athens, and representing the 
 spirit of that new humanism of which Athens 
 became the accepted centre and guardian. 
 
 In the original version, the wicked and defeated 
 warriors incurred, as part of their natural punish- 
 ment, the refusal of funeral rites. The poets of the 
 cycle, like the poet of the Iliad, doubtless accepted 
 this as an incident horrible indeed, but proper to 
 war. But according to the new version, Athens, as 
 the champion of humanity, refused to permit such an 
 outrage, and enforced the common right of the race 
 by forcibly rescuing the corpses from the insolent 
 victors, and committing them solemnly to religious 
 sepulture. The adoption of this supplement (when- 
 ever first propounded) as an article of Athenian 
 religion can be dated with near precision. There 
 is no trace of it in the Seven Against Thebes, 
 which indeed would seem rather to exclude it. 
 But about fifty years later it appears complete in 
 the Suppliants of Euripides. In this play and 
 in the Children of Heracles, by the same author, 
 where Athens plays a somewhat similar part as the 
 vindicator of the oppressed and a respecter even 
 of the enemy, we see for the first time clearly the 
 
 V. L. E. 15
 
 2 26 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 conception of Hellas, and of Athens in particular, 
 as the guardian and champion of humanity. Then 
 for the first time it became distinctly visible, at least 
 to an enthusiastic few, that the human world can 
 be imagined, and might possibly be realized in fact, 
 as something other than the sum of many hostile and 
 internecine clans, more or less efficiently organized 
 for mutual destruction. 
 
 Upon the importance of this idea or sentiment, 
 and the part which it played in the history of the 
 Mediterranean peoples up to and including the 
 formation of a Mediterranean state under the pro- 
 tection of the Caesars, we need not insist. The 
 Thebaid is entirely occupied with it. The whole 
 story, as conceived by the author, is a preparation 
 for the final interference of Athens, an ideal Athens, 
 which figures symbolically as the sacred city of 
 humanism and humanity. 
 
 And now let us see precisely in what terms the 
 essence of this Hellenistic religion is described, for 
 the edification of " Italian youth," by Statius, a son 
 ;(be it remembered) not of Italy, but of the Hellenic 
 city of Naples. 
 
 To invoke the interference of a defender on 
 behalf of the dead, in whom humanity is outraged, 
 the widows of the slain repair to Athens. There, 
 and there only as yet (we are told), the conception 
 of Godhead had been partly dissociated from that 
 of mere superhuman power. There and there only 
 was to be found, among the temples consecrated to 
 force, one place reserved for compassion.
 
 The Altar of Mercy 227 
 
 " In the midst of the city was an Altar, per- 
 taining not to Might nor the powers thereof, but 
 to gentle Mercy. Mercy there had fixed her seat, 
 and misery made it holy. Thither new suppliants 
 came ever without fail, and found acceptance all. 
 
 " There to ask is to be heard, and dark or light, 
 all hours give access unto One whose grace costs 
 nothing but a complaint. 
 
 " The ritual takes no tax, accepts no incense- 
 flame, no drench of blood, but only the dew of 
 tears upon the stone, and the shorn hair of the 
 mourner for a wreath above, and for drapery the 
 cast robe which sorrow puts away. 
 
 "With trees of kindness the ground is planted 
 about, and marked for pardon and peace with the 
 fillet-bounden bay and the olive's suppliant bough. 
 
 " Image there is not any: to no mould of metal 
 is trusted that Form Divine, who loves to dwell in 
 minds and in hearts. 
 
 " Nor lacketh there perpetual assembly. For 
 shaking fear and shivering poverty, these know that 
 Altar well, and only happiness knoweth it not. 
 
 "The legend is, that it was the children of 
 Hercules who founded the sanctuary, in the city 
 whose warriors protected them when their sire had 
 passed from the pyre to the sky. 
 
 " So the tale sayeth, but sayeth not worthily. 
 Rather we should believe that it was those Visitants 
 from Heaven whom Athens had ever made welcome 
 to her soil, the same who there, in Athens, created 
 law and the new man and the better way, they who 
 
 15—2
 
 2 28 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 thither brought the seed which thence descended 
 upon the waste places of the earth — these (we will 
 say) did in Athens likewise set apart a place of 
 common refuge for souls that are sick, a sanctuary 
 closed against wrath and threatening and tyrant 
 strength, and which prosperity should not profane. 
 
 " Even in those old days that spot was known 
 to the wide world. Thither the conquered came, 
 and the exile, fallen power and wandering guilt. 
 There did they meet, and prayed their peace. 
 
 " The time was near, when the grace of that 
 hospice should vanquish even the fiends of an 
 Oedipus, should cover the corpse of Olynthus, and 
 take even from an Orestes the torture of his mother's 
 ghost\" 
 
 Prose does of course no justice to the fine melody 
 of the Latin ; nor is it possible for English words to 
 convey exactly the native flavour. But the sense of 
 this admirable passage (if we have caught it) will 
 sufficiently show why we should not be too impatient 
 with the scholars of the thirteenth century, or too 
 ready to insist on our superiority in historical and 
 philological science, when we find Dante searching 
 for proofs that the Roman who was expounding this 
 religion to the society of Rome, within a few years 
 after "the prisoner of Christ Jesus" was brought 
 in by the Appian Way, had actually been in touch 
 
 ^ Statius, Thebais, xn 481. The legend of Olynthus (?) is 
 apparently unknown. It probably belonged to the same 
 Areopagitic circle as those of Oedipus and Orestes, and sym- 
 bolized the same doctrine of forgiveness.
 
 The Altar of Mercy 229 
 
 with " the new preachers," and had welcomed their 
 message as the very word for which he was waiting. 
 Such an error is nothing beside that of enumerating 
 a laboured list of causes why the Christian doctrine 
 should have rapidly made its way in the Graeco- 
 Roman world, and omitting to specify, for one cause 
 and the chief, that this world, so far as it had com- /' 
 prehended and embraced the Hellenistic culture, was 
 more than half Christian already. 
 
 It was not on this passage in particular that 
 Dante rested his conviction that Statius was an 
 actual convert ; for he dates the baptism of the 
 poet by an earlier part of the Thebaid^, and before 
 Book XII was presumably written. But doubtless 
 this description, the cardinal point of the whole 
 poem, weighed with Dante, or with the authors 
 of his theory, as general evidence towards their 
 conclusion. And well it might. A Christian reader 
 need not be either ignorant or prejudiced, to feel 
 a shock of surprise or curiosity upon reading", in 
 a contemporary of St Paul, and in what is mani- 
 festly intended for a declaration against paganism 
 (as it was commonly held and understood), the 
 allusions of Statius to the " new man " and the 
 "seed descending upon the waste places of the 
 earth." From the whole tone and method of 
 Dante's comments upon the Latin poets, especially 
 upon Virgil and Statius, we must infer that he 
 would have cited these expressions as consciously 
 
 ^ See the Essay on Dante and the Baptism of Statius, 
 above, p. i8i.
 
 230 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 Christian, as betraying that secret acquaintance 
 with the Christian mysteries which he attributes 
 to the author of the Thebaid — outwardly a courtier 
 of Domitian, but inwardly an adherent of the 
 Apostles. It would, of course, be unpardonable, 
 with our present lights, to repeat this error and 
 
 5 exaggeration. The Athenian, or rather perhaps 
 Eleusinian, symbols to which Statius does really 
 allude, the legendary restoration of the human race 
 and the mystic sign of the corn-seed, were far older 
 than Christianity, and by no means identical with 
 the Christian signs or doctrines which they super- 
 ficially resemble ; though, on the other hand, a 
 historian who should deny all connexion between 
 the two systems, would be going beyond proof 
 and indeed beyond likelihood. 
 
 But upon dubious resemblances or solitary 
 phrases there is no need to insist. What is solid 
 and evident, what leaps to the eye, is the senti- 
 ment of the whole passage, the spirit, the general 
 conception of religion, from which it proceeds. For 
 this there is only one suitable word. It is exactly 
 
 I that sentiment to which Christianity appealed. To 
 console the miserable and the guilty, to heal the 
 wounds of the world and the sense of sin — these 
 are the offices of that Altar to which Statius 
 directs the worship of mankind. " I will have 
 mercy and not sacrifice " ; " Come unto Me, all 
 ye that labour and are heavy-laden " ; — for such 
 inscriptions, and for such only, the shrine of his 
 imagination is prepared.
 
 The Altar of Mercy 231 
 
 Imaginary, visionary, an ideal rather than a fact, 
 we must evidently consider it, although it had an 
 historical counterpart and actual existence. There 
 were in Athens altars to more than one " Deity " 
 or spiritual abstraction, answering more or less to 
 the "Clementia" of Statius — an altar of " Eleos," 
 an altar of "Aidos." They are catalogued, as 
 Athenian curiosities, by the antiquarian impar- 
 tiality of the traveller Pausanias, whose description 
 of Hellas dates from our second century; and we 
 hear of them otherwise. But it is not in the spirit 
 of a Pausanias that Statius commemorates them. 
 The Athens of his religion is a spiritual Athens, 
 the imperfect symbol of that Hellenism by which 
 he lived. The "Altar of Mercy" is not for him 
 an object in a museum, an item in a collection 
 of miscellaneous antiquities. He scarcely cares to 
 place it: it was "in the midst of the city." For 
 the venerable legend associated with it, the story 
 of Hercules and his children, he has nothing but 
 scorn. The Altar of his thought was not founded 
 by the children of Hercules, nor in fact by any 
 earthly hand. Like other such emblems of aspi- 
 ration, it was " never built at all, and therefore 
 built for ever." 
 
 And in the thought of the poet it stands alone. 
 We cannot miss, nor misunderstand, the sweeping 
 depreciation by which, in comparison with this 
 Deity of the soul, and with the uncostly sacrifice 
 of a broken heart, the whole art and ritual of 
 polytheistic superstition are waved away. Such
 
 232 The Altar of Mercy 
 
 ornaments and offerings are for the patrons of 
 power ; and to these let those bring them who 
 will. Nor can it be fairly said that there is any- 
 thing in the Thebaid that cannot, with reasonable 
 allowance for the use of conventional literary forms, 
 be reconciled to the position here finally taken up. 
 The Apollo, the Juno, and the Minerva of Statius 
 are no more real than those of Christian poets, of 
 Dante himself for example. We can no more 
 reason from the use of such machinery to the 
 / opinion of the writer, than we could infer the 
 
 theological convictions of Scott from the spirits 
 which discourse upon the progress of the story 
 in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. In this respect 
 the Thebaid differs greatly from the Aeneid, where, 
 to the advantage doubtless of the story as a picture 
 for the fancy, but to the detriment or confusion 
 of the significance, the traditional figures of the 
 Olympian gods have pretensions to reality which 
 in Statius they have lost. This difference among 
 others was noted, we may presume, by Dante, who 
 had his own practice and feelings, as a poet both 
 Christian and classical, to guide him in such obser- 
 vations. He would naturally reckon it in favour of 
 the opinions and theology of Statius, and attribute 
 it to the advance, or rather the approach, of the 
 true religion. 
 
 But in fact we may suspect that this difference 
 between Statius and Virgil is due not so much to 
 time as to place. It is a difference in origin and 
 native culture. The Thebaid has nothing Roman
 
 The Altar of Meixy 233 
 
 about it, or almost nothing, except the language. 
 Even the Latin has marked Hellenic features, and 
 the substance is pure Hellenism. Allusions to Italy 
 and things Italian, which might have been easily 
 introduced, had such been the purpose, are almost 
 entirely absent, and when they occur, are made 
 as a Greek might have made them. Nothing else 
 could be expected from a Neapolitan, from a writer 
 so conscious of the difference between the Hellenic 
 and the non-Hellenic elements in the civilization 
 of the Empire, that when he reviews the epics of 
 Rome in search of a compliment to the memory 
 of Lucan, he can remark that, "as a poem for 
 Latins " [Latinis canens), the Pharsalia might 
 claim a preference even to the Aeneid. The 
 work of Virgil would have been reckoned by the 
 Neapolitan, not to its disadvantage, as largely 
 Greek. Naples, described as a city still fully 
 Greek in the time of Augustus, retaining the Greek 
 constitution of society, Greek life, festivals, and cul- 
 ture, had presumably lost little or nothing of this 
 character in the brief interval which brings us to 
 Statius. Rather the marked patronage extended 
 to its festivals by succeeding emperors, and the 
 conspicuous imitation of them by Domitian, the 
 prince under whom Statius passed the time of his 
 maturity and production, would strengthen the 
 conscious pride of the Neapolitan in representing 
 the chief centre of Greek learning and civilization 
 within the bounds of Italy. It is worth noticing, 
 that Naples claimed to have received a colony from
 
 234 ^-^^ Altar of Mercy 
 
 Athens herself — the more worth noticing, because 
 the historic fact is perhaps something more than 
 doubtful. When we see what part is played by 
 Athens, a somewhat imaginary and idealized Athens, 
 in the Thebaid, we may suspect that, in the view 
 of Statius, his pretension to an Athenian affiliation 
 was at least as valuable as that Roman citizenship 
 which the Neapolitans, though faithful "alHes" of 
 Rome, accepted late and with regret. The natural 
 religion of such a person was the religion of 
 Euripides, matured and enlarged, — Hellenistic hu- 
 manism in its latest stage of rational refinement 
 and cosmopolitan scope. 
 
 The part belonging to this type of sentiment 
 and imagination, among the influences preparatory 
 to the adoption of Christianity as the religion of 
 the Empire, might doubtless be overrated, but may 
 be underrated more easily. It is certainly not from 
 the actual leaders of the Christian movement, that 
 we shall learn to depreciate the importance of its 
 relation to that species of thought whose ideal 
 centre was the Areopagus of Athens. " Whom 
 therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I 
 unto you." It does not belong here to consider 
 the precise position in history which should be 
 assigned to the Acts of the Apostles. But mani- 
 festly the author of that book, and those by whom 
 it was invested with authority, did not desire to 
 overlook or to minimise any advantage which the 
 new religion might obtain from its claim to em- 
 brace, absorb, and satisfy that gentle doctrine of
 
 The Altar of Mercy 235 
 
 humanity which had radiated, or was at least sup- 
 posed by the world to have radiated, from Mars' 
 Hill. "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all 
 things ye are exceedingly God-fearing." To an 
 exhaustive commentary upon these words, and 
 upon the discourse which follows them, no small 
 contribution should be furnished by the Thebaid. 
 
 As we have had occasion to express the ap- 
 proval which, when all reserves are made, is due 
 to the historical appreciation of Statins and his 
 position by the scholarship of the thirteenth century 
 as represented in Dante, we ought not perhaps to 
 leave unnoticed the strano-e and somewhat discon- 
 certing perversion by which Dante, as commonly 
 and naturally interpreted, attributes the origin of 
 Statins, not to Naples, but to Toulouse — 
 
 " So sweet was the breath of my voice, that I, a 
 citizen of Tolosa, was drawn by Rome unto herself \" 
 
 It would no doubt be possible, without absurdity, 
 to suppose that Statius, like Lucan, came from the 
 far west ; nor did Dante apparently possess the 
 direct evidence which we now have to the actual 
 fact. But even upon the documents which were 
 certainly before him, and in view of what he him- 
 self infers and propounds, it is somewhat surprising 
 that he should have accepted the supposed datum, 
 and still more so that he should have thought it 
 worthy of mention. However, it is enough here 
 to note his error, which in any case is of little 
 importance. 
 
 ^ Furgatorio, xxi 88: " che, Tolosano, Roma a se mi trasse.'
 
 --^*«&* 
 
 ARISTOPHANES ON TENNYSON 
 
 The Muse of Comedy and the Muse — if there 
 be one — of Criticism are not sisters ; they are 
 "scarce cater-cousins." The business of Comedy 
 is to plant a jest and get a laugh — with or without 
 sense, reason, and justice ; it is not for her to inquire. 
 When Aristophanes, shy perhaps of politics in the 
 delicacy of the political situation, took for his Frogs 
 a subject purely literary, and faced the risk of in- 
 viting a popular audience to spend some hours upon 
 a comparison between the fashionable tragedy of 
 the day, as represented by the recently deceased 
 Euripides, and that which had been admired, by 
 command of Aeschylus two generations before, 
 little can he have dreamed of the gravity with which 
 some of his impudent tricks would be canvassed by 
 the erudition of future ages. It may be worth while 
 to illustrate the true value of one trick, — his very 
 best, if estimated for the purpose of the comic 
 stage, — by applying it to a poet and poetry not yet 
 ancient enough to be, like Euripides, half-buried in 
 misunderstanding. 
 
 Among the formal innovations of Euripides, one 
 of the most conspicuous was that of opening the
 
 Ai'istophanes on Tennyson 237 
 
 play with a compendious narrative of the antecedent 
 facts or suppositions defining the situation, or at all 
 events that view of the situation from which the 
 action starts. For this practice there was good 
 reason in the peculiar attitude of Euripides towards 
 the subject-matter of Athenian tragedy ; and Aris- 
 tophanes, to do him justice, says nothing to the 
 contrary. But of course there is in such openings 
 a similarity of form and style, a certain dryness or 
 simplicity of manner, which does not belong to 
 openings directly dramatic. There are not many 
 possible manners, or rather there is but one, of 
 telling a story rapidly and yet completely in verse. 
 Moreover, from the nature of the case, there is a 
 tendency (which, as we are going to see, is almost 
 irresistible) to start with a stateme?tt about some 
 personage in the story, so that the grammatical subject 
 or nominative case of the first sentence will be a 
 proper name. "Samson, the mighty man, Manoah's 
 son...," or "The shepherd David, summoned from 
 the flock...," are obvious ways of beginning a 
 summary account of those heroes. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, Euripides in his pro- 
 logues avoided this ready and quite proper form of 
 commencement with much more care than (as we 
 shall see) could be expected or reasonably asked. 
 But he used it sometimes. And Aristophanes 
 perceived that, by collecting these cases, he could 
 get the material for a good theatrical joke. He 
 could pretend to show, in a dramatic manner, that 
 Euripides knew but one type of sentence for a
 
 238 " Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 beginning. For, whenever this type occurs, you 
 can of course surprise the audience by an inter- 
 ruption and a nonsensical finish. " Samson, the 
 mighty man, Manoah's son — ...Walked up a hill, 
 and then walked down again." " The shepherd 
 David, summoned from the flock — ...Walked up 
 a hill, and then walked down again." And since 
 every kind of verse has, by necessity, certain 
 habitual places of punctuation, it will often happen 
 that, as in these instances, the same nonsensical 
 finish will find a possible point of attachment. From 
 a habit of the tragic metre in Greek, it chanced that 
 the middle of the verse was the most convenient 
 point for attaching a tag ; what point you take 
 matters nothing, provided it is always the same. 
 Accordingly Aristophanes, having got together, out 
 of some three-score Euripidean plays, half-a-dozen 
 legitimate instances (and one not legitimate^) of 
 opening sentences similar in this respect, that all 
 have a personal subject and proper name, and all 
 are punctuated at the same point, compels his pre- 
 tended Euripides to quote these selected cases as 
 typical, and assigns to his pretended Aeschylus, in 
 the character of a critic, the part of interrupting 
 Euripides each time at the proper point, and com- 
 pleting the sentence with the same nonsensical end. 
 As a stage-trick, nothing could be better ; and how 
 
 ^ Frogs, 1219. "Euripides" (see the context) cites this as 
 an instance to the contrary ; and so it is, though the tag can be 
 botched on somehow. The only legitimate example among the 
 nineteen extant plays {Iphigenia in Taurica) is cited.
 
 Aristophanes on Tennyson 239 
 
 effective it is, an Englishman will more promptly 
 perceive, if we apply it to poetry and themes for 
 which we have a natural, and not merely a cultivated 
 affection. But as criticism, were it so meant, it 
 would be futile, as by the same application we shall 
 most easily show and understand. 
 
 It happens that the greatest master of narrative 
 verse among modern English poets has really done 
 what Aristophanes attributes to Euripides — falsely, 
 as he well knew, and idly, had the charge been true. 
 Tennyson, in the Idylls of the King, does really, 
 and quite properly, prefer to open his stories, more 
 than half of them, in the way which Euripides used 
 very seldom, though often enough for the purpose 
 of the comedian. The style of Aristophanes is not 
 to be had at command ; but any one may exhibit 
 his impertinence. 
 
 For this purpose Tennyson shall be put, as any 
 son of man may, whatever his dignity and glory, in 
 the place of Euripides. 
 
 In the place of Aeschylus, the "Aeschylus" of 
 Aristophanes, we will most certainly not put any 
 English poet or person of credit. "Aeschylus" is 
 a malicious fool, for whom we will borrow the name 
 of " Gigadibs, the literary man," — with apologies to 
 Browning, and indeed to Gigadibs. And thirdly, 
 to complete a parallel with the scene in the Frogs, 
 we require in addition to the poet and the critic, 
 contenders in the literary debate, a by-stander, as 
 spectator and umpire. In Aristophanes this part 
 is played by a sort of average Athenian ass, upon
 
 240 Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 whom, as representing the patrons of the drama, is 
 conferred the title of the "god" Dionysus, in his 
 character as proprietor of the pubHc theatre. We 
 have no " Dionysus " in England, but the " Phili- 
 stine " of Matthew Arnold will be good enough. 
 These three, then, shall be the interlocutors of our 
 comedian, — a " Tennyson," such as he chooses to 
 manufacture, a " Gigadibs," ditto, and a "Philistine," 
 such as he is : 
 
 Gigadibs [to the Philistine). I say, sir, and 
 repeat, — this Tennyson 
 Was uninventive, dull, a mere machine 
 For turning verse, and I will prove the same. 
 
 Philistine. Oh come, I say ! 
 
 Gig. Look at his Idylls, then ! 
 
 Tennyson. Yes, look, and show them faulty, if 
 you dare! 
 
 Gig. I '11 wipe out all your Idylls of the King, 
 All, with a single pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 Tenn. A handkerchief! 
 
 Gig. A handkerchief, a towel, 
 
 A napkin, rag, or anything that wipes. 
 All's one. So poor you are in artifice. 
 So stiff, mechanical, and monotonous, 
 That one may fit the self-same piece of stuff 
 To all your patterns. 
 
 Tenn. What on earth do you mean } 
 
 Gig. Just what I say. You can't begin a tale 
 In any way but one. Your opening lines 
 Invariably admit, invite, suggest
 
 Aristophanes on Tennyson 241 
 
 The same pathetic end and supplement, — 
 A cold in the head and pocket-handkerchief. 
 Proper to those afflicted with catarrh. 
 
 Tenn. Nonsense ! How dare you ! 
 
 Gig. Very well, begin. 
 
 Begin, and I will tag you every time 
 With just the same conclusion, every time 
 Same ailment and same simple remedy, 
 A cold in the head, et caetera. Come, begin : 
 Quote me an Idyll, any one you please, 
 The opening lines. 
 
 Tenn. But really... 
 
 Phil. Pray, my lord. 
 
 If only to expose his impudence. 
 Oblige the gentleman. 
 
 Tenn. Oh, certainly. 
 
 Which Idyll? 
 
 Gig. Any. 
 
 Phil. "Gareth and Lynette." 
 
 Tenn. {reciting pompously). "The last tall son 
 of Lot and Bellicent, 
 And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring " 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew his little nose. 
 
 Phil Eh ? 
 
 Tenn. What ? What's that ? 
 
 Phil. Surprising ! Had a cold ? 
 
 How did he get it .-^ 
 
 Gig. "In a showerful spring"; 
 
 The poet says so. Gareth, I presume, 
 Walked in the rain, forgot to change his clothes, 
 And hence the sequel. Anyhow, the tag 
 
 V. L. E. 16
 
 242 Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 Fits, as I promised. 
 
 Tenn. Pooh ! An accident ! 
 
 You will not do it twice. 
 
 Phil. No, that he won't ; 
 
 Impossible. 
 
 Gig. {to Tennyson^. Then try me. Start again. 
 Tenn. {beginning " The Last Tournainent "). 
 " Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his 
 mood 
 Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round, 
 
 At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods," 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew his little nose. 
 Phil. Goodness ! I never ! There it comes 
 
 again. 
 Gig. And very aptly. Note the time and 
 place : 
 "At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods," 
 The autumn season, damp and treacherous, 
 The unsheltered situation of the town, 
 And carelessness of " Dagonet the fool." 
 
 Phil. Hm! Rather odd!— I fear. Lord 
 Tennyson, 
 This is another accident. 
 
 Tenn. Oh, bosh! 
 
 Listen to this, and own yourself an ass. 
 
 {begins " The Coming of Arthur''^ " Leodogran, 
 the King of Cameliard, 
 
 Had " 
 
 Gig. A bad cold, and blew his little nose. 
 Phil. Why, this is worse and worse ! The 
 handkerchief
 
 Aristophanes on Tennyson 243 
 
 Pops out already in the second line. 
 
 Gig. Yes, 'twas a chilly climate, as we hear 
 Later : " the land of Cameliard was waste, 
 Thick with wet woods " — a most unhealthy spot. 
 And pray observe, the poet gives me "had": 
 Leodogran, according to the bard, 
 Had something. Well, I say he had a cold. 
 
 Tenn. Blasphemer ! 
 
 Phil. Come, come, Tennyson, be calm. 
 
 The case is getting grave. Three accidents ! 
 Three Idylls tainted with this monstrous cold! 
 There must be one that will not let it in ; 
 At him again, and make a better choice. 
 
 Ten?i. [beginning '' The GraH''). "From noiseful 
 arms, and acts of prowess done 
 In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale " 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold... 
 
 Phil. Poor Percivale ! 
 
 Gig. It came 
 
 From getting hot in tournaments and tilts. 
 
 Tenn. Nonsense ! 
 
 Phil. Why so? 
 
 Tenn. Shut up ! I will be heard ; 
 
 It all comes right directly. 
 
 Gig. Go ahead. 
 
 Tenn. {recites). "...In tournament or tilt, Sir 
 Percivale, 
 Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The 
 Pure," 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold... 
 
 Tenn. No, no ! (shouting) " Sir Percivale, 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure, 
 Had" 
 
 Gig. A bad cold, and blew his little nose. 
 I knew it! 
 
 Tenn. {roaring). But I say... 
 
 Phil. No, Alfred, no, 
 
 It will not do ; Sir Percivale is doomed. 
 Give us " Geraint and Enid." They perhaps 
 May escape this influenza, though — I fear. 
 
 Tenn. {begins ' ' Geraint and Enid "). " The brave 
 Geraint, a knight of Arthur's court," 
 
 Gig. Had a bad 
 
 Phil. Yes, alas ! But let it pass. 
 
 We must not be too cruel, too severe. 
 Even in the fatal air of Camelot 
 It must, I think, have happened, now and then, 
 That people ran a risk of... you know what, 
 But somehow did not have it after all. 
 Geraint shall get the benefit of the doubt. 
 
 Gig. Just as you like. 
 
 Phil, {to Tennyson). Go on, and let us hear. 
 
 Tenn. "The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur's 
 court, 
 A tributary prince of Devon, one 
 Of that great Order of the Table Round, 
 Had" 
 
 Gig. A bad cold, 
 
 Phil. Oh dear! 
 
 Gig. Of course he did, 
 
 And blew his little nose. I told you so ! 
 
 Phil. This is too awful. Really, Tennyson,
 
 Aristophanes on Tennyson 245 
 
 We had better give it up. 
 
 Tenn. Give up ! Not I ! 
 
 Listen to this, and tag it if you can, 
 
 {begins " Elaine "). " Elaine " 
 
 Phil. I'm certain she will have a cold. 
 
 Tenn. {reciting). " Elaine the fair, Elaine 
 
 the " 
 
 Phil. Oh, beware ! 
 
 Now comes the dangerous point. Take care of her. 
 Tenn. [reciting with hesitation). " Elaine the 
 
 fair, . . . Elaine. . .the loveable," 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold. That's one ! 
 Phil. It is, it is. 
 
 Tenn. Silence! I'll gag you if you interrupt. 
 {beginning again, and reciting faster). "Elaine 
 the fair, Elaine the loveable, 
 
 Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat," 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold. That's two ! 
 Phil. It is, it is. 
 
 Tenn. {reciting at a furious pace). " Elaine the 
 fair, Elaine the loveable, 
 Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, 
 
 High in her chamber up a tower to the east " 
 
 Gig. Had a bad cold, and blew her little nose. 
 Phil She did, she did, she did ! Three colds 
 she had. 
 At every verse a cold. Poor lily maid ! 
 
 Gig. And well she might have in that windy 
 
 flat. 
 Phil. " High in her chamber up a tower to the 
 east.
 
 246 Aristophanes on Tennyson 
 
 Tenn. (changing desperately to another Idyll). 
 " Queen Guinevere had " 
 
 Phil. No, my lord, no more. 
 
 We will not ask the fate of Guinevere ; 
 She had a cold, and there's an end of it ; 
 She had a cold, she caught it from Elaine ; 
 Your Idylls reek with it. And since the thing's 
 Infectious, and the air is getting thick. 
 We had best perhaps go home — and take quinine.
 
 .^.-.^>^^ 
 
 f-^«=4!T' 
 
 THE PROSE OF WALTER SCOTT 
 
 When Byron and Scott were approaching, one 
 of them the end of his life, and the other of his 
 prosperity, they exchanged in a monumental corre- 
 spondence the princely compliments of literary 
 diplomacy ; and Byron, who, though he had then 
 disclaimed the quarrel of "English Bards" with 
 " Scotch Reviewers," was engaged more deeply 
 than ever in defending the . Augustan manner of 
 Pope against the fashions which he himself had 
 helped Scott and others to introduce, — Byron, than 
 whom few men have been more independent of 
 fashion and of flattery, affirmed that he found no 
 one of whose superiority Sir Walter could reason- 
 ably be jealous, either among the living or, all 
 things considered, among the dead. It is certain, 
 from the principles and practice of Byron as a critic, 
 that in this judgement he regarded form as well as 
 substance, technical merit not less, perhaps even 
 more, than abundance of imagination and invention ; 
 certain also, that it was upon the prose of the 
 romances that he built his judgement, rather than 
 upon the metrical merit, already questionable, of 
 Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. And after 
 
 /
 
 248 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 the lapse of a century, when there is no more any 
 question of living and dead, and the measure of 
 Scott is to be taken solely by the standard of what 
 I is common to good work universally, the opinion of 
 Byron may still stand as defensible. It is true that 
 Scott's works show the mark of his rapidity, and that 
 in average pieces of narrative he is not fastidious 
 in expression or always correct. It has been said, 
 and may perhaps be said with as much truth as is 
 demanded from an epigram, that in average pieces 
 of his prose "he has no style at all." But it is also 
 true that in the great moments to which those rapid 
 sketches are subsidiary, in the pinnacles for which 
 the scaffolding is somewhat hazardously piled up, he 
 displays not only a touch of hand peculiar to himself, 
 but also perfect command of sound construction, a 
 sure hold upon those principles of speech — call them 
 rules, practices, or what you will — which come from 
 the deepest parts of humanity, and are common to 
 all that succeed in this kind. A mind not sensible 
 to the effects of Scott, when he intends effect, would 
 have to seek satisfaction somewhere else than in 
 literature as it has been practised by all Europe 
 (to take the narrowest limit) from Homer to this 
 day. And it is to be added that even the unpre- 
 tentious freedom of his ordinary manner has a value 
 in its place by way of relief and contrast. 
 
 A signal instance of both qualities may be found 
 in the scene which lays the corner-stone of Guy 
 Mannering-^^xh^ denunciation of the landowner and 
 magistrate, Bertram of Ellangowan, by the gipsy
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 249 
 
 witch, Meg Merrilies. The little band to which she 
 belongs7 after having been protected and encouraged 
 for many generations in a precarious settlement 
 upon Bertram's estate, have now been expelled, in 
 a capricious fit of reform, by the summary process 
 of pulling down their miserable tenements. The 
 author of this improvement, little content with his 
 severity, absents himself on the day of execution ; 
 but as he rides home, he meets the emigrant 
 families in painful procession upon the confines of 
 his property. To the sufferers his act naturally 
 appears tyrannous, a provocation of the higher 
 powers of providential justice ; nor is it beyond 
 common reckoning to divine that, in a country and 
 among a population not very orderly, the defiance 
 of such enemies may lead to disaster. Of such 
 feelings and prognostications, raised to the tone of 
 prophecy by the ambiguous pretensions of a witch- 
 wife, Meg Merrilies makes herself the voice. The 
 sequel of the story turns, as will be remembered, 
 upon the fulfilment of her prophecy, to which, in 
 the natural course of things, she contributes a great 
 and, in the end, a dominant influence. The con- 
 ception of her character is the key to the whole 
 design"^ and here, in the scene of the prophecy, is 
 the leading note upon which the whole depends. 
 
 The chapter (viii) containing it will throughout 
 repay sttrdy; but for our present purpose we may 
 begin with the two paragraphs which immediately 
 precede the denunciation itself. The first gives 
 the psychology of the situation, describing, without
 
 250 The Pi'ose of Waltei^ Scott 
 
 \ affectation of subtlety, the uncomfortable feelings of 
 the magistrate, who has just undergone, from the 
 passing caravan, the novel experience of resentment 
 and hatred. 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 "His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, 
 which he had thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place 
 of refuge, was idle and vicious ; but had he endeavoured to render 
 them otherwise? They were not more irregular characters now 
 than they had been while they were admitted to consider them- 
 selves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family.... Some 
 means of reformation ought at least to have been tried before 
 sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and depriving 
 them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least 
 from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart 
 on parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this 
 feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited 
 qualities of his mind, which sought its principal amusements 
 among the petty objects around him. As he was about to turn 
 his horse's head to pursue his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had 
 lagged behind the troop, unexpectedly presented herself." 
 
 Manifestly we have here no research of style,. 
 " no style at all " in the sense which the word 
 "style" has for the critic or the conscious artist. 
 In vocabulary, phrasing, the cast and turn of 
 sentences, there is as little character and stamp as 
 the individuality of authorship may well admit. If 
 anything is to be praised, it is a certain plain gravity, 
 proceeding partly from this very absence of pose. 
 And there are negligences which are almost faults. 
 " To render them otherwise... ; depriving them of a 
 degree of countenance... ; from the limited qualities 
 of his mind... ; to turn his horses head to pursue 
 his journey...'' \ these and other phrases might be
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 251 
 
 improved, and would not have satisfied a punctilious 
 composer. But on the other hand, there is no 
 hitch, nothing to stumble at, and we are put without 
 strain in full possession of the meaning. 
 
 The next paragraph is much more important 
 and characteristic, and, as a composition, is both 
 better and worse. It contains what for Scott, in 
 such a situation as this, was essentially significant — 
 the stage-directions, so to speak, for setting the 
 group and scene in preparation for the coming 
 effect. Stage-directions we may well call them, for 
 it is actually to the theatre that the author has gone, 
 as he often did, for inspiration ; and later, at the 
 crowning moment of the scene, he refers us to the 
 source from which he has drawn : " Margaret of 
 Anjou " (he says), "bestowing on her triumphant 
 foes her keen-edged malediction, could not have 
 turned from them with a gesture more proudly 
 contemptuous." From the mind of Scott Shake- 
 speare was never far ; and with Henry the Sixth, 
 especially the final scenes, the figure of Meg 
 Merrilies is more than once associated \ The 
 particular passage to which he directs us we will 
 presently quote, for it is even more pertinent than 
 his words imply. But for the moment we note 
 only, as a fact, his theatrical prepossession, and now 
 present in this light what we are justified in calling 
 his stage-directions : /> / 
 
 •' She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks 
 which, as we before noticed, overhung the road ; so that she was 
 
 ^ See the motto to chapter liv.
 
 252 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 placed considerably higher than EUangowan, even though he was 
 on horseback ; and her tall figure, relieved against the clear blue 
 sky, seemed almost of supernatural stature. We have noticed 
 that there was in her general attire, or rather in her mode of 
 adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign costume, artfully adopted 
 perhaps for the purpose of adding to the effect of her spells and 
 predictions, or perhaps from some traditional notions respecting 
 the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had a large 
 piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of a 
 turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon 
 lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the 
 folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl 
 in frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough, 
 which seemed just pulled." 
 
 ^' Considering this from a practical point of view, 
 as a catalogue of points which the reader is to focus 
 as a preparation of the eye for the delivery of the 
 tirade that follows, we may pronounce it beyond 
 improvement. Nothing is neglected or slurred ; 
 posture and colours, properties and accessories, 
 suggestions, duly vague, of history or literature, all 
 is prescribed : the least lively imagination must be 
 ready to work on such terms, and the tableau could 
 be set, one almost fancies that it could be painted, 
 by an amateur. But for style — the conscious stylist 
 might say again that there is none. The whole 
 method is the very negation of art, in so far as art 
 is said to lie in the concealment of the mechanical 
 process. Stevenson, for example, would have can- 
 celled a chapter, and that not once but twice or 
 thrice, sooner than leave such a paragraph in such 
 a state. He actually cited another passage of Guy 
 Mannering, and might have cited this, for proof of
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 253 
 
 his master's indifference to such scruples as con- 
 sumed his own days and weeks. Scott wants, at 
 this moment, certain details of scenery and costume ; 
 and with perfect simplicity he now recapitulates 
 them, or now puts them in. They ought, perhaps, 
 to be ready beforehand ; or at least that is the more 
 artistic way, the way of Stevenson, and of Dumas 
 when he is on his mettle. The points might have 
 been so touched and emphasized before, that to 
 collect them now would be needless. But Scott 
 will not be troubled with anything so unpractical. 
 " Those high precipitous banks," which overhang 
 the road, " we before noticed^' says the author. 
 " Banks " we may have noticed. That they should 
 be high and steep he himself has not before seen ; 
 but as height now proves to be necessary, he simply 
 raises them. The "clear blue sky" is similarly 
 imported, and without the least preparation. The 
 red turban comes rightly enough, and, as a property, 
 is of the best ; but it is put in with so much fumbling 
 — we have noticed... or rather... or per haps... on this 
 occasion — that we seem to be watching a sketcher 
 while he changes his brushes for a tint. 
 
 From these two paragraphs, taken separately 
 or singly, no one, we suppose, could receive direct 
 pleasure ; and if the history of literature has any 
 lessons, assuredly no such work would, by itself, 
 have roused the admiration of the world. The 
 effect of it all is just to excite expectation, which, as 
 the literary novice is warned by Horace, is a very 
 dangerous thing to do. But Scott will have it so,
 
 2 54 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 and he is not even yet content. He has posed and 
 painted his performer, and now, before she speaks, 
 he insists on defining the effect : 
 
 " ' I'll be d d,' said the groom, ' if she has not been cutting 
 
 the young ashes in the Dukit park ! ' The Laird made no answer, 
 but continued to look at the figure which was thus perched above 
 his path." 
 
 Now this is all very well, but what is to come of 
 it } " How is this big-mouthed promise to be kept .-*" 
 "Quid dignum tanto feret hie promissor hiatu .? " 
 You may protest that you have imagined something 
 really most impressive, and may invoke in attesta- 
 tion the most august memories of art and religion — 
 Delphi and Avernus, tragedy and epic, Cassandra 
 and Deiphobe ; but, given your sibyl, what will you 
 make her say .-* 
 
 " ' Ride your ways,' said the gipsy, * ride your ways, Laird of 
 Ellangowan — ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram ! This day have 
 ye quenched seven smoking hearths — see if the fire in your ain 
 parlour burn the blither for that. Ye have riven the thack off 
 seven cottar houses — look if your ain roof-tree stand the faster. 
 Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings at Derncleugh— see 
 that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at Ellangowan. 
 Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram — what do ye glower after our 
 folk for? There's thirty hearts there that wad hae wanted bread 
 ere ye had wanted sunketsS and spent their life-blood ere ye had 
 scratched your finger. Yes— there's thirty yonder, from the auld 
 wife of an hundred to the babe that was born last week, that ye 
 have turned out o' their bits o' bields, to sleep with the tod and 
 the blackcock in the muirs ! Ride your ways, Ellangowan ! Our 
 bairns are hinging at our weary backs — look that your braw 
 cradle at hame be the fairer spread up ; not that I am wishing ill 
 
 ^ Delicacies.
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 255 
 
 to little Harry, or to the babe that's yet to be born — God forbid 
 — and make them kind to the poor, and better folk than their 
 father ! — And now, ride e'en your ways ; for these are the last 
 words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last 
 reise^ that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.' 
 
 *' So saying, she broke the sapling she held in her hand and 
 flung it into the road." 
 
 What wonder if the world sat up to Hsten ! To 
 praise such a composition would be superfluous 
 indeed, and I cite it for no such purpose. A man 
 who could miss or mistake the impression, would be 
 beyond instruction by words. But there may be 
 some interest and profit, especially in view of what 
 is said — and said truly, if rightly applied — about 
 Scott's neglect of style, in examining this passage 
 in detail, and exhibiting some part of its almost 
 incredible fidelity to rule. We know that Guy 
 Mannering was written at full speed, and not even 
 the plan of it laid out beforehand. There is no 
 reason, as far as I am aware, to except from this 
 record the present passage, or other such points of 
 high light, which make the whole what it is. But 
 after all, that only means that the true preparation 
 had been immeasurable. Years of training, now 
 among books, now in the walks of men, had wrought 
 the sensitive ear and brain to such consummate 
 readiness that, when the call came, the pen ran 
 headlong without a trip, and, at the utmost speed, 
 put in strokes which challenge the microscope. 
 
 A single instance will prove this, and may tempt 
 
 ' Sapling branch. 
 
 /
 
 : 
 
 1 
 
 256 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 us perhaps to look further. The substance, the 
 kernel of the prophetic menace, is resumed in the 
 repeated parallel between past and future. " As 
 you have done, so it shall be done to you," says the 
 oracle over and over again. Loss for loss, violence 
 to the violent, your house, your family, for those 
 that you have torn from their place. *' This day 
 have ye quenched seven smoking hearths — see if 
 the fire in your own parlour burn the blither for 
 that." Thrice the same parallel is repeated, hearth 
 and fire, thatch and roof, Derncleugh and Ellan- 
 gowan ; thrice, but each time with a slight variation 
 in the phrase — ^' see if the fire..." ''look if your 
 roof..." ''see that the hare...." A trick to avoid 
 monotony .'^ Is that all ? It does this indeed ; but 
 it lays the way, it provides the chance, for some- 
 thing far more important. "See if ...look if, ...see 
 that...''; the ear is left expectant, as in a rimed 
 quatrain which should stop at the third line. Was 
 the composer designing this ? Was he aware of it } 
 Not in his fingers, nor in the driving-wheels of his 
 brain. But deep down, somewhere within him, was 
 an engine or other organ which was awake and fore- 
 feeling, which knew that, in the natural harmony of 
 passion, we must come back to this major chord, 
 and that a place should be kept for the return. And 
 therefore, when we do return, our composer, so 
 negligent of style, fails not to finish the quatrain 
 with the missing form: "Our bairns are hinging 
 at our weary backs — look that your braw cradle 
 at hame be the fairer spread up " — , achieves this
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 257 
 
 exquisite precision at full stride, and leaves cor- 
 rection dumb. 
 
 Endless are the observations of this kind with 
 which we may amuse ourselves if we please. There 
 is, for one thing, the severe purity of the vocabulary, 
 so absolutely English (or Scotch if you like, anyhow 
 German, Teutonic) that the flavour even of French 
 origin — as in parlour, couch, sunkets — is instantly 
 noted for foreign, unhomely, and tells with the 
 intended touch of mislike. It is here, I think, 
 rather than in the mere gain of an extra key-board, 
 that Scott gets advantage from his dialect. 
 
 Then again, what a feeling has Scott for the 
 strong parts of English, the grand, long mono- 
 syllables, which are so carefully collected and placed 
 by Milton. ''Ride your ways,'' said the gipsy ; and 
 in what other tongue could she have condensed her 
 point — luxury, pride, domination, defied and bidden 
 go to their own end — into three such sounds as 
 these ? 
 
 Equally remarkable, perhaps even more so, if 
 judged by the prevalent laxity of English rhetoric, 
 is the faultless structure of the speech, the perfect 
 attainment of that symmetry without stiffness which 
 makes a frame organic. In this respect especially 
 Scott surpasses the Elizabethan poet to whom, as 
 we saw, he acknowledges his debt for a hint. The 
 analogy to the situation of the Lancastrian Queen 
 whose young Edward is killed in her presence by 
 the princes of York, is but remote ; but the two 
 maledictions coincide in the fundamental idea that 
 
 V. L. E. 17
 
 J- 
 
 258 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 cruelty to victims of tender age will be visited upon 
 the infants of the offender : 
 
 " O traitors, murderers ! 
 "They that stabbed Caesar shed no blood at all, 
 Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame. 
 If this foul deed were by to equal it : 
 He was a man ; this, in respect, a child : 
 And men ne'er spend their fury on a child. 
 What's worse than murderer, that I may name it? 
 No, no, my heart will burst, an if I speak, 
 And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. 
 Butchers and villains ! bloody cannibals ! 
 How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped ! 
 You have no children, butchers ! if you had, 
 The thought of them would have stirred up remorse; 
 But if you ever chance to have a child, 
 Look in his youth to have him so cut off 
 As, deaths jnen, you have rid this sweet young prince^ /*' 
 
 For a tragedy-queen this is well enough, and, 
 regarded merely as rhetoric, it is much upon the 
 average level of the Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 theatre. Those poets were seldom careful of 
 structure, and their precedent has been only too 
 well followed by our dramatic composers since. But 
 the tirade so ill bears comparison with that of Meg 
 Merrilies that, if Scott were capable of a trick, he 
 might be suspected of wishing us to remark his 
 triumph over what passes for Shakespeare. And 
 the weakness of the one speech, as contrasted with 
 the other, lies chiefly in the want of structure, of 
 rhetorical frame. Here Scott's craft is supreme, 
 good enough for Racine, Euripides, or the Homer of 
 
 ' Henry VI, in, v, 5.
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 259 
 
 the Ninth Iliad. Commentary upon such technique 
 is apt to be unconvincing unless exhaustive, and if 
 exhaustive, to be tiresome. But let one point serve 
 for all. Take the triplet, which sets the text, as 
 it were, to be developed: '^ Ride your ways,... ride 
 your ways, Laird of Ellangowan — ride your ways, 
 Godfrey Bertram f' Here we have three forms of 
 address, one anonymous, then the territorial title, 
 and last the personal name. Observe then, first, 
 that exactly these three, and no more, recur as head- 
 notes for the divisions that follow. Next observe 
 that they recur in the reverse order: '' Ride your 
 ways, Godfrey Bertram Ride your ways, Ellan- 
 gowan.... And 7tow, ride e'en your ways,..." with the 
 result, a result vital to the purpose, that we know 
 by ear and instinct when to expect the close, and 
 thus the thrill of the dismissal gets a reverberation 
 from our simple pleasure in not being disappointed 
 of our count. And observe, lastly and most care- 
 fully, that the distinction between title and name, the 
 Laird and the man, " Ellangowan " and " Bertram," 
 proves significant. For this we might hope ; count 
 upon it we could not ; but we get it, and are pleased 
 in proportion to the rareness of such fidelity to 
 poetic promise. When the former friend of the 
 gipsies is to be reminded that he has thrown away 
 the affection of his dependents, he is " Godfrey 
 Bertram"; but he is "Ellangowan," when the 
 misery of their homelessness is to be contrasted 
 with the pride and comfort of his house: ''Ride 
 your ways, Ellangowan. Our bairns are hinging at 
 
 17—2
 
 26o The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 our weary backs ; look that your draw cradle at 
 hame be the fairer spread upT 
 
 And beyond all this, deeper and more vital yet, 
 
 lie the effects of sound and of rhythm. It is a little 
 
 matter, perhaps, that the more commonplace uses of 
 
 echo and repetition — ''burn the blither''...'' stable 
 
 your stir ks'\.." wad hae wanted bread ere ye had 
 
 wanted'' — are used, and are forborne, with rare 
 
 economy. But it is no little matter, it is rather the 
 
 very essence of poetry, when the paired sounds 
 
 touch, just touch without crossing, the confine of 
 
 sobs : " What do ye glower after our folk for ? "... 
 
 "the wife and the babe, that ye have turned out o' 
 
 their bits d bields" ..." God... make them kind to the 
 
 poor, and better folk than their father." Pathos 
 
 with dignity can do no more. 
 
 From sound to rhythm is perhaps scarcely a 
 distinguishable transition ; but it is from the rhythm 
 of this passage, from the melody proper, that, for 
 my own part, I get the greatest delight. Here 
 again there is no end to the possible remarks. 
 Most obvious is a device which is a favourite with 
 Burke; though, when I say "device," I do not 
 mean that Burke always, or perhaps ever, thought 
 of it. The consciousness of the artist is generally 
 an open question. Be that as it may, the trick is 
 this. Everybody who takes lessons in English 
 prose-composition soon gets a warning "to avoid 
 blank verse." The precept is sound and important. 
 That rhythm, from its familiarity, easily catches the 
 ear ; in prose it is mostly purposeless ; and nothing
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 261 
 
 is more vexatious than rhythm without a purpose. 
 But regularity is the ground of variation, and the 
 supreme end of artistic rules is to be broken with 
 proper effect. Here, in our speech, the blank-verse 
 rhythm is scrupulously excluded. Not any group 
 of words suggests it, except one, where it is strongly 
 marked. " Our bairns are hinging at our weary 
 backs " is a verse of five accents, and a good one ; 
 better, I should say, than any of Queen Margaret's 
 in the play. And as any one may see at a glance, 
 it is placed as it should be, where, by a slight touch 
 of pomp, it sustains the complaint of the vagabond 
 above the suspicion of mendicancy. 
 
 Many other like delicacies there are ; indeed 
 every clause and phrase will bear and repay exami- 
 nation. But the best of all is kept for the close : 
 
 " And now, ride e'en your ways ; for these are the last words 
 ye'U ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last reise that 
 I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of EUangowan." 
 
 Here are two points principally to remark. It 
 cannot escape notice that, for some reason, the 
 introduction of the speaker's name, "Meg Merrilies," 
 is here strangely impressive, and that the sentence 
 seems to hinge and to swing upon it. Every one 
 perceives this ; and the cause, though less obvious, 
 may be ascertained. We have already noted that 
 the vocabulary of the speech, as is usual with Scott 
 on such occasions, is extremely simple, and almost 
 exclusively English in the strictest sense of the 
 name. Now this vocabulary, with many merits, 
 has, for the composer, some defects, and not least
 
 262 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 among them this — that, consisting almost wholly of 
 monosyllables and dissyllables, it supplies hardly 
 ever a succession of syllables, not even so much as 
 a pair, absolutely without accent, and therefore falls 
 naturally into an up-and-down jog, without those 
 pleasant trisyllabic movements which in prosody 
 are called dactylic. Introduce the elements which, 
 in later times, our writers borrowed from Latin, 
 and dactyls (or rather quasi-dactyls) spring up in 
 abundance — irregular, accessible, limited, principal, 
 precipitous, general, singular — these, and more, 
 may be picked from the paragraphs, written in the 
 common language of literature, which precede the 
 speech of the gipsy, and have been cited above. 
 But in the speech itself, nothing of the sort. With 
 the vocabulary of the gipsy, the thing is hardly 
 possible. Such combinations as ''what do ye'' 
 ''wife of an,'' ^'babe that was," are the nearest 
 approach ; and they differ materially in rhythm from 
 principal or singular. But in " Meg Merrilies " we 
 do get an English triplet, the sole triplet of syllables 
 within one word which the speech presents ; and 
 Scott, with an instinct sharpened by practice, seizes 
 upon this by-gift of his own invention to swing off 
 the finale with the desirable roll. 
 
 Partly alike is the music of the last words, alike 
 in this, that in the proper name *' Ellangowan" we 
 have again a valuable element seldom provided 
 by pure English — a quadrisyllable with two equal 
 accents, our nearest equivalent for the double 
 trochee, such as comprobavit, so beloved by pupils
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 263 
 
 of Cicero. It is the only such form in the speech. 
 But here we have another thing to note. However 
 well we may love our native tongue, we must allow 
 that, as compared with some others, or with almost 
 any other, its word-groups are seldom musical. 
 You cannot have everything at once. Our fathers 
 chose for us that we should talk mostly in mono- 
 syllables, a good way, but not musical. The collision 
 of hard sounds must at this rate be incessant, and 
 very harsh collisions will hardly be kept out. Scott 
 himself, writing pure English, cannot avoid them, 
 and wisely does not try, for the constriction of such 
 a rule would be deadly. But the result is what 
 it must be, a "music" bad or poor. No one, 
 I suppose, will say that, taken as mere sound, there 
 is any pleasure in such combinations as quenched 
 seven smoking hearths, ...at Derncleugh, . . . hearth- 
 stane, . . .scratched, . . .and the blackcock, . . .babe that's, . . . 
 and the like everywhere. There is no help for it. 
 But what then is the artist to do .'* Why, do like 
 an artist, turn stones to stepping-stones — offer, at 
 some chosen place, the good gift which will take 
 more value from his very poverty. The close of 
 the speech, the last sentence, runs almost without 
 a trip, and the final clause, as a bit of prosody, 
 might challenge Italian or Greek : 
 
 "And this is the last reise that I'll ever cut in the bonny ivoods 
 of Ellangowan." 
 
 With Scott, as with all artists in English, the 
 contrast between the various elements in our hetero- 
 geneous lexicon, the mixture and opposition of them.
 
 264 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 is a main principle. Most often, as in the case of 
 Meg Merrilies, he recurs for solemnity to the pure 
 Teutonic, fashioning of course his personages ac- 
 cordingly. The reader will expect here the pleasure 
 of comparing Meg's malediction with its not less 
 admirable pendant, the gipsy's farewell to Dern- 
 cleugh. I will cite it therefore, but spare my 
 comment, which, after what has been said, will 
 easily be conceived and supplied : 
 
 J^ " She then moved up the brook until she came to the ruined 
 
 hamlet, where, pausing with a look of peculiar and softened 
 interest before one of the gables which was still standing, she 
 said, in a tone less abrupt, though as solemn as before : ' Do you 
 see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling ? — There my kettle 
 boiled for forty years — there I bore twelve buirdly sons and 
 daughters. Where are they now? — Where are the leaves that 
 were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas? — the west wind has 
 made it bare — and I'm stripped too. — Do you see that saugh- 
 tree ? — it's but a blackened, rotten stump now — I've sat under it 
 mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands 
 ower the poppling water — I've sat there, and ' (elevating her voice) 
 • I've held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs 
 of the auld barons and their bloody wars. It will ne'er be green 
 again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they 
 blithe or sad. But ye'U no forget her ? — and ye'U gar big up the 
 auld wa's for her sake ? — and let somebody live there that's ower 
 guid to fear them of another world. For if ever the dead came 
 back amang the living, I'll be seen in this glen mony a night after 
 these crazed banes are in the mould.* " 
 
 With the imported parts of our language, im- 
 ported chiefly from Latin, as well as with the 
 primitive parts, Scott could make masterly play 
 when he chose. An example is to be found in that
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 265 
 
 incomparable story which makes a detached episode 
 in Redgauntlet, under the title of '* Wandering 
 WilHe's Tale." Stevenson in Catriona has testified ^ 
 his admiration of it by exerting his utmost strength 
 to produce a parallel, and with as much success as 
 could be hoped. One cannot mention Scott's story, 
 even for the purpose of technical illustration, without 
 turning aside to praise its general excellence. In | 
 its kind it has perhaps not a rival in English litera- | 
 ture or anywhere else. To tell, and to refute in the s 
 telling, a legend of the supernatural, is an ancient 
 and popular trick, but never perhaps has been 
 performed with such delicate balance of gravity and 
 humour. In substance the tale is simple. A certain 
 landlord, Sir Robert Redgauntlet, a former per- 
 secutor of the Covenanters (the date is about 1 700), 
 has a retainer and tenant who waits upon him to 
 pay certain arrears of rent. In the midst of the 
 business the Laird is taken with a fit, of which 
 he almost instantly dies ; and the debtor in the 
 confusion departs without, as he believes, having 
 got a receipt. The money too is not to be found, 
 and the heir demands a second payment. The 
 honest defaulter, half mad with despair and drink, 
 wanders at night to the grave of his late landlord ; 
 and there, after a dream in which he visits the dead 
 man, he wakes with the receipt in his hand. Pay- 
 ment being thus proved, the disappearance of the 
 money is soon traced to the theft of a monkey 
 which was present at the time of the transaction. 
 With singular skill and power Scott shows how,
 
 266 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 from these not wonderful incidents, has grown in 
 the course of a generation an awful story of retribu- 
 tion and reward. About the true facts there is no 
 doubt. To establish the supernatural version, it 
 would of course be essential to show that the receipt 
 was got, and not merely found, by the debtor on the 
 night alleged, that is to say, after the death and 
 burial of the payee. The receipt itself, the docu- 
 ment, was so dated ! So at least we are told ; but 
 the paper was immediately destroyed ! Everything 
 therefore turns on the question whether the debtor 
 took such a paper from the room at the time of the 
 payment, or whether, as he supposed, he did not. 
 And most unfortunately our informant, the debtor's 
 grandson, actually gives, though he is not in the 
 least aware of it, two accounts of the transaction, 
 which differ totally at the critical point. The thing 
 is a delightful example of Scott's profound acquaint- 
 ance with story-telling men, and the masterly use 
 which he made of it ; and the passages will serve, 
 as well as any, for specimens of the narrator's 
 language and style. Here is his first account of 
 the payment : 
 
 " My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put 
 on, made a leg, and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a 
 dash, like a man that does something clever. The Laird drew it 
 to him hastily — 'Is it all here, Steenie, man?' 
 
 " ' Your honour will find it right,' said my gudesire. 
 
 " ' Here, Dougal,' said the Laird, 'gie Steenie a tass of brandy 
 downstairs, //// I count the siller and write the receipt.' 
 
 " But they werena weel out of the room when Sir Robert gied 
 a yelloch that garr'd the Castle rock. Back ran Dougal — in flew
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 267 
 
 the livery-men — yell on yell gied the I>aird, ilk ane mair awfu' 
 than the ither. My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, 
 but he ventured back into the parlour.... \\{\^ head was like to 
 turn. He forgot baith siller and receipt, and down stairs he 
 banged," etc. 
 
 Now upon this showing it is plain, both that the 
 receipt could easily be written, and that the debtor 
 could easily take it away unawares ; and, ^iven 
 these facts, no reasonable person would doubt that 
 the whole story should be so understood and 
 explained. But presently *we have the interview 
 between the debtor and Sir Robert's heir (.Sir John), 
 when, of course, the circumstances of payment have 
 to be related again, as accounting for the absence 
 of proof. And behold, they are completely trans- 
 formed ! The narrator thus dramatises the dialogue : 
 
 " Stephen : ' Please your honour. Sir John, I paid it to your 
 father.' 
 
 "Sir John: 'Ye took a receipt, then, doubtless, Stephen; 
 and can produce it ? ' 
 
 "Stephen: 'Indeed, / hadna time, an it like your honour, 
 for nae sooner had I set doun the siller, and Just as his honour^ 
 Sir Robert, that's f^aen, drew it till him to count it, and write out 
 the receipt, he was ta'en wV the pains that removed him.' " 
 
 If this were the truth, or near the truth, evidently 
 the receipt could not be written, and the debtor 
 knew, by the witness of his own eyes, that it never 
 was. But here, on every material fact, the latter 
 version is contradicted by the first, though both are 
 given, as this very discrepancy proves, in good faith. 
 That Scott perceived the flaw, and deliberately 
 planned it, is proved (if proof be wanted) by his
 
 268 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 providing the narrator with a plausible pretext for 
 giving, or rather purporting to give, the second 
 version, the erroneous and misleading, in the form 
 of a dramatic dialogue, reported ipsissimis verbis : 
 
 " I have heard their communings so often tauld ower, that 
 I almost think I was there mysell." 
 
 Accordingly he describes the interview exactly as 
 if he had been there, and at the very point where 
 he becomes essentially false, becomes also (as we 
 see in the quotation) most precise and positive in 
 form, dropping narration altogether, and acting each 
 speaker in turn. To this change of form Scott 
 emphatically directs attention, actually arresting the 
 story at this point and inserting a comment, by 
 the supposed auditor, upon the narrator's dramatic 
 talent. At a first reading, or a second, this may 
 appear needless or cumbrous, but presently we 
 perceive the humour of it. The supposed precision 
 is of course altogether illusory, and merely serves 
 to disguise from our informant the fact that, as can 
 be proved out of his own mouth, he is not here 
 reporting the incident as it was originally told. 
 Scott's own view of the facts, the rationalistic view, 
 is implied clearly enough in the final paragraph of 
 the story, and indeed throughout. 
 
 We have not space to compare in detail Steven- 
 son's rival tale of the Bass Rock (in Catriona), 
 though the comparison would be full of interest. 
 In the tone of the two there is this important 
 difference, that the allegations in Stevenson's tale
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 269 
 
 cannot possibly be resolved into common incidents 
 plus involuntary error. When we are told that at 
 one and the same moment several persons saw 
 A.B. dancing (in spirit) at one place, and a crowd 
 of other persons saw him lying motionless (in body) 
 many miles away, we are driven to suppose that 
 either the facts or the lies are abnormal. Our 
 choice will depend on our opinion of the witnesses 
 and our general theory of the universe. To Frederic 
 Myers the facts in the " Bass Rock " story, so far as 
 I have yet given them, seemed abnormal indeed, but 
 quite natural. Never shall I forget the grave and 
 reproachful tone in which, talking of Catriona soon 
 after its appearance, he complained of Stevenson for 
 disfiguring an otherwise legitimate and persuasive 
 piece of imagination by the "ridiculous" addition, 
 that when the dancing spirit is shot, the silver coin 
 with which the gun was loaded, is found in the 
 man's body, which dies at the same moment but — 
 several miles away. The precise boundary between 
 the natural and the ridiculous is sometimes not easy 
 to fix. 
 
 However, to return to Scott, such, in the bare 
 outline and in general style, is the famous tale of 
 Wandering Willie. But if there were no more to 
 say of it, if it rose nowhere above the level which 
 we have described, it would be good indeed, even 
 so perhaps best in its kind, but it would not have 
 the sublimity which Scott has contrived to impart. 
 This depends on the moral source of the legend, 
 the assurance of future punishment reserved for a
 
 270 The Pi'ose of Walter Scott 
 
 persecutor of the saints. The Sir Robert Red- 
 gauntlet of the story was, as we have said, an 
 oppressor, a cruel oppressor, of nonconformists and 
 recusants ; and his tenant, the originator of the 
 legend, though no saint, was a religious man, and 
 had no doubt whatever of his master's destiny post 
 mortem. Accordingly, in his dream beside the 
 grave, it is to Hell that he goes for the receipt, a 
 Hell which is also and at the same time Sir Robert's 
 own house. There still, there again, as in this 
 world often, he and his wicked friends are holding 
 such feast as yet they may. The vision is pro- 
 foundly moving and solemn, and from it is diffused 
 over the whole narrative a strong religious enchant- 
 ment, which raises what otherwise were a trifle to 
 the level of Dante and Homer. 
 
 Indeed, I have such a reverence for this episode, 
 the Hades of the oppressors, that I have some 
 scruple in touching it with a philological finger. 
 But since I do not myself find in such remarks any 
 bar to emotion, but feel the poetic achievement only 
 the more when I seem to perceive the means, others, 
 I suppose, may feel the same ; and the truth is, that 
 the effect is partly, and even principally, a matter 
 of vocabulary. The strolling fiddler, Wandering 
 Willie, who tells the tale, is by birth a peasant, and 
 his ordinary language is not very far, though it 
 differs, from that of Meg Merrilies. But he is no 
 gipsy. He has had the regular Presbyterian train- 
 ing and, from special circumstances, much irregular 
 education besides. He has notions of history.
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 271 
 
 theology, literature ; and especially, like all good 
 Scots, he knows and reverences the language of the 
 preacher. The influence of it may be traced often, 
 and grows when he begins to describe his grand- 
 father's dream. And when for a while he is fully 
 possessed by the moral and religious purport of the 
 vision, shade by shade his speech takes the learned 
 colours of the pulpit, French and Latin, even Greek, 
 points from the Pentateuch, and rhythms modelled 
 upon the Psalms. You will hardly find anywhere 
 a finer example of what can be done by economy 
 of art than the simple effects of this passage, the 
 unexpected and therefore thrilling note of such 
 words as fierce, savage, dissolute, beautiful, contorted, 
 melancholy. And finally, this far-away spell dies out 
 as it came in, and we sink back into the plainness 
 of the vernacular. Here is the passage, with so 
 much of the context as will suffice to show these 
 contrasts. Coming in his dream to Redgauntlet 
 Castle, the debtor is received there, as usual, by 
 Dougal MacCallum, Sir Robert's old servant, whose 
 death, be it remarked, has followed close on that of 
 his master : 
 
 " ' Never fash yoursell wi' me,' said Dougal, * but look to 
 yoursell ; and see ye talc naething frae ony body here, neither 
 meat, drink, or siller, except just the receipt that is your ain.' 
 
 " So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that 
 were weel kend to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour ; 
 and there was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of 
 red wine, and speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever 
 been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the blithest. 
 
 " But, Lord take us in keeping, what a set of ghastly revellers
 
 272 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 they were that sat around that table ! — My gudesire kend mony 
 that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped 
 to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce 
 Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale ; 
 and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle ; and 
 Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand ; and wild Bonshaw, 
 that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude sprung ; and 
 Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and 
 king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his 
 worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god^ And 
 there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his 
 long, dark, curled locks, streaming down over his laced buff-coat, 
 and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the 
 wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them 
 all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance ; 
 while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed, that the room 
 rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to 
 time ; and their laugh passed into such wild sounds as made my 
 gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his 
 banes \ 
 
 " They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving- 
 men and troopers that had done their work and cruel bidding on 
 earth. There was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped 
 to take Argyle ; and the Bishop's summoner, that they called the 
 Deil's Rattle-bag ; and the wicked guardsmen in their laced coats ; 
 and the savage Highland Amorites, that shed blood like water; 
 and mony a proud serving-man, haughty of heart and bloody of 
 hand, cringing to the rich, and making them wickeder than they 
 would be; grinding the poor to powder, when the rich had 
 broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were coming 
 and ganging, a' as busy in their vocation as if they had been 
 alive." • 
 
 It will of course be understood that Scott, as 
 a manipulator of language, is not to be praised 
 
 ^ Between these points the dialectic forms almost totally 
 disappear. In the next paragraph they gradually reappear.
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 273 
 
 without discrimination. Not only is he often care- 
 less, sometimes in place and sometimes very much 
 out of place, but a certain class of his romances, the 
 so-called " historic," are all debased, more or less, 
 by a deplorable amalgam, which he compounded 
 from cuttings of every kind of English between 
 Chaucer and Gray, and vended as, in some sort, 
 the style of chivalry. Ivanhoe and The Talisman, 
 Quentin Durward, Nigel even, Woodstock, Peveril 
 and others, are sown more or less liberally with this 
 pernicious flower. It pleased the day, but it was 
 a bad thing and, like all weeds, was fertile : it has 
 helped to make some of the worst literature that we 
 possess. But let us say no more of it. It has little 
 or no part in these : Guy Mannering, The Anti- 
 quary, The Heart of Midlothian, Old Mortality, 
 Rob Roy, Redgauntlet, The Bride of Lam7nernioor, 
 St Ronans Well, and within this round one may 
 comfortably circulate without end. 
 
 St Ronans Well} Yes, assuredly, St Ronans 
 Well. It has defects; it is not such a masterpiece 
 as The Bride. The elements, comic and tragic, are 
 not so well accommodated ; and Scott, alas ! was 
 persuaded, almost compelled, by his publisher to 
 sacrifice the very base of his tragedy to the concilia- 
 tion of the vulgar, who were not won nevertheless. 
 But the story is fine, and the strong scenes — chapter 
 XXIII for example, or chapter xxxv — very strong. 
 And they will supply instances of the power and 
 dignity which Scott, when he chooses, can put 
 even into the artificial, super-literary English which 
 
 V. L. E. 18
 
 274 The Prose of Walter Scott 
 
 he inherited from the eighteenth century. So 
 here : 
 
 "'There is a Heaven above us, and there shall be judged 
 our actions towards each other ! You abuse a power most 
 treacherously obtained — you break a heart that never did you 
 wrong — you seek an alliance with a wretch who only wishes to be 
 wedded to her grave. If my brother brings you hither, I cannot 
 help it — and if your coming prevents bloody and unnatural 
 violence, it is so far well. But by my consent you come not; 
 and were the choice mine, I would rather be struck with life-long 
 blindness than that my eyes should again open on your person — 
 rather that my ears were stuffed with the earth of the grave than 
 that they should again hear your voice.' " 
 
 Or here : 
 
 " ' Oh ! no — no — no ! ' exclaimed the terrified girl, throwing 
 herself at his feet ; ' do not kill me, brother ! I have wished 
 for death — thought of death — prayed for death — but, oh ! it is 
 frightful to think that he is near ! — Oh ! not a bloody death, 
 brother, nor by your hand ! ' 
 
 " She held him close by the knees as she spoke, and expressed 
 in her looks and accents the utmost terror. It was not, indeed, 
 without reason ; for the extreme solitude of the place, the violent 
 and inflamed passions of her brother, and the desperate circum- 
 stances to which he had reduced himself, seemed all to concur to 
 render some horrid act of violence not an improbable termination 
 of this strange interview. 
 
 " Mowbray folded his arms, without unclenching his hands, 
 or raising his head, while his sister continued on the floor, 
 clasping him round the knees with all her strength, and begging 
 piteously for her life and for mercy. 
 
 " ' Fool ! ' he said at last, ' let me go ! — Who cares for thy 
 worthless life? — Who cares if thou live or die? Live, if thou 
 canst — and be the hate and scorn of everyone else, as much as 
 thou art mine."
 
 The Prose of Walter Scott 275 
 
 Extreme solitude, inflamed passions, improbable 
 termination — the movement of the narrative is 
 cumbrous and wordy. But it is strong ; and the 
 stronger notes of the speeches are reheved against 
 it with discretion and temperature. 
 
 In conclusion let it be said, though it is perhaps 
 needless, that I do not here pretend to estimate, as 
 a whole, the merits of Scott's work as a romancer. 
 Of many aspects, and these the most important, we 
 have said little or nothing. In Guy Mannei-ing the 
 variety and coherence of the topics, in Old Moi'tality 
 the subtle distinction of similar idiosyncrasies, in 
 Rob Roy the picturesque backgrounds, in Red- 
 gauntlet vigour of caricature, in the Heart of 
 Midlothian a perspective of society, humour in 
 The Antiquaiy, horror in St Ronans Well and all 
 together in the tragedy of Lammermoor — these and 
 other qualities are doubtless more vital than style. 
 But without style they would not have achieved the 
 end. Scott, in his way and at his hours, is a very 
 great stylist, supreme and hardly to be surpassed. 
 His manner of working, his profusion, the nature of 
 his faults, give room for mistake and misrepresenta- 
 tion about this aspect of his genius. And for this 
 reason it may not have been amiss to bespeak 
 attention to the form, as well as the matter, of his 
 prose. 
 
 18—2
 
 ^J^ 
 
 , M ,/ 
 
 
 f' 
 
 ^.-^ 
 
 "DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS^" 
 
 " Do you honestly enjoy this book, and, if so, 
 what in it pleases you ? Does your enjoyment 
 increase as you study it, and if so, through what 
 process of thought ? " Such are perhaps the ques- 
 tions which the members of a reading union should 
 ask themselves upon a work of Mr George Meredith. 
 To presume the affirmative answers — or, worse, to 
 force them — may in this case be to miss the best 
 of the profit. Some art is strong in the width of 
 its appeal, and some not in the width, but in the 
 depth. It is a great thing to satisfy desires that 
 are universal or common, and great also, whether 
 more or less, to gratify intensely even one desire 
 that is natural. Disclaiming all pretentions to dic- 
 tate, and confessing, or rather insisting, that others 
 may very well see where I am blind, I have to say 
 for myself that my pleasure in Mr Meredith is, if 
 not solely of one kind, yet in one kind intense 
 beyond expression, and otherwise slight. All other 
 things that belong to literature the English reader 
 may find more easily, if not in better quality, else- 
 where; but of one thing, in which English writers 
 
 ^ This essay forms one of a series on George Meredith's 
 Novels and Poetry contributed by various writers to the Natiotial 
 Home-reading Union.
 
 ''Diana of the Crossways'' 277 
 
 as a class are singularly poor, he may find in Mr 
 Meredith such a store as was hardly ever, I verily 
 believe, dispensed by a single mind since writing- 
 began. And the question to ask — once more let 
 us say that a true answer is not to be given with 
 haste — is whether we have, or wish to get, an appe- 
 tite for this particular food. I can warrant it possible 
 for a man to read The Egoist with enjoyment so 
 often that he literally cannot read it any more, be- 
 cause he knows, before turning, the contents of every 
 page ; but to tell any one, without intimate know- 
 ledge of his constitution, that he ought to admire 
 The Egoist is, as likely as not, to say that he ought 
 to be a humbug. Given a person, time, and place, 
 we may say of certain works that by that person 
 they ought to be admired — at least in this sense, 
 that, not admiring, he shows a dangerous diverg- 
 ence in taste and faculty from the type of man 
 with whom he will have to deal. But for England 
 and for this age that is certainly not to be said of 
 Mr Meredith. What may safely and rightly be 
 said is that, if we do not take pains to appreciate 
 him so far as may be possible for us, we miss the 
 best chance that Englishmen have, or ever had, to 
 cultivate a valuable faculty which is of all least 
 natural to us. 
 
 This faculty is wit — wit in the sense which it 
 bore in our "Augustan" age of Pope and Prior, and 
 should always bear if it is to be definite enough for 
 utility : — wit or subtlety, on the part of the artist, in 
 the manipulation of meanings, and on the part of the
 
 278 ''Diana of the Crossways" 
 
 recipient or critic the enjoyment of such subtlety for 
 its own sake, and as the source of a distinct intellectual 
 pleasure. The faculty and the pleasure, for obvious 
 reasons, have been most highly developed in small 
 concentrated societies. Among large bodies of people 
 it is difficult to bring about that uniformity of habit 
 in language and ideas without which a speaker dares 
 not and cannot be subtly suggestive ; and among 
 scattered bodies it is more than difficult. Between 
 two foreigners wit is well-nigh impossible, and for 
 high wit not all of one nation even can be native 
 enough to one another. Athens in the fifth and 
 fourth centuries before Christ, Florence in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth after, Paris and, to a far less 
 degree, London in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 — these have been the chief homes of wit. But 
 it is observable, and important to the student of 
 Mr Meredith, that though cities have been the breed- 
 ing-places of the art, it is not always within the local 
 urban limits that the urban and urbane company 
 finds the very best ground of exercise. To form 
 and finish the personal atoms, the quick close life 
 of a town is, broadly speaking, indispensable ; but 
 once formed, they may be more free to group and 
 grapple in a cultured rustication; more especially is 
 this so when the city has swollen to the size and 
 complexity of modern times. Fashion your wits in 
 Paris, and then away to the villa ! An urban society 
 rusticated — that is the properest situation. Mr Mere- 
 dith has himself summed up the matter, and with it 
 a great chapter or volume in the history of human
 
 ''Diana of the Crossivays'' 279 
 
 education, in the characteristic phrase (darkly splen- ' 
 did as wit should be) which describes the actors of ; 
 The Egoist : "A simple-seeming word of this import i 
 is the triumph of the spiritual, and where it passes 
 for coin of value the society has reached a high 
 refinement — Arcadian by the aesthetic route." The 
 preference of the author for companies in this pre- 
 dicament, folk of intellectual fashion, transplanted to 
 the parks of the province, is scarcely less than that 
 of Peacock, with his Nightmare Abbey, Crotchet 
 Castle, and other synonyms for a scene always 
 constantly the same. But the various ingenuity of 
 Mr Meredith in conducting us to the favourable field 
 is as far above the rude machinery of Peacock as the 
 wit of Peacock, though copious for an Englishman, 
 is below the wealth which Nature, laughing as her 
 wont is at her own rules, has suddenly chosen to 
 reveal in a denizen of Surrey. 
 
 It may not perhaps be said that without a 
 Patterne Hall or a Beckley Court or a Copsley for 
 focus of the story Mr Meredith has never achieved 
 success ; but it is in the dining-rooms and the draw- 
 ing-rooms of such mansions, and at social gatherings 
 there, that those scenes are enacted which are most 
 entirely and distinctively his own. Certainly the 
 crises of the drama do not always occur when " the 
 daughters of the Great Mel have to digest him at 
 dinner" (Bvan Hai'rington, chap, xxii), or in "ani- 
 mated conversation at a luncheon-table" {The Egoist, 
 chap, xxxvi), or amid the cross-currents of an inop- 
 portune call, as in " the scene of Sir Willoughby's
 
 28o ''Diana of the Crossways"' 
 
 generalship" {The Egoist, chap, xlvi) ; though, when 
 such crises do so occur, the reader who cares for 
 Mr Meredith at all, gets something scarcely to be 
 priced in the literary exchange. But beyond this, 
 the principal personages of Mr Meredith, all and 
 always, owe so much of their characters to the 
 experience of such meetings, that their behaviour 
 elsewhere is scarcely to be understood until we have 
 read long enough and widely enough in the author 
 to know, without telling, how they would behave 
 themselves in that sort of arena. This is the engine 
 that he delights to work. Take a set of people all 
 trained to use with facility the same medium of 
 choice and exact speech, and all sufficiently sensitive 
 in intellect and feeling to shrink from anything like 
 rudeness or baldness or bluntness in manner and 
 expression. Place them in such relations to one 
 another that each has much to conceal, much to 
 reveal, and much to discover in the thoughts, de- 
 sires, and generally in the nature of himself and his 
 companions ; in such relations that from interview 
 to interview, and indeed from moment to moment, 
 there must be changes of mutual attitude, sometimes 
 slow and sometimes sudden, as in the pattern of a 
 kaleidoscope turned gently. Then have a Mr George 
 Meredith to provide them with dialogue, and to ex- 
 plain the inner springs of movement when dialogue, 
 however delicately constructed, is not explanatory 
 enough. And then — why, then you will see what 
 you can see, — Diana of the Crossways, for example, 
 chaps. XXII, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxv, xxxviii-xliii.
 
 ''Diana of the Crossways'' 281 
 
 This book in particular, Diana of the Crossways, 
 though reasons might certainly be given for not 
 placing it first among the author's achievements, 
 and though for myself I very much prefer, for in- 
 stance, the good parts of Evan Harrington, and 
 should rank The Egoist immeasurably above it — 
 as, indeed, in its own line, above anything which 
 modern literature has to show — has nevertheless one 
 noticeable advantage as a commencement of study. 
 Here at least, there is no possibility of mistake or 
 misunderstanding as to the primary importance 
 which, among the elements of the artistic product, 
 must be assigned to wit. The principal figure is 
 notoriously and professedly a woman of wit, moves 
 and has her being in wit, and simply because of 
 her wit, attains the position and undergoes the 
 experience in which we see her. The society in 
 which she moves is consciously and professedly a 
 witty society, could not live without wit any more 
 than without food. Now, since wit always makes 
 a part, and a very large part, of Mr Meredith's 
 interest in his subject, whatever that subject may on 
 the surface appear to be, and since — to repeat once 
 more the only point on which I care to insist — the 
 reader who does not appreciate linguistic dexterity, 
 and does not rate it highly among human capacities, 
 had much better let Mr Meredith alone, it Is well 
 that on this point our attention should be challenged 
 at once. Doubtless there are many aspects in which 
 Diana of the Crosstvays may be regarded. It is a 
 study in the development of character ; it exhibits 
 
 1 8-5
 
 282 ^' Diana of the Crossways'^ 
 
 many pleasant pictures ; it has scenes, two at least, 
 of elaborate and nevertheless effective pathos ; its 
 plot turns upon the deep problem of marriage. In 
 these matters among others, and especially in the 
 last mentioned, it is possible, it may just now be 
 fashionable, to see the essential and most significant 
 element. But none of these things are the essential 
 — no, not the problem of marriage. If you want 
 pathos, or pictures, or social problems, you can get 
 them elsewhere, you will find them more easily else- 
 where ; which is practically to say that you will find 
 them better. What you have here is a touchstone 
 which, were it not for other volumes from the same 
 hand, would be in its kind unique among the pro- 
 ducts of England, to ascertain whether you have the 
 faculty of enjoying dexterity in the manipulation of 
 language ; this you have, and also an instrument 
 with which to cultivate that faculty, if you happen 
 to possess it. If we are Englishmen, it is probable, 
 as Mr Meredith repeatedly hints to us\ that by our 
 nature we suspect wit with all the malice of honesty, 
 and not unlikely that we hate it with all the vigour 
 of sloth. The first is a grave and the second a 
 grievous error. But a worse state yet would be 
 the self-deception of supposing ourselves witty or 
 capable of wit because in a witty author we have 
 come to enjoy something else. 
 
 Manifestly, from the scope of the story, Diana 
 of the Crossways could not have been attempted 
 except by one who felt himself able to unfold the 
 ^ E.g. Viana, chaps, ii, xi, xxxix.
 
 ^^ Diana of the Crossways'' 283 
 
 riches of clever speech. Of the luxuriance actually 
 displayed no sampling can give a fair representation. 
 There is scarcely perhaps any type of cleverness 
 which is not exemplified copiously. There is the 
 "sentence," "gnom^," or "epigram," scattered in 
 dozens and hundreds. " The world is ruthless, be- 
 cause the world is hypocrite." " She was perforce 
 the actress of her part.... It is a terrible decree that 
 all must act who would prevail." "Slumber. ..a 
 paradoxical thing you must battle for, and can only 
 win at last when utterly beaten." " She was delight- 
 ful to hear, delightful to see ; and her friends loved 
 her and had faith in her. So clever a woman might 
 be too clever for her friends." " Money is, of course, 
 a rough test of virtue," said Red worth ; "we have I 
 no other general test." "We are much influenced 
 in youth by sleepless nights." " Men and women 
 crossing the high seas of life he had found most 
 readable under that illuminating inquiry — as to their 
 means." Among such phrases some are in import 
 simple, some profoundly penetrative; but their com- 
 mon quality is that they are rememberable, and this 
 they are, because they are in turn and wording so 
 scrupulously right. In the last cited, some of the 
 merit lies in the felicity of the implied simile, which 
 may be more fully seen in the context (chap, xxxix) : 
 the power to find and to work out analogies has 
 always been noted as a great branch of wit; indeed, 
 where wit has been studied, the tendency has com- 
 monly been, as in the days of Queen Anne, to exag- 
 gerate the importance of this branch. At any rate
 
 284 " Diana of the Crossways " 
 
 it is through such power that wit most often attains 
 to the form of eloquence. And in this kind also the 
 mastery of our author is astounding : " With her, or 
 rather with his thought of her soul, he understood 
 the right union of women and men from the roots to 
 the flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave 
 him comprehension of the meaning of love — a word 
 in many mouths, not often explained. With her, 
 wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify 
 a new start in our existence, a finer shoot of the tree 
 stoutly planted in good gross earth ; the senses 
 running their live sap, and the minds companioned, 
 and the spirits made one by the whole-natured con- 
 junction. In sooth, a happy prospect for the sons 
 and daughters of Earth, divinely indicating more 
 than happiness : the speeding of us, compact of what 
 we are, between the ascetic rocks and the sensual 
 whirlpools, to the creation of certain nobler races, 
 now very dimly imagined." Could this possibly be 
 better done ? Less brightness but more blaze is in 
 the description of the scandal sometimes attending 
 the publication of diaries and memoirs : "The Diarist 
 ...howks the graves, and transforms the quiet worms, 
 busy on a single poor peaceable body, into winged 
 serpents that disorder sky and earth with a deadly 
 flight of zig-zags, like military rockets, among the 
 living." And there should be added here, if there 
 were room, by way of a climax in this sort, the 
 picture of jealousy from The Egoist (chap, xxiii), 
 a thing to make one stupid with admiration — so 
 perhaps one had best not dwell upon it.
 
 ^' Diana of the Crossways" 285 
 
 Nearer to the popular notion of wit, because 
 more heavily pointed, are such things as Diana's 
 rebuke to her too presuming intimate : " You must 
 come less often, even to not at all, if you are one of 
 those idols with feet of clay which leave the print 
 of their steps in a room, or fall and crush the 
 silly idolizer." Or, again, the reflexions of Lady 
 Dunstane, the " woman of brains," upon Diana's 
 unfortunate husband : " Her first and her final 
 impression likened him to a house locked up and 
 empty ; a London house conventionally furnished 
 and decorated by the upholsterer, and empty of 
 inhabitants. . ..Empty of inhabitants even to the ghost ! 
 Both human and spiritual were wanting. The mind 
 contemplating him became reflectively stagnant." 
 Or, again, Diana writing to Lady Dunstane on the 
 political prospects of women : " The middle age of 
 men is their time of delusion. It is no paradox. 
 They may be publicly useful in a small way — I do 
 not deny it at all. They must be near the gates of 
 life — the opening or the closing — for their minds to 
 be accessible to the urgency of the greater ques- 
 tions..." and so on, the whole passage (chap, xv) 
 excellent, and enough in itself to establish Diana for 
 a wit of the first rank. 
 
 As for the small change of wit, sallies, repartees, 
 and so forth, the dialogue, everywhere and by the 
 nature or necessity of the story, is starred with them. 
 They cannot be overlooked, and it is not fair to take 
 them from their setting; so we will not quote any, 
 but will remark, however, that from The Egoist,
 
 286 ''Diana of the Crossways'" 
 
 perhaps from Beauchamf s Career, we might cull 
 a score or so better than any of these. Over the 
 whole scale of smartness, from top to bottom, the 
 author ranges with justified assurance. He is not 
 afraid to tell us right out what was the particular 
 quip by which Diana repelled the malicious attack 
 of Mrs Cramborne Wathin (chap. xiv). Great 
 * writers, the very greatest, have flinched at such a 
 trial. Scott does repeatedly ; Thackeray does in 
 a famous crisis of Vanity Fair — and Thackeray 
 stands high among English wits. Mr Meredith, 
 amazing as it is to see, is perfectly ready, and hits 
 the mark exactly, giving just what is good enough 
 and not (an error scarcely less easy) too good. 
 
 The pursuit of wit has its dangers, and that Mr 
 Meredith always avoids or overcomes them, I at 
 least shall not for a moment maintain. It is the 
 I way of wit, and it must be, to tread constantly on 
 I the verge of darkness. To demand that wit shall 
 be always or often easy of understanding, would be 
 simply to expose our ignorance of its character and 
 conditions. But what we often use we may well 
 come to tolerate, or even to love, when there is no 
 use in it ; and so may wit come to love darkness. 
 My own experience (each must speak for himself) 
 is that there is no noticeable work of wit which is 
 not sometimes sheerly incomprehensible. Ha7iilet 
 is an example, and to my mind, I confess, a very 
 black one. There are passages in The Way of the 
 World which to me are no better than headache. 
 No doubt in such a case we should be cautious in
 
 ''Diana of the Crossivays''' 287 
 
 decision ; often it will appear in the end that what 
 seemed wilful confusion has a purpose, and could 
 hardly have been made simpler without some injury. 
 But that it is always so we need not believe ; and 
 of Mr Meredith I will say frankly, though with the 
 profoundest respect, that not very seldom (so far as 
 with patient study I can judge) he is dark beyond or 
 even without legitimate reason. Readers of Diana 
 will find occasion to consider the question ; only let 
 them consider it long, and for each occasion afresh. 
 Chapters i, ix, xiii (to go no further) should cost them 
 some time. 
 
 And another danger is that the author may put 
 wit in the wrong place, or too much of it, to the 
 injury of dramatic truth. That Congreve did so, 
 often and constantly, I think with Lord Macaulay ; 
 and notwithstanding well meant apologies. And 
 here Mr Meredith especially might be put in a 
 dilemma. Since the English, by temper, are so 
 backward of wit as he says they are, how shall we 
 allow, for pictures of English society, these scintil- 
 lating clusters which he presents to us ? Personally 
 I do not find this a very serious matter, provided 
 that the tone of the picture be consistent, be 
 brightened or heightened throughout in proportion. 
 Whether the result be historically true or not, we do 
 not much care. Congreve, I hold, can scarcely be 
 said to have satisfied the proviso ; the dimensions 
 of theatrical work constrained him. Whether Mr 
 Meredith satisfies it is too complicated a matter for
 
 288 " Diana of the Crossways " 
 
 present discussion ; I should say that, on the whole 
 and with some lapses, he does. 
 
 I have not touched, and I do not mean to touch, 
 on the ethical substance of Diana of the Crossways. 
 There is no fear but that the reader will give to it 
 all the attention that it deserves. The chief char- 
 acter is borrowed, in parts, with some of the chief 
 
 ^ incidents, as the first chapter informs us, from the 
 career of an historic woman, whose conduct, never- 
 
 I theless, differed from that of Diana essentially. 
 Whether the author has triumphed perfectly over 
 the immense difficulties of making from his historic 
 model a true Diana, the reader must judge. Notable 
 it is, and questionable, that her salvation, so to speak, 
 /) is achieved, so far as appears, by the purest accident. 
 After reading chapter xxv, one may be haunted by 
 a certain weighty sentence (not in Johnsonese) of 
 Dr Johnson's. Truly chapter xxvi may well drive 
 that and everything else out of the mind. But — 
 but — well, the reader must judge. I am not ashamed 
 to say that I like Miss Asper, and am glad she 
 married Dacier. So probably for my reasons or 
 for others, is Mr Meredith. And I am sorry — is 
 he ? — for Mr Warwick.
 
 INDEX I 
 
 Aeschylus 87-89, 225 
 Altar of Mercy 226-235 
 Andromache, see Euripides 
 Aqueduct, the Marcian 137 f. 
 Aristophanes 85-87, 236-239 
 
 on Aeschylus 87 
 
 on Euripides 85 f., 236-239 
 Athens 225-235 
 
 Areopagus 234 f. 
 
 New Humanism at 225 
 
 Britannicus, murder of 73 f. 
 
 Caesar, Calendar of Julius 216 
 
 Callimachus 44, 50 
 
 Catillus and Coras 142-145 
 
 Coras, see Catillus 
 
 Coliseum 59 ff. 
 
 Cynthia 27-57, 1 16-126 
 Part I. 27-36, 1 16 
 Part II. 37-46, 116 f., 124 
 Part III. 38, 44-52, 116 f, 
 
 124-126 
 Part IV. 52-57 
 
 Dante 153-218, 221 f., 228, 232, 
 
 235 
 Latin in 213 f., 218 
 
 on "the laurel" 161, 165/^ 
 
 167-171, 178 
 on name "Statius" 198-203 
 on Statius, birthplace of 235 
 on Statius, Christianity of 
 
 153-203, 221, 228 
 on Virgil's birth 204-218 
 on Virgil's poems 174-176, 190, 
 
 205 f., 208, 218, 222 
 Diana of the Crossways, see 
 
 Meredith 
 
 Erotion 11-13 
 
 Euripides 85-111, 225 f., 236- 
 240 
 Andromache of 93-111 
 Aristophanes on 85 f. 
 Children of Heracles of 225 f. 
 Prologues of 236 ff. 
 Sophocles on 90 
 Suppliants of 225 f. 
 
 Gibbon, on religion of Roman 
 
 Empire 219 f. 
 Gtty Mamiering, see Scott 
 
 Lay of Last Minstrel, see Scott 
 Lucan 213, 233 
 
 Marcella of Bilbilis 25 f. 
 Marriage in the Roman Empire 
 
 112 ff. 
 Martial 6-26, 60-65, 68-72, 78, 
 
 126, 137 f. 
 Martialis, park of Julius 19-21 
 Mercy, Altar of 226-235 
 Meredith, George, Diana of the 
 CrossTvays, 280-288 
 Evan Harrington 279 
 The Egoist 277, 279, 284 f. 
 Milton, Hytnn on Morning of 
 Nativity y 197 
 Lycidas 145 f. 
 Paradise Lost 223 
 
 Ovid 146-148, 150-152 
 
 Peter, Saint, " the Fisherman " 
 
 159 
 Propertius 27-57, 1 15-126, I38f. 
 
 Redgauntlet, see Scott 
 Roman Emperor, worship of 7-9, 
 160-163, 205, 212
 
 290 
 
 Index I 
 
 Roman Empire 
 
 Gibbon on religion of 219 f. 
 Marriage laws of ii2ff. 
 Western Provinces of 4 f. 
 
 St Ronati's Welly see Scott 
 Saturnalia 58-84 
 "birds" at 8 if. 
 description of Feast 66-84 
 gambling at 67-70 
 presents at 70 fif. 
 Scott, Byron on 247 
 Gtiy Mannering 186, 248-264 
 Lay of Last Minstrel 223, 232 
 Redgauntlet 265-272 
 St Ronati's Well 154, 273 ff. 
 Vocabulary of 257, 261-264, 
 270-273 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 257 f. 
 
 Sophocles, on Euripides 90 
 Statins 64 f, 74-84, 129-147, 
 153-203, 221-235 
 Achilleis 154, 157 f, 160-164, 
 170 fif., 174, 177 ft., 182 ff., 
 189, 196, 202 
 Altar of Mercy 226-235 
 Hellenism of 226-231 
 name of 201 ff. 
 
 Henry VL 251, 
 
 Statius, Saturnalia 74-84 
 Silvae 129, 154 
 Thebais 64 f., 154, 158-164, 
 172, 175, 178-182, 184-198, 
 200, 202 f., 221-235 
 Villa of Vopiscus 129-146 
 references to Virgil in 223, 
 
 233 
 Stevenson, Catriona 265, 268 f. 
 The Wrecker 187 
 
 Tennyson, Idylls of the King 186, 
 
 223, 239-246 
 Tiberinus 146 ff. 
 Tibur, see Tivoli 
 Tivoli, place of retreat 128, 
 148-152 
 Vopiscus' villa at 129-146 
 
 Virgil 174-176, 190, 204-218, 222, 
 232 
 JL7teid 206, 222, 232 
 Dante on Birth of 204-218 
 Eclogues 174 ff., 190, 205, 208, 
 218, 222 
 Vopiscus I29ff. 
 
 Wandering Willie's Tale, see 
 Scott, Redgauntlet 
 
 INDEX II 
 
 {Passages translated, quoted, or discussed) 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Aristophanes, Frogs, 1 197-1248... 
 
 ... 236 ff. 
 
 Dante, Inferno, i. 70-72 
 
 204-218 
 
 I. 124 
 
 160 
 
 n. 13-27 
 
 206 
 
 IV. 80 
 
 209 
 
 Paradiso IX. 
 
 ... 170 
 
 XXIV 
 
 169 
 
 XXV 
 
 167 n, 169 
 
 Purgaiorio xxi. ... 
 
 ... 155-203, 235 
 
 XXII 
 
 ... 155-203 
 
 Euripides, Androtnache, 102-180 
 
 ... 99 ff. 
 
 184 f, 205 f 
 
 ... 103 
 
 881-1008 
 
 104 ff. 
 
 1085-1165 
 
 109 ff.
 
 
 Index II 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Horace, C. i. 7. 14-21 
 
 151 
 
 C. I. 34. 1-5 ... 
 
 > • • • • ■ 
 
 220 
 
 C. II. 6. 5-8 . 
 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 C. III. 29. 2-4. 
 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 Juvenal, Sat. vii. 8 
 
 2-92 
 
 
 
 157, 202 
 
 Martial I. 49 
 
 
 
 . • 
 
 . 21-23 
 
 H. 14 ... 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 III. 47 - 
 
 
 
 
 .. 16 
 
 III. 58 ... 
 
 
 
 
 . 16-18 
 
 IV. 44 ... 
 
 
 
 . . . 
 
 II 
 
 IV. 55 ... 
 
 
 
 
 • 4'v 23 
 
 IV. 64 ... 
 
 
 
 
 19-21 
 
 IV. 88 ... 
 
 
 
 . • 
 
 . 71 
 
 V. 30 ... 
 
 
 
 
 • 70 
 
 V. 34 •■• 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 V. 37 ••• 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 12 f. 
 
 V. 84 ... 
 
 
 
 
 • 72 
 
 VI. 42. 19-21 . 
 
 
 
 
 .. 138 
 
 VI. 83 ... 
 
 
 
 
 . 8 
 
 VII. 13 ... 
 
 
 
 
 .. 127 
 
 VII. 60 ... 
 
 
 
 • • • • 
 
 • • 7 
 
 IX. 18. 7 \. 
 
 
 
 
 .. 138 
 
 IX. 59 ... 
 
 
 
 • * ■ • 
 
 10 
 
 IX. 6 1 ... 
 
 
 
 
 141'. 
 
 X. 4 
 
 
 
 
 .. 65 
 
 X. yi ... 
 
 
 
 
 . 21, 24 f. 
 
 X. 61 
 
 
 
 • • ■ 
 
 II 
 
 XI. 2 
 
 
 
 . > ■ 
 
 .. 69 
 
 XI. 6 
 
 
 
 
 .. 68 
 
 XI. 18 ... 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 XII. 21 ... 
 
 
 
 
 .. 25 f. 
 
 XII. 31 ... 
 
 
 
 ... 
 
 25 
 
 Ltd. Spec. I. 
 
 
 
 
 60 
 
 II. 
 
 
 
 
 .. 61 
 
 III. 
 
 
 
 
 .. 63 
 
 Ovid, Amores ill. 6. 49-8 
 
 
 . . . 
 
 146-148 
 
 Ex Ponto I. 3. 81 f. 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 Fasti VI. 665-684 
 
 
 
 151 f. 
 
 Propertius I. i. 1-6 
 
 
 
 • 31 
 
 I. 2. 7 f. 
 
 
 
 
 32 
 
 I. 3. 17-46 
 
 
 
 
 • il> 
 
 I. 6. 13 ff. 
 
 
 
 
 34 
 
 I. 14. I ff. 
 
 
 
 
 • 35 
 
 I. 15. 9-22 
 
 
 
 
 • 35 
 
 I. 20 
 
 
 
 
 • 36 
 
 II. I 
 
 
 
 .. 
 
 • 37 n 
 
 II. 7 ... 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 38 
 
 II. 10 ... 
 
 
 
 
 37 «, 43 
 
 II. II ... 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 43 f- 
 
 II. 13. 19-36 . 
 
 
 
 
 • 39, 43 
 
 u. 18. 3f. ( = P 
 
 aimer 
 
 18/'. c 
 
 )f.) . 
 
 41 
 
 291
 
 292 
 
 
 Index II 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 
 Propertius ll. 20 ... 
 
 
 46 
 
 
 11. 23. I f. 
 
 .. 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 41 
 
 
 II. 26. 1-20 
 
 ^_, 
 
 ... « 
 
 
 40 
 
 
 II. 28. 35-46 . 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 42 
 
 
 II. 31 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 II. 34 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 44 
 
 
 III. 2 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 49 
 
 
 III. 3 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 138 « 
 
 
 III. 6 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 . .. 
 
 46 
 
 
 III. 7. 71 f. 
 
 
 • .. • 
 
 . . . 
 
 50 
 
 
 III. 8 ... 
 
 
 ... • 
 
 . .. 
 
 46 
 
 
 III. 9 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 49 
 
 
 in. 10. 1-32 
 
 
 ... 
 
 • ■ 
 
 47 f. 
 
 
 III. 10. 31-46 
 
 
 
 . . 
 
 49 
 
 
 III. 16 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 46 
 
 
 III. 18 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 45, 121 
 
 
 111. 20 ... 
 
 
 
 .. 
 
 47, 118 f. 
 
 
 III. 21 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 121, 125 
 
 
 III. 22 ... 
 
 
 . . . 
 
 .. 
 
 50, 125 
 
 
 111. 23 I f. 
 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 51 
 
 
 111. 24. 1-20 
 
 
 ... 
 
 
 51 
 
 
 III. 25 ... 
 
 
 
 . . 
 
 52 
 
 
 IV. 7 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 53-57 
 
 
 IV. 8 ... 
 
 
 
 . . . . 
 
 52 « 
 
 
 Scott, Guy Maftnering, 
 
 Ch. VII 
 
 ■ . 
 
 249-263 
 
 
 Ch. Llll. 
 
 ... 
 
 . . . • 
 
 264 
 
 
 Redgauntlet, Letter Xl 
 
 , 
 
 . . 
 
 265-272 
 
 
 St Ronatis Well, Ch. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 . . . . 
 
 274 f. 
 
 
 Ch. XXXV. 
 
 • . . 
 
 . . . . ■ 
 
 . 274 f. 
 
 
 Shakespeare, Henry VI. 
 
 III. V. 
 
 5 * . 
 
 . 258 
 
 
 Statius, Achilleis I. 14 ff. 
 
 . . . 
 
 . . . . . 
 
 161-180, 
 
 182 f. 
 
 Silvae 1. 3 
 
 ... 
 
 . • 
 
 130-139 
 
 
 1. 6 
 
 
 . . 
 
 75-84 
 
 
 Thebais I. 1-40 ... 
 
 
 .. 
 
 158-161, 
 
 164, 172, 181 ff. 
 
 VII. 410 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 • 197 
 
 
 VII. 424 
 
 ... 
 
 . .. 
 
 . 175, 186- 
 
 188, 192-198 
 
 VII. 430 
 
 
 ... 
 
 • 195 
 
 
 XII. 481-511 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 . 227 f. 
 
 
 XII. 809 
 
 ... 
 
 
 • 159 
 
 
 Virgil, Aen. vii. 674 
 
 
 .. 
 
 144 
 
 
 XI. 464, 519 ... 
 
 
 . .. . . 
 
 . 145 
 
 
 Ed. IV. ... 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 .. 
 
 . 176 
 
 
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