THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT From the Library of Henry Goldman, Ph.D. 1886-1972 SHORT STUDIES GREAT SUBJECTS. SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT SUBJECTS. BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. t*T m.u/w Of EXKTEB COLLEGE, OXFORD. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRTBNER AND COMPANY 1871. CONTENTS. THE SCIENCE: OF HISTORY .7 TIMES OF ERASMUS AND LUTHER : Lecture 1 37 Lecture II. 66 Lecture III 96 THE INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON THE SCOTTISH CHAU ACTER ' 128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLICISM 155 A PLEA FOR THE FREE DISCUSSION OF THEOLOGICAL DIFFICUL- TIES 166 CRITICISM AND THE GOSPEL HISTORY 197 THE BOOK OF JOR 228 SPINOZA 274 Tire DISSOLUTION OP THE MONASTERIES ...... 324 ENGLAND'S FORGOTTEN WORTHIES 358 HOMER 406 THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS REPRESENTATIVE MEN REYNARD THE Fox . THE CAT'S PILGRIMAGE FABLES : I. The Lions and the Oxen II. The Farmer and the Fox . ... PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE COMPENSATION THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY: A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, FEBRUARY 5, 1864. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I have undertaken to speak to you this evening on what is called the Science of His- tory. I fear it is a dry subject ; and there seems, indeed, something incongruous in the very connection of such words as Science and History. It is as if we were to talk of the color of sound, or the longitude of the Rule-of-three. Where it is so difficult to make out the truth on the com- monest disputed fact in matters passing under our very eyes, how can we talk of a science in things long past, which come to us only through books ? It often seems to me as if History was like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do not suit our piirpose. I will try to make the thing intelligible, and I will try not to weary you ; but I am doubtful of my success either way. First, however, I wish to say a word or two about the eminent person whose name is connected with this way of looking at History, and whose premature death- struck us all with such a sudden sorrow. Many of you, perhaps, recollect Mr. Buckle as he stood not so long ago in this place. He spoke more than an hour without a note, 8 lite Science of History. never repeating himself, never wasting words ; laying out his matter as easily and as pleasantly as if he had been talking to us at his own fireside. We might think what we pleased of Mr. Buckle's views, but it was plain enough that he was a man of uncommon power ; and he had qualities also qualities to which he, perhaps, himself attached little value as rare as they were admirable. Most of us, when we have hit on something which we are pleased to think important and original, feel as if we should burst with it. We come out into the book-market with our wares in hand, and ask for thanks and recognition. Mr. Buckle, at an early age, conceived the thought which made him famous, but he took the measure of his abilities. He knew that whenever he pleased he could command per- sonal distinction, but he cared more for his subject than for himself. He was contented to work with patient reti- cence, unknown and unheard of, for twenty years ; and then, at middle life, he produced a work which was translated at once into French and German, and, of all places in the world, fluttered the dovecotes of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. Goethe says somewhere, that, as soon as a man has done any thing remarkable, there seems to be a general conspir- acy to prevent him from doing it again. He is feasted, feted, caressed ; his time is stolen from him by breakfasts, dinners, societies, idle businesses of a thousand kinds. Mr. Buckle had his share of all this ; but there are also more dangerous enemies that wait upon success like his. He had scarcely won for himself the place which he deserved, than his health was found shattered by his labors. He had but time to show us how large a man he was, time just to sketch the outlines of his philosophy, and he passed away as suddenly as he appeared. He went abroad to re- cover strength for his work, but his work was done with and O f over. He died of a fever at Damascus, vexed only that he was compelled to leave it uncompleted. Almost his last The Science of History. 9 conscious words were, " My book, my book ! I shall never finish ray book ! " He went away as he had lived, nobly careless of himself, and thinking only of the thing which he had undertaken to do. But his labor had not been thrown away. Disagree with him as we might, the effect which he had already pro- duced was unmistakable, and it is not likely to pass away. What he said was not essentially new. Some such inter- pretation of human things is as early as the beginning of thought. But Mr. Buckle, on the one hand, had the art which belongs to men of genius: he could present his opinions with peculiar distinctness ; and, on the other hand, there is much in the mode of speculation at present current among us for which those opinions have an unusual fascination. They do not please us, but they excite and irritate us. We are angry with them ; and we betray, in being so, an uneasy misgiving that there may be more truth in those opinions than we like to allow. Mr. Buckle's general theory was something of this kind : When human creatures began first to look about them in the world they lived in, there seemed to be no order in any thing. Days and nights were not the same length. The air was sometimes hot and sometimes cold. Some of the stars rose and set like the sun ; some were almost motionless in the sky ; some described circles round a cen- tral star above the north horizon. The planets went on principles of their own ; and in the elements there seemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would at times go out in eclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would shake under men's feet ; and they could only suppose that earth and air and sky and water were inhabited and managed by creatures as wayward as themselves. Time went on, and the disorder began to arrange itself. Certain influences seemed beneficent to men, others ma- lignant and destructive ; and the world was supposed to be animated by good spirits and evil spirits, who were contin 10 The Science of History. ually fighting against each other, in outward nature and in human creatures themselves. Finally, as men observed more and imagined less, these interpretations gave way also. Phenomena the most opposite in effect were seen to be the result of the same natural law. The fire did not burn the house down if the owners of it were careful, but remained on the hearth and boiled the pot ; nor did it seem more inclined to burn a bad man's house down than a good man's, provided the badness did not take the form of negligence. The phenomena of nature were found for the most part to proceed in an orderly, regular way, and their variations to be such as could be counted upon. From observing the order 'of things, the step was easy to cause and effect. An eclipse, instead of being a sign of the anger of Heaven, was found to be the necessary and innocent result of the relative position of sun, moon, and earth. The comets became bodies in space, unrelated to the beings who had imagined that ail creation was watch- ing them and their doings. By degrees caprice, volition. all symptoms of arbitrary action, disappeared out of the universe ; and almost every phenomenon in earth or heaven was found attributable to some law, either under- stood or perceived to exist. Thus nature was reclaimed from the imagination. The first fantastic conception of things gave way before the moral ; the moral in turn gave way before the natural ; and at last there was left but one small tract of jungle where the theory of law had failed to penetrate, the doings and characters of human creatures themselves. There, and only there, amidst the conflicts of reason and emotion, conscience and desire, spiritual forces were still conceived to exist. Cause and effect were not traceable when there was a free volition to disturb the connection. In all other things, from a given set of conditions the con- sequences necessarily followed. With man, the word " law " changed its meaning : and instead of a fixed order, which The Science of History. 11 he could not choose but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobey if he dared. This it was which Mr. Buckle disbelieved. The economy which prevailed throughout nature, he thought it very un- likely should admit of this exception. He considered that human beings acted necessarily from the impulse of out- ward circumstances upon their mental and bodily condi- tion at any given moment. Every man, he said, acted from a motive ; and his conduct was determined by the motive which affected him most powerfully. Every man naturally desires what he supposes to be good for him ; but, to do well, he must know well. He will eat poison, so long as he does not know that it is poison. Let him see that it will kill him, and he will not touch it. The ques- tion was not of moral right and wrong. Once let him be o o thoroughly made to feel that the thing is destructive, and he will leave it alone by the law of his nature. His vir- tues are the result of knowledge ; his faults, the necessary consequence of the want of it. A boy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it : he draws men like trees or houses, with their centre of gravity anywhere. He makes mistakes, because he knows no better: We do not blame him. Till he is better taught, he cannot help it. But his instruction begins. He arrives at straight lines ; then at solids ; then at curves. He learns perspective, and light and shade. He observes more accurately the forms which he wishes to represent. He perceives effects, and he per- ceives the means by which they are produced. He has learned what to do ; and, in part, he has learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amount of force which his nature possesses ; but all this is as natural aa the growth of an acorn. You do not preach to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree ; you do not preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favorable soil, where it can have light and air, and be sheltered from the wind ; 12 The Science of History. you remove the superfluous branches, you train the strength into the leading shoots. The acorn will then become as fine a tree as it has vital force to become. The difference between men and other things is only in the largeness and variety of man's capacities ; and in this special capacity, that he alone has the power of observing the circumstances favorable to his own growth, and can apply them for himself, yet, again, with this condition, that he is not, as is commonly supposed, free to choose whether he will make use of these appliances or not. When he knows what is good for him, he will choose it ; and he will judge what is good for him by the circum- stances which have made him what he is. And what he would do, Mr. Buckle supposed that he always had done. His history had been a natural growth as much as the growth of the acorn. His improvement had followed the progress of his knowledge ; and, by a comparison of his outward circumstances with the condi- tion of his mind, his whole proceedings on this planet, his creeds and constitutions, his good deeds and his bad, his arts and his sciences, his empires and his revolutions, would be found all to arrange themselves into clear rela- tions of cause and effect. If, when Mr. Buckle pressed his conclusions, we ob- jected the difficulty of finding what the truth about past times really was, he would admit it candidly as far as con- cerned individuals ; but there was not the same difficulty, he said, with masses of men. We might disagree about the character of Julius or Tiberius Cassar, but we could know well enough the Romans of the Empire. We had their literature to tell us how they thought ; we had their laws to tell us how they governed ; we had the broad face of the world, the huge mountainous outline of their gen- eral doings upon it, to tell us how they acted. He be- lieved it was all reducible to laws, and could be made as intelligible as the growth of the chalk cliffs or the ooal measures. TJie Science of History. 13 And thus consistently Mr. Buckle cared little for in dividuals. He did not believe (as some one has said) that the history of mankind is the history of its great men. Great men with him were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, only perhaps a trifle more erratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have been much the same. As an illustration of the truth of his view, he would point to the new science of Political Economy. Here already was a large area of human activity in which nat- ural laws were found to act unerringly. Men had gone on for centuries trying to regulate trade on moral princi- ples. They would fix wages according to some imaginary rule of fairness ; they would fix prices by what they con- sidered things ought to cost ; they encouraged one trade or discouraged another, for moral reasons. They might as well have tried to work a steam-engine on moral reasons. The great statesmen whose names were connected with these enterprises might have as well legislated thatv,: : .,.r should run up-hill. There were natural laws, fixed in the conditions of things ; and to contend against them was the old battle of the Titans against the gods. As it was with political economy, so it was with all other forms of human activity ; and, as the true laws of political economy explained the troubles which people fell into in old limes because they were ignorant of them, so the true laws of human nature, as soon as we knew them, would explain their mistakes in more serious matters, and enable us to manage better for the future. Geographical position, climate, air, soil, and the like, had their several influences. The northern nations are hardy and industrious, because they must till the earth if they would eat the fruits of it, and because the temperature is too low to make an idle life enjoyable. In the south, the soil is more productive, while less food is wanted and fewer clothes ; and, in the ex- quisite air, exertion is not needed to make the sense of 14 The Science of History. existence delightful. Therefore, in the south \ve find men lazy and indolent. True, there are difficulties in these views ; the home of the languid Italian was the home also of the sternest race O of whom the story of mankind retains a record. And again, when we are told that the Spaniards are supersti- tious because Spain is a country of earthquakes, we re- member Japan, the spot in all the world where earthquakes are most frequent, and where at the same time there is the most serene disbelief in any supernatural agency whatso- ever. Moreover, if men grow into what they are by natural laws, they cannot help being what they are ; and, if they cannot help being what they are, a good deal will have to be altered in our general view of human obligations and responsibilities. That, however, in these theories there is a great deal of truth, is quite certain, were there but a hope that those who maintain them would be contented with that admission. A man born in a Mahometan country grows up a Mahom- etan ; in a Catholic country, a Catholic ; in a Protestant country, a Protestant. His opinions are like his language : he learns to think as he learns to speak ; and it is absurd to suppose him responsible for being what nature makes him. We take pains to educate children. There is a good education and a bad education ; there are rules well ascertained by which characters are influenced ; and, clearly enough, it is no mere matter for a boy's free will whether he turns out well or ill. We try to train him into good habits ; we keep him out of the way of tempta- tions ; we see that he is well taught ; we mix kindness and strictness ; we surround him with every good influence we can command. These are what are termed the advan- tages of a good education ; and, if we fail to provide those under our care with it, and if they go wrong, the respon- sibility we feel is as much ours as theirs. This is at once Tfie Science of History. 15 an admission of the power over us of outward circum stances. In the same way, we allow for the strength of tempta- tions, and the like. In general, it is perfectly obvious that men do neces- sarily absorb, out of the influences in which they grow up, something which gives a complexion to their whole after- character. When historians have to relate great social or specula- tive changes, the overthrow of a monarchy or the establish- ment of a creed, they do but half their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, for instance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe the charac- ter of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the means which he made use of, and the effect which he pro- duced ; the historian must show what there was in the con- dition of the eastern races which enabled Mahomet to act upon them so powerfully ; their existing beliefs, their ex- isting moral and political condition. In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the future, in the judgments which we pass upon one another, we measure responsibility, not by the thing done, but by the opportunities which people have had of know- ing better or worse. In the efforts which we make to keep our children from bad associations or friends, we admit that external circumstances have a powerful effect in making men what they are. But are circumstances every thing ? That is the whole question. A science of history, if it is more than a mis- leading name, implies that the relation between cause and effect holds in human things as completely as in all others ; that the origin of human actions is not to be looked for in mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences which are ptilpable and ponderable. When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what is called volition, the word Science is 16 The Science of History. out of place. If it is free to man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the praise or blame with which we regard one another are im- pertinent and out of place. I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I do, the subject cannot be made intelligible. Man- kind are but an aggregate of individuals ; History is but the record of individual action : and what is true of the part is true of the whole. We feel keenly about such things, and, when the logic becomes perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is only misleading. "Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should know it ; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts as cool as we can. I will say at once, that, if we had the whole case before us ; if we were taken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council chamber of Nature, and were shown what we really were, where we came from, and where we were going, however unpleasant it might be for some of us to find ourselves, like Tarquin, made into villains, from the subtle necessities of " the best of all possible worlds," nevertheless, some such theory as Mr. Buckle's might pos- sibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, there is some great " equation of the universe " where the value of the unknown quantities can be determined. But we must treat things in relation to our own powers and position and the question is, whether the sweep of those vast curves can be measured by the intellect of creatures of a day like ourselves. The " Faust " of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge, calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendous experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his own The Science of History. 17 race. There he feels himself at home. The stream of life and the storm of action, the everlasting ocean of ex- istence, the web and the woof, and the roaring loom of Time, he gazes upon them all, and in passionate exulta- tion claims fellowship with the awful thing before him. But the majestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him, "Thou art fellow with the spirits which thy mind can grasp, not with me." Had Mr. Buckle tried to follow his principles into detail, it might have fared no better with him than with " Faust." What are the conditions of a science ? and when may any subject be said to enter the scientific stage ? I sup- pose when the facts of it begin to resolve themselves into groups ; when phenomena are no longer isolated expe- riences, but appear in connection and order ; when, after certain antecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow ; when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation ; and when con- jectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the help of them. Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a science of it is an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that there must be a science of human things because there is a science of all other things. This is like saying the planets must be inhabited because the only planet of which we have any experience is inhabited. It may or may not be true, but it is not a practical question ; it does not affect the practical treatment of the matter in hand. Let us look at the history of Astronomy. So long as sun. moon, and planets were supposed to be gods or angels ; so long as the sword of Orion was not a metaphor, but a fact, and the groups of stars which inlaid the floor of heaven were the glittering trophies of the loves and Avars of the Pantheon, so long there was no science of Astronomy. There was fancy, imagination, 9 18 The Science of History. poetry, perhaps reverence, but no science. As soon, how- ever, as it was observed that the stars retained their rela- tive places ; that the times of their rising and setting varied with the seasons ; that sun, moon, and planets moved among them in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was marked out and divided, then a new order of things began. Traces of the earlier stage remained in the names of the signs and constellations, just as the Scandi- navian mythology survives now in the names of the days of the week : but, for all that, the understanding was now at work on the thing ; Science had begun, and the first triumph of it was the power of foretelling the future. Eclipses were perceived to recur in cycles of nineteen years, and philosophers were able to say when an eclipse was to be looked for. The periods of the planets were determined. Theories were invented to account for their eccentricities ; and, false as those theories might be, the position of the planets could be calculated with moderate certainty by them. The very first result of the science, in its most imperfect stage, was a power of foresight ; and this was possible before any one true astronomical law had been discovered. We should not therefore question the possibility of a science of history because the explanations of its phenom- ena were rudimentary or imperfect : that they might be, and might long continue to be, and yet enough might be done to show that there was such a thing, and that it was not entirely without use. But how was it that in those rude days, with small knowledge of mathematics, and with no better instruments than flat walls and dial-plates, those first astronomers made progress so considerable ? Because, I suppose, the phenomena which they were observing re- curred, for the most part, within moderate intervals ; so that they could collect large experience within the compass of their natural lives : because days and months and years were measurable periods, and within them the more simple phenomena perpetually repeated themselves. The Science of Histvry. 19 But how would it have been if, instead of turning on its axis once in twenty-four hours, the earth had taken a year about it ; if the year had been nearly four hundred years ; if man's life had been no longer than it is, and for the initial steps of astronomy there had been nothing to de- pend upon except observations recorded in history ? How many ages would have passed, had this been our condition, before it would have occurred to any one, that, in what they saw night after night, there was any kind of order at all? We can see to some extent how it would have been, by the present state of those parts of the science which in fact depend on remote recorded observations. The movements of the comets are still extremely uncertain. The times of their return can be calculated only with the greatest vagueness. And yet such a hypothesis as I have suggested would but inadequately express the position in which we are in fact placed towards history. There the phenomena never repeat themselves-. There we are dependent wholly on the record of things said to have happened once, but which never happen or can happen a second time. There no experiment is possible ; we can watch for no recurring fact to test the worth of our conjectures. It has been suggested fancifully, that, if we consider the universe to be infinite, time is the same as eternity, and the past is per- petually present. Light takes nine years to come to us from Sirius : those rays which we may see to-night, when we leave this place, left Sirius nine years ago ; and, could the inhabitants of Sirius see the earth at this moment, they would see the English army in the trenches before Sebastopol, Florence Nightingale watching at Scutari over the wounded at Inkermann, and the peace of England undisturbed by " Essays and Reviews." As the stars recede into distance, so time recedes with them ; and there may be, and probably are, stars from 20 The, Science of History. which Noah might be seen stepping into the nrk, Eve list- ening to the temptation of the serpent, or that older race, eating the oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the Baltic was an open sea. Could we but compare notes, something might be done ; but of this there is no present hope, and without it there will be no science of history. Eclipses, recorded in an- cient books, can be verified by calculations, and lost dates can be recovered by them ; and we can foresee, by the laws which they follow, when there will be eclipses again. Will a time ever be when the lost secret of the foundation of Rome can be recovered by historic laws ? If not, where is our science ? It may be said that this is a particular fact, that we can deal satisfactorily with general phenom- ena affecting eras and cycles. AA r ell, then, let us take some general phenomenon ; Mahometanism, for instance, or Buddhism. Those are large enough. Can you imag- ine a science which would have l foretold such movements as those ? The state of things out of which they rose is obscure ; but, suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with any amount of historical insight into the old oriental beliefs, you could have seen that they were about to trans- form themselves into those particular forms and no other ? It is not enough to say, that, after the fact, you can understand partially how Mahometanism came to be. All historians worth the name have told us something about that. But when we talk of science, we mean something with more ambitious pretences, we mean something which can foresee as well as explain ; and, thus looked at, to state the problem is to show its absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen this mighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormonism could have 1 It is objected that Geology is a science : yet that Geology cannot fore- tell the future changes of the earth's surface. Geology is not a century old, and its periods are measured by millions of years. Yet, if Geology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled Sir Koderick Murchison to foretell the discov- ery of Australian {jold. The Science of History. 21 been anticipated in America ; as little as it could have been foreseen that table-turning and spirit rapping would have been an outcome of the scientific culture of England in the nineteenth century. The greatest of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass of moral putrefaction round him, de- tected and deigned to notice among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII., could he have beheld the represen- tative of the majesty of the Cassars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and execrated sect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him the fulfillment of a rational expectation, or an intelligible result of the causes in operation round him. Tacitus, indeed, was born before the science of history ; but would M. Comte have seen any more clearly ? Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our philosophy ; if we content ourselves with the past, and require only a scientific explanation of that. First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the minds of those who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, but fallible creatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydides were perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writ- ing history; the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet even now, after all these centu- ries, the truth of what they relate is called in question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them can be confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we to believe ? Or, again, let the facts be granted. To revert to my simile of the box of letters, you have but to select such facts as suit you, you have but to leave alone those which do not suif you, and, let your theory of history be what 22 The Science of History. it will, you can find uo difficulty in providing facts to prove it. You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have your Schlegel's philosophy of history ; you may prove from history that the world is governed in detail by a special Providence ; you may prove that there is no sign of any moral agent in the universe, except man ; you may believe, if you like it, in the old theory of the wisdom of antiquity ; you .may speak, as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of " our fathers, who had more wit and wisdom than we ; " or you may talk of " our barbarian ancestors," and describe their wars as the scuffling of kites and crows. You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an unbroken progress towards perfection ; you may maintain that there has been no progress at all; and that man remains the same poor creature that he ever was ; or, lastly, you may say, with the author of the " Contract Social," that men were purest and best in primeval sim- plicity, - " When wild in woods the noble savage ran." In all or any of these views, history will stand your friend. History, in its passive irony, will make no objec- tion. Like Jarno, in Goethe's novel, it will not condescend to argue with you, and will provide you with abundant illus- trations of any thing which you may wish to believe. ' ; What is history," said Napoleon, " but a fiction agreed upon ? " " My friend," said Faust to the student, who was growing enthusiastic about the spirit of past ages, " my friend, the times which are gone are a book with seven seals ; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose miud those ages are reflected." One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with distinctness : that the world is built somehow on moral foundations ; that, in the long run, it is well with the good ; The Science of History. 23 in the long run, it is ill with the wicked. But this is no science ; it is no more than the old doctrine taught long ago by the Hebrew prophets. The theories of M. Comte and his disciples advance us, after all, not a step beyond the trodden and familiar ground. If men are not entirely ;uiimals, they are at least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to the conditions of animals. So far as those parts of man's doings are concerned, which neither have, nor need have, any thing moral about them, so far the laws of him are calculable. There are laws for his digestion, and laws of the means by which his digestive organs are supplied with matter. But pass beyond them, and where are we ? In a world where it would be as easy to calculate men's actions by laws like those of positive philosophy as to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot- rule, or weigh Sirius in a grocer's scale. And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first principle, on which the theory of a science of history can be plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self-interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unenlightened ; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers will promote his happiness. His con- duct is not determined by his will ; it is determined by the object of his desire. Adam Smith, in laying the founda- tions of political economy, expressly eliminates every other motive. He does not say that men never act on other motives ; still less, that they never ought to act on other motives. He asserts merely that, as far as the arts of pro- duction are concerned, and of buying and selling, the action of self-interest may be counted upon as uniform. What Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. Buckle would extend over the whole circle of human activity. Now, that which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man that which constitutes hu- man goodness, human greatness, human nobleness is 24 The Science of History. surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage : but it is self-forgetfulness ; it is self-sacrifice ; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantages remote or pres- ent, because some other line of conduct is more right. We are sometimes told that this is but another way of expressing the same thing ; that, when a man prefers doing what is right, it is only because to do right gives him a higher satisfaction. It appears to me, on the contrary, to be a difference in the very heart and nature of things. The martyr goes to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, not with a view to any future reward to themselves, but because it is a glory to fling away their lives for truth and freedom. And so through all phases of existence, to the smallest de- tails of common life, the beautiful character is the unselfish character. Those whom we most love and admire are those to whom the thought of self seems never to occur ; who do simply and with no ulterior aim with no thought whether it will be pleasant to themselves or unpleasant that which is good and right and generous. Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened? I do not think so. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. Surely it is a paradox to speak of the self-interest of a martyr who dies for a cause, the triumph of which he will never enjoy ; and the greatest of that great company in all ages would have done what they did, had their personal prospects closed with the grave. Kay, there have been those so zealous for some glorious principle as to wish themselves blotted out of the book of Heaven if the cause of Heaven could suc- ceed. And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the higher relations of human life, the higher modes of hu- man obligation. Kant, the philosopher, used to say that there were two things which overwhelmed him with awe as The Science of History. 25 he thought of them. One was the star-sown deep of space, without limit and without end ; the other was, right and wrong. Right, the sacrifice of self to good ; wrong, the sacrifice of good to self, not graduated objects of desire, to which we are determined by the degrees of our knowl- edge, but wide asunder as pole and pole, as light and dark- ness : one the object of infinite love ; the other, the object of infinite detestation and scorn. It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the less true for that), it is in this power to do wrong wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calcu- lations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact. If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their motives ; if they were consistently noble, they would express in their conduct the laws of the highest perfection. But so long as two natures are mixed together, and the strange creature which results from the combination is now under one influ- ence and now under another, so long you will make noth- ing of him except from the old-fashioned moral or, . if you please, imaginative point of view. Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us when they touch moral government. So long as labor is a chattel to be bought and sold, so long, like other com- modities, it follows the condition of supply and demand. v But if, for his misfortune, an employer considers that he stands in human relations towards his workmen ; if he be- lieves, rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for them ; that in return for their labor he is bound to see that their children are decently taught, and they and their families decently fed and clothed and lodged ; that he ought to care for them in sickness and in old age, then political econ- omy will no longer direct him, and the relations between himself and his dependents will have to be arranged on quite other principles. 26 The Science of History. So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long supply and demand will settle every difficulty; but the introduction of a new factor spoils the equation. And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low mo- tives and noble emotions ; in the struggle, ever failing yet ever renewed, to carry truth and justice into the adminis- tration of human society ; in the establishment of states and in the overthrow of tyrannies ; in the rise and fall of croeds ; in the world of ideas ; in the character and deeds of the great actors in the drama of life, where good and evil fight out their everlasting battle, now ranged in oppo- site camps, now and more often in the heart, both of them, of each living man, that the true human interest of his- tory resides. The progress of industries, the growth of ma- terial and mechanical civilization, are interesting ; but they are not the most interesting. They have their reward in the increase of material comforts ; but, unless we are mistaken about our nature, they do not highly concern us after all. Once more : not only is there in men this baffling duality of principle, but there is something else in us which still more defies scientific analysis. Mr. Buckle would deliver himself from the eccentrici- ties of this and that individual by a doctrine of averages. Though he cannot tell whether A, B, or C will cut his throat, he may assure himself that one man in every fifty thousand, or thereabout (I forget the exact proportion), will cut his throat, and with this he consoles himself. No doubt it is a comforting discovery. Unfortunately, the aver- age of one generation need not be the average of the next. We may be converted by the Japanese, for all that we know, and the Japanese methods of taking leave of life may become fashionable among us. Nay, did not Novalis siiggest that the whole race of men would at last become so disgusted with their impotence, that they w r ould extinguish themselves by a simultaneous act of suicide, and make room for a bet- ter order of beings ? Anyhow, the fountain out of which The Science of History. 27 the race is flowing perpetually changes ; no two generations are alike. Whether there is a change in the organization itself we cannot tell ; but this is certain, that, as the planet varies with the atmosphere which surrounds it, so each new generation varies from the last, because it inhales as its atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowl- edge of the whole past of the world. These things form the spiritual air which we breathe as we grow ; and, in the infinite multiplicity of elements of which that air is now composed, it is forever matter of conjecture what the minds will be like Avhich expand under its influence. From the England of Fielding and Richardson to .the England of Miss Austen, from the England of Miss Austen to the England of Railways and Freetrade, how vast the change ! Yet perhaps Sir Charles Grandison would ;iot seem so strange to us now as one of ourselves will seem to our great-grandchildren. The world moves faster and faster ; and the difference will probably be considera- bly greater. The temper of each new generation is a continual sur prise. The Fates delight to contradict our most confident expectations. Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too civ- ilized for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale of every day ; and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of destruction. What next ? We may strain our eyes into the future which lies beyond this waning century ; but never was conjecture more at fault. It is blank darkness, which even the imagination fails to people. What, then, is the use of History, and what are its les- sons ? If it can tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a study? 28 TJie Science of History. First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or un- righteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or van- ity, the price has to be paid at last; not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways. That is one lesson of History. Another is, that we should draw no horoscopes ; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations, those A'ast movements into which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the millennium, have not borne the fruit which they looked for. Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions leave the world changed, perhaps improved, but not improved as the actors in them hoped it would be. Luther would have gone to work with less heart, could he have foreseen the Thirty Years' War, and in the distance the theology of Tubingen. Washington might have hesitated to draw the sword against England, could he have seen the country which he made as we see it now. 1 The most reasonable anticipations fail us, antecedents the most apposite mislead us, because the conditions of human problems never repeat themselves. Some new feat- ure alters every thing, some element which we detect only in its after-operation. But this, it may be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the long records of humanity, with all its joys and, sorrows, its sufferings and its conquests, teach us no more than this ? Let us approach the subject from another side. If you were asked to point out the special features ilk 1 /ebruary, 1864. The Science of History. 29 which Shakespeare's plays are so transcendently excellent, you would mention perhaps, among others, this, that his stories are not put together, and his characters are not con- ceived, to illustrate any particular law or principle. They teach many lessons, but not any one prominent above another ; and, when we have drawn from them all the di- *rect instruction which they contain, there remains still something unresolved, something which the artist gives, and which the philosopher cannot give. It is in this characteristic that we are accustomed to say Shakespeare's supreme truth lies. He represents real life. His dramas teach as life teaches, neither less nor more. He builds his fabrics, as Nature does, on right and wrong ; but he does not struggle to make Nature more systematic than she is. In the subtle interflow of good and evil ; in the unmerited sufferings of innocence ; in the dispropor- tion of penalties to desert ; in the seeming blindness with which justice, in attempting to assert itself, overwhelms innocent and guilty in a common ruin, Shakespeare is true to real experience. The mystery of life he leaves as he finds it ; and, in his most tremendous positions, he is addressing rather the intellectual emotions than the un- derstanding, knowing well that the understanding in such things is at fault, and the sage as ignorant as the child. Only the-highest order of genius can represent Nature thus. An inferior artist produces either something en- tirely immoral, where good and evil are names, and nobil- ity of disposition is supposed to show itself in the absolute disregard of them, or else, if he is a better kind of man, he will force on Nature a didactic purpose ; he composes what are called moral tales, which may edify the conscience, but only mislead the intellect. The finest work of this kind produced in modern times is Lessing's play of " Nathan the Wise." The object of it is to teach religious toleration. The doctrine is aclmir- 30 The Science of History. able, the mode in which it is enforced is interesting ; but it has the fatal fault that it is not true. Nature does not teach religious toleration by any such direct method ; and the result is no one knew it better than Lessing himself that the play is not poetry, but only splendid manufac- ture. Shakespeare is eternal ; Lessing's " Nathan " will pass away with the mode of thought which gave it birtht One is based on fact ; the other, on human theory about fact. The theory seems at first sight to contain the most immediate instruction ; but it is not really so. Gibber and others, as you know, wanted to alter Shakes- peare. The French king, in " Lear," was to be got rid of ; Cordelia was to marry Edgar, and Lear himself was to be rewarded for his sufferings by a golden old age. They could not bear that Hamlet should suffer for the sins of Claudius. The wicked king was to die, and the wicked mother ; and Hamlet and Ophelia were to make a match of it, and live happily ever after. A common novelist would have arranged it thus ; and you would have had your comfortable moral that wickedness was fitly punished, and virtue had its due reward, and all would have been well. But Shakespeare would not have it so. Shakespeare knew that crime was not so simple in its consequences, or Prov- idence so paternal. He was contented to take the truth from life ; and the effect upon the mind of the most cor- rect theory of what life ought to be, comparedto the effect of the life itself, is infinitesimal in comparison. Again, let us compare the popular historical treatment of remarkable incidents with Shakespeare's treatment of them. Look at "Macbeth." You may derive abundant instruction from it, instruction of many kinds. There is a moral lesson of profound interest in the steps by which a noble nature glides to perdition. In more modern fash- ion you may speculate, if you like, on the political condi- tions represented there, and the temptation presented in absolute monarchies to unscrupulous ambition ; yon may t Science of History. 31 say, like Doctor Slop, these things could not have happened under a constitutional government : or, again, you may take up your parable against superstition ; you may dilate on the frightful consequences of a belief in witches, and reflect on the superior advantages of an age of schools and newspapers. If the bare facts of the story had come down to us from a chronicler, and an ordinary writer of the nineteenth century had undertaken to relate them, his account, we may depend upon it, would have been put to- gether upon one or other of these principles. Yet, by the side of that unfolding of the secrets of the prison-house of the soul, what lean and shriveled anatomies the best of such descriptions would seem ! Shakespeare himself, I suppose, could not have given us a theory of what he meant ; he gave us the thing itself, on which we might make whatever theories we pleased. Or, again, look at Homer. The " Iliad " is from two to three thousand years older than " Macbeth," and yet it is as fresh as if it had been written yesterday. "We have there no lesson save in the emotions which rise in us as we read. Homer had no philosophy ; he never struggles to press upon us his views about this or that; you can scarcely tell, indeed, whether his sympathies are Greek or Trojan : but he represents to us faithfully the men and women among whom he lived. He sang the tale of Troy, he touched his lyre, he drained the golden beaker in the halls of men like those on whom he was conferring immortality. And thus, although no Agamemnon, king of men, ever led a Grecian fleet to Ilium ; though no Priam sought the midnight tent of Achilles ; though Ulysses and Diomed and Nestor were but names, and Helen but a dream, yet, through Homer's power of representing men and women, those old Greeks will still stand out from amidst the darkness of the ancient world with a sharpness of outline which belongs to no period of history except the most recent. For the mere 32 Tlie Science of History. hard purposes of history, the " Iliad " and <; Odyssey " are the most effective books which ever were written. We see the hall of Menelaus, we see the garden of Alcinous, we see Nausicaa among her maidens on the shore, we see the mellow monarch sitting with ivory sceptre in the mar- ket-place dealing out genial justice. Or, again, when the wild mood is on, we can hear the crash of the spears, the rattle of the armor as the heroes fall, and the plunging of the horses among the slain. Could we enter the palace of an old Ionian lord, we know what we should see there ; we know the words in which he would address us. We could meet Hector as a friend. If we could choose a companion to spend an evening with over a fireside, it would be the man of many counsels, the husband of Penelope. I am not going into the vexed question whether History or Poetry is the more true. It has been sometimes said that Poetry is the more true, because it can make things more like what our moral sense would prefer they should be. We hear of poetic justice and the like, as if nature and fact were not just enough. I entirely dissent from that view. So far as Poetry at- tempts to improve on truth in that way, so far it abandons truth, and is false to itself. Even literal facts, exactly as they were, a great poet will prefer whenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the historical plays is studious, wherever possible, to give the very words which he finds to have been used ; and it shows how wisely he was guided in this, that those magnificent speeches of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no more change than the metre makes necessary, from Cavendish's Life. Marlborough read Shakespeare for English history, and read nothing else. The poet only is not bound, when it is inconvenient, to what may be called the accidents of facts. It was enough for Shakespeare to know that Prince Hal in his youth had lived among loose companions, and the tavern in Eastcheap came in to fill out his picture ; although Mrs. Quickly and The Science of History. 33 Falstaff, and Poins and Bardolph, were more likely to have been fallen in with by Shakespeare himself at the Mer- maid, than to have been comrades of the true Prince Henry. It was enough for Shakespeare to draw real men, and the situation, whatever it might be, would sit easy on them. In this sense only it is that Poetry is truer than History, that it can make a picture more complete. It may take liberties with time and space, and give the action distinctness by throwing it into more manageable compass. But it may not alter the real conditions of things, or represent life as other than it is. The greatness of the poet depends on his being true to Nature, without insisting that Nature shall theorize with him, without making her more just, more philosophical, more moral than reality ; and, in difficult matters, leaving much to reflection which cannot be explained. And if this be true of Poetry if Homer and Shakes- peare are what they are from the absence of every thing didactic about them may we not thus learn something of what History should be, and in what sense it should as- pire to teach ? If Poetry must not theorize, much less should the his- torian theorize, whose obligations to be true to fact are even greater than the poet's. If the drama is grandest when the action is least explicable by laws, because then it best resembles life, then history will be grandest also under the same conditions. " Macbeth," were it literally true, would be perfect history ; and so far as the historian can approach to that kind of model, so far as he can let his story tell itself in the deeds and words of those who act it out, so far is he most successful. His work is no longer the vapor of his own brain, which a breath will scatter ; it is the thing itself, which will have interest for all time. A thousand theories may be formed about it, spiritual theories, Pantheistic theories, cause and effect theories ; but each age will have its own philosophy of history, and 3 34 The Science of History. all these in turn will fail and die. Hegel falls out of date, Schlegel falls out of date, and Corate in good time will fall out of date ; the thought about the thing must change as we change : hut the thing itself can never change ; and a history is durable or perishable as it contains more or least of the writer's own speculations. The splendid intellect of Gibbon for the most part kept him true to the right course in this ; yet the philosophical chapters for which he has been most admired or censured may hereafter be thought the least interesting in his work. The time has been when they would not have been comprehended : the time may come when they will seem commonplace. It may be said, that, in requiring history to be written like a drama, we require an impossibility. For history to be written with the complete form of a drama, doubtless is impossible : but there are periods, and these the periods, for the most part, of greatest interest to mankind, the history of which may be so written that the actors shall reveal their characters in their own words ; where mind can be seen matched against mind, and the great passions of the epoch not simply be described as ex- isting, but be exhibited at their white heat, in the souls and hearts possessed by them. There are all the elements of drama drama of the highest order where the huge forces of the times are as the Grecian destiny, and the power of the man is seen either stemming the stream till it overwhelms him, or ruling while he seems to yield to it. It is Nature's drama, not Shakespeare's, but a drama none the less. So at least it seems to me. Wherever possible, let us not be told about this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak, let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him. The historian, we are told, must not leave his readers to themselves. He must not only lay the facts before them: he must tell them what he himself thinks about those facts. In my opinion, The Science of History, 35 this is precisely what he ought not to do. Bishop Butler says somewhere, that the best book which could be written would be a book consisting only of premises, from which the readers^should draw conclusions for themselves. The highest poetry is the very thing which Butler requires, and the highest history ought to be. We should no more ask for a theory of this or that period of history, than we should ask for a theory of "Macbeth" or "Hamlet." Philosophies of history, sciences of history, all these there will continue to be : the fashions of them will change, as our habits of thought will change ; each new philosopher will find his chief employment in showing that before him no one understood any thing ; but the drama of history is imperishable, and the lessons of it will be like what we learn from Homer or Shakespeare, lessons for which we have no words. The address of history is less to the understanding than to the higher emotions. We learn in it to sympathize with what is great and good ; we learn to hate what is base. In the anomalies of fortune we feel the mystery of out mortal existence ; and in the companionship of the illustri- ous natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we escape from the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life, and our minds are tuned in a higher and nobler key. For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched in connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and none can tell what will be after us. What opinions, what convictions, the infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it live out to- gether to the middle of another century, only a very bold man would undertake to conjecture. " The time will come," said Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materializing tend- encies of modern thought, " the time will come when the belief in God will be as the tales with which old women frighten children ; when the world wilt be a machine, the 86 The Science of History. ether a gas, and God will be a force." Mankind, if they last long enough on the earth, may develop strange things out of themselves ; and the growth of what is called the Positive Philosophy is a curious commentary on Lichten- berg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred, be the close of the mortal his- tory of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us, this only we may foretell with confidence, that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain, that something, what- ever it be, in himself and in the world, which science can- not fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his destiny. There will remain yet " Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things ; Falling from us, vanishings ; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized ; High instincts, before which our/nortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." There will remain -> " Thqse first affections. Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet the master-light of all our seeing, Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the Eternal Silence." 1IMES OF ERASMUS AND LUTHER; THREE LECTURES DELIVERED AT NEWCASTLE, 1867. LECTURE I. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I do not know whether I have made a very wise selection in the subject which I have chosen for these Lectures. There was a time a time which, measured by the years of our national life, was not so very long ago when the serious thoughts of man- kind were occupied exclusively by religion and politics. The small knowledge which they possessed of other things was tinctured by their speculative opinions on the relations of heaven and earth ; and, down to the sixteenth century, art, science, scarcely even literature, existed in this coun- try, except as, in some way or other,, subordinate to theol- ogy. Philosophers such philosophers as there were obtained and half deserved the reputation of quacks and conjurors. Astronomy was confused with astrology. The physician's medicines were supposed to be powerless, unless the priests said prayers over them. The great lawyers, the ambassadors, the chief ministers of state, were generally bishops ; even the fighting business was not entirely secu- lar. Half a dozen Scotch prelates were killed at Flodden ; and, late in the reign of Henry the Eighth, no fitter person could be found than Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry, to take command of the Welsh Marches, and harry the free- booters of Llangollen. Every single department of intellectual or practical life 38 Times of Erasmus and Luther. was penetrated with the beliefs, or was interwoven with the interests, of the clergy ; and thus it was that, when differ- ences of religious opinion arose, they split society to its foundations. The lines of cleavage penetrated everywhere, and there were no subjects whatever in which those who disagreed in theology possessed any common concern. When men quarreled, they quarreled altogether. The disturbers of settled beliefs were regarded as public ene- mies who had placed themselves beyond the pale of human- ity, and were considered fit only to be destroyed like wild beasts, or trampled out like the seed of a contagion. Three centuries have passed over our heads since the time of which I am speaking, and the world is so changed that we can hardly recognize it as the same. The secrets of nature have been opened out to us on a thousand lines ; and men of science of all creeds can pur- sue side by side their common investigations. Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Calvinists, contend with each other in honorable rivalry in arts and literature and commerce and industry. They read the same books. They study at the same academies. They have seats in the same senates. They preside together on the judicial bench, and carry on, without jar or difference, the ordinary business of the country. Those who share the same pursuits are drawn in spite of themselves into sympathy and good-will. When they are in harmony in so large a part of their occupations, the points of remaining difference lose their venom. Those who thought they hated each other, unconsciously find themselves friends ; and, as far as it affects the world at large, the acrimony of controversy has almost disappeared. Imagine, if you can, a person being now put to death for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at once, that, in the most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has become impossible ; and the impossibility is the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. The formu Times of Erasmus and Luther. 39 las remain as they were on either side, the very same formulas which were once supposed to require these de- testable murders. But we have learned to know each other better. The cords which bind together the brother- hood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not any more fly apart or become enemies because, here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are still unsound places. If I were asked for a distinct proof that Europe was im- proving and not retrograding, I should find it in this phe- nomenon. It has not been brought about by controversy. Men are fighting still over the same questions which they began to fight about at the Reformation. Protestant divines have not driven Catholics out of the field, nor Catholics Protestants. Each polemic writes for his own partisans, and makes no impression on his adversary. Controversy has kept alive a certain quantity of bitter- ness ; and that, I suspect, is all that it would accomplish if it continued till the day of judgment. I sometimes, in im- patient moments, wish the laity in Europe would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quarreling about. As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them whispered to the other, "-If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine." The reconciliation of parties, if I may use such a word, is no tinkered-up truce, or convenient Interim. It is the healthy, silent, spontaneous growth of a nobler order of conviction, which has conquered our prejudices even before we knew that they were assailed. This better spirit espe- cially is represented in institutions like this, which acknowl- edge no differences of creed, which are constructed on the broadest principles of toleration, and which, there- fore, as a rule, are wisely protected from the intrusion of discordant subjects. 40 Times of Erasmus and Luther. They exist, as I understand, to draw men together, not to divide them, to enable us to share together in those topics of universal interest and instruction which all can take pleasure in, and which give offence to none. If you ask me, then, why I am myself departing from a practice which I admit to be so excellent, I fear that I shall give you rather a lame answer. I might say that I know more about the history of the sixteenth century than I know about any thing else. I have spent the best years of my life in reading and writing about it ; and if I have any thing to tell you worth your hearing, it is probably on that subject. Or, again, I might say which is indeed most true that to the Reformation we can trace, indirectly, the best of those very influences which I have -been describing. The "Reformation broke the theological shackles in which men's minds were fettered. It set them thinking, and so gave birth to science. The Reformers also, without know- ing what they were about, taught the lesson of religious toleration. They attempted to supersede one set of dog- mas by another. They succeeded with half the world ; they failed with the other half. In a little while it became apparent that good men, without ceasing to be good, could think differently about theology ; and that goodness, therefore, depended on something else than the holding orthodox opinions.' It is not, however, for either of these reasons that I am going to talk to you about Martin Luther ; nor is tolera- tion of differences and opinion, however excellent it be, the point on which I shall dwell in these Lectures. Were the Reformation a question merely of opinion, I for one should not have meddled with it, either here or anywhere. I hold that, on the obscure mysteries of faith, every one should be allowed to believe according to his conscience, and that arguments on such matters are either impertinent or useless. But the Reformation, gentlemen, beyond the region of Times of Erasmus and Luther. 41 opinions, was a historical fact, an objective something tfhich may be studied like any of the facts of nature. The Reformers were men of note and distinction, who played a great part for good or evil on the stage of the world. If we except the Apostles, no body of human beings ever printed so deep a mark into the organization of society ; and, if there be any value or meaning in his- tory at all, the lives, the actions, the characters of such men as these can be matters of indifference to none of us. We have not to do with a story which is buried in ob- scure antiquity. The facts admit of being learnt. The truth, whatever it was, concerns us all equally. If the di- visions created by that great convulsion are ever to be ob- literated, it will be when we have learnt, each of us, to see the thing as it really was, and not rather some mythical or imaginative version of the thing, such as from our own point of view we like to think it was. Fiction in such matters may be convenient for our immediate theories, but it is certain to avenge itself in the end. We may make our own opinions, but facts were made for us ; and, if we evade or deny them, it will be the worse for us. Unfortunately, the mythical version at present very largely preponderates. Open a Protestant history of the Reformation, and you find a picture of the world given over to a lying tyranny, the Christian population of Eu- rope enslaved by a corrupt and degraded priesthood, and the Reformers, with the Bible in their hands, coming to the rescue like angels of light. All is black on one side ; all is fair and beautiful on the other. Turn to a Catholic history of the same events and the same men, and we have before us the Church of the Saints fulfilling quietly its blessed mission in the saving of human souls. Satan a second time enters into Paradise, and a second time with fatal success tempts miserable man to his ruin. He disbelieves his appointed teachers, he aspires after forbidden knowledge, and at once anarchy 42 Times of Erasmus and Luther. breaks loose. The seamless robe of the Saviour is rent in pieces, and the earth becomes the habitation of fiends. Each side tells the story as it prefers to have it ; facts, characters, circumstances, are melted in the theological crucible, and cast in moulds diametrically opposite. Noth- ing remains the same except the names and dates. Each side chooses its own Avitnesses. Exery thing is credible which makes for what it calls the truth. Every thing is made false which will not fit into its place. " Blasphemous fables " is the usual expression in Protestant controversial books for the accounts given by Catholics. " Protestant tradition," says an eminent modern Catholic, " is based on lying, bold, wholesale, unscrupulous lying." Now, depend upon it, there is some human account of the matter different from both these, if we could only get at it, and it will be an excellent thing for the world when that human account can be made out. I am not so pre - sumptuous as to suppose that I can give it to you; still less can you expect me to try to do so within the compass of two or three lectures. If I cannot do every thing, however I believe I can do a little ; at any rate, I can give you a sketch, such as you may place moderate confidence in, of the state of the Church as it was before the Reformation began. I will not expose myself more than I can help to the censure of the divine who was so hard on Protestant tradition. Most of what I shall have to say to you this evening will be taken from the admissions of Catholics themselves, or from official records earlier than the out- break of the controversy, when there was no temptation to pervert the truth. Here, obviously, is the first point on which we require accurate information. If all was going on well, the Re formers really and truly told innumerable lies, and deserve all the reprobation which we can give them. If all was not going on well, if, so far from being well, the Church was so corrupt that Europe could bear with it no longer, Times of Erasmus and Luther. 43 then clearly a Refonnation was necessary of some kind ; and we have taken one step towards a fair estimate of the persons concerned in it. A fair estimate, that, and only that, is what we want. I need hardly observe to you, that opinion in England has been undergoing lately a very considerable alteration about these persons. Two generations ago, the leading Reformei's were looked upon as little less than saints : now a party has risen up who intend, as they frankly tell us, to un-Protestantize the Church of England ; who detest Protestantism as a kind of infidelity ; who desire simply to reverse every thing which the Reformers did. One of these gentlemen, a clergyman, writing lately of Luther, called him a heretic, a heretic fit only to be ranked with whom do you think ? Joe Smith the Mormon Prophet. Joe Smith and Luther, that is the combina- tion with which we are now presented. The book in which this remarkable statement appeared was presented by two bishops to the Upper House of Con- vocation. It was received with gracious acknowledgments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was placed solemnly in the library of reference, for that learned body to con- sult. So, too, a professor at Oxford, the other day, spoke of Luther as a Philistine, a " Philistine " meaning an op- pressor of the chosen people ; the enemy of men of culture, of intelligence, such as the professor himself. One notices these things, not as of much importance in themselves, but as showing which way the stream is run- ning ; and, curiously enough, in quite another direction we may see the same phenomenon. Our liberal philosophers, men of high literary power and reputation, looking into the history of Luther and Calvin and John Knox and the rest, find them falling far short of the philosophic ideal, wanting sadly in many qualities which the liberal mind 44 Times of Erasmus and Luther. cannot dispense with. They are discovered to be intolcr ant, dogmatic, narrow-minded, inclined to persecute Cath- olics as Catholics had persecuted them ; to be, in fact, little if at all better than the popes and cardinals whom they were fighting against. Lord Macaulay can hardly find epithets strong enough to express his contempt for Archbishop Cranmer. Mr. Buckle places Cranmer by the side of Bonner, and hesi- tates which of the two characters is the more detestable. An unfavorable estimate of the Reformers, whether just or unjust, is unquestionably gaining ground among our ad- vanced thinkers. A greater man than either Macaulay or Buckle the German poet, Goethe says of Luther, that he threw back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries, by calling in the passions of the multitude to decide on subjects which ought to have been left to the learned. Goethe, in saying this, was alluding especially to Erasmus. Goethe thought that Erasmus, and men like Erasmus, had struck upon the right track ; and, if they could have retained the direction of the mind of Europe, there would have been more truth, and less falsehood, among us at this present time. The party hatreds, the theological rivalries, the persecutions, the civil wars, the religious an- imosities, which have so long distracted us, would have been all avoided, and the mind of mankind would have ex- panded gradually and equally with the growth of knowl- edge. Such an opinion, coming from so great a man, is not to be lightly passed over. It will fee my endeavor to show you what kind of man Erasmus was, what he was aiming at, what he was doing, and how Luther spoilt his work, if u spoiling " is the word which we are to us the machinery of the law courts is set creak- ing on its rusty hinges, and denunciation and anathema in the old style take the place of reasoning. It will not an- swer ; and the worst danger to what is really true is the want of wisdom in its defenders. The language which we sometimes hear about these things seems to imply that while Christianity is indisputably true, it cannot stand nev- ertheless without bolt and shackle, as if the Author of our faith had left the evidence so weak that an honest investi- gation would fail to find it. Inevitably, the altered relation in which modern culture places the minds of all of us towards the supernatural, will compel a reconsideration of the grounds on which the ac- ceptance of miracles is required. If the English learned clergy had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, they would be the first to take possession of the field ; they would look the difficulty in the face fearlessly and frankly, and we should not be tossing as we are now in an ocean of uncer- tainty, ignorant whether, if things seem obscure to us, the fault is with our intellects or our hearts. It might have been that Providence, anticipating the effect produced on dead testimony by time and change, had raised religion into a higher sphere, and had appointed on 204 Criticism and the Gospel History. earth a living and visible authority which could not err, guided by the Holy Spirit into truth, and divinely sustained in the possession of it. Such a body the Eoman Catholic Church conceives itself to be ; but in breaking away from its communion, Protestant Christians have declared their conviction that neither the Church of Rome, nor they themselves, nor any other body of men on earth, are ex- empt from a liability to error. It is no longer competent for the Anglican communion to say that a doctrine or a fact is true because it forms a part of their teaching, because it has come down to them from antiquity, and because to deny it is sin. Transubstantiation came down to the Fathers of the Reformation from antiquity ; it was received and in- sisted upon by the Catholic Church of Christendom ; yet nevertheless it was flung out from among us as a lie and an offense. The theory of the Divine authority of the Church was abandoned in the act of Protestantism three centuries ago ; it was the central principle of that great revolt that the establishment of particular opinions was no guaranty for their truth ; and it becomes thus our duty as well as our right to examine periodically our intellectual defenses, to abandon positions which the alteration of time makes untenable, and to admit and invite into the service of the sanctuary the fullest light of advancing knowledge. Of all positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is the assumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics to hold, but not for them, that beliefs once sanc- tioned by the Church are sacred, and that to impugn them is not error but crime. With a hope, then, that this reproach may be taken away from us ; that, in this most wealthily-endowed Church of England, where so many of the most gifted and most ac- complished men among us are maintained in well-paid leisure to attend to such things, we may not be left any longer to grope our way in the dark, the present writer puts forward some few perplexities of which it would be Criticism and the Gospel History. 205 well if English divinity contained a clearer solution than is found there. The laity, occupied in other matters, regard the clergy as the trustees of their spiritual interests ; but inasmuch as the clergy tell them that the safety of their souls depends on the correctness of their opinions, they dare not close their eyes to the questions which are being asked in louder and even louder tones ; and they have a right to demand that they shall not be left to their own unaided efforts to answer such questions. We go to our appointed teachers as to our physicians ; we say to them, " We feel pain here, and v here, and here ; we do not see our way, and we require you to help us." Most of these perplexities are not new : they wdre felt with the first beginnings of critical investigation ; but the fact that they have been so many years before the world without being satisfactorily encountered, makes the situa- tion only the more serious. It is the more strange that as time passes on, and divine after divine is raised to honor and office for his theological services, we should find only when we turn to their writings that loud promises end in no performance ; that the chief object which they set be- fore themselves is to avoid difficult ground ; and that the points on which Ave most cry out for satisfaction are passed over in silence, or are disposed of with ineffectual common- places. With a temperament constitutionally religious, and with an instinctive sense of the futility of theological controver- sies, the English people have long kept the enemy at bay by passive repugnance. To the well-conditioned English layman the religion in which he has been educated is part of the law of the land ; the truth of it js assumed in the first principles of his personal and social existence ; and attacks on the credibility of his sacred books he has re- garded with the same impatience and disdain with which he treats speculations on the rights of property or the com- mon maxims of right and wrong. Thus, while the inspira- 206 Criticism and the Gospel History. tion of the Bible has been a subject of discussion for a century in Germany, Holland, and France ; while even in the desolate villages in the heart of Spain the priests find it necessary to placard the church walls with cautions against rationalism, England hitherto has escaped the trial ; and it is only within a very few years that the note of specu- lation has compelled our deaf ears to listen. That it has come at last is less a matter of surprise than that it should have been so long delayed ; and though slow to move, it is likely that so serious a people will not now rest till they have settled the matter for themselves in some practical way. We are assured that if the truth be, as we are told, of vital moment, vital to all alike, wise and foolish, edu- cated and uneducated, the road to it cannot lie through any very profound inquiries. We refuse to believe that every laborer or mechanic must balance arduous historical probabilities and come to a just conclusion, under pain of damnation. We are satisfied that these poor people are not placed in so cruel a dilemma. Either these abstruse historical questions are open questions, and we are not obliged under those penalties to hold a definite opinion upon them, or else there must be some general principle accessible and easily intelligible, by which the details can be summarily disposed of. We shall not be much mistaken, perhaps, if we say that the view of most educated English laymen at present is something of this kind. They are aware that many ques- tions may be asked, difficult or impossible to answer satis- factorily, about the creation of the world, the flood, and generally on the historical portion of the Old Testament ; but they suppose that if the authority of the Gospel history- can be well ascertained, the rest may and must be taken for granted. If it be true that of the miraculous birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we have the evidence of two evangelists who were eye-witnesses of the facts which they relate, and of two others who wrote \mder the Criticism and the Q-ospcl History. 207 direction of, or upon the authority of, eye-witnesses, we can afford to dispense with merely curious inquiries. The sub- ordinate parts of a divine economy which culminated in so stupendous a mystery may well be as marvelous as itself; and it may be assumed, we think, with no great want of charity, that those who doubt the truth of the Old Testa- ment extend their incredulity to the New ; that the point of their disbelief, towards which they are trenching their way through the weak places in the Pentateuch, is the Gospel narrative itself. 1 Whatever difficulty there may be in proving the ancient Hebrew books to be the work of the writers whose names they bear, no one would have cared to challenge their genuineness who was thoroughly con- vinced of the resurrection of our Lord. And the real object of these speculations lies open before us in the now notorious work of M. Renan, which is shooting through Europe with a rapidity which recalls the era of Luther. To the question of the authenticity of the Gospels, therefore, the common sense of Englishmen has instiix t- ively turned. If, as English commentators confidently tell us, the Gospel of St. Matthew, such as we now possess it, is undoubtedly the work of the publican who followed our Lord from the receipt of custom, and remained with him to be a witness of his ascension ; if St. John's Gospel was written by the beloved disciple who lay on Jesus' breast at supper ; if the other two were indeed the composition of the companions of St. Peter and St. Paul ; if in these four Gospels we have independent accounts of our Lord's life and passion, mutually confirming each other, and if it can be proved that they existed and were received as au- thentic in the first century of the Christian Church, a stronger man than M. Renan will fail to shake the hold of Christianity in England. We put the question hypothetically, not as meaning to suggest the fact as uncertain, but being as the matter is 1 I do not sneak o p individuals ; I speak of tendency- 208 Criticism and the Crospet History. of infinite moment being, as it were, the hinge on which our faith depends, we are forced beyond our office to tres- pass on ground which we leave usually to professional the- ologians, and to tell them plainly that there are difficulties which it is their business to clear up, but to which, with worse than imprudence, they close their own eyes, and de- liberately endeavor to keep them from ours. Some of these it is the object of this paper to point out, with an earnest hope that Dean Alford, or Dr. Ellicott, or some other com- petent clergyman, may earn our gratitude by telling us what to think about them. Setting aside their duty to us, they will find frank dealing in the long run their wisest policy. The conservative theologians of England have carried silence to the point of indiscretion. Looking, then, to the first three Gospels, usually called the Synoptical, we are encountered immediately with a re- markable common element which runs through them all a resemblance too peculiar to be the result of accident, and impossible to reconcile with the theory that the writers were independent of each other. It is not that general similarity which we should expect in different accounts of the same scenes and events, but, amidst many differences, a broad vein of circumstantial identity extending both to substance and expression. And the identity is of several kinds. I. Although the three evangelists relate each of them some things peculiar to themselves, and although between them there are some striking divergencies as, for in- stance, between the account of our Lord's miraculous birth in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in the absence in St. Mark of any mention of the miraculous birth at all nevertheless, the body of the story is essentially the same. Out of those words and actions so many, that if all were related the world itself could not contain the books that snould be written the three evangelists select for the most part tne same ; tne same parables, the same miracles, Criticism and the Gospel History. 209 and, more or less complete, the same addresses. When the material from which to select was so abundant how abundant we have but to turn to the fourth evangelist to see it is at least singular that three writers should have made so nearly the same choice. II. But this is not all. Not only are the things related the same, but the language in which they ai*e expressed is the same. Sometimes the resemblance is such as would have arisen had the evangelists been translating from a common document in another language. Sometimes, and most frequently, there is an absolute verbal identity ; sen- tences, paragraphs, long passages, arc word for word the very same ; a few expressions have been slightly varied, a particle transposed, a tense or a case altered, but the differ- ences being no greater than would arise if a number of persons were to write from memory some common passages which they knew almost by heart. That there should have been this identity in the account of the words used by our Lord seems at first sight no more than we should expect. But it extends to the narrative as well ; and with respect to the parables and discourses, there is this extraordinary feature, that whereas our Lord is supposed to have spoken in the ordinary language of Palestine, the resemblance be- tween the evangelists is in the Greek translation of them ; and how unlikely it is that a number of persons in trans- lating from one language into another should hit by acci- dent on the same expressions, the simplest experiment will show. Now, waiving for a moment the inspiration of the Gos- pels ; interpreting the Bible, to use Mr. Jowett's canon, as any other book, what are we to conclude from phenomena of this kind ? What in fact do we conclude when we en- counter them elsewhere ? In the lives of the saints, in the monkish histories, there are many parallel cases. A me- diaeval chronicler, when he found a story well told by his predecessor, seldom cared to recompose it ; he transcribed 14 210 Criticism and the Gospel History. the words as they stood into his own narrative, contented perhaps with making a few trifling changes to add a finish or a polish. Sometimes two chroniclers borrow from a third. There is the same identity in particular expressions, the same general resemblance, the same divergence, as each improves his original from his independent knowledge by addition or omission ; but the process is so transparent, that when the original is lost, the existence of it can be in- ferred with certainty. Or to take a more modern parallel, we must entreat our readersto pardon any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison, if in the letters of the corre- spondents of three different newspapers written from Amer- ica or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the same language, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, but nevertheless in themselves identical, and related in words which, down to unusual and remarka- ble tenns of expression, were exactly the same, what should we infer ? Suppose, for instance, the description of a battle ; if we were to find but a single paragraph in which two out of three correspondents agreed verbally, we should regard it as a very strange coincidence. If all three agreed verbally, we should feel certain it was more than accident. If through- out their letters there was a recurring series of such passa- ges, no doubt would be left in the mind of any one that either the three correspondents had seen each other's let- ters, or that each had had before him some common narra- tive which he had incorporated in his own account. It might be doubtful which of these two explanations was the true one ; but that one or other of them was true, unless we suppose a miracle, is as certain as any conclusion in human things can be certain at all. The sworn testimony of eye- witnesses who had seen the letters so composed would add nothing to the weight of a proof which without their evi- dence would be overwhelming ; and were the writers them- Criticism and the Gospel History. 211 selves, with their closest friends and companions, to swear that there had been no intercommunication, and no story preexisting of which they had made use, and that each had written bond Jide from his own original observation, an English jury would sooner believe the whole party perjured than persuade themselves that so extraordinary a coinci- dence would have occurred. Nor would it be difficult to ascertain from internal evi- dence which of the two possible interpretations was the real one. If the writers were men of evident good faith ; if their stones were in parts widely different ; if they made no allusion to each other, nor ever referred to one another as authorities ; finally, if neither of them, in giving a dif- ferent account of any matter from that given by his com- panions, professed either to be supplying an omission or correcting a mistake, then we should have little doubt that they had themselves not communicated with each other, but were supplementing, each of them from other sources of information, a central narrative which all alike had before them. How far may we apply the parallel to the Synoptical Gospels? In one sense the inspiration lifts them above comparison, and disposes summarily of critical perplexities ; there is no difficulty which may not be explained by a miracle ; and in that aspect the points of disagreement between these accounts are more surprising than the sim- ilarities. It is on the disagreements in fact that the labors of commentators have chiefly been expended. Yet it is a question whether, on the whole, inspiration does not leave unaffected the ordinary human phenomena ; and it is hard to suppose that where the rules of judgment in ordinary writings are so distinct, God would have thus purposely cast a stumbling-block in our way, and contrived a snare into which our reason should mislead us. That is hard to credit ; yet that and nothing else we must believe if we refuse to apply to the Gospel the same canons of criticism 212 Criticism and the Gospel History. which with other writings would be a guide so decisive. It may be assumed that the facts connected with them admit a natural explanation ; and we arrive, therefore, at the same conclusion as before : that either two of the evangelists borrowed from the third, or else that there was some other Gospel besides those which are now extant ; existing per- haps both in Hebrew and Greek, existing certainly in Greek, the fragments of which are scattered up and down through St. Mark, St. Matthew, and St. Luke, in masses sufficiently large to be distinctly recognizable. That at an early period in the Christian Church many such Gospels existed, we know certainly from the words of St. Luke. St. Paul alludes to words used by our Lord which are not mentioned by the evangelists, which he assumed nevertheless to be well known to his hearers. He speaks, too, of an appearance of our Lord after his resur- rection to five hundred brethren ; on which the four Gospels are also silent. It is indisputable, therefore, that besides and antecedent to them there were other accounts of our Lord's life in use in the Christian Church. And in- deed, what more natural, what more necessary, than that from the day on which the Apostles entered upon their public mission, some narrative should have been drawn up of the facts which they were about to make known ? Then as little as now could the imagination of men be trusted to relate accurately a story composed of stupen- dous miracles without mistake or exaggeration ; and their very first step would have been to compose an account of what had passed, to which they could speak with certainty, and which they could invest with authoritative sanction. Is it not possible then that the identical passages in the Syn- optical Gospels are the remains of something of this kind, which the evangelists, in their later, fuller, and more com- plete histories, enlarged and expanded ? The conjecture has been often made, and English commentators have for the most part dismissed it slightingly ; not apparently being Criticism and .the Gospel History. 213 aware that in rejecting one hypothesis they were bound to suggest another ; or at least to admit that there was some- thing which required explanation, though this particular suggestion did not seem satisfactory. Yet if it were so, the external testimony for the truth of the Gospel history would be stronger than before. It would amount to the collective view of the first congregation of Christians, who had all immediate and personal knowledge of our Lord's miracles and death and resurrection. But perhaps the external history of the four Gospels may throw some light upon the question, if indeed we can speak of light where all is a cloud of uncertainty. It would seem as if the sources of Christianity, like the roots of all other living things, were purposely buried in mystery. There exist no ancient writings whatever of such vast moment to mankind of which so little can be authentically known. The four Gospels, in the form and under the names which they at present bear, become visible only with dis- tinctness towards the end of the second century of the Christian era. Then it was that they assumed the author- itative position which they have ever since maintained, and were selected by the Church out of the many other then existing narratives as the supreme and exclusive authorities for our Lord's life. Irenaeus is the first of the Fathers in whom they are found attributed by name to St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. That there were four true evangelists, and tliat there could be neither more nor less than four, Irenaeus had persuaded himself because there were four winds or spirits, and four divisions of the earth, for which the Church being universal required four columns ; because the cherubim had four faces, to each of which an evangelist corresponded ; because four covenants had been given to mankind one before the Deluge in Adam, one after the Deluge in Noah, the third in Moses, the fourth and greatest in the New Testament ; while again 214 Criticism and the Gospd History. the name of Adam was composed of four letters. It is not to be supposed that the intellects of those great men who converted the world to Christianity were satisfied with arguments so imaginative as these ; they must have had other closer and more accurate grounds for their decision ; but the mere employment of such figures as evidence in any sense, shows the enormous difference between their modes of reasoning and ours, and illustrates the difficulty of deciding at our present distance from them how far their conclusions were satisfactory. Of the Gospels separately the history is immediately lost in legend. The first notice of a Gospel of St. Matthew is in the well-known words of Papias, a writer who in early life might have seen St. John. The works of Papias are lost a misfortune the more to be regretted because Euse- bius speaks of him as a man of very limited understand- ing, TTO.VV 0-p.iKpos rov vow. Understanding and folly are words of undetermined meaning ; and when language like that of Irenaeus could seem profound it is quite possible that Papias might have possessed commonplace faculties which would have been supremely useful to us. A surviving fragment of him says that St. Matthew put together the discourses of our Lord in Hebrew, and that every one in- terpreted them as he could. Pantaenus, said by Eusebius to have been another contemporary of the Apostles, was reported to have gone to India, to have found there a con- gregation of Christians which had been established by St. Bartholomew, and to have seen in use among them this He- brew Gospel. Origen repeats the story, which in his time had become the universal Catholic tradition, that St. Mat- thew's was the first Gospel, that it was written in Hebrew, and that it was intended for the use of the Jewish converts. Jerome adds that it was unknown when or by whom it was rendered into a Greek version. That was all which the Church had to say ; and what had become of that Hebrevr original no one could tell. Criticism and the G-ospel History. 215 That there existed a Hebrew Gospel in very early times is well authenticated ; there was a gospel called the Gospel of the Ebionites or Nazarenes, of which Origen possessed a copy, and which St. Jerome thought it worth while to translate ; this too is lost, and Jerome's translation of it also ; but the negative evidence seems conclusive that it was not the lost Gospel of St. Matthew. Had it been so it could not have failed to be recognized, although from such accounts of it as have been preserved, it possessed some affinity with St. Matthew's Gospel. In one instance indeed it gave the right reading of a text which has per- plexed orthodox commentators, and has induced others to suspect that that Gospel in its present form could not have existed before the destruction of Jerusalem. The Zacha- riah the son of Barachiah said by St. Matthew to have been slain between the temple and the altar, is unknown to Old Testament history, while during the siege of Jerusalem a Zachariah the son of Barachiah actually was killed exactly in the manner described. But in the Ebionite Gospel the same words are found with this slight but important differ- ence, that the Zachariah in question is there called the son of Jehoiadah, and is at once identified with the person whose murder is related in the Second Book of Chroni- cles. The later translator of St. Matthew had probably confused the names. Of St. Mark's Gospel the history is even more profoundly obscure. Papias, again the highest discoverable link of the Church tradition, says that St. Mark accompanied St. Peter to Rome as his interpreter ; and that while there he wrote down what St. Peter told him, or what he could re- member St. Peter to have said. Clement of Alexandria enlarges the story. According to Clement, when St. Peter was preaching at Rome the Christian congregation there requested St. Mark to write a gospel for them ; St. Mark complied without acquainting St. Peter, and St. Peter, when informed of it, was uncertain whether to give or 216 Criticism and the Gospel History. withhold his sanction till his mind was set at rest by a vision. Irenaeus, on the other hand, says that St. Mark's Gospel was not written till after the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Chrysostom says that after it was written St. Mark went to Egypt and published it at Alexandria ; Epiphanius again, that the Egyptian expedition was under- taken at the express direction of St. Peter himself. Thus the Church tradition is inconsistent with itself, and in all probability is nothing but a structure of air ; it is bound up with the presence of St. Peter at Rome ; and the only ground for supposing that St. Peter was ever at Rome at all is the passage at the close of St. Peter's First Epis- tle, where it pleased the Fathers to assume that the " Babylon " there spoken of must have been the city of the Caesars. This passage alone, with the wild stories (now known to have originated in the misreading of an inscrip- tion) of St. Peter's conflict with Simon Magus in the presence of the emperor, form together the light and airy arches on which the huge pretenses of the Church of Rome have reared themselves. If the Babylon of the Epistle was Babylon on the Euphrates and there is not the slightest historical reason to suppose it to have been any thing else the story of the origin of St. Mark's Gos- pel perishes with the legend to which it was inseparably attached by Church tradition. Of St. John's Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place ; it forms a subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the defects of external evidence which undoubt- edly exist seem overborne by the overwhelming proofs of authenticity contained in the Gospel itself. The faint traditionary traces which inform us that St. Matthew and St. Mark were supposed to have written Gospels fail us with St. Luke. The apostolic and the im- mediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Luke as having written a history of our Lord at all. There was Criticism and the Gospel History. 217 indeed a Gospel in use among the Marcionites which re- sembled that of St. Luke, as the Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew. In both the one and the other there was no mention of our Lord's miraculous birth ; and later writers accused Marcion of having mutilated St. Luke. But apparently their only reason for thinking so was that the two Gospels were like each other ; and for all that can be historically proved, the Gospel of the Marcion- ites may have been the older of the two. What is wanting externally, however, is supposed to be more than made up by the language of St. Luke himself. The Gospel was evi- dently composed in its present form by the same person who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. In the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles the writer speaks in the first per- son as the companion of St. Paul ; and the date of this Gospel seems to be thus conclusively fixed at an early period in the apostolic age. There is at least a high prob- ability that this reasoning is sound; yet it has seemed strange that a convert so eminent as " the most excellent " Theophilus, to whom St. Luke addressed himself, should be found impossible to identify. " Most excellent " was a title given only to persons of high rank ; and it is singular that St. Paul himself should never have mentioned so con- siderable a name. And again there is something peculiar in the language of the introduction to the Gospel itself. Though St. Luke professes to be writing on the authority of eye-witnesses, he does not say he had spoken with eye-wit- nesses ; so far from it, that the word translated in the Eng- lish version " delivered " is literally " handed down ; " it is the verb which corresponds to the technical expression for " tradition ; " and the words translated " having had perfect understanding of all things from the first " might be rendered more properly " having traced or followed up all things from the beginning." And again, as it is humanly speaking cer- tain that in St. Luke's Gospel there are passages, however they are to be explained, which were embodied in it from 218 Criticism and the Gospel History. some other source ; so, though extremely probable, it is not absolutely certain that those passages in the Acts in which the writer speaks in the first person are by the same hand as the body of the narrative. If St. Luke had anywhere directly introduced himself if he had said plainly that he, the writer who was addressing Theophilus, had person- ally joined St. Paul, and in that part of his story was re- lating what he had seen and heard there would be no room for uncertainty. But, so far as we know, there is no other instance in literature of a change of person intro- duced abruptly without explanation. The whole book is less a connected history than a series of episodes and frag- ments of the proceedings of the Apostles ; and it is to be noticed that the account of St. Paul's conversion, as given in its place in the first part of the narrative, differs in one material point from the second account given later in the part which was unquestionably the work of one of St. Paul's companions. There is a possibility it amounts to no more, and the suggestion is thrown out for the consid- eration of those who are better able than this writer to judge of it that in the Gospel and the Acts we have the work of a careful editor of the second century. Towards the close of that century a prominent actor in the great movement which gave their present authority to the four Gospels was Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch ; he it was who brought them together, incorporated into a single work in unum opus ; and it may be, after all, that in him we have the long-sought person to whom St. Luke was writ- ing ; that the Gospel which we now possess was compiled at his desire out of other imperfect Gospels in use in the different churches ; and that it formed a part of his scheme to supersede them by an account more exhaustive, com- plete, and satisfactory. To this hypothesis indeed there is an answer which if valid at all is absolutely fatal. We are told that although the names of the writers of the Gospels may rot be men- Criticism and the Gospel History. 219 tioned until a comparatively late period, yet that the Gos- pels themselves can be shown to have existed, because they are habitually quoted in the authentic writings of the earliest of the Fathers. If this be so, the slightness of the historical thread is of little moment, and we may rest safely on the solid ground of so conclusive a fact. But is it so ? That the early Fathers quoted some accounts of our Lord's life is abundantly clear ; but did Aey quote these ? We proceed to examine this question again ten- tatively only we do but put forward certain considera- tions on which we ask for fuller information. If any one of the primitive Christian writers was likely to have been acquainted with the authentic writings of the evangelists, that one was indisputably Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine in the year 89, Justin Martyr lived to the age of seventy-six ; he travelled over the Roman world as a missionary ; and intellectually he was more than on a level with most educated Oriental Christians. He was the first distinctly controversial writer which the Church produced ; and the great facts of the Gospel history were obviously as well known to him as they are to ourselves. There are no traces in his writings of an acquaintance with any thing peculiar either to St. John or St. Mark ; but there are ex- tracts in abundance, often identical with and generally nearly resembling passages in' St. Matthew and St. Luke. Thus at first sight it would be difficult to doubt that with these two Gospels at least he was intimately familiar. And yet in all his citations there is this peculiarity, that Justin Martyr never speaks of either of the evangelists by name ; he quotes or seems to quote invaiiably from something which he calls V 'ATrosroAwy, or " Me- moirs of the Apostles." It is no usual habit of his to de- scribe his authorities vaguely ; when he quotes the Apoc- alypse he names St. John ; when he refers to a prophet he specifies Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Daniel. Why, unless there was some particular reason for it, should he use so singu- 220 Criticism and the G-ospd Hhtory. lar an expression whenever he alludes to the sacred history of the New Testament ? why, if he knew the names of the evangelists, did he never mention them even by accident ? Nor is this the only singularity in Justin Martyr's quota- tions. There are those slight differences between them and the text of the Gospels which appear between the Gospels themselves. When we compare an extract in Justin wi^h the parallel passage in St. Matthew, we find often that it differs from St. Matthew just as St. Matthew differs from St. Luke, or both from St. Mark great ver- bal similarity many paragraphs agreeing word for word and then other paragraphs where there is an alteration of expression, tense, order, or arrangement. Again, just as in the midst of the general resemblance between the Synoptical Gospels, each evangelist has some- thing of his own which is not to be found in the others, so in these ''Memoirs of the Apostles" there are facts un- known to either of the evangelists. In the account ex- tracted by Justin from " the Memoirs " of the baptism in the Jordan, the words heard from heaven are not as St. Mat- thew gives them, " Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," but the words of the psalm, " Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee ; " a reading which, singularly enough, was to be found in the Gospel of the Ebionites. Another curious addition to the same scene is in the words Kai -vp avrj6r) cV lopSarfl, " and a fire was kindled in Jordan." Again. Justin Martyr speaks of our Lord having prom- ised " to clothe us with garments made ready for us if we keep his commandments " KOL auvviov /Sao-iAcou- Trpoi-orjo-ai whatever those words may precisely mean. These and other peculiarities in Justin may be explained if we suppose him to have been quoting from memory. The evangelical text might not as yet have acquired its verbal sanctity ; and as a native of Palestine he might well OritiiAsm and the G-ospel History. 221 have been acquainted with other traditions which lay outside the written word. The silence as to names, however, re- mains unexplained ; and as the facts actually stand there is the same kind of proof, and no more, that Justin Martyr was acquainted with St. Matthew and St. Luke as there is that one of these evangelists made extracts from the other, or both from St. Mark. So long as one set of commenta- tors decline to recognize the truth of this relation betwee. the Gospels, there will be others who with as much justice will dispute the relation of Justin to them. He too might have used another Gospel, which, though like them, was not identical with them. After Justin Martyr's death, about the year 170, appeared Tatian's " Diatessaron," a work which, as its title implies, was a harmony of four Gospels, and most likely of the four ; yet again not exactly as we have them. Tatian's harmony, like so many others of the early evangelical his- tories, was silent on the miraculous birth, and commenced only with the public ministration. The text was in other places different, so much so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels ; but of this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The " Diatessaron " has been long lost, and the name is the only clew to its composition. Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings as remain of the immediate successors of the Apostles Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius : it is asserted confidently that in these there ara quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot be mistaken. We will examine them one by one. In an epistle of Barnabas there is one passage it is the only one of the kind to be found in him agreeing word for word with the Synoptical Gospels : " I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." It is one of the many passages in which the Greek of the three evan- 222 Criticism and the Gospel History. gelists is exactly the same ; it was to be found also in Jus tin's " Memoirs ; " and there can be no doubt that Barna bas either knew those Gospels or else the common source if common source there was from which the evangelists borrowed. More than this such a quotation does not en- able us to say ; and till some satisfactory explanation has seen offered of the agreement between the evangelists, the argument can advance no further. On the other hand, Barnabas like St. Paul had other sources from which he drew his knowledge of our Lord's words. He too ascribes words to Him which are not recorded by the evangelists. 'Ir/aovr 01 ^eAovres fJ.e l&ew /cat ai^acr^ai p.ov TJ}S -xdOev &\ysa f nv Kara Qvp&v, apvvfj.ei>os ^vxjhv but the scenes, the names, and the incidents, are all con- trived as if to baffle curiosity as if, in the very form of the poem, to teach us that it is no story of a single thing which happened once, but that it belongs to humanity itself, and is the drama of the trial of man, with Almighty God and the angels as the spectators of it. No reader can have failed to have been struck with the simplicity of the opening. Still, calm, and most majestic, it tells us every thing which is necessary to be known in the fewest possible words. The history of Job was proba- 1 See Ewald on Job ix. 13, and xxvi. 14. Tlie Boole of Job. 241 bly a tradition in the East ; his name, like that of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfor- tunes the problem of philosophers. In keeping with the current belief, he is described as a model of excellence, the most perfect and upright man upon the earth, " and the same was the greatest man in all the east." So far, great- ness and goodness had gone hand in hand together, as the popular theory required. The details of his character are brought out in the progress of the poem. He was " the father of the oppressed, and of those who had none to help them." When he sat as a judge in the market-places, " righteousness clothed him " there, and "his justice was a robe and a diadem." He " broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth ; " and, humble in the midst of his power, he' "did not despise the cause of his man-servant, or his maid-servant, when they contended with him," knowing (and amidst those old people where the multitude of mankind were regarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carved into eunuchs or polluted into concubines at their master's pleasure, it was no easy mat- ter to know it) knowing that " He who had made him had made them," and one " had fashioned them both in the womb." Above all, he was the friend of the poor ; " the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him," and he " made the widow's heart to sing for joy." Setting these characteristics of his daily life by the side of his unaffected piety, as it is described in the first chap- ter, we have a picture of the best man who could then be conceived ; not a hard ascetic, living in haughty or cow- ardly isolation, but a warm figure of flesh and blood, a man full of all human loveliness, and to whom, that no room might be left for any possible Calvinistic falsehood, God Himself bears the emphatic testimony, that " there was none like him upon the earth, a perfect and upright man, who feared God and eschewed evil." If such a person as this, therefore, could be made miserable, necessarily the 10 242 The Book of Job. current belief of the Jews was false to the root ; and tra- dition furnished the fact that he had been visited by every worst calamity. How was it then to be accounted for? Out of a thousand possible explanations, the poet intro- duces a single one. He admits us behind the veil which covers the ways of Providence, and we hear the accusing angel charging Job with an interested piety, and of being obedient because it was his policy. " Job does not serve God for nought," he says ; " strip him of his splendor, and see if he will care for God then. Humble him into pov- erty and wretchedness, so only we shall know what is in his heart." The cause thus introduced is itself a rebuke to the belief which, with its "rewards and punishments," immediately fostered selfishness ; and the poem opens with a double action, on one side to -try the question whether it is possible for man to love God disinterestedly the issue of which trial is not foreseen or even foretold, and we watch the progress of it with an anxious and fearful inter- est ; on the other side, to bring out, in contrast to the truth which we already know, the cruel falsehood of the popular faith to show how, instead of leading men to mercy and affection, it hardens their heart, narrows their sympathies, and enhances the trials of the sufferer, by re- finements which even Satan had not anticipated. The combination of evils, as blow falls on blow, suddenly, swiftly, and terribly, has all the appearance of a purposed visitation (as indeed it was) ; if ever outward incidents might with justice be interpreted as the immediate action of Providence, those which fell on Job might be so inter- preted. The world turns disdainfully from the fallen in the world's way ; but far worse than this, his chosen friends, wise, good, pious men, as wisdom and piety were then, without one glimpse of the true cause of his sufferings, see in them a judgment upon his secret sins. He becomes to them an illustration, and even (such are the paralogisms of men of this description) a proof of their theory that The Book of Job. 243 " the prosperity of the wicked is but for a while ; " and instead of the comfort and help which they might have brought him, and which in the end they were made ^o bring him, he is to them no more than a text for the enun- ciation of solemn falsehood. And even worse again, the sufferer himself had been educated in the same creed ; he, too, had been taught to see the hand of God in the out- ward dispensation ; and feeling from the bottom of his heart, that he, in his own case, was a sure contradiction of what he had learnt to believe, he himself finds his very faith in God shaken from its foundation. The worst evils which Satan had devised were distanced far by those which had been created by human folly. The creed in which Job had believed was tried and found wanting, and, as it ever will be when the facts of ex- perience come in contact with the inadequate formula, the true is found so mingled with the false, that they can hardly be disentangled, and are in danger of being swept away together. A studied respect is shown, however, to orthodoxy, even while it is arraigned for judgment. It may be doubtful whether the writer purposely intended it. He probably cared only to tell the real truth ; to say for the old theory the best which could be said, and to produce as its defend- ers the best and wisest men whom in his experience he had known to believe and defend it. At any rate, he rep- resents the three friends, not as a weaker person would have represented them, as foolish, obstinate bigots, but as wise, humane, and almost great men, who, at the outset, at least, are animated only by the kindest feelings, and speak what they have to say with the most earnest conviction that it is true. Job is vehement, desperate, reckless. His language is the wild, natural outpouring of suffering. The friends, true to the eternal nature of man, are grave, sol- emn, and indignant, preaching their half truth, and mis taken only in supposing that it is the whole ; speaking, zs 244 The Book of Job. all such persons would speak, and still do speak, in defend- ing what they consider sacred truth against the assaults of folly and skepticism. How beautiful is their first introduc- tion : " Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil which was come upon him, they came every one from his own place ; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite : for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept, and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great." What a picture is there ! What majestic tenderness ! His wife had scoffed at his faith, bidding him " leave God and die." " His acquaintance had turned from him." He " had called his servant, and he had given him no an- swer." Even the children, in their unconscious cruelty, had gathered round and mocked him as he lay among the ashes. But " his friends sprinkle dust towards heaven, and sit silently by him, and weep for him seven days and seven nights upon the ground." That is, they were true- hearted, truly loving, devout, religious men; and yet they, with their religion, were to become the instruments of the most poignant sufferings, the sharpest temptations, which he had to endure. So it was, and is, and will be of such materials is this human life of ours composed. And now, remembering the double action of the dra- ma the actual trial of Job, the result of which is un- certain ; and the delusion of these men, which is, at the outset, certain let us go rapidly through the dialogue. Satan's share in the temptation had already been over- come. Lying sick in the loathsome disease which had been sent upon him, his wife, in Satan's own words, had The Book of Job. 245 tempted Job to say, " Farewell to God," think no more of God or goodness, since this was all which came of it ; and Job had told her that she spoke as one of the fool- ish women. He " had received good at the hand of the Lord, and should he not receive evil ? " But now, when real love and real affection appear, his heart melts iii him ; he loses his forced self-composure, and bursts into a passionate regret that he had ever been born. In the agony of his sufferings, hope of better things had died away. He does not complain of injustice ; as yet, and before his friends have stung and wounded him, he makes no questioning of Providence, but why was life given to him at all, if only for this ? Sick in mind, and sick in body, but one wish remains to him, that death will come quickly and end all. It is a cry from the very depths of a single and simple heart. But for such simplicity and singleness his friends could not give him credit; possessed beforehand with their idea, they see in his misery only a fatal witness against him ; such calamities could not have befallen a man, the justice of God would not have permitted it, unless they had been deserved. Job had sinned and he had suffered, and this wild passion was but impenitence and rebellion. Being as certain that they were right in this opinion as they were that God Himself existed, that they should speak what they felt was only natural and necessary ; and their language at the outset is all which would be dic- tated by the tenderest sympathy. Eliphaz opens, the oldest and most important of the three, in a soft, subdued, suggestive strain, contriving in every way to spare the feel- ings of the sufferer, to the extreme to which his love will allow him. All is general, impersonal, indirect, the rule of the world, the order of Providence. He does not ac- cuse Job, but he describes his calamities, and leaves him to gather for himself the occasion which had produced them ; and then passes off, as if further to soften the 246 The Book of Job. blow, to the mysterious vision in which the infirmity of mortal nature had been revealed to him, the universal weakness which involved both the certainty that Job had shared in it, and the excuse for him, if he would confess and humble himself: the blessed virtue of repentance fol- lows, and the promise that all shall be well. This is the note on which each of the friends strikes successively, in the first of the three divisions into which the dialogue divides itself, but each with increasing per- emptoriness and confidence, as Job, so far from accepting their interpretation of what had befallen him, hurls it from him in anger and disdain. Let us observe (and the Cal- vinists should consider this), he will hear as little of the charges against mankind as of the charges against him- self. He will not listen to the " corruption of humanity," because in the consciousness of his own innocency, he knows that it is not corrupt : .he knows that he is himself just and good, and we know it, the Divine sentence upon him having been already passed. He will not acknowl- edge his sin, for he knows not of what to repent. If he could have reflected calmly, he might have foreseen what they would say. He knew all that as well as they : it was the old story which he had learned, and could repeat, if necessary, as well as any one ; and if it had been no more than a philosophical discussion, touching himself no more nearly than it touched his friends, he might have allowed for the tenacity of opinion in such matters, and listened to it and replied to it with equanimity. But, as the proverb says, "It is ill talking between a full man and a fasting : " and in Job such equanimity would have been but Stoicism, or the affectation of it, and unreal as the others' theories. Possessed with the certainty that he had not deserved what had befallen him, harassed with doubt, and worn out with pain and unkindness, he had assumed (and how natural that he should assume it) that those who loved him should not have been hasty to be- The Book of Job. 247 lieve evil of him; he had spoken to them as he really felt, and he thought that he might have looked to them for something warmer and more sympathizing than such dreary eloquence. So when the revelation comes upon him of what was passing in them, he attributes it (and now he is unjust to them) to a falsehood of heart, and not to a blindness of understanding. Their sermons, so kindly intended, roll past him as a dismal mockery. They had been shocked (and how true again is this to nature) at his passionate cry for death. " Do ye reprove words ? " he says, " and the speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind ? " It was but poor friendship and narrow wisdom. He had looked to them for pity, for comfort, and love. He had longed for it as the parched caravans in the desert for the water-streams, and " his brethren had dealt deceitfully with him." The brooks, in the cool winter, roll in a full turbid torrent ; " what time it waxes warm they vanish, when it is hot they are consumed out of their place ; the caravans of Tema looked for them, the companies of Sheba waited for them ; they were confounded because they had hoped ; they came thither, and there was nothing." If for once these poor men could have trusted their hearts, if for once they could have believed that there might be " more things in heaven and earth " than were dreamt of in their philosophy but this is the one thing which they could not do, which the theologian proper never has done or will do. And thus whatever of calm- ness or endurance Job alone, on his ash-heap, might have conquered for himself, is all scattered away ; and as the strong gusts of passion sweep to and fro across his heart, he pours himself out in wild fitful music, so beauti- ful because so true, not answering them or their speeches, but now flinging them from him in scorn, now appealing to their mercy, or turning indignantly to God ; now pray- ing for death ; now in perplexity doubting whether, in some mystic way which he cannot understand, he may not, 248 The Book of Job. perhaps, after all, really have sinned, and praying to bo shown his fault; and then staggering further into the darkness, and breaking out into upbraidings of the Power which has become so dreadful an enigma to him. '"' Thou inquirest after my iniquity, thou searchest after my sin, and thou knowest that I am not wicked. Why didst thou bring me forth out of the womb ? Oh, that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me. Cease, let me alone. It is but a little while that I have to live. Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little before I go, whence I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death." In what other poem in the world is there pathos deep as this ? With experience so stern as his, it was not for Job to be calm, and self-possessed, and delicate in his words. He speaks not what he knows, but what he feels ; and without fear the writer allows him to throw out his passion all genuine as it rises, not overmuch caring how nice ears might be offended, but contented to be true to the real emotion of a genuine human heart. So the poem runs on to the end of the first answer to Zophar. But now, with admirable fitness, as the contest goes for- ward, the relative position of the speakers begins to change. Hitherto, Job only had been passionate ; and his friends temperate and collected. Now. becoming shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed in the result of their homilies, they stray still further from the truth in an endeavor to strengthen their position, and, as a natural consequence, visibly grow angry. To them, Job's vehement and desper- ate speeches are damning evidence of the truth of their suspicion. Impiety is added to his first sin. and they begin to see in him a rebel against God. At first they had been contented to speak generally, and much which they had urged was partially true ; now they step forward to a direct application, and formally and personally accuse himself. Here their ground is positively false ; and with delicate art it is they who are now growing violent, and wounded self- TJie JBook of Job. 249 love begins to show behind their zeal for God ; while in contrast to them, as there is less and less truth in what they say, Job grows more and more collected. For a time it had seemed doubtful how he would endure his trial. The light O of his faith was burning feebly and unsteadily ; a little more, and it seemed as if it might have utterly gone out. But at last the storm was lulling; as the charges are brought personally home to him, the confidence in his own real innocence rises against them. He had before known that he was innocent ; now he feels the strength which lies in innocence, as if God were beginning to reveal Himself within him, to prepare the way for the after outward man- ifestation of Himself. The friends, as before, repeat one another with but little difference ; the sameness being of course intentional, as showing that they were not speaking for themselves, but as representatives of a prevailing opinion. Eliphaz, again, gives the note which the others follow. Hear this Calvin- ist of the old world : " Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and thine own lips testify against thee. What is man that he should be clean, and he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous ? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints ; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight ; how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water." Strange, that after all these thousands of years we should still persist in this degrading confession, as a thing which it is impious to deny and impious to attempt to render otherwise, when Scripture itself, in lan- guage so emphatic, declares that it is a lie. Job is innocent, perfect, righteous. God Himself bears witness to it. It is Job who is found at last to have spoken truth, and the friends to have sinned in denying it. And he holds fast by his innocency, and with a generous confidence thrusts away the misgivings which had begun to cling to him. Among his complainings, he had exclaimed, that God was remem- bering upon him the sins of his youth not denying them ; 250 The Book of Job. knowing well that he, like others, had gone astray before he had learnt to control himself, but feeling that at least in an earthly father it is unjust to visit the faults of childhood on the matured man ; feeling that he had long, long shaken them off from him, and they did not even impair the prob- ity of his after-life. But now these doubts, too, pass away in the brave certainty that God is not less just than man. As the deuouncings grow louder and darker, he ap- peals from his narrow judges to the Supreme Tribunal calls on God to hear him and to try his cause and then, in the strength of this appeal the mist rises from before his eyes. His sickness is mortal ; he has no hope in life, and death is near ; but the intense feeling that justice must and will be done, holds to him closer and closer. God may appear on earth for him ; or if that be too bold a hope, and death finds him as he is what is death then? God will clear his memory in the place where he lived ; his injuries will be righted over his grave ; while for himself, like a sudden gleam of sunlight between clouds, a clear, bright hope beams up, that he too, then, in another life, if not in this, when his skin is wasted off his bones, and the worms have done their work on the prison of his spirit, he too, at last, may then see God ; may see Him, and have his pleadings heard. With such a hope, or even the shadow of one, he turns back to the world again to look at it. Facts against which he had before closed his eyes lie allows and confronts, and he sees that his own little experience is but the reflection of a law. You tell me, he seems to say, that the good are rewarded, and that the wicked are punished ; that God is just, and that this is always so. Perhaps it is, or will be, but not in the way which you imagine. You have known me, you have known what my life has been ; you see what I am, and it is no difficulty to you. You prefer believing that I, whom you call your friend, am a deceiver or a pre- tender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of your The Book of Job. 251 hypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, and you are angry with me because I will not lie against my own soul, and acknowledge sins which I have not committed. * o You appeal to the course of the world in proof of your faith, and challenge me to answer you. Well, then, I accept your challenge. The world is not what you say. You have told me what you have seen of it ; I will tell you what I have seen. "Even while I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold upon my flesh. Wherefore do the wicked become old, yea, and are mighty in power ? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down into the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, for we de- sire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him ? and what profit should we have if we pray to him ? " Will you quote the weary proverb ? Will you say that " God layeth up his iniquity for his children ? " (Our trans- lators have wholly lost the sense of this passage, and en- deavor to make Job acknowledge what he is steadfastly denying.) Well, and what then ? What will he care ? " Will his own eye see his own fall ? Will he drink the wrath of the Almighty? What are the fortunes of his house to him if the number of his own months is fulfilled ? " One man is good and another wicked, one is happy and another is miserable. In the great indifference of nature they share alike in the common lot. " They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them." Ewald, and many other critics, suppose that Job was 252 T/te Boole of Jot. hurried away by his feelings to say all this ; and that in his calmer moments he must have felt that it was untrue. It is a point on which we must decline accepting even Ewald's high authority. Even then, in those old times, it was be- ginning to be terribly true. Even then the current theory was obliged to bend to large exceptions ; and what Job saw as exceptions we see round us everywhere. It was true then, it is infinitely more true now, that what is called virtue in the common sense of the word, still more that nobleness, godliness, or heroism of character in any form whatsoever, have nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness. The thoroughly vicious man is no doubt wretched enough ; but the worldly, prudent, self-restraining man, with his fire senses, which he under- stands how to gratify with tempered indulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called respectability, such a man feels no wretchedness ; no inward uneasiness disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify ; and this though he be the basest and moat con- temptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him obey the laws under which prosperity is obtainable, and he will obtain it, let him never fear. He will obtain it, be he base or noble. Nature is indifferent ; the famine and the earthquake, and the blight or the accident, will not -discriminate to strike him. He may insure himself against casualties in these days of ours, with the money perhaps which a better man would have given away, and he will have his reward. He need not doubt it. And, again, it is not true, as optimists would per- suade us, that such prosperity brings no real pleasure. A man with no high aspirations, who thrives, and makes money, and envelops himself in comforts, is as happy as such a nature can be. If unbroken satisfaction be the most blessed state for a man (and this certainly is the practical notion of happiness), he is the happiest of men. The Book of Job. 253 Nor are those idle phrases any truer, that the good man's goodness is a never-ceasing sunshine ; that virtue is its own reward, &c., &c. If men truly virtuous care to be re- warded for it, their virtue is but a poor investment of theii moral capital. Was Job so happy then on that ash-heap of his, the mark of the world's scorn, and the butt for the spiritual archery of the theologian, alone in his forlorn na- kedness, like some old dreary stump which the lightning has scathed, rotting away in the wind and the rain ? If hap- piness be indeed what we men are sent into this world to seek for, those hitherto thought the noblest among us were the pitifulest and wretchedest. Surely it was no error in Job. It was that real insight which once was given to all the world in Christianity, however we have forgotten it now. Job was learning to see that it was not in the possession of enjoyment, no, nor of happiness itself, that the difference lies between the good and the bad. True, it might be that God sometimes, even generally, gives such happiness gives it in what Aristotle calls an eTriyiyvo/xeyov re'Ao?, but it is no part of the terms on which He admits us to his ser- vice, still less is it the end which we may propose to our- selves on entering his service. Happiness He gives to whom He will, or leaves to the angel of Nature to distrib- ute among those who fulfill the laws upon which it depends. But to serve God and to love Him is higher and better than happiness, though it be with wounded feet, and bleed- ing brows, and hearts loaded with sorrow. Into this high faith Job is rising, treading his tempta- tions under his feet, and finding in them a ladder on which his spirit rises. Thus he is passing further and even fur- ther from his friends, soaring where their imaginations cannot follow him. To them he is a blasphemer whom they gaze at with awe and terror. They had charged him with sinning on the strength of their hypothesis, and he has answered with a deliberate denial of it. Losing now all mastery over themselves, they pour out a torrent of 254 The Book of Job. mere extravagant invective and baseless falsehood, which in the calmer outset they would have blushed to think of. They know no evil of Job, but they do not hesitate to con- vert conjecture into certainty, and specify in detail the par- ticular crimes which he must have committed. He ought to have committed them, and so he had ; the old argument then as now. " Is not thy wickedness great ? " says Eliphaz. " Thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing ; thou hast not given water to the weary, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry ; " and so on through a series of mere distracted lies. But the time was past when words like these could make Job angry. Bildad follows them up with an attempt to frighten him by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming ; but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not have approached ; and then proud- ly and calmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high, tranquil self-possession. " God forbid that I should justify you," he says ; " till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go. My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live." So far all has been clear, each party, with increasing confidence, having insisted on their own position, and de- nounced their adversaries. A difficulty now arises which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As the chapters are at present printed, the entire of the twenty-seventh is assigned to Job, and the paragraph from the eleventh to the twenty-third verses is in direct contradiction to all which he has maintained before is, in fact, a concession of having been wrong from the beginning. Ewald, who, as we said above, himself refuses to allow the truth of Job's last and highest position, supposes that he is here receding from it, and confessing w r hat an over-precipitate passion had betrayed him into denying. For many rea- The Bock of Job. 255 sons, principally because we are satisfied that Job said then no more than the real fact, we cannot think Ewald right ; and the concessions are too large and too inconsist- ent to be reconciled even with his own general theory of the poem. Another solution of the difficulty is very sim- ple, although it is to be admitted that it rather cuts the knot than unties it. Eliphaz and Bildad have each spoken a third time ; the symmetry of the general form requires that now Zophar should speak ; and the suggestion, we be- lieve, was first made by Dr. Kennicott, that he did speak, and that the verses in question belong to him. Any one who is accustomed to MSS. will understand easily how such a mistake, if it be one, might have arisen. Even in Shakespeare, the speeches in the early editions are in many instances wrongly divided, and assigned to the wrong per- sons. It might have arisen from inadvertence; it might have arisen from the foolishness of some Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the book into harmony with Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy. This vifV has the merit of fully clearing up the obscurity. Another, however, has been suggested by Eichorn, who originally followed Kennicott, but discovered, as he supposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equally satisfactory. Eich- orn imagines the verses to be a summary by Job of his adversaries' opinions, as if he said, " Listen now ; you know what the facts are as well as I, and yet you main- tain this ; " and then passed on with his indirect reply to it. It is possible that Eichorn may be right at any rate, either he is right, or else Dr. Kennicott is. Certainly Ewald is not. Taken as an account of Job's own convic- tion, the passage contradicts the burden of the whole poem. Passing it by, therefore, and going to what immediately follows, we arrive at what, in a human sense, is the final climax Job's victory and triumph. He had appealed to God, and God had not appeared ; he had doubted and fought against his doubts, and at last had crushed them 256 The Book of M. down. He, too, had been taught to look for God in out-- ward judgments ; and when his own experience had shown him his mistake, he knew not where to turn. He had been leaning on a bruised reed, and it had run into his hand and pierced him. But as soon as in the speeches of his friends he saw it all laid down in its weakness and its false conclusions when he saw the defenders of it wandering further and further from what he knew to be true, growing every moment, as if from a consciousness of the unsound- ness of their standing ground, more violent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scales fell more and more from his eyes he had seen the fact that the wicked might prosper, and in learning to depend upon his innocency he had felt that the good man's support was there, if it was anywhere ; and at last, with all his heart, was reconciled to the truth. The mystery of the outer world becomes deeper to him, but he does not any more try to understand it. The wisdom which can compass that mystery, he knows, is not in man, though man search for it deeper and harder than the miner searches for the hidden treasures of the earth ; the wisdom which alone is attainable is resignation to God. " Where," he cries, " shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth said it is not with me ; and the sea said it is not in me. It is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air. 1 God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof [He, not man, understands the mysteries of the world which He has made]. And unto man He said. Behold ! the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil, that is understanding." Here, therefore, it might seem as if all was over. There 1 An allusion, perhaps, to the old bird auguries. The birds, as the in- habitants of the air, were supposed to be the messengers between heaven and earth. TJie Book of Job. 257 is no clearer or purer faith possible for man ; and Job had achieved it. His evil had turned to good ; and sorrow had severed for him the last links which bound him to lower things. He had felt that he could do without happiness, that it was no longer essential, and that he could live on, and still love God, and cling to Him. But he is not described as of preternatural, or at all Titanic nature, but as very man, full of all human tenderness and susceptibility. His old life was still beautiful to him. He does not hate it because he can renounce it ; and now that the str.iggle is over, the battle fought and won, and his heart has flowed over in that magnificent song of victory, the note once more changes : he turns back to earth to linger over those old departed days, with which the present is so hard a con- trast ; and his parable dies away in a strain of plaintive, but resigned melancholy. Once more he throws himself on God, no longer in passionate expostulation, but in pleading humility. 1 And then comes (perhaps, as Ewald says, it could not have come before) the answer out of the whirlwind. Job had called on God, and prayed that He 1 The speech of Elihu, which lies between Job's last words and God's appearance, is now decisively pronounced by Hebrew scholars not to be genuine. The most superficial reader will have been perplexed by the in- troduction of a speaker to whom no allusion is made, either in the Prologue or the Epilogue; by a long dissertation, which adds nothing to the progress of the argument, proceeding evidently on the false hypothesis of the three friends, and betraying not the faintest conception of the real cause of Job's sufferings. And the suspicions which such an anomaly would naturally suggest, are now made certainties by a fuller knowledge of the language, and the detection of a different hand. The interpolator has unconsciously confessed the feeling which allowed him to take so great a liberty. He, too, possessed with the old Jew theory, was unable to accept in its full- ness so great a contradiction to it; and, missing the spirit of the poem, he believed that God's honor could still be vindicated in the old way. " His tvrath was kindled" against the friends, because they could not answer Job ; and against Job, because he would not be answered ; and conceiving himself " full of matter," and " ready to burst like new bottles," he could not contain himself, and delivered into the text a sermon on the Theodice, such, we suppose, as formed the current doctrine of the time in which he Kved. . 17 258 The Book of Job. might appear, that he might plead his cause with Him ; and now He comes, and what will Job do ? He conies not as the healing spirit in the heart of man ; but, as Job had at first demanded, the outward God, the Almighty Creator of the universe, and clad in the terrors and the glory of it. Job, in his first precipitancy, had desired to reason with Him on his government. The poet, in gleaming lines, describes for an answer the universe as it then was known, the maj- esty and awfulness of it ; and then asks whether it is this which he requires to have explained to him, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. The revelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmos on the modern Faust ; but when he sinks, crushed, it is not as the rebel- lious upstart, struck down in his pride, for he had him- self, partially at least, subdued his own presumption, but as a humble penitent, struggling to overcome his weakness. He abhors himself for his murmurs, and " repents in dust and ashes." It will have occurred to every one that the secret which has been revealed to the reader is not, after all, revealed to Job or to his friends, and for this plain rea- son : the burden of the drama is, not that we do, but that we do not, and cannot, know the mystery of the govern- ment of the world, that it is not for man to seek it, or for God to reveal it. We, the readers, are, in this one instance, admitted behind the scenes, for once, in this single case, because it was necessary to meet the received theory by a positive fact which contradicted it. But the explanation of one case need not be the explanation of another ; our business is to do what we know to be right, and ask no questions. The veil which in the Egyptian legend lay before the face of Isis is not to be raised ; and we are not to seek to penetrate secrets which are not ours. While, however, God does not condescend to justify his ways to man, He gives judgment on the past controversy. The self-constituted pleaders for him, the acceptors of his person, were all wrong ; and Job, the passionate, vehe- The Book of Job. 259 ment, scornful, misbelieving Job, he had spoken the truth ; he at least had spoken facts, and they had been de- fending a transient theory as an everlasting truth. " And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends ; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now seven bul- locks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job ; and offer for yourselves a burnt-offering. And my servant Job shall pray for you, and him will I accept. Lest I deal with you after your folly, for that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job." One act of justice remains. Knowing as we do the cause of Job's misfortunes, and that as soon as his trial was over it was no longer operative, our sense of fitness could not be satisfied unless he were indemnified outwardly for his outward sufferings. Satan is defeated, and Job's integ- rity proved ; and there is no reason why the general law should be interfered with, which, however large the excep- tions, tends to connect goodness and prosperity ; or why obvious calamities, obviously undeserved, should remain any more unremoved. Perhaps, too, a deeper lesson still lies below his restoration something perhaps of this kind. Prosperity, enjoyment, happiness, comfort, peace, whatever be the name by which we designate that state in which life is to our own selves pleasant and delightful, as long as they are sought or prized as things essential, so far have a tend- ency to disennoble our nature, and are a sign that we are still in servitude to selfishness. Only when they lie out- side us, as ornaments merely to be worn or laid aside as God pleases, only then may such things be possessed with impunity. Job's heart in early times had clung to them more than he knew, but now he was purged clean, and they were restored because he had ceased to need them. 260 The Book of Job. Such in outline is this wonderful poem. "With the mate- rial of which it is woven we have not here been concerned, although it is so rich and pregnant that we might with lit- tle difficulty construct out of it a complete picture of the world as then it was : its life, knowledge, arts, habits, super- stitions, hopes, and fears. The subject is the problem of all mankind, and the composition embraces no less wide a range. But what we are here most interested upon is the epoch which it marks in the progress of mankind, as the first recorded struggle of a new experience with an estab- lished orthodox belief. True, for hundreds of years, per- haps for a thousand, the superstition against which it was directed continued. When Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those who re- tained their imperfect belief had received into their canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, so irre- sistible was the majesty of truth. In days like these, when we hear so much of progress, it is worth while to ask ourselves what advances we have made further in the same direction ? and once more, at the risk of some repetition, let us look at the position in which this book leaves us. It had been assumed that man, if he lived a just and upright life, had a right to expect to be happy. Happiness, "his being's end and aim," was his legitimate and covenanted reward. If God therefore was just, such a man would be happy ; and inasmuch as God was just, the man who was not happy had not deserved to be. There is no flaw in this argument ; and if it is un- sound, the fallacy can only lie in the supposed right to happiness. It is idle to talk of inward consolations. Job felt them, but they were not every thing. They did not re- lieve the anguish of his wounds ; they did not make the loss of his children, or his friends' unkindness, any the less painful to him. The poet, indeed, restores him in the book ; but in life The Book of Job. 261 it need not have been so. He might have died upon his ash-heap, as thousands of good men have died, and will die again, in misery. Happiness, therefore, is not what we are to look for. Our place is to be true to the best which we know, to seek that and do that ; and if by " virtue its own reward " be meant that the good man cares only to continue good, desiring nothing more, then it is a true and noble say- ing. But if virtue be valued because it is politic, because in pursuit of it will be found most enjoyment and fewest suffer- ings, then it is not noble any more, and it is turning the truth of God into a lie. Let us do right, and whether happiness come or unhappiness it is no very mighty matter. If it come, life will be sweet ; if it do not come, life will be bitter bitter, not sweet, and yet to be borne. On such a theory alone is the government of this world intelligibly just. The well-being of our souls depends only on what we are; and nobleness of character is nothing else but steady love of good and steady scorn of evil. The government of the world is a problem while the desire of selfish en- joyment survives ; and when justice is not done according to such standard (which will not be till the day after doomsday, and not then), self-loving men will still ask, Why ? and find no answer. Only to those who have the heart to say, " We can do without that ; it is not what we ask or desire," is there no secret. Man will have what he deserves, and will find what is really best for him, exactly as he honestly seeks for it. Happiness may fly away, pleasure pall or cease to be obtainable, wealth decay, friends fail or prove unkind, and fame turn to infamy ; but the power to serve God never fails, and the love of Him is never rejected. Most of us, at one time or other of our lives, have known something of love of that only pure love in which no self is left remaining. We have loved as children, we have loved as lovers ; some of us have learned to love a cause, a faith, a country; and what love would that be 262 Tlie Book of Job. which existed only with a prudent view to after-interests. Surely there is a love which exults in the power of self- abandonment, and can glory in the privilege of suffering for what is good. Que mon nom soit fletri, pourvu que la France soil Hire, said Danton ; and those wild patriots who had trampled into scorn the faith in an immortal life in which they would be rewarded for what they were suffering, went to their graves as beds, for the dream of a people's liberty. Justice is done ; the balance is not deranged. It only seems deranged, as long as we have not learned to serve without looking to be paid for it Such is the theory of life which is to be found in the Book of Job ; a faith which has flashed up in all times and all lands, wherever high-minded men were to be found, and which passed in Christianity into the acknowledged creed of half the world. The cross was the new symbol, the Divine sufferer the great example ; and mankind answered to the call, because the appeal was not to what was poor and selfish in them, but to whatever of best and bravest was in their nature. The law of reward and punishment was superseded by the law of love. Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love man ; and that was not love men knew it once which was bought by the prospect of reward. Times are changed with us now. Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love man, in the hands of a Paley, are found to mean no more than, Thou shalt love thyself after an enlightened manner. And the same base tone has satu- rated not only our common feelings, but our Christian theologies and our Antichristian philosophies. A prudent regard to our future interests ; an abstinence from present unlawful pleasures, because they will entail the loss of greater pleasure by and by, or perhaps be paid for with pain, this is called virtue now ; and the belief that such beings as men can be influenced by any more elevated feel- ings, is smiled at as the dream of enthusiasts whose hearts have outrun their understandings. Indeed, he were but a The Book of Job. 263 poor lover whose devotion to his mistress lay resting on the feeling that a marriage with her would conduce to his own comforts. That were a poor patriot who served his country for the hire which his country would give to him. And we should think but poorly of a son who thus ad- dressed his earthly father : " Father, on whom my for- tunes depend, teach me to do what pleases thee, that I, pleasing thee in all things, may obtain those good things which thou hast promised to give to thy obedient children." If any of us who have lived in so meagre a faith venture, by and by, to put in our claims, Satan will be likely to say of us (with better reason than he did of Job), " Did they serve God for nought, then ? Take their reward from them, and they will curse him to his face." If Christianity had never borne itself more loftily than this, do we sup- pose that those fierce Norsemen who had learned, in the fiery war-songs of the Edda, of what stuff the hearts of heroes are composed, would have fashioned their sword- hilts into crosses, and themselves into a crusading chiv- alry ? Let us not dishonor our great fathers with the dream of it. The Christians, like the Stoics and the Epi- cureans, would have lived their little day among the ignoble sects of an effete civilization, and would have passed off and been heard of no more. It was in another spirit that those first preachers of righteousness went out upon their warfare with evil. They preached, not enlightened pru- dence, but purity, justice, goodness ; holding out no prom- ises in this world except of suffering as their great Mas- ter had suffered, and rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for his sake. And that crown of glory which they did believe to await them in a life beyond the grave, was no enjoyment of what they had surrendered in life, was not enjoyment at all in any sense which human thought or language can attach to the words; as little like it as the crown of love is like it, which the true lover looks for when at last he obtains his mistress. It was to be with Christ to lose themselves in Him. 264 The Book of Job. How these high feelings ebbed away, and Christianity became what we know it, we are partially beginning to see. The living spirit organized for itself a body of perishable flesh : not only the real gains of real experience, but mere conjectural hypotheses, current at the day for the solution of unexplained phenomena, became formulas and articles of faith. Again, as before, the living and the dead were bound together, and the seeds of decay were already planted on the birth of a constructed polity. But there was another cause allied to this, and yet dif- ferent from it, which, though a law of human nature itself, seems nowadays altogether forgotten. In the rapid and steady advance of our knowledge of material things, we are apt to believe that all our knowledge follows the same law ; that it is merely generalized experience ; that experi- ence accumulates daily ; and, therefore, that " progress of the species," in all senses, is an obvious and necessary fact. There is something which is true in this view, mixed with a great deal which is false. Material knowledge, the phys- ical and mechanical sciences, make their way from step to step, from experiment to experiment, and each advance is secured and made good, and cannot again be lost. One generation takes up the general sum of experience where the last laid it down, adds to it what it has the opportunity of adding, and leaves it with interest to the next. The successive positions, as they are gained, require nothing for the apprehension of them but an understanding ordinarily cultivated. Prejudices have to be encountered, but prej- udices of opinion merely, not prejudices of conscience or prejudices of self-love, like those which beset our progress in the science of morality. But in morals we enter upon conditions wholly different conditions in which age dif- fers from age, man differs from man, and even from him- self, at different moments. We all have experienced times when, as we say, we should not know ourselves ; some, when we fall below our average level ; soire, when we are The Book of Job. 265 lifted above, and put on, as it were, a higher nature. At such intervals as these last (unfortunately, with most of us of rare occurrence), many things become clear to us which before were hard sayings ; propositions become alive which, usually, are but dry words ; our hearts seem purer, our motives loftier ; our purposes, what we are proud to ac- knowledge to ourselves. And, as man is unequal to himself, so is man to his neighbor, and period to period. The entire method of ac- tion, the theories of human life which in one era prevail universally, to the next are unpractical and insane, as those of this next would have seemed mere baseness to the first, if the first could have anticipated them. One epoch, we may suppose, holds some " greatest nobleness principle," the other some " greatest happiness principle ; " and then their very systems of axioms will contradict one another ; their general conceptions and their detailed interpretations, their rules, judgments, opinions, practices, will be in per- petual and endless collision. Our minds take shape from our hearts, and the facts of moral experience do not teach their own meaning, but submit to many readings according to the power of the eye which we bring with us. The want of a clear perception of so important a feature about us leads to many singular contradictions. A believer in popular Protestantism, who is also a believer in progress, ought, if he were consistent, to regard mankind as growing every day towards a more and more advantageous position with respect to the trials of life ; and yet if he were asked whether it was easier for him to "save his soul" in the nineteenth century than it would have been in the first or second, or whether the said soul was necessarily better worth saving, he would be perplexed for an answer. There is hardly one of us who, in childhood, has not felt like the Jews to whom Christ spoke, that if he had " lived in the days of the Fathers," if he had had their advantages, he would have found duty a much easier matter; and some of 266 The Book of Job. us in mature life have felt that, in old Athens, or old re* publican Rome, in the first ages of Christianity, in the Crusades, or at the Reformation, there was a contagious atmosphere of heroism, in which we should have been less troubled with the little feelings which cling about us now. At any rate, it is at these rare epochs only that real addi- tions are made to our moral knowledge. At such times new truths are, indeed, sent down among us, and, for periods longer or shorter, may be seen to exercise an elevating influence on mankind. Perhaps what is gained on these occasions is never entirely lost. The historical monuments of their effects are at least indestructible ; and when the spirit which gave them birth reappears, their dormant energy awakens again. But it seems from our present experience of what, in some at least of its modern forms, Christianity has been capable of becoming, that there is no doctrine in itself so pure, but what the meaner nature which is in us can disarm and distort it, and adapt it to its own littleness. The once living spirit dries up into formula?, and formulae, whether of mass-sacrifice or vicarious righteousness, or " reward and punishment," are contrived ever so as to escape mak- ing over-high demands upon the conscience. Some aim at dispensing with obedience altogether, and those which in- sist on obedience rest the obligations of it on the poorest of motives. So things go on till there is no life left at all ; till, from all higher aspirations, we are lowered down to the love of self after an enlightened manner ; and then nothing remains but to fight the battle over again. The once bene- ficial truth has become, as in Job's case, a cruel and mis- chievous deception, and the whole question of life and its obligations must again be opened. It is now some three centuries since the last of such re- openings. If we ask ourselves how much during this time has been actually added to the sum of our knowledge in these matters ; what, in all the thousands upon thousands The Book of Job. 267 of sermons, and theologies, and philosophies with which Europe has been deluged, has been gained for mankind beyond what we have found in this Book of Job, how far all this has advanced us in the " progress of humanity," it were hard, or rather it is easy, to answer. How far we have fallen below, let Paley and the rest bear witness. But what moral question can be asked which admits now of a grander solution than was offered two, perhaps three, thousand years ago? The world has not been standing still ; experience of man and life has increased ; questions have multiplied on questions, while the answers of the established teachers to them have been growing every day more and more incredible. What other answers have there been ? Of all the countless books which have appeared, there has been only one of enduring importance, in which an attempt is made to carry on the solution of the great problem. Job is given over into Satan's hand to be tempted ; and though he shakes, he does not fall. Taking the temptation of Job for his model, Goethe has similarly exposed his Faust to trial, and with him the tempter suc- ceeds. His hero falls from sin to sin, from crime to crime ; he becomes a seducer, a murderer, a betrayer, following recklessly his evil angel wherever he chooses to lead him ; and yet, with all this, he never wholly forfeits our sympathy. In spite of his weakness, his heart is still true to his higher nature ; sick and restless, even in the delirium of enjoy- ment he always longs for something better, and he never can be brought to say of evil that it is good. And there- fore, after all, the devil is balked of his prey ; in virtue of this one fact, that the evil in which he steeped himself re- mained to the last hateful to him, Faust is saved by the angels. . . It will be eagerly answered for the established belief, that such cases are its especial province. All men are sinners, and it possesses the blessed remedy for sin. But, among the countless numbers of those characters so strangely mixed among us, in which the dark and the bright 268 The Book of Job. fibres cross like a mesh-work ; characters at one moment capable of acts of heroic greatness, at another hurried by temptation into actions which even common men may de- plore, how many are there who have never availed them- selves of the conditions of reconciliation as orthodoxy proffers them, and of such men what is to be said ? It was said once of a sinner that to her " much was forgiven, for she loved much." But this is language which theology has as little appropriated as the Jews could appropriate the lan- guage of Job. It cannot recognize the power of the human heart. It has no balance in which to weigh the good against the evil ; and when a great Burns or a Mirabeau comes before it, it can but tremblingly count up the offenses com- mitted, and then, looking to the end, and rinding its own terms not to have been complied with, it faintly mutters its anathema. Sin only it can apprehend and judge ; and for the poor acts of struggling heroism, " Forasmuch as they were not done," &c., &c., it doubts not but they have the nature of sin. 1 Something of the difficulty has been met by Goethe, but it cannot be said that he has resolved it ; or at least that he has furnished others with a solution which may guide their judgment. In the writer of the Book of Job there is an awful moral earnestness before which we bend as in the presence of a superior being. The orthodoxy against which he contended is not set aside or denied; he sees what truth is in it ; only he sees more than it, and over it, and through it. But in Goethe, who needed it more, inas- much as his problem was more delicate and difficult, the moral earnestness is not awful, is not even high. "We can- not feel that in dealing with sin he entertains any great horror of it ; he looks on it as a mistake, as undesirable, but scarcely as more. Goethe's great powers are of an- other kind ; and this particular question, though in appear- ance the primary subject of the poem, is really only sec- i See the Thirteenth Article. The Book of Job. 269 ondary. In substance, Faust is more like Ecclesiastes than it is like Job, and describes rather the restlessness of a largely gifted nature which, missing the guidance of the heart, plays experiments with life, trying knowledge, pleas- ure, dissipation, one after another, and hating them all; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofit- able mockery. The temper, exhibited here will probably be perennial in the world. But the remedy for it will scarcely be more clear under other circumstances than it is at present, and lies in the disposition of the emotions, . and not in any proposition which' can be addressed to the understanding. For that other question, how rightly to estimate a hu- man being ; what constitutes a real vitiation of character, and how to distinguish, without either denying the good or making light of the evil ; how to be just to the popular theories, and yet not to blind ourselves to their shallowness and injustice, that is a problem for us, for the solution of which we are at present left to our ordinary instinct, without any recognized guidance whatsoever. Nor is this the only problem which is in the same situa- tion. There can scarcely be a more startling contrast be- tween fact and theory than the conditions under which, practically, positions of power and influence are distributed among us, between the theory of human worth which the necessities of life oblige us to act upon, and the theory which we believe that we believe. As we look around among our leading men, our statesmen, our legislators, the judges on our bench, the commanders of our armies, the men to whom this English nation commits the conduct of its best interests, profane and sacred, what do we see to be the principles which guide our selection ? How entirely dv> they lie beside and beyond the negative tests! and how little respect do we pay to the breach of this or that com- mandment in comparison with ability ! So wholly impos- Bible is it to apply the received opinions on such matters to 270 T/ie Book of Job. practice, to treat men known to be guilty of what the- ology calls deadly sins, as really guilty of them, that it would almost seem we had fallen into a moral anarchy; that ability alone is what we regard, without any reference at all, except in glaring and outrageous cases, to moral dis- qualifications. It is invidious to mention names of living men ; it is worse than invidious to drag out of their graves men who have gone down into them with honor, to make a point for an argument. But we know, all of us, that among the best servants of our country there have been, and there are, many whose lives will not stand scrutiny by the nega- tive tests, and who do not appear very greatly to repent, or to have repented, of their sins according to recognized methods. Once more : among our daily or weekly confessions, which we are supposed to repeat as if we were all of us at all times in precisely the same moral condition, we are made to say that we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and to have left undone those things which we ought to have done. An earthly father to whom his children were day after day to make this ac- knowledgment would be apt to inquire whether they were trying to do better whether, at any rate, they were en- deavoring to learn ; and if he were told that although they had made some faint attempts to understand the negative part of their duty, yet that of the positive part, of those things which they ought to do, they had no notions at all, and had no idea that they were under obligation to form any, he would come to rather strange conclusions about them. But, really and truly, what practical notions of duty have we beyond that of abstaining from committing sins ? Not to commit sin, we suppose, covers but a small part of what is expected of us. Through the entire tissue of our employments there runs a good and a bad. Bishop Butler tells us, for instance, that even of our time there is a portion which is ours, and a portion which is our The Book of Job. 271 neighbor's ; and if we spend more of it on personal inter- ests than our own share, we are stealing. This sounds strange doctrine ; we prefer making vague acknowledg- ments, and shrink from pursuing them into detail. We say vaguely, that in all \ve do we should consecrate ourselves to God, and our own lips condemn us ; for who among us cares to learn the way to do it ? The devoir of a knight was understood in the courts of chivalry; the lives of heroic men, Pagan and Christian, were once held up before the world as patterns of detailed imitation ; and now, when such ideals are wanted more than ever, Protestantism stands with a drawn sword on the threshold of the inquiry, and tells us that it is impious. The law, we are told, has been fulfilled for us in condescension to our inherent worthless- ness, and our business is to appropriate another's righteous- ness, and not, like Titans, to be scaling heaven by profane efforts of our own. Protestants, we know very well, will cry out in tones loud enough at such a representation of their doctrines. But we know also that unless men may feel a cheerful conviction that they can do right if they try, that they can purify themselves, can live noble and worthy lives, unless this is set before them as the thing which they are to do, and can succeed in doing, they will not waste their energies on what they know beforehand will end in failure ; and if they may not live for God, they will live for themselves. And all this while the whole complex frame of society is a mesh-work of duty woven of living fibre, and the condi- tion of its remaining sound is, that every thread of it, of its own free energy, shall do what it ought. The penalties of duties neglected are to the full as terrible as those of sins committed ; more terrible, perhaps, because more palpable and sure. A lord of the land, or an employer of labor, supposes that he has no duty except to keep what he calls the commandments in his own person, to go to church, and to do what he will with his own, and Irish famines fol- 272 The Book of Job. low, and trade strikes, and chartisms, and Paris revolutions. We look for a remedy in impossible legislative enactments, and there is but one remedy which will avail that the thing which we call public opinion leai'n something of the meaning of human obligation, and demand some approxi- mation to it. As things are, we have no idea of what a human being ought to be. After the first rudimental con- ditions, we pass at once into meaningless generalities ; and with no knowledge to guide our judgment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles ; we respect money, we respect rank, we respect ability character is as if it had no existence. In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. Progress there is in knowledge ; and science has enabled the number of human beings capable of existing upon this earth to be indefinitely multiplied. But this is but a small triumph if the ratio of the good and bad, the wise and the foolish, the full and the hungry, remains unaffected. And we cheat ourselves with words when we conclude out of our material splendor an advance of the race. In two things there is progress progress in knowledge of the outward world, and progress in material wealth. This last, for the present, creates, perhaps, more evils than it relieves ; but suppose this difficulty solved suppose the wealth distributed, and every peasant living like a peer what then ? If this is all, one noble soul outweighs the whole of it. Let us follow knowledge to the outer circle of the universe the eye will not be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Let us build our streets of gold, and they will hide as many aching hearts as hovels of straw. The well-being of mankind is not advanced a single step. "Knowledge is power, and wealth is power ; and harnessed, The Book of Job. 273 as in Plato's fable, to the chariot of the soul, and guided by wisdom, they may bear it through the circle of the stars ; but left to their own guidance, or reined by a fool's hand, the wild horses may bring the poor fool to Phaeton's end, and set a world on fire* SPINOZA.' Benedicti de Spinoza Tractatus de Deo et Homine ejusque Felicitate Lineamenta. Atque Annotationes ad Tractatum Theologico-Politicum. Edidit et illustravit EDWARDTJS BOEH- MER. Halae ad Salain. J. F. Lippert. 1852. THIS little volume is one evidence among many of the interest which continues to be felt by the German stu- dents in Spinoza. The actual merit of the book itself is little or nothing; but it shows the industry with which they are gleaning among the libraries of Holland for any traces of him which they can recover ; and the smallest fragments of his writings are acquiring that factitious im- portance which attaches to the most insignificant relics of acknowledged greatness. Such industry cannot be otherwise than laudable, but we do not think it at present altogether wisely directed. Nothing is likely to be brought to light which will further illustrate Spinoza's philosophy. He himself spent the better part of his life in clearing his language of ambiguities ; and such earlier sketches of his system as are supposed still to be extant in MS., and a specimen of which M. Boehmer believes himself to have discovered, contribute only obscurity to what is in no need of additional difficulty. Of Spinoza's private history, on the contrary, rich as it must have been, and abundant traces of it as must be extant somewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, we know only enough to feel how vast a chasm remains to be filled. It is not often that any 1 Westminster Review, 1854, Spinoza. 275 man in this world lives a life so well worth writing as Spinoza lived; not for striking incidents or large events connected with it, but because (and no sympathy with his peculiar opinions disposes us to exaggerate his merit) he was one of the very best men whom these modern times have seen. Excommunicated, disinherited, and thrown upon the world when a mere boy to seek his livelihood, he resisted the inducements which on all sides were urged upon him to come forward in the world. He refused pensions, legacies, money in many forms ; he maintained himself with grinding glasses for optical instruments, an art which he had been taught in early life, and in which he excelled the best workmen in Holland ; and when he died, which was at the early age of forty-four, the affection with which he was regarded showed itself singularly in the in- dorsement of a tradesman's bill which was sent in to his executors, in which he was described as M. Spinoza of " blessed memory." The account which remains of him we owe, not to an admiring disciple, but to a clergyman to whom his theories were detestable ; and his biographer allows that the most malignant scrutiny had failed to detect a blemish in his character that, except so far as his opinions were blam- able, he had lived to outward appearance free from fault. We desire, in what we are going to say of him, to avoid offensive collision with popular prejudices ; still less shall we place ourselves in antagonism with the earnest convic- tions of serious persons : our business is to relate what Spinoza was, and leave others to form their own conclu- sions. But one lesson there does seem to lie in such a life of such a man, a lesson which he taught equally by ex- ample and in word, that wherever there is genuine and thorough love for good and goodness, no speculative super- structure of opinion can be so extravagant as to forfeit those graces which are promised, not to clearness ot intel- lect, but to purity of heart. In Spinoza's own beautiful 276 Spinoza. language, " Justitia et caritas unicum et certissimum vera fidei Catholicae signum est, et veri Spiritus Sancti fructus : et ubicumque haec reperiuntur, ibi Christus re vera est, et ubicumque hsec desunt deest Christus : solo namaue Christi Spiritu duel possumus in amorem justitiae et caritatis." We may deny his conclusions ; we may consider his system of thought preposterous and even pernicious ; but we cannot refuse him the respect which is the right of all sincere and honorable men. Wherever and on whatever questions good men are found ranged on opposite sides, one of three alter- natives is always true : either the points of disagreement are purely speculative and of no moral importance; or there is a misunderstanding of language, and the same thing is meant under a difference of words ; or else the real truth is something different from what is held by any of the disputants, and each is representing some important element which the others ignore or forget. In either case, a certain calmness and good temper is necessary, if we would understand what we disagree with, or would oppose it with success ; Spinoza's influence over European thought is too great to be denied or set aside ; and if his doctrines be false in part, or false altogether, we cannot do their work more surely than by calumny or misrepresentation a most obvious truism, which no one now living will deny in words, and which a century or two hence perhaps will begin to produce some effect upon the popular judgment Bearing it in mind, then, ourselves, as far as we are able, we propose to examine the Pantheistic philosophy in the first and only logical form which as yet it has assumed. Whatever may have been the case with Spinoza's disciples, in the author of this system there was no unwillingness to look closely at it, or to follow it out to its conclusions ; and whatever other merits or demerits belong to him, at least he has done as much as with language can be done to make himself thoroughly understood. And yet, both in friend and enemy alike, there has been Spinoza. 277 a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Chris- tian a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable ; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist which is still more extrava- gant ; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have had something reasonable to say, could find no better name for him than a Gott trunkner Mann a God-intoxicated man : an expression which has been quoted by every body who has since written upon the sub- ject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Sweden- borg ; but with what justice can it be applied to the cau- tious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the world in a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much as at- tempted before ? With him, as with all great men, there was no effort after sublime emotions. He was a plain, practical person ; his object in philosophy was only to find a rule by which to govern his own actions and his own judgment ; and his treatises contain no more than the con- clusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, with the grounds on which he rested them. We cannot do better than follow his own account of him- self, as he has given it in the opening of his unfinished Tract, " De Emendatione Intellectus." His language is very beautiful, but it is elaborate and full; and, as we have a long journey before us, we must be content to epito- mize it. Looking round him on his entrance into life, and asking himself what was his place and business there, he turned for examples to his fellow-men, and found little that he could venture to imitate. He observed them all in their 278 Spinoza,. several ways governing themselves by their different no- tions of what they thought desirable ; while these notions themselves were resting on no more secure foundation than a vague, inconsistent experience : the experience of one was not the experience of another, and thus men were all, so to say, rather playing experiments with life than living, and the larger portion of them miserably failing. Their mistakes arose, as it seemed to Spinoza, from inadeqiiate knowledge ; things which at one time looked desirable, disappointed expectation when obtained, and the wiser course concealed itself often under an uninviting exterior. He desired to substitute certainty for conjecture, and to endeavor to find, by some surer method, where the real good of man actually lay. We must remember that he had been brought up a Jew, and had been driven out of the Jews' communion ; his mind was therefore in contact with the bare facts of life, with no creed or system lying between them and himself as the interpreter of experience. He was thrown on his own resources to find his way for himself, and the question was, how to find it. Of all forms of human thought, one only, he reflected, would admit of the certainty which he required. If certain knowledge were attainable at all, it must be looked for under the mathematical or demonstrative method ; by tracing from ideas clearly conceived the consequences which were for- mally involved in them. What, then, were these ideas these verce idece, as he calls them and how were they to be obtained ? If they were to serve as the axioms of his system, they must be self-evident truths, of which no proof was required ; and the illustration which he gives of the character of such ideas is ingenious and Platonic. In order to produce any mechanical instrument, Spinoza says, we require others with which to manufacture it ; and others again to manufacture those; and it would seem thus as if the process must be an infinite one, and as if nothing could ever be made at all. Nature, however, has 279 provided for the difficulty in creating of her own accord certain rude instruments, with the help of which we can make others better; and others again with the help of those. And so he thinks it must be with the mind ; there must be somewhere similar original instruments provided also as the first outfit of intellectual enterprise. To dis- cover these, he examines the various senses in which men are said to know any thing, and he finds that they resolve themselves into three, or, as he elsewhere divides it, four. "We know a thing i. Ex mero auditu : because we have heard it from some person or persons whose veracity we have no reason to question. ii. Ab experientid vagd, : from general experience : for instance, all facts or phenomena which come to us through our senses as phenomena, but of the . causes of which we are ignorant. 2. We know a thing as we have correctly conceived the laws of its phenomena, and see them following in their ^j- quence in the order of Nature. 3. Finally, we know a thing, ex scientid intuitivd, which alone is absolutely clear and certain. To illustrate these divisions, suppose it be required to find a fourth proportional which shall stand to the third of three numbers as the second does to the 'first. The mer- chant's clerk knows his rule ; he multiplies the second into the third and divides by the first. He neither knows nor cares to know why the result is the number which he seeks, but he has learnt the fact that it is so, and he remem- bers it. A person a little wiser has tried the experiment in a va- riety of simple cases ; he has discovered the rule by induc- tion, but still does not understand k. A third has mastered the laws of proportion mathemat- ically, as he has found them in Euclid or other geometrical tteatise. 280 Spinoza. A fourth, with the plain numbers of 1, 2, and 3, sees for himself by simple intuitive force that 1 : 2=3 : 6. Of these several kinds of knowledge the third and fourth alone deserve to be called knowledge, the others being no more than opinions more or less justly founded. The last is the only real insight, although the third, being exact in its form, may be depended upon as a basis of certainty. Under this last, as Spinoza allows, nothing except the very simplest truths, non nisi simplicissimce veritates, can be per- ceived ; but, such as they are, they are the foundation of all after-science ; and the true ideas, the verce idece, which are apprehended by this faculty of intuition, are the primitive instruments with which Nature has furnished us. If we ask for a test by which to distinguish them, he has none to give us. " Veritas," he says to his friends, in answer to their question, " veritas index sui est et falsi. Veritas se ipsam patefacit." All original truths are of such a kind that they cannot without absurdity even be conceived to be false > the opposites of them are contradictions in terms. "lit sciam me scire, necessarib debeo prius scire. Hinc patet quod certitude nihil est prseter ipsam essentiam objecti- vam. . . . Cum itaque veritas nullo egeat signo, sed suffi- ciat habere essentiam rerum objectivam, aut quod idem est ideas, ut omne tollatur dubium ; hinc sequitur quod vera non est methodus, signum veritatis quaerere post acquisi- tionem idearum ; sed quod vera methodus est via, ut ipsa veritas, aut essentiad objectivae rerum, aut idese (omnia ilia idem significant) debito ordine quaeranttlr." (De Etnend. Intel!.) Spinoza will scarcely carry with him the reasoner of the nineteenth century in arguments like these. When we remember the thousand conflicting opinions, the truth of which their several advocates have as little doubted as they have doubted their own existence, we require some better evidence than a mere feeling of certainty ; and Aris- totle's less pretending canon promises a safer road. "O Spinoza. 281 Soxet, " what all men think," says Aristotle, TOVTO elv d[ji,ev " this we say is" " and if you will not have this to be a fair ground of conviction, you will scarcely find one which will serve you better." We are to see, however, what these idea are which are offered to us as self-evident. Of course, if they are self-evident, if they do produce con- viction, nothing more is to be said ; but it does, indeed, appear strange to us that Spinoza was not staggered as to the validity of his canon, when his friends, every one of them, so floundered and stumbled among what he regarded as his simplest propositions ; when he found them, in spite of all that he could say, requiring endless signa veritatis, and unable for a long time even to understand their mean- ing, far less to " recognize them as elementary certainties." Modern readers may, perhaps, be more fortunate. We produce at length the definitions and axioms of the first book of the " Ethica," and they may judge for them- selves : DEFINITIONS. 1. By a tiling which is causa sui, its own cause, I mean a thing the essence of which involves the existence of it, or a thing which cannot be conceived except as existing. 2. I call a thing finite, suo genere, when it can be limited by another (or others) of the same nature e. g. a given body is called finite, because we can always conceive another body en- veloping it ; but body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body. 3. By substance I mean what exists in itself and is conceived by itself; the conception of which, that is, does not involve the conception of any thing else as the cause of it. 4. By attribute I mean whatever the intellect perceives of sub- stance as constituting the essence of substance. 5. Mode is an affection of substance, or is that which is in something else, by and through which it is conceived. 6. God is a being absolutely infinite ; a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses his eternal and infinite essence. 282 Spinoza. EXPLANATION. I say absolutely infinite, not infinite suo genere for of what is infinite suo genere only, the attributes are not infinite but finite ; whereas what is infinite absolutely contains in its own essence every thing by which substance can be expressed, and which involves no impossibility. DEFINITIONS. 7. That thing is " free " which exists by the sole necessity of its own nature, and is determined in its operation by itself only. That is " not free " which is called into existence by something else, and is determined in its operation according to a fixed and definite method. 8. Eternity is existence itself, conceived as following necessa- rily and solely from the definition of the thing which is eternal. EXPLANATION. Because existence of this kind is conceived as an eternal verity, and, therefore, cannot be explained by duration, even though the duration be without beginning or end. So far the definitions ; then follow the AXIOMS. 1. All things that exist, exist either of themselves or in virtue of something else. 2. What we cannot conceive of as existing in virtue of some- thing else, we must conceive through and in itself. 3. From a given cause an effect necessarily follows, and if there be no given cause no effect can follow. 4. Things which have nothing in common with each other can- not be understood through one another i. e. the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other. 5. To understand an effect implies that we understand the cause of it. 6. A true idea is one which corresponds with its ideate. 7. The essence of any thing which can be conceived as non- existent does not involve existence. Such is our metaphysical outfit of simple ideas with Spinoza. 283 which to start upon our enterprise of learning. The larger number of them, so far from being simple, must be abso- lutely without meaning to persons whose minds are undis- ciplined in metaphysical abstraction; they become only intelligible propositions as we look back upon them with the light of the system which they are supposed to contain. Although, however, we may justly quarrel with such xmlooked-for difficulties, the important question, after all, is not of the obscurity of these axioms, but of their truth. Many things in all the sciences are obscure to an unprac- ticed understanding, which are true enough and clear enough to people acquainted with the subjects, and they may be fairly made the foundations of a scientific system, although rudimentary students must be contented to accept them upon faith. Of course, also, it is entirely competent to Spinoza, or to any one, to define the terms which he intends to use just as he pleases, provided it be understood that any conclusions which he derives out of them apply only to the ideas so defined, and not to any supposed object existing which corresponds with them. Euclid defines his triangles and circles, and discovers that to figures so described certain properties previously unknown may be proved to belong. But as in Nature there are no such things as triangles and circles exactly answering the definition, his conclusions, as applied to actually existing objects, are either not true at all or only proximately so. Whether it be possible to bridge over the gulf between existing things and the abstract conception of them, as Spinoza attempts to do, we shall presently see. It is a royal road to certainty if it be a practicable one ; but we cannot say that we ever met any one who could say hon- estly Spinoza's reasonings had convinced him ; and power of demonstration, like alt other powers, can be judged anly by its eifects. Does it prove ? does it produce con- viction ? If not, it is nothing. We need not detain our readers among these abstrac- 284 Spinoza. tions. The power of Spinozism does not lie so remote from ordinary appreciation, or we should long ago have heard the last of it. Like all other systems which have attracted followers, it addresses itself, not to the logical intellect, but to the imagination, which it affects to set aside. We refuse to 'submit to the demonstrations by which it thrusts itself upon our reception ; but regarding it as a whole, as an attempt to explain the nature of the world of which we are a part, we can still ask ourselves how far the attempt is successful. Some account of these things we know that there must be, and the curiosity which asks the question regards itself, of course, as com- petent in some degree to judge of the answer to it. Before proceeding, however, to regard this philosophy in the aspect in which it is really powerful, we must clear our way through the fallacy of the method. The system is evolved in a series of theorems in se- verely demonstrative order out of the definitions and axi- oms which we have translated. To propositions 1-6 we have nothing to object ; they will not, probably, convey any very clear ideas, but they are so far purely abstract, and seem to follow (as far as we can speak of " following " in such subjects) by fair reasoning. " Substance is prior in Nature to its affections." " Substances with different at- tributes have nothing in common," and, therefore, " one cannot be the cause of the other." " Things really dis- tinct are distinguished by difference either of attribute or mode (there being nothing else by which they can be distinguished), and, therefore, because things modally dis- tinguished do not qua substance differ from one another, there cannot be more than one substance of the same attribute. Therefore (let us remind our readers that we are among what Spinoza calls notiones simplicissimas), since there cannot be two substances of the same attribute, and substances of different attributes cannot be the cause one of the other, it follows that no substance can be pro- duced by another substance." Spinoza. 285 The existence of substance, he then concludes, is in* volved in the nature of the thing itself. Substance exists. It does and must. "We ask, why ? and we are answered, because there is nothing capable of producing it, and there- fore it is self-caused i. e. by the first definition the essence of it implies existence as part of the idea. It is astonishing that Spinoza should not have seen that he assumes the fact that substance does exist in order to prove that it must. If it cannot be produced and exists, then, of course, it exists in virtue of its own nature. But sup- posing it does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof falls to pieces. We have to fall back on the facts of experience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that the thing which we call the world, and the personalities which we call ourselves, are a real substantial something, before we find ground of any kind to stand upon. Con- scious of the infirmity of his demonstration, Spinoza winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escaping the same vicious circle : substance exists because it exists, and the ultimate experience of existence, so far from being of that clear kind which can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all our sensations. What is existence ? and what is that something which we say exists? Things essences existences! these are but the vague names with which faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional phenomena, disguise their incapacity. The world in the Hindoo legend was supported upon the back of the tortoise. . It was a step between the world and nothingness, and served to cheat the imagination with ideas of a fictitious resting-place. If any one affirms (says Spinoza) that he has a clear, distinct that is to say, a true idea of substance, but that nevertheless he is uncertain whether any such substance exist, it is the same as if he were to affirm that he had a true idea, but yet was uncertain whether it was not false. Or if he says that substance can be cre- ated, it is like saying that a false idea can become a true idea 286 Spinoza. as absurd a thing as it is possible to conceive ; and therefore the existence of substance, as well as the essence of it, must be ac- knowledged as an eternal verity. It is again the same story. Spinoza speaks of a clear idea of substance ; but lie has not proved that such an idea is within the compass of the mind. A man's own notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he really sees clearly ; and the distinctness of a definition in itself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately with the object of it. No doubt a man who professes to have an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannot doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists. This is merely to say that as long as a man is certain of this or that fact, he has no doubt of it. But neither his certainty nor Spinoza's will be of any use to a man who has no such idea, and who cannot recognize the lawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at. From the self-existing substance it is a short step to the existence of God. After a few more propositions, follow- ing one another with the same kind of coherence, we arrive O * successively at the conclusion that there is but one sub- stance ; that this substance being necessarily existent, it is also infinite ; that it is therefore identical with the Being who had been previously defined as the " Ens absolute perfectum." Demonstrations of this kind were the characteristics of the period. Descartes had set the example of construct- ing them, and was followed by Cudworth, Clarke, Berkeley, and many others besides Spinoza. The inconclusiveness of the method may perhaps be observed most readily in the strangely opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of the nature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless agreed, by the same process, to gather each out of their ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully, for it is the very key-stone of the Pantheistic system. As stated by Descartes, the argument stands something Spinoza. 287 as follows : God is an all-perfect Being, perfection is the idea which we form of Him : existence is a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The sophism we are told is only apparent. Existence is part of the idea as much involved in it as the equality of all lines drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle. A non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered that in this way we may prove the existence of any thing Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian gods ; we have but to define them as existing, and the proof is complete. But, this objection summarily set aside ; none of these beings are by hypothesis abso- lutely perfect, and, therefore, of their existence we can conclude nothing. With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence we know too little to speculate. Existence may be an imperfection for all we can tell ; we know nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless petiliones principii like the self-devouring serpent, resolving themselves into noth- ing. We wander round and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible point at which we can seize their meaning ; but we are presented everywhere with the same impracticable surface, from which our grasp glides off inef- fectual. Spinoza himself, however, obviously felt an intense con- viction of the validity of his argument. His opinion is stated with sufficient distinctness in one of his letters. " Nothing is more clear," he writes to his pupil De Vries, " than that, on the one hand, every thing which exists is conceived by or under some attribute or other ; that the more reality, therefore, a being or thing has, the more at- tributes must be assigned to it ; " " and conversely " (and this he calls his argumentum palmarium in proof of the ex- istence of God), " the more attributes I assign to a thing, the more I am forced to conceive it as existing." Arrange the 288 Spinoza. argument how we please, we shall never get it into a form clearer than this : The more perfect a thing is, the more it must exist (as if existence could admit of more or less) ; and therefore the all-perfect Being must exist absolutely. There is no flaw, we are told, in the reasoning ; and if we are not convinced, it is from the confused habits of our own minds. Some persons may think that all arguments are good when on the right side, and that it is a gratuitous imperti- nence to quarrel with the proofs of a conclusion which it is so desirable that all should receive. As yet, however, we are but inadequately acquainted with the idea attached by Spinoza to the word " perfection ; " and if we commit our- selves to his logic, it may lead us out to unexpected conse- quences. All such reasonings presume, as a first condi- tion, that we men possess faculties capable of dealing with absolute ideas ; that we can understand the nature of things external to ourselves as they really are in their ab- solute relation to one another, independent of our own con- ception. The question immediately before us is one which can never be determined. The truth which is to be proved is one which we already believe ; and if, as we believe also, our conviction of God's existence is, like that of our own existence, intuitive and immediate, the grounds of it can never adequately be analyzed; we cannot say exactly what they are, and therefore we cannot say what they are not Whatever we receive intuitively, we receive without proof; and, stated as a naked proposition, it must involve a petitio principii. We have a right, however, to object at once to an argument in which the conclusion is more obvious than the premises ; and if it lead on to other consequences which we disapprove in themselves, we reject it without difficulty or hesitation. We ourselves believe that God is, because we experience the control of a " power " which is stronger than we ; and our instincts teach us so much of the nature of that power as our own relation to it requires Spinoza. 289 us to know. God is the being to whom our obedience is due ; and the perfections which we attribute to Him are those moral perfections which are the proper object of our reverence. Strange to say, the perfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear to him, are without any moral char- acter whatever ; and for men to speak of the justice of God, he tells us, is but to see in Him a reflection of them- selves ; as if a triangle were to conceive of Him as eminen- ter triangularis, or a circle to give Him the property of circularity. Having arrived at existence, we next find ourselves among ideas, which at least are intelligible, if the charac- ter of them is as far removed as before from the circle of ordinary thought. Nothing exists .except substance, the attributes under which substance is expressed, and the modes or affections of those attributes. There is but one substance self-existent, eternal, necessary, and that is the absolutely Infinite all-perfect Being. Substance cannot produce substance, and therefore there is no such thing as creation ; and every thing which exists is either an attri- bute of God, or an affection of some attribute of Him, modified in this manner or in that. Beyond Him there is nothing, and nothing like Him or equal to Him ; He there- fore alone in himself is absolutely free, uninfluenced by any thing, for nothing is except himself ; and from Him and from his supreme power, essence, intelligence (for these words mean the same thing), all things have neces- sarily flowed, and will and must flow forever, in the same manner as from the nature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, and will follow from eternity to eternity, that the angles of it are equal to two right angles. It would seem as if the analogy were but an artificial play upon words, and that it was only metaphorically that in mathematical demonstration we speak of one thing as following from another. The properties of a curve or a triangle are what they are at all times, and the sequence is merely in tho 19 290 Spinoza. order in which they are successively known to ourselves. But according to Spinoza, this is the only true sequence ; and what we call the universe, and all the series of inci- dents in earth or planet, are involved formally and mathe- matically in the definition of God. Each attribute is infinite suo genere ; and it is time that we should know distinctly the meaning which Spinoza at- taches to that important word. Out of the infinite number of the attributes of God, two only, he says, are known to us " extension," and " thought," or " mind." Duration, even though it be without beginning or end, is not an attri- bute ; it is not even a real thing. Time has no relation to Being, conceived mathematically ; it would be absurd to speak of circles or triangles as any older to-day than they were at the beginning of the world. These and every thing of the same kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, sub quadam specie ceternitatis. But extension, or sub- stance extended, and thought, or substance perceiving, are real, absolute, and objective. We must not confound ex- tension with body ; for though body be a mode of exten- sion, there is extension which is not body, and it is infinite because we cannot conceive it to be limited except by itself or, in other words, to be limited at all. And as it is with extension, so it is with mind, which is also infinite with the infinity of its object. Thus there is no such thing as creation, and no beginning or end. All things of which our faculties are cognizant under one or other of these at- tributes are produced from God, and in Him they have their being, and without Him they would cease to be. Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration (and most admirably indeed is the form of the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it), we learn that God is the only causa libera ; that no other thing or being has any power of self-deter- mination ; all moves by fixed laws of causation, motive upon motive, act upon act ; there is no free will, and no contingency ; and however necessary it may be for our in- Spinoza. 291 capacity to consider future things as in a sense contingent (see Tractat. Theol. Polit. cap. iv., sec. 4), this is but one of the thousand convenient deceptions which we are obliged to employ with ourselves. God is the causa immanens om- nium ; He is not a personal being existing apart from the universe ; but himself in his own reality, He is expressed in the universe, which is his living garment. Keeping to the philosophical language of the time, Spinoza preserves the distinction between natura naturans and natura natu- rata. The first is being in itself, the attributes of substance as they are conceived simply and alone ; the second is the infinite series of modifications which follow out of the prop- erties of these attributes. And thus all which is, is what it is by an absolute necessity, and could not have been other than it is. God is free, because no causes external to him- self have power over Him ; and as good men are most free when most a law to themselves, so it is no infringement on God's freedom to say that He must have acted as He has acted, but rather He is absolutely free because absolutely a law himself to himself. Here ends the first book of Spinoza's Ethics the book which contains, as we said, the notiones simplicissimas, and the primary and rudimental deductions from them. His Dei naturam, he says, in his lofty confidence, ejusque pro- prieties explicui. But, as if conscious that his method will never convince, he concludes this portion of his sub- ject with an analytical appendix ; not to explain or apolo- gize, but to show us clearly, in practical detail, the position into which he has led us. The root, we are told, of all phi- losophical errors lies in our notion of final causes ; we invert the order of Nature, and interpret God's action through our own ; we speak of his intentions, as if He were a man ; we assume that we are capable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has de- 292 Spinoza. scribed it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to every thing, and evil is of course impossible ; there is no short-coming either in Nature or in man ; each person and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously affected, have con- ceived these opposite influences to result from opposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributes to their advantage good, and whatever obstructs it, evil. For our convenience we form generic conceptions of human excel- lence, as archetypes after which to strive ; and such of us as approach nearest to such archetypes are supposed to be virtuous, and those who are most remote from them to be wicked. But such generic abstractions are but entia imag- inatiom's, and have no real existence. In the eyes of God each thing is what it has the means of being. There is no rebellion against him, and no resistance of his will ; in truth, therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thing as a bad action in the common sense of the word. Actions are good or bad, not in themselves, but as compared with the nature of the agent : w r hat we censure in men, we tolerate and even admire in animals ; and as soon as we are aware of our mistake in assigning to man a power of free volition, our notion of evil as a positive thing will cease to exist. If I am asked (concludes Spinoza) why then all mankind were not created by God, so as to be governed solely by reason ? it was because, I reply, there was to God no lack of matter to create all things from the highest to the lowest grade of perfection ; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of God's nature were am- ple enough to suffice for the production of all things which can be conceived by an Infinite Intelligence. It is possible that readers who have followed us so far will now turn away from a philosophy which issues in such conclusions ; resentful, perhaps, that it should have been ever laid before them at all, in language so little expressive Spinoza. 293 of aversion and displeasure. We must claim, however, in Spinoza's name, the right which he claims for himself. His system must be judged as a whole ; and whatever we may think ourselves would be the moral effect of such doctrines if they were generally received, in his hands and in his heart they are Avorkecl into maxims of the purest and lof- tiest morality. And at least Ave are bound to remember that some account of this great mystery of evil there must be ; and although familiarity with commonly received ex planations may disguise from us the difficulties with which they too, as well as that of Spinoza, are embarrassed, such difficulties none the less exist. The fact is the grand per- plexity, and for ourselves we acknowledge that of all theo- ries about it Spinoza's would appear to us the least irra- tional, setting conscience, and the voice of conscience, aside. The objections, with the replies to them, are well drawn out in the correspondence with William de Blyen- burg. It will be seen at once with how little justice the denial of evil as a positive thing can be called equivalent to denying it relatively to man, or to confusing the moral distinctions between virtue and vice. We speak (writes Spinoza, in answer to Blyenburg, who had urged something of the kind) we speak of this or that man hav- ing done a wrong thing, when we compare him with a general standard of humanity ; but inasmuch as God neither perceives things in such abstract manner, nor forms to himself such generic definitions, and since there is no more reality in any thing than God has assigned to it, it follows, surely, that the absence-of good exists only in respect of man's understanding, not in respect of God's. If this be so, then (replies Blyenburg), bad men fulfill God's will as well as good. It is true (Spinoza answers) they fulfill it, yet not as the good, nor as well as the good, nor are they to be compared with them. The better a thing or a person be, the more there is in him of God's spirit, and the more he expresses God's will ; while the bad, being without that divine love which arises from the knowledge of Spinoza. God, and through which alone we are called (in respect of our understandings) his servants, are but as instruments in the hand of the artificer they serve unconsciously, and are consumed in their service. Spinoza, after all, is but stating ia philosophical language the extreme doctrine of Grace ; and St. Paul, if we inter- pret his real belief by the one passage so often quoted, in which he compares us to ' clay in the hands of the potter, who maketh one vessel to honor and another to dishonor," may be accused with justice of having held the same opin- ion. If Calvinism be pressed to its logical consequences, it either becomes an intolerable falsehood, or it resolves it- self into the philosophy of Spinoza. It is monstrous to call evil a positive thing, and to assert, in the same breath, that God has predetermined it, to tell us that He has or- dained what He hates, and hates what He has ordained. It is incredible that we should be without power to obey Him except through his free grace, and yet be held responsible for our failures when that grace has been withheld. And it is idle to call a philosopher sacrilegious who has but sys- tematized the faith which so many believe, and cleared it of its most hideous features. Spinoza flinches from nothing, and disguises no conclu- sions either from himself or from his readers. "We believe for ourselves that logic has no business with such ques- tions ; that the answer to them lies in the conscience and not in the intellect. Spinoza thinks otherwise ; and he is at least true to the guide which he has chosen. Blyen- burg presses him with instances of monstrous crime, such as bring home to the heart the natural horror of it. He speaks of Nero's murder of Agrippina, and asks if God can be called the cause of such an act as that. God (replies Spinoza calmly) is the cause of all things which nave reality. If you can show that evil, errors, crimes express any real things, I agree readily that God is the cause of them ; but 1 conceive myself to have proved that what constitutes the iSpinoza. 295 essence of evil is not a real thing at all, and therefore that God cannot be the cause of it. Nero's matricide was not a crime, in so far as it was a positive outward act. Orestes also killed his mother ; and we do not judge Orestes as we judge Nero. The crime of the latter lay in his being without pity, without obedience, without nat- ural affection none of which things express any positive essence, but the absence of it ; and therefore God was not the cause of these, although he was the cause of the act and the intention. But once for all (he adds), this aspect of things will remain in- .olerable and unintelligible as long as the common notions of free- will remain unremoved. And of course, and we shall all confess it, if these no- tions are as false as Spinoza supposes them if we have no power to be any thing but what we are, there neither is nor can be such a thing as moral evil ; and what we call crimes will no more involve a violation of the will of God, they will no more impair his moral attributes if we suppose him to have willed them, than the same actions, whether of lust, ferocity, or cruelty, in the inferior animals. There will be but, as Spinoza says, an infinite gradation in created things, the poorest life being more than none, the meanest active disposition something better than inertia, and the smallest exercise of reason better than mere ferocity. " The Lord has made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil." The moral aspect of the matter will be more clear as we proceed. "We pause, however, to notice one difficulty of a metaphysical kind, which is best disposed of in passing. Whatever obscurity may lie about the thing which we call Time (philosophers not being able to agree what it is, or whether properly it is any thing), the words past, present, future, do undoubtedly convey some definite idea with them: things will be which are not yet, and have been which are no longer. Now, if every thing which exists be a necessary mathematical consequence from the nature or definition of the One Being, we cannot see how there can be any lime but the present, or how past and future have 296 Spinoza. room for a meaning. God is, and therefore all propeities of him are, just as every property of a circle exists in it as soon as the circle exists. We may if we like, for conven- ience, throw our theorems into the future, and say, e. g that if two lines in a circle cut each other, the rectangle under the parts of the one will equal that under the parts of the other. But we only mean in reality that these rectangles are equal ; and the future relates only to our knowledge of the fact. Allowing, however, as much as we please, that the condition of England a hundred years hence lies already in embryo in existing causes, it is a par- adox to say that such condition exists already in the sense in which the properties of the circle exist ; and yet Spi- noza insists on the illustration. It is singular that he should not have noticed the diffi- culty ; not that either it or the answer to it (which no doubt would have been ready enough) are likely to inter- est any person except metaphysicians, a class of thinkers, happily, which is rapidly diminishing. We proceed to more important matters to Spinoza's detailed theory of Nature as exhibited in man and in man's mind. His theory for its bold ingenuity is by far the most remarkable which on this dark subject has ever been pro- posed. Whether we can believe it or not, is another ques- tion ; yet undoubtedly it provides a solution for every diffi- culty ; it accepts with equal welcome the extremes of materialism and of spiritualism ; and if it be the test of the soundness of a philosophy that it will explain phenom- ena and reconcile contradictions, it is hard to account for the fact that a system which bears such a test so admira- bly, should nevertheless be so incredible as it is. Most people have heard of the " Harmonic Pre-etablie *' of Leibnitz ; it is borrowed without acknowledgment from Spinoza, and adapted to the Leibnitzian philosophy. " Man," says Leibnitz, " is composed of mind and body ; but what is mind and what is body, and what is the nature Spinoza. 297 of their union ? Substances so opposite in kind cannot affect one another ; mind cannot act on matter, or matter upon mind ; and the appearance of their reciprocal opera- tion is an appearance only and a delusion." A delusion so general, however, required to be accounted for ; and Leib- nitz accounted for it by supposing that God, in creating a world composed of material and spiritual phenomena, or- dained that these several phenomena should proceed from the beginning in parallel lines side by side in a constantly corresponding harmony. The sense of seeing results, it appears to us, from the formation of a picture upon the retina. The motion of the arm or the leg appears to re- sult from an act of will ; but in either case we mistake coincidence for causation. Between substances so wholly alien there can be no intercommunion ; and we only sup- pose that the object seen produces the idea, and that the desire produces the movement, because the phenomena of matter and the phenomena of spirit are so contrived as to flow always in the same order and sequence. This hypoth- esis, as coming from Leibnitz, has been, if not accepted, at least listened to respectfully ; because while taking it out of its proper place, he contrived to graft it upon Chris- tianity ; and succeeded, with a sort of speculative legerde- main, in making it appear to be in harmony with revealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination, and connected with the Christian doctrine of Retribution, it steps forward with an air of unconscious innocence, as if interfering with nothing which Christians generally believe. And yet, leaving as it does no larger scope for liberty or responsibility than when in the hands of Spinoza, 1 Leibnitz, 1 Since these words were written a book has appeared in Paris by an able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead us to modify the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give our reasons for speaking as we do. M. de Careil * has discovered in the library at Hanover, a MS. * Refutation Incdite de Spinoza. Par Leibnitz. Precedes (Viine Mcmoire, pat Foncher do Careil. Paris. 1854. 298 Spinoza. in our opinion, has only succeeded in making it infinitely more revolting. Spinoza could not regard the bad man as an object of Divine anger and a subject of retributory in the handwriting of Leibnitz, containing a series of remarks on the book of a certain John "Wachter. It does not appear who this John Wachter was, nor by what accident he came to have so distinguished a critic. If we may judge by the extracts at present before us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, who had attempted to combine the the- ology of the Cabbala with the very little which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza; and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writ- ings nor the reflections upon them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance of Spinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an opportunity of noticing the points on which he most disapproved of Spinoza himself; and these few notices M. de Careil has now for the first time published as The Refutation of Spinoza, by Leibnitz. They are ex- ceedingly brief and scanty; and the writer of them would assuredly have hesitated to describe an imperfect criticism by so ambitious a title. The modern editor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshiper, and we will not quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his master had accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what is at least a curious discovery, and we will not qualify the gratitude which he has earned by industry and good will. At the same time, the notes them- selves confirm the opinion which we have always entertained, that Leibnitz did not understand Spinoza. Leibnitz did not understand him, and the followers of Leibnitz do not understand him now. If he were no more than what he is described in the book before us if his metaphysics were " mis- erable," if his philosophy was absurd, and he himself nothing more than a second-rate disciple of Descartes we can assure M. de Careil that we should long ago have heard the last of him. There must be something else, something very different from this, to explain the position which he holds in Germany, or the fascination which liis writings exerted over such minds as those of Lessing or of Goethe ; the fact of so enduring an influence is more than a sufficient answer to mere depreciating criticism. This, however, is not a point which there is am- use in pressing. Our present business is to justify the two assertions which we have made. First, that Leibnitz borrowed his Theory of the Harmonie Pre-etablie from Spinoza, without acknowledgment; and, secondly, that this theory is quite as inconsistent with religion as is that of Spinoza, and only differs from it in disguising its real character. First for the Harmonie Pre-etablie. Spinoza's Ethics appeared in 1677; and we know that they were read by Leibnitz. In 1696, Leibnitz an- nounced as a discovery of his own, a Theory of The Communication of Sub- rlances, which he illustrates in the following manner: " Vous lie comprenez pas, dites-vous, comment je pourrois prouver ce ijue j'ai avance touchant la communication, ou riiannonie de doux sub Spinoza. 299 punishment. He was not a Christian, and made no pre- tension to be considered such ; and it did not occur to him to regard the actions of a being which, both with Leibnitz stances aussi differentcs quo 1'ame et le corps? II est vrai que je crois en avoir trouvd le moyen; et void comment je pretends vous satisfaire. Fi- gurez-vous deux horloges ou montres qui s'accordent parfaitement. Or cela se peut faire de trois manieres. La 1 consiste dans une influence mutuelle. La 2 e est d'y attacher un ouvrier habile qui les redresse, et les mette d'accord a tons momens. La 3 e est de fabriquer ces deux pendules avec tant d'art et de justesse, qu'on se puisse assurer de leur accord dans la suite. Mettez maintenant 1'ame et le corps a la place de ces deux pen- dules; leur accord peut arriver par 1'une de ces trois manieres. La voj r c d'influence est celle de la philosophic vulgaire; mais comme 1'on ne sauroit concevoir des particules mate'rielles qui puissent passer d'une de ces sub- stances dans 1'autrc, il faut abandonner ce sentiment. La voye de 1'assist- ance contimtelle du Cre'ateur est celle du systeme des causes occasionnelles ; mais je tiens que c'est faire intervenir Deus ex machina- dans une choso naturelle et ordinaire, ou scion la raison il ne doit concourir, que de la maniere qu'il concourt a toutes les autres choses naturelles. Ainsi il ne reste que mon hypoth6se; c'est-a-dire que la voye de 1'harmonie. Dieu a fait des le commencement chacune de ces deux substances de telle nature, qu'en ne suivant que ces propres loix qu'elle a repue avec son 6tre, elle s'accorde pourtant avec 1'autre tout comme s'il y avoit une influence mu- tuelle, ou comme si Dieu y mettoit toujours la main au-dela de son concouvs general. Apres cela je n'ai pas besoin de rien prouver a moins qu'on ne veuille exiger que je prouve que Dieu est assez babilepour se servir de cette artifice," &c. LEIBNITZ, Opera, p. 133. Berlin edition, 1840. Leibnitz, as we have said, attempts to reconcile his system with Christian- ity, and therefore, of course, this theory of the relation of mind and body wears a very different aspect under his treatment, from what it wears under that of Spinoza. But Spinoza and Leibnitz both agree in this one peculiar conception in which, they differ from all other philosophers before or after them that mind and body have no direct communication with each other, and that the phenomena of them merely correspond. M. de Careil says they both borrowed it from Descartes; but that is impossible. Descartes held no such opinion ; it was the precise point of disagreement at which Spinoza parted from him ; and therefore, since in point of date Spinoza had the advantage of Leibnitz, and we know that Leibnitz was acquainted with his writings, we must either suppose that he was directly indebted to Spinoza for an obligation which he ought to have acknowledged, or else, which is extremely improbable, that having read Spinoza and forgotten him, he afterwards reoriginated for himself one of the most singular and peculiar notions which was ever offered to the belief of mankind. So much for the first pout, which, after all, is but of little moment. It Is more important to ascertain whether, in the hands of Leibnitz, this th- 300 Spinoza. and himself is (to use his own expression) an automaton spirituals, as deserving a fiery indignation and everlasting vengeance. " Deus," according to Spinoza's definition, " est ens con- stans infinitis attributis quorum unumquodque zeternam et ory can be any better reconciled with what h commonly meant by religion; whether, that is, the ideas of obedience and disobedience, merit and de- merit, judgment and retribution, have any proper place under it. Spinoza makes no pretension to any thing of the kind, and openly declares that these ideas are ideas merely, and human mistakes. Leibnitz, in opposition to him, endeavors to reestablish them in the following manner. He con- eeives that the system of the universe has been arranged and predeter- mined from the moment at which it was launched into being; from the moment at which God selected it, with all its details, as the best which could exist ; but that it is carried on by the action of individual creatures (monads as he calls them) which, though necessarily obeying the laws of their existence, yet obey them with a "character of spontaneity, 7 ' which, although " automata," are yet voluntary agents; and therefore, by the consent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moral praise or moral censure. The question is, whether by the mere assertion of the coexistence of these opposite qualities in the monad man, he has proved that such qualities can coexist. In our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or of a quadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these matters from which no philosophy can extricate itself. If men can incur guilt, their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot act otherwise than they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least it appears to us; yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would not complain merely of a theory, and if our earthly life were all in all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopes and fears, the Harmonic Pre-etablie might be tolerated as credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is when forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has no natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The world may be in the main good; while the good, from the unknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without some intermixture of evil ; and although Leibnitz was at times staggered even himself by the misery and wicked- ness which he witnessed, and was driven to comfort himself with the reflec- tion that this earth might be but one world in the midst of the universe, and perhaps the single checkered exception in an infinity of stainless globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because it was imper- fect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark subject, when noth- ing better than conjecture was attainable. But as soon as we are told that the evil in these human " automata," being a necessary condition of this world which God has called into being, is yet infinitely detestable to God ; that the creatures who suffer under the ccursed necessity of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God's eyes, fot Spinoza. 801 infinitam essentiam exprimit." Under each of these attri- butes infinita sequuntur, and every thing which an infinite intelligence can conceive, and an infinite power can pro- duce, every thing which follows as a possibility out of the divine nature, all things which have been, and are, and will be, find expression and actual existence, not under one attribute only, but under each and every attri- bute. Language is so ill-adapted to explain such a system, that even to stute it accurately is all but impossible, and analogies can only remotely suggest what such expressions mean. But it is as if it were said that the same thought might be expressed in an infinite variety of languages ; and not in words only, but in action, in painting, in sculpture, in music, in any form of any kind which can be employed as a means of spiritual embodiment. Of all these infinite attributes, two only, as we said, are known to us exten- sion and thought. Material phenomena are phenomena of extension ; and to every modification of extension an idea corresponds under the attribute of thought. Out of such a compound as this is formed man, composed of body and mind; two parallel and correspondent modifications eter- nally answering one another. And not man only, but all other beings and things are similarly formed and similarly animated ; the anima or mind of each varying according to the complicity of the organism of its material counterpart. Although body does not think, nor affect the mind's power of thinking, and mind does not control body, nor commu- doing what the}' have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justly pun- ished in everlasting fire; we recoil against the paradox. No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had found this belief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of the popular creed, such a doctrine would have formed a natural appendage of his system; aud if M. de Careil desires to know why the influence of Spinoza, whose genius he considers so insignificant, has been so deep and so enduring, while Leibnitz has only secured for himself a mere admiration of his tal- ents, it is because Spinoza was not afraid to be consistent, even at tho price of the world's reprobation, and refused to purchase the applause of iris own agf' at (he sacrifice of sincerity. 802 Spinoza. nicate to it either motion or rest or any influence from itself, yet body with all its properties is the object or ideate of mind : whatsoever body does, mind perceives ; and the greater the energizing power of the first, the greater the perceiving power of the second. And this is not because they are adapted one to the other by some inconceivable preordinating power, but because mind and body are una et eadem res, the one absolute being affected in one and the same manner, but expressed under several attributes ; the modes and affections of each attribute having that being for their cause, as he exists under that attribute of which they are modes, and no other ; idea being caused by idea, and body affected by body ; the image on the retina being produced by the object reflected upon it, the idea or image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c., &c. A solution so remote from all ordinary ways of thinking on these matters is so difficult to grasp, that one can hardly speak of it as being probable, or as being improbable. Probability extends only to what we can imagine as pos- sible, and Spinoza's theory seems to lie beyond the range within which our judgment can exercise itself. In our own opinion, indeed, as we have already said, the entire subject is one with which we have no business; and the explanation of our nature, if it is ever to be explained to us, is reserved till we are in some other state of existence. We do not disbelieve Spinoza because what he suggests is in itself incredible. The chances may be millions to one against his being right ; yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probably at least as strange as his conception of it. But we are firmly convinced that of these questions, and of all like them, practical answers only lie within the reach of human faculties; and that in "researches into the absolute " we are on the road which ends nowhere. Among the difficulties, however, most properly akin to this philosophy itself, there is one most obvious, namely, that if the attributes of God be infinite, and each particular Spinoza* 303 thing is expressed under them all, then mind and body express but an infinitesimal portion of the nature of each of ourselves; and this human nature exists (i. e., there exists corresponding modes of substance) in the whole infinity of the divine nature under attributes differing each from each, and all from mind and all from body. That this must be so follows from the definition of the Infinite Being, and the nature of the distinction between the two attributes which are known to us ; and if this be so, why does not the mind perceive something of all these other attributes? The objection is well expressed by a corre- spondent (Letter 67) : "It follows from what you say," a friend writes to Spinoza, " that the modification which constitutes my mind, and that which constitutes my body, although it be one and the same modification, yet must be expressed in an infinity of ways : one way by thought, a second way by extension, a third by some attribute un- known to me, and so on to infinity ; the attributes being infinite in number, and the order and connection of mo^s being the same in them all. Why, then, does the mind perceive the modes of but one attribute only ? " Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily, a fragment of his letter only is extant, so that it is too brief to be satis- factory : In reply to your difficulty (he says), although each particular thing be truly in the Infinite rnind, conceived in Infinite modes, the Infinite idea answering to all these cannot constitute one and the same mind of any single being, but must constitute Infinite minds. No one of all these Infinite ideas has any connection with another. He means, we suppose, that God's mind only perceives, or can perceive, things under their Infinite expression, and that the idea of each several mode, under whatever attri- bute, constitutes a separate mind. We do not know that we can add any thing to this ex- planation ; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the 304 Spinoza. speculation itself; we will, however, attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum per obscu- ring. Let A B C D be four out of the infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind ; B the attribute of extension ; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now, A, as the attribute of mind, is that which perceives all which takes place under B C and D, but it is only as it exists in God that it forms the universal consciousness of all attributes at once. In its modifications it is combined separately with the modifica- tions of each, constituting, in combination with the modes of each attribute, a separate being. As forming the mind of B, A perceives what takes place in B, but not what takes place in C or D. Combined with B, it forms the soul of the human body, and generally the soul of all modifications of extended substance ; combined with C, it forms the soul of some other analogous being ; combined with D, again of an- other ; but the combinations are only in pairs, in which A is constant. A and B make one being, A and C another, A and D a third ; but B will not combine with C, nor C with D ; each attribute being, as it were, conscious only of itself. And therefore, although to those modifications of mind and extension which we call ourselves, there are corresponding modifications under C and D, and generally under each of the infinite attributes of God, each of oxirselves being in a sense infinite nevertheless, we neither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselves in this infinite aspect ; our actual consciousness being limited to the phenomena of sensible experience. English readers, however, are likely to care little for all this ; they will look to the general theory, and judge of it as its aspect affects them. And first, perhaps, they will be tempted to throw aside as absurd the notion that their bodies go through the many operations which they ex- perience them to do, undirected by their minds. It is a thing, they may say, at once preposterous and incredible. Spinoza. 305 It is, however, less absurd than it seems ; and, though we could not persuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the sense of having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not. It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the human body capable by its own virtue, and by the laws of material organization, of building a house, than of thinking ; and yet men are allowed to say that the body thinks, without being regarded as candidates for a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into stem and leaf and throw out flowers ; we observe it fulfilling processes of chemistry more subtle than were ever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and pro- ducing structures more cunning than man can imitate. The bird builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate web, and stretches it in the path of his prey ; directed not by calculating thought, as we conceive ourselves to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance of the nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and call it instinct, but which we believe at least to be some property residing in the organization. We are not to suppose that the human body, the most complex of all material structures, has slighter powers in it than the bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect. Let us listen to Spinoza himself: There can be no doubt (he says) that this hypothesis is true ; but unless I can prove it from experience, men will not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly, so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that their todies are set in motion. And yet what body can or cannot do no one has yet determined ; body, i. e., by the law of its own nature, and without assistance from mind. No one has so probed the human frame as to have detected all its functions and exhausted the list of them ; there are powers exhibited by animals far exceeding human sagacity ; and, again, feats are performed by somnambulists on which in the waking state the same persons would never venture itself a proof that body is able to accomplish what mind can only admire. Men say that mind moves body, but how it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it can impart to it ; so that, in fact, they do not know what they say, and are only confessing their own 20 306 Spinoza. ignorance in specious language. They will answer me, that whether or not they understand how it can be, yet that they are assured by plain experience that unless mind could perceive, body would be altogether inactive ; they know that it depends on the mind whether the tongue speaks or is silent. But do they not equally experience that if their bodies are paralyzed their minds cannot think ? that if their bodies are asleep their minds are without power? that their minds are not at all times equally able to exert themselves even on the same subject, but depend on the state of their bodies ? And as for experience proving that the members of the body can be controlled by the mind, I fear ex- perience proves very much the reverse. But it is absurd (they rejoin) to attempt to explain from the mere laws of body such things as pictures, or palaces, or works of art ; the body could not build a church unless mind directed it. I have shown, however, that we do not yet know what body can or cannot do, or what would naturally follow from the structure of it ; that we experi- ence in the feats of somnambulists something which antecedently to that experience would have seemed incredible. This fabric of the human body exceeds infinitely any contrivance of human skill, and an infinity of things, as I have already proved, ought to fol- low from it. "We are not concerned to answer this reasoning, although if the matter were one the debating of which could be of any profit, it would undoubtedly have its weight, and would require to be patiently considered. Life is too serious, however, to be wasted with impunity over speculations in which certainty is impossible, and in which we are trifling with what is inscrutable. Objections of a far graver kind were anticipated by Spi- noza himself, when he went on to gather out of his philos- ophy " that the mind of man being part of the Infinite intelligence, when we say that such a mind perceives this thing or that, we are, in fact, saying that God perceives it, not as He is infinite, but as he is represented by the nature of this or that idea ; and similarly, when we say that a man does this or that action, we say that God does it, not qua He is infinite, but qua He is expressed in that man's na- Spinoza. 307 ture." " Here," he says, " many readers will no doubt hes itate, and many difficulties will occur to them in the way of such a supposition." We confess that we ourselves are among these hesitat ing readers. As long as the Being whom Spinoza so freely names remains surrounded with the associations which in this country we bring with us out of our childhood, not all the logic in the world would make us listen to language such as this. It is not so, we know it, and that is enough. We are well aware Tof the phalanx of difficulties which lie about our theistic conceptions. They are quite enough, if religion depended on speculative consistency, and not in obedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What are we ? what is any thing ? If it be not divine what is it then ? If created out of what is it created ? and how created and why ? These questions, and others far more mo- mentous which we do not enter upon here, may be asked and cannot be answered ; but we cannot any the more con- sent to Spinoza on the ground that he alone consistently provides an answer ; because, as we have said again and again, we do not care to have them answered at all. Con- science is the single tribunal to which we choose to be referred, and conscience declares imperatively that what he says is not true. It is painful to speak of all this, and as far as possible v;e designedly avoid it. Pantheism is not Atheism, but the Infinite Positive and the Infinite Nega- tive are not so remote from one another in their practical bearings ; only let us remember that we are far indeed from the truth if we think that God to Spinoza was nothing else but that world which we experience. It is but one of infinite expressions of Him a conception which makes us giddy in the effort to realize it. We have arrived at last at the outwork of the whole matter in its bearings upon life and human duty. It was in the search after this last, that Spinoza, as we said, trav- slled over so strange a country, and we now expect his 308 Spinoza. conclusions. To discover the true good of man, to direct his actions to such ends as will secure to him real and last- ing felicity, and, by a comparison of his powers with the objects offered to them, to ascertain how far they are capa- ble of arriving at these objects, and by what means they can best be trained towards them is the aim "which Spi- noza assigns to philosophy. " Most people," he adds, " de- ride or vilify their nature ; it is a better thing to endeavor to understand it ; and however extravagant my proceeding may be thought, I propose to analyze the properties of that nature as if it were a mathematical figure." Mind being, as he conceives himself to have shown, nothing else than the idea corresponding to this or that affection of body, we are not, therefore, to think of it as a faculty, but simply and merely as an act. There is no general power called intellect, any more than there is any general abstract voli- tion, but only hie ct ille intellectus et hcec et ilia volitio. Again, by the word " Mind " is understood not merely an act or acts of will or intellect, but all forms also of con- sciousness of sensation or emotion. The human body being composed of many small bodies, the mind is similarly com- posed of many minds, and the unity of body and of mind depends on the relation which the component portions maintain towards each other. This is obviously the case with body ; and if we can translate metaphysics into com- mon experience, it is equally the case with mind. There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect ; a thou- sand tastes," tendencies, and inclinations form our mental composition ; and since one contradicts another, and each has a tendency to become dominant, it is only in the har- monious equipoise of their several activities, in their due and just subordination, that any unity of action or consist- ency of feeling is possible. After a masterly analysis of all these tendencies (the most complete by far which has ever been made by any moral philosopher), Spinoza arrives at the principles under which unity and consistency can be Spinoza. 309 obtained as the condition upon which a being so composed can look for any sort of happiness ; and these principles, arrived at as they are by a route so different, are the same, and are proposed by Spinoza as being "the same, as those of the Christian religion. It might seem impossible in a system which binds to- gether in so inexorable a sequence the relations of cause and effect, to make a place for the action of self-control ; but consideration will show that, however vast the differ- ence between those who deny and those who affirm the liberty of the will (in the sense in which the expression is usually understood), it is not a difference which affects the conduct or alters the practical bearings of it. Conduct may be determined by laws laws as absolute as those of matter ; and yet the one as well as the other may be brought under control by a proper understanding of those laws. Now, -experience seems plainly to say, that while all our actions arise out of desire, that whatever we do, we do for the sake of something which we wish to be or to obtain, we are differently affected towards what is pro- posed to us as an object of desire, in proportion as we understand the nature of such object in itself and in its consequences. The better we know, the better we act; and the fallacy of all common arguments against necessi- tarianism lies in the assumption that it leaves no room for self-direction : it merely insists, in exact conformity with experience, on the conditions under which self-determina- tion is possible. Conduct, according to the necessitarian, depends on knowledge. Let a man certainly know that there is poison in the cup of wine before him, and he will not drink it. By the law of cause and effect, his desire for the wine is overcome by the fear of the pain or the death which will follow. So with every thing which comes before him. Let the consequences of any action be clear, defi- nite, and inevitable, and though Spinoza would not say that the knowledge of them will be absolutely sufficient to de 810 Spinoza. termine the conduct (because the clearest knowledge may be overborne by violent passion), yet it is the best which we have to trust to, and will do much if it cannot do all. On this hypothesis, after a diagnosis of the various tend encies of human nature, called commonly the passions and affections, he returns upon the nature of our ordinary knowledge to derive out of it the means for their subordi- nation. All these tendencies of themselves seek their own objects seek them blindly and immoderately ; and the mistakes and the unhappinesses of life arise from the want of due understanding of these objects, and a just modera- tion of the desire for them. His analysis is remarkably clear, but it is too long for us to enter upon it ; the impor- tant thing being the character of the control which is to be exerted. To arrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practical utility, and which is peculiarly his own. Following his tripartite division of knowledge, he finds all kinds of it arrange themselves under one of two classes, and to be either adequate or inadequate. By adequate knowledge he does not mean what is exhaustive and com- plete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct and unconfused : by inadequate, he means what we know merely as fact either derived from our own sensations, or from the author- ity of others, while of the connection of it with other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning of it we know nothing. We may have an adequate idea of a circle, though we are unacquainted with all the properties which belong to it ; we conceive it distinctly as a figure generated by the rota- tion of a line, one end of which is stationary. Phenomena, on the other hand, however made known to us, phenom- ena of the senses, and phenomena of experience, as long as they remain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higher relation, we can never know except as inade- quately. We cannot tell what outward things are by com- ing in contact with certain features of them. We have a very imperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, and Spinoza. 311 the sensations which we experience of various kinds rather indicate to us the nature of these bodies themselves than of the objects which affect them. Now, it is obvious that the greater part of mankind act only upon knowledge of this latter kind. The amusements, even the active pur- suits, of most of us remain wholly within the range of uncertainty, and, therefore, are full of hazard and precari- ousness : little or nothing issues as we expect. We look for pleasure and we find pain ; we shun one pain and find a greater ; and thus arises the ineffectual character which we O * so complain of in life the disappointments, failures, mor- tifications which form the material of so much moral medi- tation on the vanity of the world. Much of all this is inevi- table from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which can- not be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy ; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all ; and, although through a large tract of life " there comes one event to all, to the wise and to the unwise," " yet wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness." .The phenomena of experience, after inductive experiment, and just and careful considera- tion, arrange themselves under laws uniform in their opera- tion, and furnishing a guide to the judgment ; and over all things, although the interval must remain unexplored for- ever, because what we would search into is infinite, may be seen the beginning of all things, the absolute, eternal God. " Mens humana," Spinoza continues, " quaedam agit, qusedam vero patitur." In so far as it is influenced by in- adequate ideas " eatenus patitur " it is passive and in bondage, it is the sport of fortune and caprice : in so far as its ideas are adequate " eatenus agit " it is active, it is itself. While we are governed by outward temptations, by the casual pleasures, by the fortunes or the misfortunes of 812 Spinoza. life, we are but instruments, yielding ourselves to be acted upon as the animal is acted on by its appetites, or the inan- imate matter by the laws which bind it ; we are slaves instruments, it may be, of some higher purpose in the order of Nature, but in ourselves nothing ; instruments which are employed for a special work, and which are consumed in effecting it. So far, on the contrary, as we know clearly what we do, as we understand what we are, and direct our conduct not by the passing emotion of the moment, but by a. grave, clear, and constant knowledge of what is really good, so far we are said to act, we are ourselves the spring of our own activity, we pursue the genuine well- being of our entire nature, and that we can always find, and it never disappoints us when found. All things desire life ; all things seek for energy and fuller and ampler being. The component parts of man, his various appetites and passions, are seeking larger activity while pursuing each its immoderate indulgence ; and it is the primary law of every single being that it so follows what will give it increased vitality. Whatever will con- tribute to such increase is the proper good of each ; and the good of man as a united being is measured and deter- mined by the effect of it upon his collective powers. The appetites gather power from their several objects of desire ; but the power of the part is the weakness of the whole ; and man as a collective person gathers life, being, and self- mastery only from the absolute good, the source of all real good, and truth, and energy, that is, God. The love of God is the extinction of all other loves and all other desires. To know God, as far as man can know him, is power, self-government, and peace. And this is virtue, and this is blessedness. Thus, by a formal process of demonstration, we are brought round to the old conclusions of theology; and Spinoza protests that it is no new doctrine which he is teaching, but that it is one which in various dialects has Spinoza. 313 been believed from the beginning of the world. Happi- ness depends on the consistency and coherency of charac- ter, and that coherency can only be given by the knowledge of the One Being, to know whom is to know all things ade- quately, and to love whom is to have conquered every other inclination. The more entirely our minds rest on Him the more distinctly we regard all things in their relation to Him, the more we cease to be under the dominion of external things ; we surrender ourselves consciously to do his will, and as living men and not as passive things we become the instruments of his power. When the true na- ture and true causes of our affections become clear to us, they have no more power to influence us. The more we understand, the less can feeling sway us ; we know that all things are what they are, because they are so constituted that they could not be otherwise, and we cease to be an- gry with our brother, because he disappoints us ; we shall not fret at calamity, nor complain of fortune, because no such thing as fortune exists ; and if we fail it is better than if we had succeeded, not perhaps for ourselves, yet for the universe. We cannot fear when nothing can be- fall us except what God wills, and we shall not violently hope, when the future, whatever it be, will be the best which is possible. Seeing all things in their place in the everlasting order, Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation of present pleasure will not overcome the cer- tainty of future pain, for the pain will be as sure as the pleasure, and we shall see all things under a rule of ada- mant. The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the idea of contingency, and expect to escape the just issues of their actions ; the wise man will know that each action brings with it its inevitable consequences, which even God cannot change without ceasing to be himself. In such a manner, through all the conditions of life, Spi- noza pursues the advantages which will accrue to man from the knowledge of God, God and man being what his phi- 314 Spinoza. losophy has described then?.. His practical teaching is sin- gularly beautiful ; although much of its beauty is perhaps due to associations which have arisen out of Christianity, and which in the system of Pantheism have no proper abid- ing place. Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Chris- tianity, he even seems to have relieved himself of the more fearful features of the general creed. He acknowledges no hell, no devil, no positive and active agency at enmity with God ; but sees in all things infinite gradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and all fulfilling the part allotted to them. Doubtless a pleasant exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only we could- persuade ourselves that a hun- dred pages of judiciously arranged demonstrations could really and indeed have worked it for us ; if we could in- deed believe that we could have the year without its winter, day without night, sunlight without shadow. Evil is unhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of. But if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the disinterestedness and calm nobility which pervade his theories of human life and obligation. He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded. Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that is the exhaust- ive end of all human desire. " Beatitude non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. 2sih.il aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, qua? ex Dei intuitiva cognitione oritur." The same spirit of generosity exhibits itself in all its conclu- sions. The ordinary objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for one man to obtain them is for another to lose them ; and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not what any man should labor after. But the fullness of God suffices for us all ; and he who possesses this good desires only to communicate it to every one, and to make all mankind as happy as himself. And again : " The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbor's faults, and sparingly of the infirmity of human nature ; but he Spinoza. 315 will speak largely of human virtue and human power, and of the means by which that nature can best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that fear and aversion with which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to love and desire it." And once more : " He who loves God will not desire that God should love him in return with any partial or particular affection, for that is to desire that God for his sake should change his everlasting nature and become lower than himself." One grave element, indeed, of a religious faith would seem in such a system to be necessarily wanting. Where individual action is resolved into the modified activity of the Universal Being, all absorbing and all evolving, the in- dividuality of the personal man is but an evanescent and unreal shadow. Such individuality as we now possess, whatever it be, might continue to exist in a future state as really as it exists in the present, and those to whom it be- longs might be anxious naturally for its persistence. Yet it would seem that if the soul'be nothing except the idea of a body actually existing, when that body is decomposed into its elements, the soul corresponding to it must accom- pany it into an answering dissolution. And this, indeed, Spinoza in one sense actually affirms, when he denies to the mind any power of retaining consciousness of what has befallen it in life, " nisi durante corpore." But Spi- nozism is a philosophy full of surprises ; and our calcula- tions of what must belong to it are perpetually baffled. The imagination, the memory, the senses, whatever belongs to inadequate perception, perish necessarily and eternally ; and the man who has been the slave of his inclinations, who has no knowledge of God, and no active possession of himself, having in life possessed no personality, loses in death the appearance of it with the dissolution of the body. Nevertheless, there is in God an idea expressing the essence of the mind, united to the mind as the mind is 816 Spinoza. united to the body, and thus there is in the soul something of an everlasting nature which cannot utterly perish. And here Spinoza, as he often does in many of his most solemn conclusions, deserts for a moment the thread of his demon- strations, and appeals to the consciousness. In spite of our non-recollection of what passed before our birth, in spite of all difficulties from the dissolution of the body, " Nihilominus," he says, " sentimus experimurque nos agter- nos esse. Nam mens non minus res illas sentit quas in- telligendo concipit, quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis enim oculi quibus res videt observatque sunt ipsse demon- strationes." This perception, immediately revealed to the mind, falls into easy harmony with the rest of the system. As the mind is not a faculty, but an act or acts, not a power of perception, but the perception itself, in its high union with the highest object (to use the metaphysical language which Coleridge has made popular and partially intelligible), the object and the subject become one. If knowledge be fol- lowed as it ought to be followed, and all objects of knowl- edge be regarded in their relations to the One Absolute Being, the knowledge of particular outward things, of Nature, or life, or history, becomes, in fact, knowledge of God ; and the more complete or adequate such knowledge, the more the mind is raised above what is perishable in the phenomena to the idea or law which lies beyond them.. It learns to dwell exclusively upon the eternal, not upon the temporary ; and being thus occupied with the everlasting laws, and its activity subsisting in its perfect union with them, it contracts in itself the character of the objects which possess it. Thus we are emancipated from the con- ditions of duration ; we are liable even to death only quate- nus patimur, as we are passive things and not active intel- ligences; and the more we possess such knowledge and are possessed by it, the more entirely the passive is super- seded by the active so that at last the human soul may Spinoza. 317 " become of such a nature that the portion of it which will perish with the body in comparison with that of it which shall endure, shall be insignificant and nidlius momenti." (Eth. v. 38.) Such are the principal features of a philosophy, the in- fluence of which upon Europe, direct and indirect, it is not easy to over-estimate. The account of it is far from being an account of the whole of Spinoza's labors ; his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus " was the forerunner of German historical criticism ; the whole of which has been but the application of principles laid down in that remark- able work. But this is not a subject on which, upon the present occasion, we have cared to enter. We have de- signedly confined ourselves to the system which is most associated with the name of its author. It is this which has been really powerful, which has stolen over the minds even of thinkers who imagine themselves most opposed to it. It has appeared in the absolute Pantheism of Schell- ing and Hegel, in the Pantheistic Christianity of Herder and Schleiermacher. Passing into practical life it has formed the strong, shrewd judgment of Goethe, while again it has been able to unite with the theories of the most ex- treme materialism. It lies too, perhaps (and here its influence has been un- mixedly good), at the bottom of that more reverent con- templation of Nature which has caused the success of our modern landscape painting, which inspired Wordsworth's poetry, and which, if ever physical science is to become an instrument of intellectual education, must first be in- fused into the lessons of Nature ; the sense of that " some thing " interfused in the material world, " Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; A motion and a spirit, which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." 318 Spinoza. If we shrink from regarding the extended unherse, with Spinoza, as an actual manifestation of Almighty God, we are unable to rest in the mere denial that it is this. We go on to ask what it is, and we are obliged to conclude thus much at least of- it, that every smallest being was once a thought in his mind ; and in the study of what He has made, we are really and truly studying a revelation of himself. It is not here, it is not on the physical, it is rather on the moral side, that the stumbling-block is lying ; in that excuse for evil and for evil men which the necessitarian theory will furnish, disguise it in what fair-sounding words we will. So plain this is, that common-sense people, and especially English people, cannot bring themselves even to consider the question without impatience, and turn dis- dainfully and angrily from a theory which confuses their instincts of right and wrong. Although, however, error on this side is infinitely less mischievous than on the other, no vehement error can exist in this world with impunity ; and it does appear that in our common view of these matters we have closed our eyes to certain grave facts of experience, and have given the fatalist a vantage-ground of real truth which we ought to have considered and al- lowed. At the risk of .tecliousness we shall enter briefly into this unpromising ground. Life and the necessities of life are our best philosophers if we will only listen honestly to what they say to us ; and dislike the lesson as we may, it is cowardice which refuses to hear it. The popular belief is, that right and wrong lie before every man, and that he is free to choose between them, and the responsibility of choice rests with himself. The fatal- ist's belief is that every man's actions are determined by causes external and internal over which he has no power, leaving no room for any moral choice whatever. The first is contradicted by facts, the second by the instinct of con- science. Even Spinoza allows that for practical purposes we are obliged to regard the future as contingent, and our- Spinoza. 319 selves as able to influence it ; and it is incredible that both our inward convictions and our outward conduct should be built together upon a falsehood. But if, as Butler says, whatever be the speculative account of the matter, we are practically forced to regard ourselves as free, this is but half the truth, for it may be equally said that practically we are forced to regard each other as not free ; and to make allowance, every moment, for influences for which we cannot hold each other personally responsible. If not, if every person of sound mind (in the common acceptation of the term) be equally able at all times to act right if only he will, why all the care which we take of children ? why the pains to keep them from bad society ? why do we so anxiously watch their disposition, to determine the edu- cation which will best answer to it? "Why in cases of guilt do we vary our moral censure according to the oppor- tunities of the offender ? Why do we find excuses for youth, for inexperience, for violent natural passion, for bad education, bad example ? Why, except that we feel that all these things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard them ? But what we act upon in private life we cannot acknowledge in our ethical theories, and while our conduct in detail is humane and just, we have been contented to gather our speculative philosophy out of the broad and coarse generalizations of political necessity. In the swift haste of social life we must indeed treat men as we find them. We have no time to make allowances ; and the graduation of punishment by the scale of guilt is a mere impossibility. A thief is a thief in the law's eye though he has been trained from his cradle in the kennels of St. Giles's ; and definite penalties must be attached to definite acts, the conditions of political life not admitting of any other method of dealing with them. But it is absurd to argue from such rude necessity that each act therefore, by whomsoever committed, is of specific culpability. The act 320 Spinoza. is one thing, the moral guilt is another. There are many cases in which, as Butler again allows, if we trace a sin- ner's history to the bottom, the guilt attributable to himself appears to vanish altogether. This is plain matter of fact, and as long as we continue to deny or ignore it, there will be found men (not bad men, but men who love the truth as much as ourselves) who will see only what we neglect, and will insist upon it, and build their systems upon it. And again, if less obvious, yet not less real, are those natural tendencies which each of us brings with him into the world, which we did not make, and yet which almost as much determine what we are to be, as the properties of the seed determine the tree which shall grow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or obstinate, or weak, or gen- erous, or affectionate ; there is as large difference in their dispositions as in the features of their faces. Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult or impossible. It is with morals as it is with art. Two children are taught to draw ; one learns with ease, the other hardly or never. In vain the master will show him what to do. It seems so easy : it seems as if he had only to will, and the thing would be done ; but it is not so. Between the desire and the execution lies the incapable organ which only wearily, and after long labor, imperfectly accomplishes what is re- quired of it. And the same, to a certain extent, unless we will deny the patent facts of experience, holds true in moral actions. No wonder, therefore, that evaded or thrust aside as these things are in the popular beliefs, as soon as they are recognized in their full reality they should be mistaken for the whole truth, and the free-will theory be thrown aside as a chimera. It may be said, and it often is said, that such reasonings are merely sophistical that however we entangle our- selves in logic, we are conscious that we are free ; we know we are as sure as we are of our existence that we Spinoza* 321 have power to act this way or that way, exactly as we choose. But this is less plain than it seems ; and if granted, it proves less than it appears to prove. It may be true that we can act as w r e choose, but can we choose ? Is not our choice determined for us ? We cannot determine from the fact, because we always have chosen as soon as we act, and we cannot replace the conditions in such a way as to dis- cover whether we could have chosen any thing else. The stronger motive may have determined our volition without our perceiving it ; and if Ave desire to prove our independ- ence of motive, by showing that we can choose something different from that which we should naturally have chosen, we still cannot escape from the circle, this very desire be- coming, as Mr. Hume observes, itself a motive. Again, consciousness of the possession of any power may easily be delusive ; we can properly judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished ; we know what we have done, and we may infer from having done it that our power was equal to what it achieved. But it is easy for us to overrate our strength if we try to measure our abilities in themselves. A man who can leap five yards may think that he can leap six ; yet he may try and fail. A man who can write prose may only learn that he cannot write poetry from the badness of the verses which he pro- duces. To the appeal to consciousness of power there is always an answer : that we may believe ourselves to possess it, but that experience proves that we may be de- ceived. There is, however, another group of feelings which can- not be set aside in this way, which do prove that, in some sense or other, in some degree or other, we are the authors of our own actions. It is one of the clearest of all in- ward phenomena, that, where two or more courses involv- ing moral issues are before us, whether we have a con- sciousness of power to choose between them or not, we have a consciousness that we ought to choose between 21 322 Spinoza. them ; a sense of duty on Set TOVTO Trparrav as Aris- totle expresses it, which we cannot shake off. Whatever this consciousness involves (and some measure of freedom it must involve or it is nonsense), the feeling exists within us, and refuses to yield before all the batteries of logic. It is not that of the two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and the other more immediately tempt- ing. We have a sense of obligation irrespective of con- sequence, the violation of which is followed again by a sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. In vain will Spinoza tell us that such feelings, incompatible as they are with the theory of powerlessness, are mistakes arising out of a false philosophy. They are primary facts of sensation, most vivid in minds of most vigorous sen- sibility ; and although they may be extinguished by habitual profligacy, or possibly, perhaps, destroyed by logic, the paralysis of the conscience is no more a proof that it is not a real power of perceiving real things, than blindness is a proof that sight is not a real power. The perceptions of worth and worthlessness are not conclusions of reason- ing, but immediate sensations like those of seeing and hearing ; and although, like the other senses, they may be mistaken sometimes in the accounts they render to us, the fact of the existence of such feelings at all proves that there is something which corresponds to them. If there be any such things as '' true ideas," or clear, distinct per- ceptions at all, this of praise and blame is one of them, and according to Spinoza's own rule we must accept what it involves. And it involves that somewhere or other the influence of causes ceases to operate, and that some degree of power there is in men of self-determination, by the amount of which, and not by their specific actions, moral merit or demerit is to be measured. Speculative diffi- culties remain in abundance. It will be said in a case, e. g. of moral trial, that there may have been power ; but was there power co>tyh to resist the temptation ? If there Spinoza. 323 ffas, then it was resisted. If there was not, there was not responsibility. We must answer again from prac- tical instinct. We refuse to allow men to be considered all equally guilty who have committed the same faults; and we insist that their actions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similar conviction assures us that there is somewhere a point of freedom. Where that point is where other influences terminate, and responsibility begins will always be of intricate and often impossible solution. But if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarianism, and man is what he has been hitherto supposed to be an exception in the order of Nature, with a power not differing in de- gree but differing in kind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all life, is a mystery ; and as to anatom- ize the body will not reveal the secret of animation, so with the actions of the moral man. The spiritual life, which alone gives them meaning and being, glides away before the logical dissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work upon. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. 1 To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not difficult it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own, before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it. And in historical inquiries, the most instructed think- ers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most, approach least to agreement. The most careful investigations are diverging roads the further men travel upon them, the greater the interval by which they are divided. In the eyes of David Hume, the history of the Saxon Princes is " the scuffling of kites and crows." Father Newman would mortify the conceit of a degenerate England by pointing to the sixty saints and the hundred confessors who were trained in her royal palaces for the Calendar of the Blessed. How vast a chasm yawns between these two conceptions of the same era ! Through what common term can the student pass from one into the other ? Or, to take an instance yet more noticeable. The his- tory of England scarcely interests Mr. Macaulay before the Revolution of the seventeenth century. To Lord John Russell, the Reformation was the first outcome from centuries of folly and ferocity ; and Mr. Hallam's more temperate language softens, without concealing, a similar conclusion. These writers have all studied what they de^ scribe. Mr. Carlyle has studied the same subject with 1 From Frascr's Magazine^ 1857. The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 325 power at least equal to theirs, and to him the .greatness of English character was waning with the dawn of English literature ; the race of heroes was already failing. The era of action was yielding before the era of speech. All these views may seem to ourselves exaggerated ; we may have settled into some moderate via media, or have carved out our own ground on an original pattern ; but if we are wise, the differences in other men's judgments will teach us to be diffident. The more distinctly we have made history bear witness in favor of our particular opin- ions, the more we have multiplied the chances against the truth of our own theory. Again, supposing that we have made a truce with " opin- ions," properly so called ; supposing we have satisfied our- selves that it is idle to quarrel upon points on which good men differ, and that it is better to attend rather to what we certainly know ; supposing that, either from superior wis- dom, or from the conceit of superior wisdom, we have re- solved that we will look for human perfection neither exclusively in the Old World nor exclusively in the New neither among Catholics nor Protestants, among Whigs or Tories, heathens or Christians - that we have laid aside accidental differences, and determined to recognize only moral distinctions, to love moral worth, and to hate moral evil, wherever we find them ; even supposing all this, we have not much improved our position we cannot leap from our shadow. Eras, like individuals, differ from one another in the species of virtue which they encourage. In one age, we find the virtues of the warrior ; in the next, of the saint. The ascetic and the soldier in their turn disappear ; an in- dustrial era succeeds, bringing with it the virtues of com- mon sense, of grace, and refinement. There is the virtue of energy and command, there is the virtue of humility and patient suffering. All these are different, and all are, or may be, of equal moral value ; yet from the constitution 326 The Dissolution of the Monasteries, of our minds, we are so framed that we cannot equally aji* predate all ; we sympathize instinctively with the person who most represents our own ideal with the period when the graces which most harmonize with our own tempers have been especially cultivated. Further, if we leave out of sight these refinements, and content ourselves with the most popular conceptions of morality, there is this immeas- urable difficulty, so great, yet so little considered, that goodness is positive as well as negative, and consists in the active accomplishment of certain things which we are bound to do, as well as in the abstaining from things which we are bound not to do. And here the warp and woof vary in shade and pattern. Many a man, with the help of circumstances, may pick his way clear through life, never having violated one prohibitive commandment, and yet at last be fit only for the place of the unprofitable servant he may not have committed either sin or crime, yet never have felt the pulsation of a single unselfish emotion. Another, meanwhile, shall have been hurried by an impul- sive nature into fault after fault shall have been reckless, improvident, perhaps profligate, yet be fitter after all for the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisee fitter, because against the catalogue of faults there could perhaps be set a fairer list of acts of comparative generosity and self-for- getfulness fitter, because to those who love much, much is forgiven. Fielding had no occasion to make Blifil, be- hind his decent coat, a traitor and a hypocrite. It would have been enough to have colored him in and out alike in the steady hues of selfishness, afraid of offending the upper powers as he was afraid of offending Allworthy not from any love for what was good, but solely because it would be imprudent because the pleasure to be gained was not worth the risk of consequences. Such a Blifil would have answered the novelist's purpose for he would have remained a worse man in the estimation of some of us than Tom Jones. The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 327 So the truth is ; but unfortunately it is only where accu- rate knowledge is stimulated by affection, that we are able to feel it. Persons who live beyond our own circle, and, still more, persons who have lived in another age, receive what is called justice, not charity ; and justice is supposed to consist in due allotments of censure for each special act of misconduct, leaving merit unrecognized. There are many reasons for this harsh method of judging. We must de- cide of men by what we know, and it is easier to know faults than to know virtues. Faults are specific, easily de- scribed, easily appreciated, easily remembered. And again there is, or may be, hypocrisy in virtue ; but no one pretends to vice who is not vicious. The bad things which can be proved of a man we know to be genuine. He was a spend- thrift, he was an adulterer, he gambled, he equivocated. These are blots positive, unless untrue, and when they stand alone, tinge the whole character. This also is to be observed in historical criticism. All men feel a necessity of being on some terms with their conscience, at their own expense or at another's. If they cannot part with their faults, they will at least call them by their right name when they meet with such faults else- where ; and thus, when they find accounts of deeds of vio- lence or sensuality, of tyranny, of injustice of man to man, of great and extensive suffering, or any of those other mis- fortunes which the selfishness of men has at various times .occasioned, they will vituperate the doers of such things, and the age which has permitted them to be done, with the full emphasis of virtuous indignation, while all the time they are themselves doing things which will be described, with no less justice, in the same color, by an equally vir- tuous posterity. Historians are fond of recording the supposed sufferings of the poor in the days of serfdom and villanage ; yet the records of the strikes of the last ten years, when told by the sufferers, contain pictures no less fertile in tragedy. 328 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. We speak of famines and plagues under the Tudors and Stuarts ; but the Irish famine, and the Irish plague of 1847, the last page of such horrors which has yet been turned over, is the most horrible of all. We can conceive a de- scription of England during the year which has just closed over us (1856), true in all its details, containing no one statement which can be challenged, no single exaggeration which can be proved ; and this description, if given with- out the correcting traits, shall make ages to come marvel why the Cities of the Plain were destroyed, and England was allowed to survive. The frauds of trusted men, high in power and high in supposed religion ; the wholesale poi- sonings ; the robberies ; the adulteration of food nay, of almost every thing exposed for sale the cruel usage of women children murdered for the burial fees life and property insecure in open day in the open streets splen- dor such as the world never saw before upon earth, with vice and squalor crouching under its walls let all this be written down by an enemy, or let it be ascertained hereaf- ter by the investigation of a posterity which desires to judge us as we generally have judged our forefathers, and few years will show darker in the English annals than the year which we have just left behind us. Yet we know, in the honesty of our hearts, how unjust such a picture would be. Our future advocate, if we are so happy as to find one, may not be able to disprove a single article in the in- dictment ; and yet we know that, as the world goes, he will be right if he marks the year with a white stroke as one in which, on the whole, the moral harvest was better than an average. Once more : our knowledge of any man is always inade- quate even of the unit which each of us calls himself; and the first condition under which we can know a man at all is, that he be in essentials something like ourselves; that our own experience be an interpreter which shall open the secrets of his experience ; and it often happens, even T/ie Dissolution of the Monasteries. 329 among our contemporaries, that we are altogether baffled. The Englishman and the Italian may understand each other's speech, but the language of each other's ideas has still to be learnt. Our long failures in Ireland have risen from a radical incongruity of character which has divided the Celt from the Saxon. And again, in the same country the Catholic will be a mystery to the Protestant, and the Protestant to the Catholic. Their intellects have been shaped in opposite moulds ; they are like instruments which cannot be played in concert. In the same way, but in a far higher degree, we are divided from the generations which have preceded us on this planet we try to com- prehend a Pericles or a Cassar an image rises before us which we seem to recognize as belonging to our common humanity. There is this feature which is familiar to us and this and this. We are full of hope ; the lineaments, one by one, pass into clearness ; when suddenly the figure becomes enveloped in a cloud some perplexity crosses our analysis, baffling it utterly ; the phantom which we have evoked dies away before our eyes, scornfully mocking our incapacity to master it. The English antecedent to the Reformation are nearer to us than Greeks or Romans ; and yet there is a large interval between the baron who fought at Barnet field, and his polished descendant in a modern drawing-room. The scale of appreciation and the rule of judgment the habits, the hopes, the fears, the emotions have utterly changed. In perusing modern histories, the present writer has been struck with dumb wonder at the facility with which men will fill in chasms in their information with conjecture ; will guess at the motives which have prompted actions ; will pass their censures, as if all secrets of the past lay out on an open scroll before them. He is obliged to say for himself that, wherever he has been fortunate enough to discover authentic explanations of English historical diffi- culties, it is rare indeed that he has found any conjecture, 330 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. either of his own or of any other modern writer, confirmed, The true motive has almost invariably been of a kind which no modern experience could have suggested. Thoughts such as these form a hesitating prelude to an expression of opinion on a controverted question. They will serve, however, to indicate the limits within which the said opinion is supposed to be hazarded. And in fact, neither in this nor in any historical subject is the conclu- sion so clear that it can be enunciated in a definite form. The utmost which can be safely hazarded with history is to relate honestly ascertained facts, with only such indications of a judicial sentence upon them as may be suggested in the form in which the story is arranged. Whether the monastic bodies of England, at the time of their dissolution, were really in that condition of moral corruption which is laid to their charge in the Act of Par- liament by which they were dissolved, is a point which it seems hopeless to argue. Roman Catholic, and indeed almost all English writers who are not committed to an un- favorable opinion by the ultra-Protestantism of their doc- trines, seem to have agreed of late years that the accusa- tions, if not false, were enormously exaggerated. The dis- solution, we are told, was a predetermined act of violence and rapacity ; and when the reports and the letters of the visitors are quoted in justification of the Government, the discussion is closed with the dismissal of every unfavora- ble witness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious in fact, as a suborned liar. Upon these terms the argu- ment is easily disposed of; and if it were not that truth is in all matters better than falsehood, it would be idle to reopen a question which cannot be justly dealt with. No evidence can affect convictions which have been arrived at without evidence and why should we attempt a task which it is hopeless to accomplish ? It seems necessary, however, to reassert the actual state of the surviving tes- timony from time to time, if it be only to sustain the links The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 831 of the old traditions ; and the present paper will contain one or two pictures of a peculiar kind, exhibiting the life and habits of those institutions, which have been lately met with chiefly among the imprinted Records. In antici- pation of any possible charge of unfairness in judging from isolated instances, we disclaim simply all desire to judge all wish to do any thing beyond relating certain ascertained stories. Let it remain, to those who are per- verse enough to insist upon it, an open question whether the monasteries were more corrupt under Henry the Eighth than they had been four hundred years earlier. The dissolution would have been equally a necessity ; for no reasonable person would desire that bodies of men should have been maintained for the only business of sing- ing masses, when the efficacy of masses was no longer be- lieved. Our present desire is merely this to satisfy our- selves whether the Government, in discharging a duty which could not be dispensed with, condescended to false- hood in seeking a vindication for themselves which they did not require ; or whether they had cause really to be- iieve the majority of the monastic bodies to be as they affirmed whether, that is to say, there really were such cases either of flagrant immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste and prodigality, as to justify the general censure which was pronounced against the system by the Parliament and the Privy Council. Secure in the supposed completeness with which Queen Mary's agents destroyed the Eecords of the visitation un- der her father, Roman Catholic writers have taken refuge in a disdainful denial ; and the Anglicans, who for the most part, while contented to enjoy the fruits of the Refor- mation, detest the means by which it was brought about, have taken the same view. Bishop Latimer tells us that, when the Report of the visitors of the abbeys was read in the Commons House, there rose from all sides one long cry of " Down with them." But Bishop Latimer, in the 332 T/te Dissolution of the Monasteries. opinion of High Churchmen, is not to be believed. Do we produce letters of the visitors themselves, we are told that they are the slanders prepared to justify a preconceived purpose of spoliation. No witness, it seems, will be admit- ted unless it be the witness of a friend. Unless some enemy of the Reformation can be found to confess the crimes which made the Reformation necessary, the crimes themselves are to be regarded as unproved. This is a hard condition. Y\ r e appeal to Wolsey. Wolsey com- menced the suppression. "Wolsey first made public the infamies which disgraced the Church ; while, notwith- standing, he died the devoted servant of the Church. This evidence is surely admissible ? But no : Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey was a courtier and a timeserver. Wolsey was a tyrant's minion. Wolsey was in short, we know not what Wolsey was, or what he was not. Who can put confidence in a charlatan ? Behind the bulwarks of such objections, the champion of the abbeys may well believe himself secure. And yet, unreasonable though these demands may be, it happens, after all, that we are able partially to gratify them. It is strange that, of all extant accusations against any one of the abbeys, the heaviest is from a quarter which even Lingard himself would scarcely call suspicious. No picture left us by Henry's visitors surpasses, even if it equals, a description of the condition of the Abbey of St. Albans, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, drawn by Morton, Henry the Seventh's minister, Cardinal Arch- bishop, Legate of the Apostolic See, in a letter addressed by him to the Abbot of St. Albans himself. We must request our reader's special attention for the next two pages. In the year 1489, Pope Innocent the Eighth moved with the enormous stories which reached his ear of the corruption of the houses of religion in England granted R commission to the Archbishop of Canterbury to mako The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 333 inquiries whether these stories were true, and to proceed to correct and reform as might seem good to him. The regular clergy were exempt from episcopal visitation, ex- cept under especial directions from Rome. The occasion had appeared so serious as to make extraordinary inter- ference necessary. On the receipt of the Papal commission, Cardinal Mor- ton, among other letters, wrote the following letter : John by Divine permission, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Albans, greeting. We have received certain letters under lead, the copies whereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lord and Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine Providence Pope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, the Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judge therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See, have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing the said commission ; and have determined that we will pi*oceed by, and according to, the full force, tenor, and effect of the same. And it has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot aforementioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enor- mous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes, of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in order that true religion might flourish there, that the name of the Most High, in whose honor and glory it was instituted, might be duly celebrated there ; And whereas, in days heretofore, the regular observance of the eaid rule was greatly regarded, and hospitality was diligently kept; Nevertheless, for no little time, during which you have pre- 33-i The Dissolution of the Monasteries. sided in the same monastery, you and certain of your fellow-monks and brethren (whose blood, it is feared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will require at your hand) have relaxed the measure and form of religious life ; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation, and all regular observances hospitality, alms, and those other offices of piety which of old time were exercised and ministered therein have decreased, and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect and deed, do daily decrease more and more, and cease to be regarded the pious vows of the founders are defrauded of their just intent the ancient rule of your order is deserted ; and not a few of your fellow-monks and breth- ren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, giving themselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside the fear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness nay, as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holy places, even the very churches of God, by in- famous intercourse with nuns, &c., &c. You yourself, moreover, among other grave enormities and abominable crimes whereof you are guilty, and for which you are noted and diffamed, have, in the first place, admitted a certain married woman, named Elena Germyn, who has separated her- self without just cause from her husband, and for some time past has lived in adultery with another man, to be a nun or sister in the house or Priory of Bray, lying, as you pretend, within your jurisdiction. You have next appointed the same woman to be prioress of the said house, notwithstanding that her said husband was living at the time, and is still alive. And finally, Father Thomas Sudbury, one of your brother monks, publicly, notori- ously, and without interference or punishment from you, has associated, and still associates, with this woman as an adulterer with his harlot. Moreover, divers other of your brethren and fellow-monks have resorted, and do resort, continually to her and other women at the same place, as to a public brothel or receiving-house, and have received no correction therefor. Nor is Bray the only house into which you have introduced dis- order. At the nunnery of Sapwell, which you also contend to be under your jurisdiction, you change the prioresses and superiors again and again at your own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Bray, you depose those who are good and religious ; you pro- mote to the highest dignities the worthless and the vicious. Tho The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 335 duties of the order are cast aside ; virtue is neglected ; anl by these means so much cost and extravagance has been caused, that to provide means for your indulgence you have introduced certain of your brethren to preside in their houses under the name of guardians, when in fact they are no guardians, but thieves and notorious villains ; and with their help you have caused and per- mitted the goods of the same priories to be dispensed, or to speak more truly to be dissipated, in the above-described corruptions and other enormous and accursed offenses. Those places once religious are rendered and reputed as it were profane and impi^ ous ; and by your own and your creatures' conduct, are so impov- erished as to be reduced to the verge of ruin. In like manner, also, you have dealt with certain other cells of monks, which you say are subject to you, even within the monas- tery of the glorious proto-martyr Alban himself. You have dilap- idated the common property ; you have made away with the jewels ; the copses, the woods, the underwood, almost all the oaks, and other forest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks and more, you have made to be cut down without distinction, and they have by you been sold and alienated. The brethren of the abbey, some of whom, as is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously, within the precincts of the monastery and without. Some of them, who are covetous of honor and promotion, and desirous therefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen and made away with the chalices and other jewels of the Church. They have even sacrilegiously extracted the precious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban ; and you have not punished these men, but have rather knowingly supported and maintained them. If any of your brethren be living justly and religiously, if any be wise and virtuous, these you straightway depress and hold in hatred . . . You . . . But we need not transcribe further this overwhelming document It pursues its way through mire and filth to its most lame and impotent conclusion. After all this, the abbot was not deposed ; he was invited merely to recon- sider his doings, and, if possible, amend them. Such was Church discipline, even under an extraordinary commis- 336 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. sion from Rome. But the most incorrigible Anglican will scarcely question the truth of a picture drawn by such a hand ; and it must be added that this one unexceptionable indictment lends at once assured credibility to the reports which were presented fifty years later, on the general visit- ation. There is no longer room for the presumptive ob- jection that charges so revolting could not be true. We see that in their worst form they could be true, and the evidence of Legh and Leghton, of Rice and Bedyll, as it remains in their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken in detail, or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannot dream that Archbishop Morton was mistaken, or was mis- led by false information. St. Albans was no obscure priory in a remote and thinly peopled county. The Abbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, taking precedence of bish- ops, living in the full glare of notoriety, within a few miles of London. The archbishop had ample means of ascer- taining the truth ; and, we may be sure, had taken care to examine his ground before he left on record so tremendous an accusation. This story is true as true as it is pite- ous. We will pause a moment over it before we pass from this, once more to ask our passionate Church friends whether still they will persist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudors than they had been in their origin, under the Saxons, or under the first Norman and Plantag- enet kings. We refuse to believe it. The abbeys which towered in the midst of the English towns, the houses clus- tered at their feet like subjects round some majestic queen, were images indeed of the civil supremacy which the Church of the Middle Ages had asserted for itself; but they were images also of an inner spiritual sublimity, which had won the homage of grateful and admiring nations. The heavenly graces had once descended upon the monas- tic orders, making them ministers of mercy, patterns of celestial life, breathing witnesses of the power of the Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the heart. And then it was Tlit, Dissolution of the Monasteries. 337 that art and wealth and genius poured out their treasures to raise fitting tabernacles for the dwelling of so divine a soul. Alike in the village and the city, amongst the una- dorned walls and lowly roofs which closed in the humble dwellings of the laity, the majestic houses of the Father of mankind and of his especial servants rose up in sovereign beauty. And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering ; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins of mankind ; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts of society the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw gathered round the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the Apostle, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till their sins were washed from off their souls. The abbeys of the Middle Ages floated through the storms of war and conquest, like the ark upon the waves of the flood : in the midst of violence remaining invi- olate, through the awful reverence which surrounded them. The abbeys, as Henry's visitors found them, were as little like what they once had been as the living man in the pride of his growth is like the corpse \vkich the earth makes haste to hide forever. The official letters which reveal the condition into which the monastic establishments had degenerated, are chiefly in the Cotton Library, and a large number of them have been published by the Camden Society. 4 Besides these, however, there are in the Rolls House many other docu- ments which confirm and complete the statements of the writers of those letters. There is a part of what seems to have been a digest of the " Black Book " an epitome of iniquities, under the title of the " Compendium Comperto- rum/' There are also reports from private persons, private entreaties for inquiry, depositions of monks in official ex- aminations, and other similar papers, which, in many in- 22 388 TJte Dissolution of the Monasteries. stances, are too offensive to be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious persons compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious light on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disor- ders which accompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that although the dark tints predominate, the picture was not wholly black ; that as just Lot was in the midst of Sodom, yet was unable by his single presence to save the guilty city from destruction, so in the latest era of monasticism there were types yet lingering of an older and fairer age, who, nevertheless, were not delivered, like the patriarch, but perished most of them with the institution to which they belonged. The hideous exposure is not un- tinted with fairer lines ; and we see traits here and there of true devotion, mistaken but heroic. Of these documents two specimens shall be given in this place, one of either kind ; and both, so far as we know, new to modern history. The first is so singular, that we print it as it is found a genuine antique, fished up, in perfect preservation, out of the wreck of the old world. About eight miles from Ludlow, in the county of Here- fordshire, once stood the Abbey of Wigmore. There was Wigmore Castle, a stronghold of the Welsh Marches, now, we believe, a modern, well-conditioned mansion ; and Wig- more Abbey, of which we do not hear that there are any remaining traces. Though now vanished, however, like so many of its kind, the house was three hundred years ago in vigorous existence ; and when the stir commenced for an inquiry, the proceedings of the abbot of this place gave occasion to a memorial which stands in the Rolls collec- tion as follows : 1 Articles to be objected against John Smart, Abbot of the Mon- astery of Wigmore, in the county of Hereford, to be exhibited to the Eight Honorable Lord Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal and Vicegerent to the King's Majesty. 1 Rolls House "MS., MitceUiincous Papers, First Serie-. 356. The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 339 1. The said abbot is to be accused of simony, as well for taking money for advocation and putations of benefices, as for giving of orders, or more truly, selling them, and that to such persons which have been rejected elsewhere, and of little learning and light con- sideration. 2. The said abbot hath promoted to orders many scholars when all other bishops did refrain to give such orders on account of cer- tain ordinances devised by the King's Majesty and his Council for the common weal of this realm. Then resorted to the said abbot scholars out of all parts, whom he would promote to orders by sixty at a time, and sometimes more, and otherwhiles less. And sometimes the said abbot would give orders by night within his chamber, and otherwise in the church early in the morning, and now and then at a chapel out of the abbey. So that there be many unlearned and light priests made by the said abbot; and in the diocese of Llandaff, and in the places aforenamed a thou- sand, as it is esteemed, by the space of this seven years he hath made priests, and received not so little money of them as a thou- sand pounds for their orders. 3. Item, that the said abbot now of late, when he could not be suffered to give general orders, for the most part doth give orders by pretense of dispensation ; and by that color he promoteth them to orders by two and three, and takes much money of them, both for their orders and for to purchase their dispensations after the time he hath promoted them to their orders. 4. Item, the said abbot hath hurt and dismayed his tenants by putting them from their leases, and by inclosing their commons from them, and selling and utter wasting of the woods that were wont to relieve and succor them. 5. Item, the said abbot hath sold corradyes, to the damage of the said monastery. 6. Itern, the said abbot hath alienate and sold the jewels and plate of the monastery, to the value of five hundred marks, to purchase of the Bishop of Rome his bulls to be a bishop, and to annex the said abbey to his bishopric, to that intent that he should not for his misdeeds be punished, or deprived from his said abbey. 7. Item, that the said abbot, long after that other bishops had renounced the Bishop of Home, and professed them to the King's Majesty, did use, but more verily usurped, the office of a bishop by virtue of his first bulls purchased from Rome, till now of late, as it will appear by the date of his confirmation, if he have any. 340 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 8. Item, that he the said abbot hath lived viciously, and kept to concubines divers and many women that is openly known. 9. Item, that the said abbot doth yet continue his vicious living, as it is known, openly. 10. Item, that the said abbot hath spent and wasted much of the goods of the said monastery upon the foresaid women. 11. Item, that the said abbot is malicious and very wrathful, not regarding what he saith or doeth in his fury or anger. 12. Item, that one Richard Gyles bought of the abbot and con- vent of Wigmore a corradye, and a chamber for him and his wife for term of their lives ; and when the said Richard Gyles was aged and was very weak, he disposed his goods, and made execu- tors to execute his will. And when the said abbot now being perceived that the said Richard Gyles was rich, and had not bequested so much of his goods to him as he would have had, the said abbot then came to the chamber of the said Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friends and kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness ; and then the said abbot set his brother and other of his servants to keep the sick man ; and the night next coming after the said Richard Gyles's cofTer was broken, and thence taken all that was in the same, to the value of forty marks ; and long after the said abbot confessed, before the executors of the said Richard Gyles, that it was his deed. 13. Item, that the said abbot, after he had taken away the goods of the said Richard Gyles, used daily to reprove and check the said Richard Gyles, and inquire of him where was more of his coin and money : and at the last the said abbot thought he lived too long, and made the sick man, after much sorry keeping, to be taken from his feather-bed, and laid upon a cold mattress, and kept his friends from him to his death. 15. Item, that the said abbot consented to the death and mur- dering of one John Tichkill, that was slain at his procuring, at the said monastery, by Sir Richard Cubley, canon and chaplain to the said abbot ; which canon is and ever hath been since that time chief of the said abbot's council ; and is supported to carry cross- bowes, and to go whither he lusteth at any time, to fishing and hunting in the king's forests, parks, and chases ; but little or nothing serving the quire, as other brethren do, neither corrected ef the abbot for any trespass he uoth commit 16. Item, that the said abbot hath been perjured oft, as is tobt The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 841 proved and is proved ; and as it is supposed, did not make a truo inventory of the goods, chattels, and jewels of his monastery to the King's Majesty and his Council. 17. Item, that the said abbot hath infringed all the king's injunctions which were given him by Doctor Cave to observe and keep ; and when he was denounced in pleno capitulo to have broken the same, he would have put in prison the brother as did denounce him to have broken the same injunctions, save that he was let by the convent there. 18. Item, that the said abbot hath openly preached against the doctrine of Christ, saying he ought not to love his enemy, but as he loves the devil ; and that he should love his enemy's soul, but not his body. 19. Item, that the said abbot hath taken but small regard to the good-living of his household. 20. Item, that the said abbot hath had and hath yet a special favor to misdoers and manquellers, thieves, deceivers of their neighbors, and by them [is] most ruled and counseled. 21. Item, that the said abbot hath granted leases of farms and advocations first to one man, and took his fine, and also hath granted the same lease to another man for more money ; and then would make to the last taker a lease or writing, with an antedate of the first lease, which hath bred great dissension among gen- tlemen, as Master Blunt and Master Moysey, and other takers of such leases, and that often. 22. Item, the said abbot having the contrepaynes of leases in his keeping, hath, for money, rased out the number of years mentioned in the said leases, and writ a fresh number in the for- mer taker's lease, and in the contrepayne thereof, to the intent to defraud the taker or buyer of the residue of such leases, of whom he hath received the money. 23. Item, the said abbot hath not, according to the foundation of his monastery, admitted freely tenants into certain alms-houses belonging to the said monastery ; but of them he hath taken large fines, and some of them he hath put away that would not give him fines ; whither poor, aged, and impotent people were wont to be freely admitted, and [to] receive the founder's alms that of the old customs [were] limited to the same which alms is also diminished by the said abbot. 24. Item, that the said abbot did not deliver the bulls of bis 342 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. bishopric, that he purchased from Rome, to our sovereign lord the king's council till long after the time he had delivered and exhib- ited the bulls of his monastery to them. 25. Item, that the said abbot hath detained and yet doth detain servants' wages ; and often when the said servants hath asked their wages, the said abbot hath put them into the stocks, and beat them. 26. Item, the said abbot, in times past. hath, had a great devo- tion to ride to Llangarvan, in Wales, upon Lammas-day, to receive pardon there ; and on the even he would visit one Mary Hawlc an old acquaintance of his, at the Welsh Poole, and on the morrow ride to the forcsaid Llangarvan, to be confessed and absolved, and the same night return to company with the said Mary Hawle, at the Welsh Poole aforesaid, and Kateryn, the said Mary Hawle her first daughter, whom the said abbot long hath kept to concubine, and had children by her, that he lately married at Ludlow. And [there be] others that have been taken out of his chamber and put in the stocks within the said abbey, and others that have com- plained upon him to the king's council of the Marches of Wales ; and the woman that dashed out his teeth, that he would have had by violence, I will not name now, nor other men's wives, lest it would offend your good lordship to read or hear the same. 27. Item, the said abbot doth daily embezzle, sell, and convey the goods and chattels, and jewels of the said monastery, having no need so to do : for it is thought that he hath a thousand marks or two thousand lying by him that he hath gotten by selling of orders, and the jewels and plate of the monastery and corradyes ; and it is to be feared that he will alienate all the rest, unless your good lordship speedily make redress and provision to let the same. 28. Item, the said abbot was accustomed yearly to preach at Leyntwarden on the Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, where and when the people were wont to offer to an image there, and to the same the said abbot in his sermons would exhort them and encourage them. But now the oblations be decayed, the abbot, espying the image then to have a cote of silver plate and gilt, hath taken away of his own authority the said image, and the plate turned to his own use ; and left his preaching there, saying it is no manner of profit to any man, and the plate that was about the eaid image was named to be worth forty pounds. 29. Item, the said abbot hath ever nourished enmity and dia The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 343 cord among his brethren ; and hath not encouraged them to learn the laws and the mystery of Christ. But he that least knew was most cherished by him ; and he hath been highly displeased and [hath] disdained when his brothers would say that "it is God's precept and doctrine that ye ought to prefer before your ceremo- nies and vain constitutions." This saying was high disobedient, and should be grievously punished; when that lying, obloquy, (lattery, ignorance, derision, contumely, disorder, great swearing, drinking, hypocrisy, fraud, superstition, deceit, conspiracy to wrong their neighbor, and other of that kind, was had in special favor and regard. Laud and praise be to God that hath sent us the true knowledge. Honor and long prosperity to our sov- ereign lord and his noble council, that teaches to advance the same. Amen. By John Lee, your faithful bedeman, and canon of the said Monastery of Wigmorc. Postscript. My good lord, there is in the said abbey a cross of fine gold and precious stones, whereof one diamond was esteemed by Doctor Booth, Bishop of Hereford, worth a hundred marks. In that cross is inclosed a piece of wood, named to be of the cross that Christ died upon, and to the same hath been offering. And when it should be brought down to the church from the treasury, it was brought down with lights, and like reverence as should have been done to Christ himself. I fear lest the abbot upon Sunday next, when he may enter the treasury, will take away the said cross and break it, or turn it to his own use, with many other precious jewels that be there. All these articles afore written be true as to the substance and true meaning of them, though peradventure for haste and lack of counsel, some words be set amiss or out of their place. That I will be ready to prove forasmuch as lies in me, when it shall like your honorable lordship to direct your commission to men (or any man) that will be indifferent and not corrupt to sit upon the same, at the said abbey, where the witnesses and proofs br most rea3y and the truth is best known, or at any other place where it shall be thought most convenient by your high discretion and authority. The statutes of Provisors, commonly called Prasmunire statutes, which forbade all purchases of bulls from Rome S44 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. under penalty of outlawry, have been usually considered in the highest degree oppressive ; and more particularly the public censure has fallen upon the last application of those statutes, when, on Wolsey's fall, the whole body of the clergy were laid under a praemunire, and only obtained pardon on payment of a serious fine. Let no one regret that he has learnt to be tolerant to Roman Catholics as the nineteenth century knows them. But it is a spurious charity which, to remedy a modern injustice, hastens to its opposite ; and when philosophic historians indulge in loose invective against the statesmen of the Reformation, they show themselves unfit to be trusted with the custody of our national annals. The Acts of Parliament speak plainly of the enormous abuses which had grown up under these bulls. Yet even the emphatic language of the statutes scarcely prepares us to find an abbot able to purchase with jewels stolen from his own convent a faculty to confer holy orders, though he had never been consecrated bishop, and to make a thousand pounds by selling the exercise of his privileges. This is the most flagrant case which has fallen under the eyes of the present writer. Yet it is but a choice specimen out of many. He was taught to believe, like other modern students of history, that the papal dispensa- tions for immorality, of which we read in Fox and other Protestant writers, were calumnies, but he has been forced against his will to perceive that the supposed calumnies were but the plain truth ; he has found among the records for one thing, a list of more than twenty clergy in one diocese who had obtained licenses to keep concubines. 2 After some experience, he advises all persons who are anxious to understand the English Reformation to place implicit confidence in the Statute Book. Every fresh record which is brought to light is a fresh evidence in Us favor. In the fluctuations of the conflict there were parliaments, as there were princes, of opposing sentiment* * Tanner MS. 105. Bodleian Library, Oxford. T/ie Dissolution of the Monasteries. 345 and measures were passed, amended, repealed, or cen- sured, as Protestants and Catholics came alternately into power. But whatever were the differences of opinion, the facts on either side which are stated in an Act of Parlia- ment may be uniformly trusted. Even in the attainders for treason and heresy we admire the truthfulness of the details of the indictments, although we deplore the preju- dice which at times could make a crime of virtue. We pass on to the next picture. Equal justice, or some attempt at it, was promised, and we shall perhaps part from the friends of the monasteries on better terms than they believe. At least> we shall add to our own history and to the Catholic martyrology a story of genuine interest. We have many accounts of the abbeys at the time of their actual dissolution. The resistance or acquiescence of superiors, the dismissals of the brethren, the sale of the property, the destruction of relics, &c., are all described. We know how the windows were taken out, how the glass was appropriated, how the "melter" accompanied the visi- tors to run the lead upon the roofs and the metal of the bells into portable forms. We see the pensioned regulars filing out reluctantly, or exulting in their deliverance, discharged from their vows, furnished each with his " secular apparel," and his purse of money, to begin the world as he might. These scenes have long been partially known, and they were rarely attended with any thing remarkable. At the time of the suppression, the discipline of several years had broken down opposition, and prepared the way for the catastrophe. The end came at last, but as an issue which had been long foreseen. We have sought in vain, however, for a glimpse into the interior of the houses at the first intimation of what was coming more especially when the great blow was struck which severed England from obedience to Rome, and as- serted the independence of the Anglican Church. Then, virtually, the fate of the monasteries was decided. As soon 846 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. as the supremacy was vested in the Crown, inquiry into their condition could no longer be escaped or delayed ; and then, through the length and breadth of the country, there must have been rare dismay. The account of the London Carthusians is indeed known to us, because they chose to die rather than yield submission where their consciences forbade them ; and their isolated heroism has served to dis- tinguish their memories. The pope, as head of the Uni- versal Church, claimed the power of absolving subjects from their allegiance to their king. He deposed Henry. He called on foreign princes to enforce his sentence ; and, on pain of excommunication, commanded the native English to rise in rebellion. The king, in self-defense, was com- pelled to require his subjects to disclaim all sympathy with these pretensions, and to recognize no higher authority, spiritual or secular, than himself within his own dominions. The regular clergy throughout the country were on the pope's side, secretly or openly. The Charterhouse monks, however, alone of all the order, had the courage to declare their convictions, and to suffer for them. Of the rest, we only perceive that they at last submitted ; and since there was no uncertainty as to their real feelings, we have been disposed to judge them hardly as cowards. Yet we who have never been tried, should perhaps be cautious in our censures. It is possible to hold an opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying for it. We consider our- selves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of many things ; yet which of them should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were the alternative or at least seem to relinquish, under silent protest ? And yet, in the details of the struggle at the Charter- house, we see the forms of mental trial which must have repeated themselves among all bodies of the clergy wher- ever there was seriousness of conviction. If the majority of the monks were vicious and sensual, there was still a large minority laboring to be true to their vows; and The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 347 when one entire convent was capable of sustained resist- ance, there must have been many where there was only just too little virtue for the emergency where the con- flict between interest and conscience was equally genuine, though it ended the other way. Scenes of bitter misery there must have been of passionate emotion wrestling ineffectually with the iron resolution of the Government : and the faults of the Catholic party weigh so heavily against them in the course and progress of the Reforma- tion, that we cannot willingly lose the few countervailing tints which soften the darkness of their conditions. Nevertheless, for any authentic account of the abbeys at this crisis, we have hitherto been left to our imagination. A stern and busy administration had little leisure to pre- serve records of sentimental struggles which led to nothing. The Catholics did not care to -keep alive the recollection of a conflict in which, even though with difficulty, the Church was defeated. A rare accident only could have brought down to us any fragment of a transaction which no one had an interest in remembering. That such an accident has really occurred, we may consider as unusually fortunate. The story in question concerns the Abbey of TVoburn, and is as follows : At "Woburn, as in many other religious houses, there were representatives of both the factions which divided the country ; perhaps we should say of three the sincere Catholics, the Indifferentists, and the Protestants. These last, so long as Wolsey was in power, had been frightened into silence, and with difficulty had been able to save themselves from extreme penalties. No sooner, however, had Wolsey fallen, and the battle commenced with the papacy, than the tables turned, the persecuted became per- secutors or at least threw off their disguise and were strengthened with the support of the large class who cared only to keep on the winning side. The mysteries of the faith came to be disputed at the public tables ; the refec- The Dissolution of the Monasteries. tones rang with polemics ; the sacred silence of the dor- mitories was broken for the first time by lawless specula- tion. The orthodox might have appealed to the Govern- ment : heresy was still forbidden by law, and, if detected, was still punished by the stake. But the orthodox among the regular clergy adhered to the pope as well as to the faith, and abhorred the sacrilege of the Parliament as deeply as the new opinions of the Keformers. Instead of calling in the help of the law, they muttered treason in secret ; and the Reformers, confident in the neces- sities of the times, sent reports to London of their arguments and conversations. The authorities in the abbey were accused of disaffection ; and a commission of inquiry was sent down towards the end of the spring of 1536, to investigate. The depositions taken on this occa- sion are still preserved ; and with the help of them, we can leap over three centuries of time, and hear the last echoes of the old monastic life in Woburn Abbey dying away in discord. "Where party feeling was running so high, there were, of course, passionate arguments. The Act of Supremacy, the spread of Protestantism, the power of the pope, the state of England all were discussed ; and the possibil- ities of the future, as each party painted it in the colors of his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending to a joke. Brother Sherborne deposes that the sub-prior, " on Candlemas-day last past (February 2, 153G), asked him whether he longed not to be at Rome where all his bulls were ? " Brother Sherborne answered that " his bulls had made so many calves, that he had burned them. "Where- unto the sub-prior said he thought there were more calves now than there were then." Then there were long and furious quarrels about " my Lord Privy Seal " (Cromwell) who was to one party, the incarnation of Satan ; to the other, the delivering angel. The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 349 Nor did matters mend when from the minister passed to the master. Dan John Croxton being in " the shaving-house " one day with certain of the brethren having their tonsures looked to, and gossiping, as men do on such occasions, one " Friar Lawrence did say that the king was dead." Then said Croxton, " Thanks be to God, his Grace is in good health, and I pray God so continue him ; " and said fur- ther to the said Lawrence, " I advise thee to leave thy babbling." Croxton, it seems, had been among the sus- pected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him, " Croxton, it maketh no matter what thou sayest, for thou art one of the new world ; " whereupon hotter still the conversation pro- ceeded. " Thy babbling tongue," Croxton said, " will turn us all to displeasure at length." " Then," quoth Lawrence, " neither thou nor yet any of us all shall do well as long as we forsake our head of the Church, the pope." " By the mass ! " quoth Croxton, " I would thy Pope Roger were in thy belly, or thou in his, for thou art a false perjured knave to thy prince." Whereunto the said Lawrence answered, saying, " By the mass, thou liest ! I was never sworn to forsake the pope to be our head, and never will be." "Then," quoth Croxton, "thou shalt be sworn spite of thine heart one day, or I will know why nay." These and similar wranglings may be taken as speci- mens of the daily conversation at Woburn, and we can perceive how an abbot with the best intentions would have found it difficult to keep the peace. There are in- stances of superiors in other houses throwing down their command in the midst of the crisis in flat despair, pro- testing that their subject brethren were no longer govern- able. Abbots who were inclined to the Reformation could not manage the Catholics ; Catholic abbots could not man- age the Protestants ; indifferent abbots could not manage either the one or the other. It would have been well for the Abbot of Woburn or well as far as this world is con- 850 TJie Dissolution of the Monasteries. ccrned if he, like one of these, had acknowledged his incapacity, and had fled from his charge. His name was Kobert Hobbes. Of his age and family, history is silent. We know only that he held his place M'hen the storm rose against the pope ; that, like the rest of the clergy, he bent before the blast, taking the oath to the king, and submitting to the royal supremacy, but swearing under protest, as the phrase went, with the out- ward, and not with the inward man in fact, perjuring himself. Though infirm, so far, however, he was too hon- est to be a successful counterfeit, and from the jealous eyes of the Neologians of the abbey he could not conceal his tendencies. We have significant evidence of the espionage which was established over all suspected quarters, in the conversations and trifling details of conduct, on the part of the abbot, which were reported to the Government. In the summer of 1534, orders came that the pope's name should be rased out wherever it was mentioned in the Mass books. A malcontent, by name Robert Salford, deposed that " he was singing mass before the abbot at St. Thomas's altar within the monastery, at which time he rased out with his knife the said name out of the canon." The abbot told him to " take a pen and strike or cross him out." The saucy monk said those were not the orders. They were to rase him out. " Well, well," the abbot said, " it will come again one day." " Come again, will it ? " was the answer ; " if it do, then we will put him in again ; but I trust I shall never see that day." The mild abbot could remonstrate, but could not any more command ; and the proofs of his malignant inclinations were remem- bered against him for the ear of Cromwell. In the general injunctions, too, he was directed to preach against the pope, and to expose his usurpation; but he could not bring himself to obey. He shrank from the pulpit ; he preached but twice after the visitation, and then on other subjects, while in the prayer before the ser- The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 351 mon he refused, as we find, to use the prescribed form. He only said, " You shall pray for the spirituality, the tem- porality, and the souls that be in the pains of purgatory ; and did not name the king to be supreme head of the Church in neither of the said sermons, nor speak against the pretended authority of the Bishop of Rome." Again, when Paul the Third, shortly after his election, proposed to call a general council at Mantua, against which, by advice of Henry the Eighth, the Germans protested, we have a: glimpse how eagerly anxious English eyes were watching for a turning tide. " Hear you," said the abbot one day, " of the pope's holiness and the congregation of bishops, abbots, and princes gathered to the council at Mantua ? They be gathered for the reformation of the universal Church ; and here now we have a book of the excuse of the Germans, by which we may know what here- tics they be : for if they were Catholics and true men as they pretend to be, they would never have refused to come to a general council." So matters went with the abbot for some months after he had sworn obedience to the king. Lulling his conscience with such opiates as the casuists could provide for him, he watched anxiously for a change, and labored with but little reserve to hold his brethren to their old allegiance. In the summer of 1535, however, a change came over the scene, very different from the outward reaction for which he was looking, and a better mind woke in the ab- bot: he learnt that in swearing what he did not mean with reservations and nice distinctions, he had lied to Heaven and lied to man ; that to save his miserable life he had periled his soul. When the oath of supremacy was required of the nation, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse mistaken, as we be- lieve, in judgment, but true to their consciences, and dis- daining evasion or subterfuge chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die than to perjure themselves. This 352 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. is no place to enter on the great question of the justice or necessity of those executions ; but the story of the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world. The pope shook upon his throne ; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still ; diplomatists who had lived so long in lies that the whole life of man seemed but a stage pageant, a thing of show and tinsel, stood aghast at the revelation of English sincerity, and a shudder of great awe ran through Europe. The fury of party leaves little room for generous emotion, and no pity was felt for these men by the English Protest- ants. The Protestants knew well that if these same suf- ferers could have had their way, they would themselves have been sacrificed by hecatombs ; and as they had never experienced mercy, so they were in turn without mercy. But to the English Catholics, who believed as Fisher be- lieved, but who had not dared to suffer as Fisher suffered, his death and the death of the rest acted as a glimpse of the Judgment Day. Their safety became their shame and terror ; and in the radiant example before them of true faithfulness, they saw their own falsehood and their own disgrace. So it was with Father Forest, who had taught his penitents in confession that they might perjure them- selves, and who now sought a cruel death in voluntary ex- piation ; so it was with Whiting, the Abbot of Glaston- bury ; so with others whose names should be more familiar to us than they are ; and here in "Woburn we are to see the feeble but genuine penitence of Abbot Hobbes. He was still unequal to immediate martyrdom, but he did what he knew might drag his death upon him if disclosed to the Government, and surrounded by spies he could have had no hope of concealment. " At the time," deposed Robert Salford, " that the monks of the Charterhouse, with other traitors, did suffer death, the abbot did call us into the chapter-house, and said these words : ' Brethren, this is a perilous time ; such a scourge was never heard since Christ's passion. Ye hear how good The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 353 men suffer the death. Brethren, this is undoubted for our offenses. Ye read, so long as the children of Israel kept the commandments of God, so long their enemies had no power over them, but God took vengeance of their enemies. But when they broke God's commandments, then they were subdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry for our offenses. Undoubted He will take ven- geance of our enemies ; I mean those heretics that causeth so many good men to suffer thus. Alas, it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood should be shed. There- fore, good brethren, for the reverence of God, every one of you devoutly pray, and say this Psalm, " God, the hea- then are come into thine inheritance ; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the field. Their blood have they shed like water on every side of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them. We are become an open scorn unto our enemies, a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about us. Oh, remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, and that soon, for we are come to great misery. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God ? " Ye shall say this Psalm,' repeated the abbot, ' every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge.' And so," continues Salford, significantly, "the convent did say this aforesaid Psalm until there were cer- tain that did murmur at the saying of it, and so it was left." The abbot, it seems, either stood alone, or found but A languid support ; even his own familiar friends whom he trusted, those with whom he had walked in the house of God, had turned against him ; the harsh air of the dawn of a new world choked him ; what was there for him 23 354 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. but to die ? But his conscience still haunted him ; while he lived he must fight on, and so, if possible, find par- don for his perjury. The blows in those years fell upon the Church thick and fast. In February, 1536, the Bill passed for the dissolution of the smaller monasteries ; and now we find the sub-prior with the whole fraternity united in hostility, and the abbot without one friend re- maining. " He did again call us together," says the next deposi- tion, "and lamentably mourning for the dissolving the said houses, he enjoined us to sing ' Salvator mundi, salva nos omnes,' every day after lauds ; and we murmured at it, and were not content to sing it for such cause ; and so we did omit it clivers days, for which the abbot came unto the chapter, and did in manner rebuke us, and said we were bound to obey his commandment by our profession, and so did command us to sing it again, with the versicle ' Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate him flee before him.' Also he enjoined us at every mass that every priest did sing, to say the col- lect, ' O God, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart.' And he said if we did this with good and true de- votion, God would so handle the matter, that it should be to the comfort of all England, and so show us mercy as he showed unto the children of Israel. And surely, brethren, there will come to us a good man that will rectify these monasteries again that be now supprest, because ' God can of these stones raise up children to Abraham.' " " Of the stones," perhaps, but less easily of the stony- hearted monks, who, with pitiless smiles, watched the ab- bot's sorrow, which should soon bring him to his ruin. Time passed on, and as the world grew worse, so the abbot grew more lonely. Desolate and unsupported, he was still unable to make up his mind to the course which he knew to be right ; but he slowly strengthened himself for the trial, and as Lent came on, the season brought with The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 355 it a more special call to effort ; he did not fail to recognize it. The conduct of the fraternity sorely disturbed him. They preached against all which he most loved and valued, in language purposely coarse ; and the mild sweetness of the rebukes which he administered, showed plainly on which side lay, in the Abbey of Woburn, the larger portion of the spirit of Heaven. Now, when the passions of those times have died away, and we can look back with more indif- ferent eyes, how touching is the following scene. There was one Sir William, curate of Woburn Chapel, whose tongue, it seems, was rough beyond the rest. The abbot met him one day, and spoke to him. " Sir William," he said, " I hear tell ye be a great railer. I marvel that ye rail so. I pray you teach my cure the Scripture of God, and that may be to edification. I pray you leave such railing. Ye call the pope a bear and a bandog. Either he is a good man or an ill. Domino suo stat aut cadit. The office of a bishop is honorable. What edifying is this to rail ? Let him alone." But they would not let him alone, nor would they let the abbot alone. He grew " somewhat acrasecl," they said ; vexed with feelings of which they had no experience. He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent discipline weighing upon him. The brethren- went to see him in his room ; one Brother Dan Woburn came among the rest, and asked him how he did ; the abbot answered, " I would that I had died with the good men that died for holding with the pope. My conscience, my conscience doth grudge me every day for it." Life was fast losing its value for him. What was life to him or any man when bought with a sin against his soul ? " If the abbot be disposed to die, for that matter," Brother Croxton observed, " he may die as soon as he will." All Lent he fasted and prayed, and his illness grew upon him ; and at length in Passion Week he thought all was over, and that he was going away. On Passion Sunday he called the brethren about him. and as they stood round his 356 The Dissolution of the Monasteries. bed, with their cold, hard eyes, " he exhorted them all to charity ; " he implored them " never to consent to go out of their monastery ; and if it chanced them to be put from it, they should in no wise forsake their habit." After these words, " being in a great agony, he rose out of his bed, and cried out and said, ' I would to God, it would please Him to take me out of this wretched world ; and I would I had died with the good men that have suffered death hereto- fore, for they were quickly out of their pain.' " l Then, half wandering, he began to mutter to himself aloud the thoughts which had been working in him in his struggles ; and quoting St. Bernard's words about the pope, he ex- claimed, " Tu quis es primatu Abel, gubernatione Noah, auctoritate Moses, judicatu Samuel, potestate Petrus, unc- tione Christus. Alias ecclesiae habent super se pastores. Tu pastor pastorum es." Let it be remembered that this is no sentimental fiction begotten out of the brain of some ingenious novelist, but the record of the true words and sufFerings of a genuine child of Adam, laboring in a trial too hard for him. He prayed to die, and in good time death was to come to him ; but not, after all, in the sick-bed, with his expia- tion but half completed. A year before, he had thrown down the cross when it was offered him. He was to take it again the very cross which he had refused. He re- covered. He was brought before the council ; with what result, there are no means of knowing. To admit the papal supremacy when officially questioned was high trea- son. Whether the abbot was constant, and received some conditional pardon, or whether his heart again for the moment failed him whichever he did, the records are silent This only we ascertain of him : that he was not put to death under the statute of supremacy. But, two years later, when the official list was presented to the Par- liament of those who had suffered for their share in " the 1 Meaning, as he afterwards said, More and Fisher and the Carthusians. The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 357 Pilgrimage of Grace," among the rest we find the name of Robert Hobbes, late Abbot of "Woburn. To this soli- tary fact we can add nothing. The rebellion was put down, and in the punishment of the offenders there was unusual leniency ; not more than thirty persons were ex- ecuted, although forty thousand had been in arms. Those only were selected who had been most signally implicated. But they were all leaders in the movement ; the men of highest rank, and therefore greatest guilt. They died for what they believed their duty ; and the king and council did their duty in enforcing the laws against armed insur- gents. He for whose cause each supposed themselves to be contending has long since judged between them ; and both parties perhaps now see all things with clearer eyes than was permitted to them on earth. "We also can see more distinctly. We will not refuse the Abbot Hobbes a brief record of his trial and passion. And although twelve generations of Russells all loyal to the Protestant ascendancy have swept Woburn clear of Catholic associations, they, too, in these later days, will not regret to see revived the authentic story of its last abbot ENGLAND'S FORGOTTEN WORTHIES, 1. The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt., in his Voyage in the South Sea in 1593. Reprinted from the Edition of 1622, and Edited by R. H. Major, Esq., of the British Museum. Published by the Hakluyt Society. 2. The Discoverie of the Empire of Guiana, By Sir Walter Ralegh, Knt. Edited, -with copious Explanatory Notes, and a Biographical Memoir, by Sir Robert II. Schomburgk, Phil. D., &c. 3. Narratives of Early Voyages undertaken for the Discovery of a Passage to Calhaia and India by the Northwest ; with Selec- tions from the Records of the Worshipful Fellowship of the Mer- chants of London, trading into the East Indies, and from MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, now first published, by Thomas Rundall, Esq. THE Reformation, the Antipodes, the American conti- nent, the Planetary system, and the infinite deep of the Heavens, have now become common and familiar facts to us. Globes and orreries are the playthings of our school- days ; -we inhale the spirit of Protestantism with our ear- liest breath of consciousness. It is all but impossible to throw back our imagination into the time when, as new grand discoveries, they stirred every mind which they touched with awe and wonder at the revelation which God had sent down among mankind. Vast spiritual and ma- terial continents lay for the first time displayed, opening fields of thought and fields of enterprise of which none could conjecture the limit Old routine was broken up. 1 Westminster Review. 1853. England's Forgotten Worthies. 359 Men were thrown back on their own strength and their own power, unshackled, to accomplish whatever they might dare. And although we do not speak of these dis- coveries as the cause of that enormous force of heart and intellect which accompanied them (for they were as much the effect as the cause, and one reacted on the other), yet at any rate they afforded scope and room for the play of powers which, without such scope, let them have been as transcendent as they would, must have passed away unproductive and blighted. An earnest faith in the supernatural, an intensely real conviction of the divine and devilish forces by which the universe was guided and misguided, was the inheritance of the Elizabethan age from Catholic Christianity. The fiercest and most lawless men did then really and truly believe in the actual personal presence of God or the devil in every accident, or scene, or action. They brought to the contemplation of the new heaven and the new earth an imagination saturated with the spiritual convictions of the old era, which were not lost, but only infinitely ex- panded. The planets, whose vastness they now learnt to recognize, were, therefore, only the more powerful for evil or for good ; the tides were the breathing of Demogorgon ; and the idolatrous American tribes were real worshipers of the real devil, and were assisted with the full power of his evil army. It is a form of thought which, however in a vague and general way we may continue to use its phraseology, has become, in its detailed application to life, utterly strange to us. We congratulate ourselves on the enlargement of our understanding when we read the decisions of grave law courts in cases of supposed witchcraft ; we smile compla- cently over Raleigh's story of the island of the Amazons, and rejoice that we are not such as he entangled in the cobwebs of effete and foolish superstition. Yet the true con- clusion is less flattering to our vanity. That Ealeigh and 860 England's Fcrgotten Worthies. Bacon could believe what they believed, and could be what they were notwithstanding, is to us a proof that the injury which such mistakes can inflict is unspeakably insignifi- cant ; and arising, as they arose, from a never-failing sense of the real awfulness and mystery of the world, and of the life of human souls upon it, they witness to the presence in such minds of a spirit, the loss of which not the most perfect acquaintance with every law by which the whole cre- ation moves can compensate. We wonder at the grandeur, the moral majesty, of some of Shakespeare's characters, so far beyond what the noblest among ourselves can imitate, and at first thought we attribute it to the genius of the poet, who has outstripped Nature in his creations. But we are misunderstanding the power and the meaning of poetry in attributing creativeness to it in any such sense. Shakespeare created, but only as the spirit of Nature created around him, working in him as it worked abroad in those among whom he lived. The men whom he draws were such men as he saw and knew ; the words they utter were such as he heard in the ordinary conversations in which he joined. At the Mermaid with Raleigh and with Sidney, and at a thousand unnamed English firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlan- dos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we are satisfied that Shakespeare's great poetry is no more than the rhythmic echo of the life which it depicts. It was, therefore, with no little interest that we heard of the formation of a society which was to employ itself, as we understood, in republishing in accessible form some, if not all, of the invaluable records compiled or composed by Richard Hakluyt. Books, like every thing else, have their appointed death-day ; the souls of them, unless they be found worthy of a second birth in a new body, perish with the paper in which they lived ; and the early folio Hak- England's Forgotten Worthies. 361 luyts, not from their own want of merit,, but from our neg- lect of them, were expiring of old age. The five-volume quarto edition, published in 1811, so little people then cared for the exploits of their ancestors, consisted but of 270 copies. It was intended for no more than for curious antiquaries, or for the great libraries, where it could be consulted as a book of reference ; and among a people, the greater part of whom had never heard Hakluyt's name, the editors are scarcely to be blamed if it never so much as occurred to them that general readers would care to have the book within their reach. And yet those five volumes may be called the Prose Epic of the modern English nation. They contain the heroic tales of the exploits of the great men in whom the new era was inaugurated ; not mythic, like the Iliads and the Eddas, but plain broad narratives of substantial facts, which rival legend in interest and grandeur. What the old epics were to the royally or nobly born, this modern epic is to the common people. We have no longer kings or princes for chief actors, to whom the heroism, like the dominion of the world, had in time past been confined. But, as .it was in the days of the Apostles, when a few poor fishermen from an obscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the Divine mission, the spiritual i-iithority over man- kind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and the Dart, self-taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seas, fighting, discovering, colonizing, and graved out the channels, paving them at last with their bones, through which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out over all the world. We can con- ceive nothing, not the songs of Homer himself, which would be read among us with more enthusiastic interest than these plain massive tales ; and a people's edition of them in these days, when the writings of Ainsworth and 862 England's Forgotten Worthies. Eugene Sue circulate in tens of thousands, would per- haps be the most blessed antidote which could be bestowed upon us. The heroes themselves were the men of the people the Joneses, the Smiths, the Davises, the Drakes ; and no courtly pen, with the one exception of Raleigh, lent its polish or its varnish to set them off. In most cases the captain himself, or his clerk or servant, or some un- known gentleman volunteer, sat down and chronicled the voyage which he had shared ; and thus inorganically arose a collection of writings which, with all their simplicity, are for nothing more striking than for the high moral beauty, warmed with natural feeling, which displays itself through all their pages. With us, the sailor is scarcely himself be- yond his quarter-deck. If he is distinguished in his pro- fession, he is professional merely ; or if he is more than that, he owes it not to his work as a sailor, but to independ- ent domestic culture. With them their profession was the school of their nature, a high moral education which most brought out what was most nobly human in them ; and the wonders of earth, and air, and sea, and sky, were a real intelligible language in which they heard Almighty God speaking to them. That such hopes of what might be accomplished by the Hakluyt Society should in some measure be disappointed, is only what might naturally be anticipated of all very san- guine expectation. Cheap editions are expensive editions to the publisher ; and historical societies, from a necessity which appears to encumber all corporate English action, rarely fail to do their work expensively and infelicitously. Yet, after all allowances and deductions, we cannot recon- cile ourselves to the mortification of having found but one volume in the series to be even tolerably edited, and that one to be edited by a gentleman to whom England is but an adopted country Sir Robert Schomburgk. Raleigh's " Conquest of Guiana," with Sir Robert's sketch of Ra- leigh's history and character, form in every thing but its England's Forgotten Worthies. 363 cost a very model of an excellent volume. For the re- maining editors, 1 we are obliged to say that they have ex- erted themselves successfully to paralyze whatever interest was reviving in Hakluyt, and to consign their own volumes to the same obscurity to which time and accident were con- signing the earlier editions. Very little which was really noteworthy escaped the industry of Hakluyt himself, and we looked to find reprints of the most remarkable of the stories which were to be found in his collection. The ed- itors began unfortunately with proposing to continue the work where he had left it, and to produce narratives hitherto unpublished of other voyages of inferior interest, or not of English origin. Better thoughts appear to have occurred to them in the course of the work ; but their evil destiny overtook them before their thoughts could get themselves executed. We opened one volume with eagerness, bearing the title of " Voyages to the Northwest," in hope of find- ing our old friends Davis and Frobisher. "We found a vast unnecessary Editor's Preface ; and instead of the voyages themselves, which with their picturesqueness and moral beauty shine among the fairest jewels in the diamond mine of Hukluyt, we encountered an analysis and digest of their results, which Milton was called in to justify in an inappro- priate quotation. It is much as if they had undertaken to edit "Bacon's Essays," and had retailed what they con- ceived to be the substance of them in their own language ; strangely failing to see that the real value of the actions or the thoughts of remarkable men does not lie in the ma- terial result which can be gathered from them, but in the heart and soul of the actors or speakers themselves. Con- sider what Homer's " Odyssey " would be, reduced into an analysis. The editor of the " Letters of Columbus " apologizes for the rudeness of the old seaman's phraseology. Columbus, he tells us, was not so great a master of the pen as of the 1 This essay \vas written 15 years ago. 364 England's Forgotten Wortftie*. art of navigation. We are to make excuses for him. We are put on our guard, and warned not to be offended, be- fore we are introduced to the sublime record of sufferings under which a man of the highest order was staggering to- wards the end of his earthly calamities ; although the in- articulate fragments in which his thought breaks out from him, are strokes of natural art by the side of which literary pathos is poor and meaningless. And even in the subjects which they select they are pur- sued by the same curious fatality. Why is Drake to be best known, or to be only known, in his last voyage ? Why pass over the success, and endeavor to immortalize the fail- ure ? When Drake climbed the tree in Panama, and saw both oceans, and vowed that he would sail a ship in the Pacific; when he crawled out upon the cliffs of Terra del Fuego, and leaned his head over the southernmost angle of the world ; when he scored a furrow round the globe with his keel, and received the homage of the barbarians of the antipodes in the name of the Virgin Queen, he was another man from what he had become after twenty years of court- life and intrigue, and Spanish fighting and gold-hunting. There is a tragic solemnity in his end, if we take it as the last act of his career ; but it is his life, not his death, which we desire not what he failed to do, but what he did. But every bad has a worse below it, and more offensive than all these is the editor of Hawkins's " Voyage to the South Sea." The narrative is striking in itself; not one of the best, but very good ; and, as it is republished com- plete, we can fortunately read it through, carefully shutting off Captain Bethune's notes with one hand, and we shall then find in it the same beauty which breathes in the tone of all the writings of the period. It is a record of misfortune, but of misfortune which did no dishonor to him who sunk under it ; and there is a melancholy dignity in the style in which Hawkins tells his England's Forgotten Worthies. 365 story, which seems to say, that though he had been de- feated, and had never again an opportunity of winning back his lost laurels, he respects himself still for the heart with which he endured a shame which would have broken a smaller man. It would have required no large exertion of editorial self-denial to have abstained from marring the O pages with puns of which " Punch " would be ashamed, and with the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea-captain of the nineteenth century condescends to criticize and approve of his half-barbarous precursor. And what excuse can we find for such an offense as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. The Spaniards themselves were not behindhand in ac- knowledging the chivalry before which they quailed, and, after many years of ineffectual efforts, they gave up a con- flict which they never afterwards resumed ; leaving the Araucans alone, of all the American races with which they came in contact, a liberty which they were unable to tear from them. It is a subject for an epic poem ; and what- ever admiration is due to the heroism of a brave people whom no inequality of strength could appall and no defeats could crush, these poor Indians have a right to demand of us. The story of the war was well known in Europe ; Hawkins, in coasting the western shores of South America, fell in with them, and the finest passage in his book is the relation of one of the incidents of the war : An Indian captain was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and for that he was of name, and known to have done his devoir against them, they cut off his hands, thereby intending to disena- ble him to fight any more against them. But he, returning home, desirous to revenge this injury, to maintain his liberty, with the reputation of his nation, and to help to banish the Spaniard, with his tongue entreated and incited them to persevere in their accus- tomed valor and reputation, abasing the enemy and advancing his nation ; condemning their contraries of cowardliness, and con- 366 England's Forgotten Worthies. firming it by the cruelty used with him and other his companions in their mishaps ; showing them his arms without hands, and nam- ing his brethren whose half feet they had cut off, because they might be unable to sit on horseback ; with force arguing that if they feared them not, they would not have used so great inhu- manity for fear produceth cruelty, the companion of cowardice. Thus encouraged he them to fight for their lives, limbs, and lib- erty, choosing rather to die an honorable death fighting, than to live in servitude as fruitless members of the commonwealth. Thus using the office of a sergeant-major, and having loaden his two stumps witk bundles of arrows, he succored them who, in the succeeding battle had their store wasted ; and changing himself from place to place, animated and encouraged his countrymen with such comfortable persuasions, as it is reported and credibly believed, that he did more good with his words and presence, without striking a stroke, than a great part of the army did with fighting to the utmost. It is an action which may take its place by the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet ^Eschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leav- ing his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making his notes, merely, as he tells us, from the sugges- tions of his own mind as he revised the proof-sheets, in- forms us, at the bottom of the page, that " it reminds him of the familiar lines, " For "Widdrington I needs must wail, As one in doleful dumps ; For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon his stumps." It must not avail him, that he has but quoted from the bal- lad of " Chevy-Chase." It is the most deformed stanza 1 1 Here is the old stanza. Let whoever is disposed to think 115 too hard on Captain Bethune compare them : " For Wetharrington my harte was TTO, That even he slaync sholdc be; England's Forgotten Worthies. 367 of the modern deformed version which was composed in the eclipse of heart and taste, on the restoration of the Stuarts ; and if such verses could' then pass for serious poetry, they have ceased to sound in any ear as other than a burlesque ; the associations which they arouse are only absurd, and they could only have continued to ring in Injs memory through their ludicrous doggerel. When to these offenses of the Society we add, that in the long labored appendices and introductions, which fill up valuable space, which increase the expense of the edition, and into reading which many readers are, no doubt, be- trayed, we have found nothing which assists the understand- ing of the stories which they are supposed to illustrate when we have declared that we have found what is most uncommon passed without notice, and what is most trite and familiar encumbered with comment we have un- packed our hearts of the bitterness which these volumes have aroused in us, and can now .take our leave of them and go on with our more grateful subject. Elizabeth, whose despotism was as peremptory as that of the Plantagenets, and whose ideas of the English con- stitution were limited in the highest degree, was, notwith- standing, more beloved by her subjects than any sovereign before or since. It was because, substantially, she was the people's sovereign ; because it was given to her to conduct the outgrowth of the national life through its crisis of change, and the weight of her great mind and her great place were thrown on the people's side. She was able to paralyze the dying efforts with which, if a Stuart had been on the throne, the representatives of an effete system might have made the struggle a deadly one ; and the history of England is not the history of France, because the resolu- For when both his leggis were hewen in to, He knyled and fought on his knee." Even Percy, who, on the whole, thinks well of the modern ballad, gives up this stanza as hopeless. 868 England's Forgotten Worthies. tion of one person held the Reformation firm till it had rooted itself in the heart of the nation, and could not be again overthrown. The Catholic faith was no longer able to furnish standing ground on which the English or any other nation could live a manly and a godly life. Feu- dalism, as a social organization, was not any more a sys- tem under which their energies could have scope to move. Thenceforward, not the Catholic Church, but any man to whom God had given a heart tafeel and a voice to speak, was to be the teacher to whom men were to listen ; and great actions were not to remain the privilege of the fami- lies of the Norman nobles, but were to be laid within the reach of the poorest plebeian who had the stuff in him to perform them. Alone, of all the sovereigns in Europe, Elizabeth saw the change which had passed over the world. She saw it, and saw it in faith, and accepted it. The Eng- land of the Catholic Hierarchy and the Norman Baron, was to cast its shell and to become the England of free thought and commerce and manufacture, which was to plough the ocean with its navies, and sow its colonies over the globe ; and the first appearance of these enormous forces and the light of the earliest achievements of the new era shines through the forty years of the reign- of Elizabeth with a grandeur which, when once its history is written, will be seen to be among the most sublime phe- nomena which the earth as yet has witnessed. The work was not of her creation ; the heart of the whole English nation was stirred to its depths ; and Elizabeth's place was to recognize, to love, to foster, and to guide. The Govern- ment originated nothing ; at such a time it was neither necessary nor desirable that it should do so ; but wherever expensive enterprises were on foot which promised ultimate good, and doubtful immediate profit, we never fail to find among the lists of contributors the Queen's Majesty, Burghley, Leicester, Walsingham. Never chary of her presence, for Elizabeth could afford to condescend, when England's Forgotten Worthies. 369 Wps in the river were fitting for distant voyages, the Queen would go down in her barge and inspect. Fro- bisher, who was but a poor sailor adventurer, sees her wave her handkerchief to him from the Greenwich Palace windows, and he brings her home a narwhal's horn for a present. She honored her people, and her people loved her ; and the result was that, with no cost to the Govern- ment, she saw them scattering the fleets of the Spaniards, planting America with colonies, and exploring the most distant seas. Either for honor or for expectation of profit, or from that unconscious necessity by which a great people, like a great man, will do what is right, and must do it at the right time, whoever had the means to furnish a ship, and whoever had the talent to command one, laid their abilities together and went out to pioneer, and to conquer, and take possession, in the name of the Queen of the Sea. There was no nation so remote but what some one or other was found ready to undertake an expedition there, in the hope of opening a trade ; and, let them go where they would, they were sure of Elizabeth's countenance. We find letters written by her, for the benefit of nameless ad- venturers, to every potentate of whom she had ever heard to the Emperors of China, Japan, and India, the Grand Duke of Russia, the Grand Turk, the Persian "Sofee," and other unheard-of Asiatic and African princes ; what- ever was to be done in England, or by Englishmen, Eliza- beth assisted when she could, and admired when she could not. The springs of great actions are always difficult to analyze impossible to analyze perfectly possible to analyze only very proximately ; and the force by which a man throws a good action out of himself is invisible and mystical, like that which brings out the blossom and the fruit upon the tree. The motives which we find men urg- ing for their enterprises seem often insufficient to have prompted them to so large a daring. They did what they did from the great unrest in them which made them do it, 24 8TO England's Forgotten Worthies. and what it was may be best measured by the results in the present England and America. Nevertheless, there was enough in the state of the world, and in the position of England, to have furnished abun- dance of conscious motive, and to have stirred the drowsiest minister of routine. Among material occasions for exertion, the population began to outgrow the employment, and there was a neces- sity for plantations to serve as an outlet. Men who, under happier circumstances, might have led decent lives, and done good service, were now driven by want to desperate courses " witness," as Richard Hakluyt says, " twenty tall fellows hanged last Rochester assizes for small rob- beries ; " and there is an admirable paper addressed to the Privy Council by Christopher Carlile, Walsingham's son- in-law, pointing out the possible openings to be made in or through sueh plantations for home produce and manu- facture. Far below all such prudential economics and mercantile ambitions, however, lay a chivalrous enthusiasm which in these dull days we can hardly, without an effort, realize. The life-and-death wrestle between the Reformation and the old religion had settled in the last quarter of the six- teenth century into a permanent struggle between England and Spain. France was disabled. All the help which Elizabeth could spare barely enabled the Netherlands to defend themselves. Protestantism, if it conquered, must conquer on another field ; and by the circumstances of the time the championship of the Reformed faith fell to the English sailors. The sword of Spain was forged in the gold-mines of Peru; the legions of Alva were only to be disarmed by intercepting the gold ships on their passage ; and, inspired by an enthusiasm like that which four cen- turies before had precipitated the chivalry of Europe upon the East, the same spirit which in its present degeneracy covers our bays and rivers with pleasure yachts, then fitted England's Forgotten Worthies. 371 out armed privateers, to sweep the Atlantic and plunder and destroy Spanish ships wherever they could meet them. Thus from a combination of causes, the whole force and energy of the age was directed towards the sea. The wide excitement, and the greatness of the interests at stake, raised even common men above themselves ; and people who in ordinary times would have been no more than mere seamen, or mere money-making merchants, appear before us with a largeness and greatness of heart and mind in which their duties to God and their country are alike clearly and broadly seen and felt to be para- mount to every other. Ordinary English traders we find fighting Spanish war ships in behalf of the Protestant faith. The cruisers of the Spanish Main were full of generous eagerness for the con- version of the savage nations to Christianity. And what is even more surprising, sites for colonization were examined and scrutinized by such men in a lofty statesmanlike spirit, and a ready insight was displayed by them into the indi- rect effects of a wisely extended commerce on every high- est human interest. Again, in the conflict with the Spaniards, there was a further feeling, a feeling of genuine chivalry, which was spurring on the English, and one which must be well un- derstood and well remembered, if men like Drake, and Hawkins, and Raleigh are to be tolerably understood. One of the English Reviews, a short time ago, was much amused with a story of Drake having excommunicated a petty officer as a punishment for some moral offense ; the reviewer not being able to see in Drake, as a man, any thing more than a highly brave and successful buccaneer, whose pretenses to religion might rank with the devotion of an Italian bandit to the Madonna. And so Hawkins, and even Raleigh, are regarded by superficial persons, who see only such outward circumstances of their history as correspond with their own impressions. The high nature 872 England's Forgotten Worthies. of these men, and the high objects which they pursued, will only rise out and become visible to us as we can throw ourselves back into their times and teach our hearts to feel as they felt. We do not find in the language of the voy- agers themselves, or of those who lent them their help at home, any of that weak watery talk of " protection of ab- origines," which, as soon as it is translated into fact, be- comes the most active policy for their destruction, soul and body. But the stories of the dealings of the Spaniards with the conquered Indians, which were widely known in England, seem to have affected all classes of people, not with pious passive horror, but with a genuine human indig- nation. A thousand anecdotes in detail we find scattered up and down the pages of Hakluyt, who, with a view to make them known, translated Peter Martyr's letters ; and each commonest sailor-boy who had heard these stories from his childhood among the tales of his father's fireside, had longed to be a man, that he might go out and become the avenger of a gallant and suffering people. A high mission, undertaken with a generous heart, seldom fails to make those worthy of it to whom it is given ; and it was a point of honor, if of nothing more, among the English sail- ors, to do no discredit by their conduct to the greatness of their cause. The high courtesy, the chivalry of the Span- ish nobles, so conspicuous in their dealings with their European rivals, either failed to touch them in their deal- ings with uncultivated idolaters, or the high temper of the aristocracy was unable to restrain or to influence the masses of the soldiers. It would be as ungenerous as it would be untrue, to charge upon their religion the griev- ous actions of men who called themselves the armed mis- sionaries of Catholicism, when the Catholic priests and bishops were the loudest in the indignation with which they denounced them. But we are obliged to charge upon it that slow and subtle influence so inevitably exercised by any religion which is divorced from life, and converted England's Forgotten Worthies. 378 into a thing of form, or creed, or ceremony, or sjstem which could permit the same men to be extravagant in a sincere devotion to the Queen of Heaven, whose entire lower nature, unsubdued and unaffected, was given up to thirst of gold, and plunder, and sensuality. If religion does not make men more humane than they would be without it, it makes them fatally less so ; and it is to be feared that the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, which had oscillated to the other extreme, and had again crystallized into a formal Antinomian fanaticism, reproduced the same fatal results as those in which the Spaniards had set them their unworthy precedent. But the Elizabethan naviga- tors, full for the most part with large kindness, wisdom, gentleness, and beauty, bear names untainted, as far as we know, with a single crime against the savages of America ; and the name of England was as famous in the Indian seas as that of Spain was infamous. On the banks of the Ori- noko there was remembered for a hundred years the noble captain who had come there from the great queen beyond the seas ; and Raleigh speaks the language of the heart of his country, when he urges the English statesmen to colonize Guiana, and exults in the glorious hope of driv- ing the white marauder into the Pacific, and restoring the Incas to the throne of Peru. Who will not be persuaded (he says) that now at length the great Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lam- entations, hath seen the tears and blood of so many millions of innocent men, women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hot oil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, fam- ished, devoured by mastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties con- jumed, and purposeth to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and to take the yoke of servitude from that distressed people, as free by nature as any Christian ? Poor Raleigh ! if peace and comfort in this world were 374 England's Forgotten Worthies. of much importance to him, it was in an ill day that he provoked the revenge of Spain. The strength of England was needed at the moment at its own door ; the Armada came, and there was no means of executing such an enter- prise. And afterwards the throne of Elizabeth was filled by a Stuart, and Guiana was to be no scene of glory for Raleigh ; rather, as later historians are pleased to think, it was the grave of his reputation. But the hope burned clear in him through all the weary years of unjust imprisonment ; and when he was a gray- headed old man, the base son of a bad mother used it to betray him. The success of his last enterprise was made the condition under which he was to be pardoned for a crime which he had not committed ; and its success de- pended, as he knew, on its being kept secret from the Spaniards. James required of Raleigh on his allegiance a detail of what he proposed, giving him at the same time his word as a king that the secret should be safe with him. The next day it was sweeping out of the port of London in the swiftest of the Spanish ships, with private orders to the Governor of St. Thomas to provoke a collision, when Raleigh should arrive there, which should afterward cost him his heart's blood. We modern readers may run rapidly over the series of epithets under which Raleigh has catalogued the Indian sufferings, hoping that they are exaggerated, seeing that they are horrible, and closing our eyes against them with swiftest haste ; but it was not so when every epithet sug- gested a hundred familiar facts ; and some of these (not resting on English prejudice, but on sad Spanish evidence, which is too full of shame and sorrow to be suspected) shall be given in this place, however old a story it may be thought ; because, as we said above, it is impossible to un- derstand the actions of these men, unless we are familiar with the feelings of which their hearts were full. The massacres tinder Cortez and Pizarro, terrible as England's Forgotten Worthies. 876 they were, were not the occasion which stirred the deepest indignation. They had the excuse of what might be called, for want of a better word, necessity, and of the des- perate position of small bands of men in the midst of ene- mies who might be counted by millions. And in De Soto, when he burnt his guides in Florida (it was his practice, when there was danger of treachery, that those who were left alive might take warning) ; or in Vasco Nunnez, praying to the Virgin on the mountains of Darien, and going down from off them into the valleys to hunt the Indian caciques, and fling them alive to his bloodhounds ; there was, at least, with all this fierceness and cruelty, a desperate courage which we cannot refuse to admire, and which mingles with and corrects our horror. It is the O refinement- of the Spaniard's cruelty in the settled and con- quered provinces, excused by no danger and provoked by no resistance, the details of which witness to the infernal coolness with which it was perpetrated ; and the great bearing of the Indians themselves under an oppression which they despaired of resisting, raises the whole history to the rank of a world-wide tragedy, in which the nobler but weaker nature was crushed under a malignant force which was stronger and yet meaner than itself. Gold hunting and lust were the two passions for which the Spaniards cared ; and the fate of the Indian women was only more dreadful than that of the men, who were ganged and chained to a labor in the mines which was only to cease with their lives, in a land where but a little before they had lived a free contented people, more innocent of crime than perhaps any people upon earth. If we can conceive what our own feelings would be if, in the " de- velopment of the mammalia," some baser but more power- ful race than man were to appear upon this planet, and we and our wives and children at our own happy firesides Avere degraded from our freedom, and became to them what the lower animals are to us, we can perhaps realize the feelings of the enslaved nations of Hispaniola. 876 England* Forgotten Worthies* As a harsh justification of slavery, it is sometimes urged that men who do not deserve to be slaves will prefer death to the endurance of it ; and that if they prize their liberty, it is always in their power to assert it in the old Roman fashion, Tried even by so hard a rule, the Indians vindi- cated their right ; and, before the close of the sixteenth century, the entire group of the Western Islands in the hands of the Spaniards, containing, when Columbus dis- covered them, many millions of inhabitants, were left liter- ally desolate from suicide. Of the anecdotes of this terri- ble self-immolation, as they were then known in England, here are a few out of many. The first is simple, and a specimen of the ordinary method. A Yucatan cacique, who was forced with his old subjects to labor in the mines, at last " calling those miners into an house, to the number of ninety-five, he thus de- bateth with them " : "My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to live any longer under so cruel a servitude ? Let us now go unto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall there have rest from these intolerable cares and grievances which we endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go ye before ; I will presently fol- low you." Having so spoken, he held out whole handfuls of those leaves which take away life, prepared for the purpose, and giving every one part thereof, being kindled to suck up the fume ; who obeyed his command, the king and his chief kinsmen reserving the last place for themselves. We speak of the crime of suicide, but few persons will see a crime in this sad and stately leave-taking of a life which it was no longer possible to bear with unbroken hearts. We do not envy the Indian, who, with Spaniards before him as an evidence of the fruits which their creed brought forth, deliberately exchanged for it the old religion of his country, which could sustain him in an action of such melancholy grandeur. But the Indians did not al- ways reply to their oppressors with escaping passively be- England's Forgotten Worthies. 377 yond their hands. Here is a story with matter in it for as rich a tragedy as OEdipus or Agamemnon, and in its stern and tremendous features, more nearly resembling them than any which were conceived even by Shakespeare. An officer named Orlando had taken the daughter of a Cuban cacique to be his mistress. She was with child by him, but, suspecting her of being engaged in some other intrigue, he had her fastened to two wooden spits, not in- tending to kill her, but to terrify her ; and setting her be- fore the fire, he ordered that she should be turned by the servants of the kitchen. The maiden, stricken with fear through the cruelty thereof, and strange kind of torment, presently gave up the ghost. The ca- cique her father, understanding the matter, took thirty of his men and went to the house of the captain, who was then absent, and slew his wife, whom he had married after that wicked act commit- ted, and the women who were companions of the wife, and her servants every one. Then shutting the door of the house, and putting fire under it, he burnt himself and all his companions that assisted him, together with the captain's dead family and goods. This is no fiction or poet's romance. It is a tale of wrath and revenge, which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, and remains among the eternal rec- ords of the doings of mankind upon it. As some relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a story which has a touch in it of diabolical humor. The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thus un- prosperously out of their grasp, set themselves to find a remedy for so desperate a disease, and were swift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental or bodily, through which to retain them in life. One of these proprietors being informed that a number of his people intended to kill themselves on a certain day, at a particular spot, and- knowing by experience that they were too likely to do it, presented himself there at the time which had been fixed upon, and telling the Indians when they arrived that ho 378 England's Forgotten Worthies. knew their intention, and that it was vain for them to at- tempt to keep any thing a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come there to kill himself with them ; that as he. had used them ill in this world, he might use them worse in the next ; " with which he did dissuade them presently from their purpose." With what efficacy such believers in the immortality of the soul were likely to recommend either their faith or their God ; rather, how terribly all the devotion and all the earnestness with which the poor priests who followed in the wake of the conquer- ors labored to recommend it were shamed and paralyzed, they themselves too bitterly lament. It was idle to send out governor after governor with or- ders to stay such practices. They had but to arrive on the scene to become infected with the same fever ; or if any remnant of Castilian honor, or any faintest echoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few of the best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands in ineffectual mourning ; they could do nothing without soldiers, and the soldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a desert : the gold was in the mines, and there were no slaves left remaining to extract it. One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteous pa- thos exceeds any story we have ever heard. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, Nature finds an antidote for their poison, and they and their ill consequences alike are blotted out and perish. If we do not forgive the vil- lain, at least we cease to hate him, as it grows more clear to us thaf he injures none so deeply as himself. But the 6r)piw8r]ne would explain the love which Elizabeth bore him : Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any laud- able and honest enterprise, for if through pleasure or idleness we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth forever. Give me leave, therefore, without offense, always to live and die in this mind : that he is not worthy to live at all that for fear or danger of death, shunneth his country's service and his own honor, seeing that death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal, wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timers sperno. Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shattered his fortune, and failed, as they naturally might, since inefficient help or mutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable conditions under which more or less great men must be content to see their great thoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did not dishearten him, and in June, 1583, a last fleet of five ships sailed from the port of Dartmouth, with commission from the queen to discover and take possession from latitude 45 to 50 North a voyage not a little noteworthy, there be- ing planted in the course of it the first English colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth had a foreboding that she O would never see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favor, and she desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before he went. The history of the voyage was written by a Mr. Edward Hayes, of Dartmouth, one of the principal actors in it, and as a composition it is more remarkable for fine writing than any very commendable thought in the author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through the infirmity of his chronicler ; and in the end, indeed, Mr. Hayes himself is jsiibdued into a better mind. He had lost money by the voyage, and we will hope his higher nature was only un- der a temporary eclipse. The fleet consisted (it is well to observe the ships and the size of them) of the Delight, 390 England's Forgotten Worthies. 120 tons; the bark Raleigh, 200 tons (this ship deserted off the Land's End) ; the Golden Hinde and the Swallow, 40 tons each; and the Squirrel, which was called the frigate, ]0 tons. For the uninitiated in such matters, we may add, that if in a vessel the size of the last, a member of the Yacht Club would consider that he had earned a club-room immortality if he had ventured a run in the depth of summer from Cowes to the Channel Islands. We were in all (says Mr. Hayes) 260 men, among whom we had of every faculty good choice. Besides, for solace of our own people, and allurement of the savages, we were provided of music in good variety, not omitting the least toys, as morris-dancers, hobby-horses, and May-like conceits to delight the savage people. The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident. St. John's was taken possession of, and a colony left there ; and Sir Humfrey then set out exploring along the American coast to the south, he himself doing all the work in his lit- tle 10-ton cutter, the service being too dangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One of these had remained at St. John's. He was now accompanied only by the De- light and the Golden Hinde, and these two keeping as near the shore as they dared, he spent what remained of the summer examining every creek and bay, marking the soundings, taking the bearings of the possible harbors, and risking his life, as every hour he was obliged to risk it in such a service, in thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the conquest of the New World. How dangerous it was we shall presently see. It was towards the end of August. The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without token of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night, like the swan that singeth before her death, they in the Delight contin- ued in sounding of drums and trumpets and fifes, also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity left with th battell and rinmns of doleful knells. England's Forgotten Worthies. 391 Two days after came the storm ; the Delight struck upon a bank, and went down in sight of the other vessels, which were unable to render her any help. Sir Humfrey's papers, among other things, were all lost in her ; at the time considered by him an irreparable misfortune. But it was little matter : he was never to need them. The Golden Hincle and the Squirrel were now left alone of the five ships. The provisions were running short, and the summer season was closing. Both crews were on short allowance ; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey was pre- vailed upon to be satisfied for the present with what he had done, and to lay off for England.- So upon Saturday, in the afternoon, the 31st of August, we changed our course, and returned back for England, at which very instant, even in winding about, there passed along between us and the land, which we now forsook, a very lion, to our seem- ing, in shape, hair, and color ; not swimming after the manner of a beast by moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the water with his whole body, except his legs, in sight, neither yet diving under and again rising as the manner is of whales, porpoises, and other fish, but confidently showing himself without hiding, not- withstanding that we presented ourselves in open view and gest- ure to amaze him. Thus he passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teeth and glaring eyes; and to bidde us farewell, coming right against the Hinde, he sent forth a horrible voice, roaring and bellowing as doth a lion, which spectacle we all beheld so far as we were able to discern the same, as men prone to wonder at every strange thing. What opinion others had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver. But he took it for Bonum Omen, rejoicing that he was to war against such an enemy, if it were the devil. We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil ; men in those days believing really that evil was more than a principle or a necessary accident, and that in all their labor for God and for right, they must make their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person. But 392 England's Forgotten Worthier if we are to call it superstition, and if this wore no devil in the form of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea- lion, it is a more innocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, and it requires a bolder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror, than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget to bat- tle with it in speculating on its origin and nature. But to follow the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now over, and who was passing to his reward. The 2d of September the General came on board the Golden Hinde " to make merry with us." He greatly de- plored the loss of his books and papers, but he was full of confidence from what he had seen, and talked with eagerness and warmth of the new expedition for the fol- lowing spring. Apocryphal gold-mines still occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, they were persuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he had secretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him. They could make nothing, however, of his odd, ironical answers, and their sorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment that such a secret should have perished. Sir Humfrey doubt- less saw America with other eyes than theirs, and gold- mines richer than California in its huge rivers and sa- vannas. Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold), (contin- ues Mr. Hayes), to God, -who only knoweth the truth thereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God's ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion of his friends could noth- ing avail to divert him from his willful resolution of going in his frigate ; and when he was entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers in the Hinde, not to venture, this was his answer "I will not forsake my little company going homewardsi with whom I have passed so ma-'iy storms and perils." Two thirds of the wav home thev met foul weather and England's Forgotten Worthies. 893 terrible seas, " breaking short and pyramidwise." Men who had all their lives " occupied the sea " had never seen . it more outrageous. " We had also upon our mainyard an apparition of a little fier by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux." Monday, the ninth of September, in the afternoon, the frigato was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that time recov- ered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto us in the Hinde so often as we did approach within hearing, " We are as near to heaven by sea as by land." reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify that he was. The same Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate being ahead of us in the Golden Hinde, suddenly her lights were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight ; and withal our watch cried, " The General was cast away," w-hich was too true. Thus faithfully (concludes Mr. Hayes, in some degree rising above himself) I have related this story, wherein some spark of the knight's virtues, though he be extinguished, may happily ap- pear; he remaining resolute to a purpose honest and godly as was this, to discover, possess, and reduce unto the service of God and Christian piety, those remote and heathen countries of America. Such is the infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good, that fruit may grow in time of our travelling in these North- western lands (as has it not grown ?), and the crosses, turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of the voy- age, did correct the intemperate humors which before we noted to be in this gentleman, and made unsavory and less delightful hia other manifold virtues. Thus as he was refined and made nearer unto the image of God, so it pleased the Divine will to resume him unto Himself, whither both his and every other high and noble mind have al- ways aspired. Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert ; still in the prime of his years when the Atlantic swallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape lit suddenly for a moment by the lightning, these few scenes flash down to us across the centuries ; 894 England's Forgotten Worthies. but what a life must that have been of which this was the conclusion ! "We have glimpses of him a few years earlier, when he won his spurs in Ireland won them by deeds which to us seem terrible in their ruthlessness, but which won the applause of Sir Henry Sidney as too high for praise or even reward. Checkered like all of us with lines of light and darkness, he was nevertheless one of a race which has ceased to be. We look round for them, and we can hardly believe that the same blood is flowing in our veins. Brave we may still be, and strong perhaps as they, but the high moral grace which made bravery and strength so beautiful is departed from us forever. Our space is sadly limited for historical portrait paint- ing ; but we must find room for another of that Greena- way party whose nature was as fine as that of Gilbert, and who intellectually was more largely gifted. The latter was drowned in 1583. In 1585 John Davis left Dartmouth on his first voyage into the Polar seas ; and twice subse- quently he went again, venturing in small, ill-equipped ves- sels of thirty or forty tons into the most dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their success as for the daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis's epitaph is written on the map of the world, where his name still remains to commemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by a peculiar and exquisite sweetiiess of nature, which, from many little facts of his life, seems to have affected every one with whom he came in contact in a remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of Master Davis, leaving their firesides 'to sail with him, without other hope or motion ; we find silver bullets cast to shoot him in a -mutiny; the hard rude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage which was not like that of a common man. He has writ- ten the account of one of his northern voyages himself} one of those, by the by, which the Hakluyt Society have mutilated ; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a England's Forgotten Worthies. 395 rich delicacy of expression, which is called out in him by the first sight of strange lands and things and people. To show what he was, we should have preferred, if pos- sible, to have taken the story of his expedition into the South Seas, in which, under circumstances of singular dif- ficulty, he was deserted by Candish, under whom he had sailed ; and after inconceivable trials from famine, mutiny, and storm, ultimately saved himself and his ship, and such of the crew as had chosen to submit to his orders. But it is a long history, and will not admit of being curtailed. As an instance of the stuff of which it was composed, he ran back in the black night in a gale of wind through the Straits of Magellan, by a chart which he had made with the eye in passing np. His anchors were lost or broken ; the cables were parted. He could not bring up the ship ; there was nothing for it but to run, and he carried her safe through along a channel often not three miles broad, sixty miles from end to end, and twisting like the reaches of a river. For the present, however, we are forced to content our- selves with a few sketches out of the northwest voyages. Here is one, for instance, which shows how an English- man could deal with the Indians. Davis had landed at Gilbert's Sound, and gone up the country exploring. On his return he found his crew loud in complaints of the thievish propensities of the natives, and urgent to have an example made of some of them. On the next occasion he fired a gun at them with blank cartridge ; but their nature was still too strong for them. Seeing iron (he says), they could in no case forbear stealing ; which, when I perceived, it did but minister to me occasion of laughter to see their simplicity, and I willed that they should not be hardly used, but that our company should be more diligent to keep their things, supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to make them know their evils. In his own way, however, he took an opportunity of ad- 896 England's Forgotten Worthies. ministering a lesson to them of a more wholesome kind than could be given with gunpowder and bullets. Like the rest of his countrymen, he believed the savage Indians in their idolatries to be worshipers of the devil. " They are witches," he says ; " they have images in great store, and use many kinds of enchantments." And these en- chantments they tried on one occasion to put in force against himself and his crew. Being on shore on the 4th day of July, one of them made a long oration, and then kindled a fire, into which, with many strange words and gestures, he put divers things, which we sup- posed to be a sacrifice. Myself and certain of my company standing by, they desired us to go into the smoke. I desired them to go into the smoke, which they would by no means do. I then took one of them and thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of my company to tread out the fire, and spurn it into the sea, which was done to show them that we did contemn their sorceries. It is a very English story exactly what a modern Englishman would do ; only, perhaps, not believing that there was any real devil in the case, which makes a differ- ence. However, real or not real, after seeing him patiently put up with such an injury, we will hope the poor Green- lander had less respect for the devil than formerly. Leaving Gilbert's Sound, Davis went on to the north- west, and in lat. 63 fell in with a barrier of ice, which he coasted for thirteen days without finding an opening. The very sight of an iceberg was new to all his crew ; and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer, becom- ing compassed with ice, The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion, they entreated me to regard the safety of mine own life, as well as the preservation of theirs ; and that I should not, through over-boldness, leave their widows and fatherless children to give me bitter curses. Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His Divine Maj- esty to move my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to His glory, and to the contentation of every Christian mind. England's Forgotten Worthies. 397 He hatt two vessels one of some burden, the other a pinnace of thirty tons. The result of the counsel which he had sought was, that he made over his own large vessel to such as wished to return, and himself, " thinking it bet- ter to die with honor than to return with infamy," went on with such volunteers as would follow him, in a poor leaky cutter, up the sea now in commemoration of that adven- ture called Davis's Straits. He ascended 4 north of the furthest known point, among storms and icebergs, when the long days and twilight nights alone saved him from being destroyed, and, coasting back along the American shore, he discovered Hudson's Straits, supposed then to be the long-desired entrance into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of Walsingham, and by him Davis was presented to Burleigh, " who was also pleased to show him great encouragement." If either these statesmen or Eliz- abeth had been twenty years younger, his name would have filled a larger space in history than a small corner of the map of the world ; but if he was employed at all in the last years of the century, no vates sacer has been found to celebrate his work, and no clew is left to guide us. He disappears ; a cloud falls over him. He is known to have commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned five times from India. But the details are all lost, and accident has only parted the clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting with which he, too, went down upon the sea. In taking ovt Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in 1604, he fell in with a crew of Japanese, whose ship had been burnt, drifting at sea, without provisions, in a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but he did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them on board ; and in a few hours, watching their oppor- tunity, they murdered him. As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no dif- ference ; it was the chance of the sea, and the ill reward 398 England? s Forgotten Worthies* of a humane action a melancholy end for such a man like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawl or am- buscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the flower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of their fathers. Thej knew the service which they had chosen, and they did not ask the wages for which they had not labored. Life with them was no summer holiday, but a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and what their Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age beautiful is the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work ; she loads him with her blessings ; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life ; and surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with bless- ings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and aching brow ; the life of which the cross is the symbol ; a battle which no peace follows, this side the grave ; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is won ; and strange that it should be so this is the highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history ; there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has been given to do the really highest work in this earth whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves one and all, their fate has been the same the same bitter cup has been given to them to drink. And so it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth century. Their life was a long battle, either with the elements or with men ; and it was enough for them to fulfill their work, and to pass away in the hour when God had nothing more to bid them do. They did not complain, and why should we complain for them ? Peaceful life was not what they England's Forgotten Worthies. 399 desired, and an honorable death had no terrors for them. Theirs was the old Grecian spirit, and the great heart of the Theban poet lived again in them : tif 8' oiffiv avdyicr], ri Ke TIS avtavv^ov fv ffK&Ttf Ka.Qi]p.fVos etyoi juaroj', aAojv afifioposi " Seeing," in Gilbert's own brave words, " that death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue is immortal ; wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timere sperno" In the conclusion of these light sketches we pass into an element different from that in which we have been lately dwelling. The scenes in which Gilbert and Davis played out their high natures were of the kind which we call peaceful, and the enemies with which they contended were principally the ice and the wind, and the stormy seas and the dangers of unknown and savage lands. -We shall close o c? amidst the roar of cannon, and the wrath and rage of bat- tle. Hume, who alludes to the engagement which we are going to describe, speaks of it in a tone which shows that he looked at it as something portentous and prodigious ; as a thing to wonder at but scarcely as deserving the admiration which we pay to actions properly within the scope of humanity and as if the energy which was dis- played in it was like the unnatural strength of madness. He does not say this, but he appears to feel it ; and he scarcely would have felt it if he had cared more deeply to saturate himself with the temper of the age of which he was writing. At the time, all England and all the world rang with the story. It struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people, it dealt a more deadly blow upon their fame and moral strength than the destruction of the Ar- mada itself; and in the direct results which arose from it, it was scarcely less disastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems to us, if the most glorious actions which are set like jewels 400 England's Forgotten "Worthies. in the history of mankind are weighed one against the other in the balance, hardly will those 300 Spartans who in the summer morning sat '' combing their long hair for death " in the passes of Thermopylae, have earned a more lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew of modern Englishmen. In August, 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six Eng- lish line-of-battle ships, six victualers, and two or three pinnaces, was lying at anchor under the Island of Florez* Light in ballast and short of water, with half his men dis- O / abled by sickness, Howard was unable to pursue the ag- gressive purpose on which he had been sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore : the ships themselves " all pestered and rommaging," with every thing out of order. In this condition they were surprised by a Span- ish fleet consisting of 53 men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelve English ships obeyed the signal of the admiral, to cut or weigh their anchors and escape as they might. The twelfth, the Revenge, was unable for the moment to follow. Of her crew of 190, ninety were sick on shore, and, from the position of the ship, there was some delay and difficulty in getting them on board. The Revenge was commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, of Bideford, a man well known in the Spanish seas, and the terror of the Spanish sailors ; so fierce he was said to be, that mythic stories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like Earl Tal- bot or Coeur de Lion, the nurses at the Azores frightened children with the sound of his name. " He was of great revenues, of his own inheritance," they said, " but of un- quiet mind, and greatly affected to wars ; " and from his uncontrollable propensities for blood-eating, he had volun- teered his services to the queen ; " of so hard a complex- ion was he, that I (John Huighen von Lirischoten, who is our authority here, and who was with the Spanish fleet after the action) have been told by divers credible persons who stood and beheld him, that he would carouse three or Englanffs Forgotten Worthies. 401 four glasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teeth and crush them in pieces and swallow them down.'' Such Grenville was to the Spaniard. To the English he was a goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned his back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that re- markable time for his constancy and daring. In this sur- prise at Florez he was in no haste to fly. He first saw all his sick on board and stowed away on the ballast; and then, with no more than 100 men left him to fight and work the ship, he deliberately weighed, uncertain, as it seemed at first, what he intended to do. The Spanish fleet were by this time on his weather bow, and he was persuaded (we here take his cousin Raleigh's beautiful narrative, and follow it in Raleigh's words) " to cut his main sail and cast about, and trust to the sailing of the ship " : But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alleg- ing that he would rather choose to die than to dishonor himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship, persuading his company that he would pass through their two squadrons in spite of them, and enforce those of Seville to give him way ; which he performed upon diverse of the foremost, who, as the mariners term it, sprang their luff, and fell under the lee of the Revenge. But the other course had been the better ; and might right well have been an- swered in so great an impossibility of prevailing : notwithstand- ing, out of the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded. The wind was light; the San Philip "a huge high- carged ship" of 1500 tons, came up to windward of him, and, taking the wind out of his sails, ran aboard him. After the Revenge was entangled with the San Philip, four others boarded her, two on her larboard and two on her star- board. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the after- noon continued very terrible all that evening. But the great San Philip, having received the lower tier of the Revenge, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking her first entertainment. The Spanish ships were filled with sol- diers, in some 200, besides the mariners, in some 500, in others 2*5 402 England's Forgotten Worthies. 800. Iii ours there were none at all, besides the mariners, but the servants of the commander and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged volleys of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the Revenge, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitude of their armed soldiers and musketeers ; but were still repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own ship or into the sea. In the beginning of the fight the George No- ble, of London, having received some shot through her by the Armadas, fell under the lee of the Revenge, and asked Sir Richard what he would command him ; but being one of the victualers, and of small force, Sir Richard bad him save himself and leave him to his fortune. This last was a little touch of gallantry, which we should be glad to remember with the honor due to the brave English sailor who commanded the George Noble ; but his name has passed away, and his action is an in memoriam, on which time has effaced the writing. All that August night the fight continued, the stars rolling over in their sad majesty, but unseen through the sulphurous clouds which hung over the scene. Ship after ship of the Span- iards came on upon the Revenge, "so that never less than two mighty galleons were at her side and aboard her," washing up like waves upon a rock, and falling foiled and shattered back amidst the roar of the artillery. Before morning fifteen several armadas had assailed her, and all in vain ; some had been sunk at her side ; and the rest, " so ill approving of their entertainment, that at break of day they were far more willing to hearken to a composi- tion, than hastily to make more assaults or entries." " But as the day increased," says Raleigh, " so our men de- creased ; and as the light grew more and more, by so much the more grew our discomfort, for none appeared in sight but enemies, save one small ship called the Pil- grim, commanded by Jacob "Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success, but in the morning, bearing with the Revenge, was hunted like a hare among many raven- ous hounds but escaped." England's Forgotten Worthies. 403 All the powder in the Revenge was now spent, all her pikes were broken, 40 out of her 100 men killed, and a great number of the rest wounded. Sir Richard, though badly hurt early in the battle, never forsook the deck till an hour before midnight ; and was then shot through the body while his wounds were being dressed, and again in the head. His surgeon was killed while attending on him ; the masts were lying over the side, the rigging cut or broken, the upper works all shot in pieces, and the ship herself, unable to move, was settling slowly in the sea ; the vast fleet of Spaniards lying round her in a ring, like dogs round a dying lion, and wary of approaching him in his last agony. Sir Richard, seeing that it was past hope* having fought for fifteen hours, and " having by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery through him," " com- manded the master gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby noth- ing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards ; seeing in so many hours they were not able to take her, having had above fifteen hours' time, above ten thousand men, and fifty-three men-of-war to perform it withal ; and persuaded the company, or as many as he could induce, to yield themselves unto God and to the mercy of none else ; but as they had, like valiant resolute men, repulsed so many enemies, they should not now shorten the honor of their nation by prolonging their own lives for a few hours or a few days." The gunner and a few others consented. But such Saipovi-f) aperrj was more than could be expected of ordinary seamen. They had dared do all which did become men, and they were not more than men. Two Spanish ships had gone down, above 1500 of their crews were killed, and the Spanish Admiral could not induce any one of the rest of his fleet to board the Revenge again, " doubting lest Sir Richard woxild have blown up himself and them, knowing his dangerous disposition." Sir Richard lying 404 England's Forgotten Worthies. disabled below, the captain, " finding the Spaniards as ready to entertain a composition as they could be to offer it," gained over the majority of the surviving company ; and the remainder then drawing back from the master gunner, they all, without further consulting their dying commander, surrendered on honorable terms. If unequal to the English in action* the Spaniards were at least as courteous in victory. It is due to them to say, that the conditions were faithfully observed ; and " the ship being marvelous unsavourie," Alonzo de Ba9on, the Spanish Admiral, sent his boat to bring Sir Richard on board his own vessel. Sir Richard, whose life was fast ebbing away, replied that " he might do with his body what he list, for that he esteemed it not ; " and as he was carried out of the ship he swooned, and reviving again, desired the company to pray for him. The Admiral used him with all humanity, " commending his valor and worthiness, being unto them a rare specta- cle, and a resolution seldom approved." The officers of the fleet, too, John Higgins tells us, crowded round to look at him ; and a new fight had almost broken out between the Biscayans and the "Portugals," each claiming the honor of having boarded the Revenge. In a few hours Sir Richard, feeling bis end approaching, showed not any sign of faintness, but spake these words in Spanish, and said, " Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honor. Whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do." When he had finished these or other such like words, he gave up the ghost with great and stout courage, and no man could per- ceive any sign of heaviness in him. uch was the fight at Florez, in that August of 1591, England's Forgotten Worthies. 405 without its equal in such of the annals of mankind as the thing which we call history has preserved to us ; scarcely equaled by the most glorious fate which the imagination of Barrere could invent for the Venguer. Nor did the matter end without a sequel awful as itself. Sea-battles have been often followed by storms, and without a miracle ; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards and the English alike believed, or without one, as we moderns would prefer be- lieving, " there ensued on this action a tempest so terrible as was never seen or heard the like before." A fleet of merchantmen joined the armada immediately after the bat- tle, forming in all 140 sail ; and of these 140, only 32 ever saw Spanish harbor. The rest foundered, or were lost on the Azores. The men-of-war had been so shattered by shot as to be unable to carry sail ; and the Revenge her- self, disdaining to survive her commander, or, as if to complete his own last baffled purpose, like Samson, buried herself and her 200 prize crew under the rocks of St. Michael's. And it may well be thought and presumed (says John Huighen) that it was no other than a just plague purposely sent upon the Spaniards ; and that it might be truly said, the taking of the Revenge was justly revenged on them ; and not by the might or force of man, but by the power of God. As some of them openly said in the. Isle of Terceira, that they believed verily God would consume them, and that He took part with the Lutherans and heretics .... saying further, that so soon as they had thrown the dead body of the Vice- Admiral Sir Richard Grenville over- board, they verily thought that as he had a devilish faith and re- ligion, and therefore the devil loved him, so he presently sunk into the bottom of the sea and down into hell, where he raised up all the devils to the revenge of his death, and that they brought so great a storm and torments upon the Spaniards, because they only maintain the Catholic and Romish religion. Such and the like blasphemies against God they ceased not openly to utter. HOMER, 1 TKOT fell before the Greeks ; and in its turn the war of Troy is now falling before the critics. That ten years' death-struggle, in which the immortals did not disdain to mingle those massive warriors, with their grandeur and their chivalry, have, ' like an unsubstantial pageant, faded " before the wand of these modern enchanters ; and the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," and the other early legends, are discovered to be no more than the transparent myths of an old cosmogony, the arabesques and frescos with which the imagination of the Ionian poets set off and ornamented the palace of the heavens, the struggle of the eartli with the seasons, and the labors of the sun through his twelve signs. Nay, with Homer himself it was likely at one time to have fared no better. His works, indeed, were indestructi- ble, yet if they could not be destroyed, they might be dis- organized ; and with their instinctive hatred of facts, the critics fastened on the historical existence of the poet. The origin of the poems was distributed among the clouds of pre-historic imagination ; and instead of a single in- spired Homer for their author, we were required to believe in some extraordinary spontaneous generation, or in some collective genius of an age which ignorance had personified, But the person of a poet has been found more difficult of elimination than a mere fact of history. Facts, it was 1 Fraser's Mar/asine, 1851. Homer. 407 once said, were stubborn things ; but in our days we have changed all that ; a fact, under the knife of a critic, splits in pieces, and is dissected out of belief with incredible readiness. The helpless thing lies under his hand like a foolish witness in a law court, when browbeaten by an un- scrupulous advocate, and is turned about and twisted this way and that way, till in its distraction it contradicts itself, and bears witness against itself; and to escape from tor- ture, at last flies utterly away, itself half doubting its own existence. But it requires more cunning weapons to destroy a Ho- mer; like his own immortals, he may be wounded, but he cannot have the life carved ovit of him by the prosaic strokes of common men. His poems have but to be dis- integrated to unite again, so strong are they in the indi- viduality of their genius. The singleness of their struct- ure the unity of design the distinctness of drawing in the characters the inimitable peculiarities of manner in each of them, seem to place beyond serious question, after the worst onslaught of the Wolfian critics, that both " Iliad" and " Odyssey," whether or not the work of the same mind, are at least each of them singly the work of one. Let them leave us Homer, however, and on the rank and file of facts they may do their worst ; we can be indif- ferent to, or even thankful for, what slaughter they may make. In the legends of the Theogonia, in that of Zeus and Cronus, for instance, there is evidently a metaphysical allegory ; in the legends of Persephone, or of the Dios- curi, a physical one ; in that of Athene, a profoundly phil- osophical one ; and fused as the entire system was in the intensely poetical conception of the early thinkers, it would be impossible, even if it were desirable, at this time of day to disentangle the fibres of all these various elements. Fact and theory, the natural and the supernatural, the le- gendary and the philosophical, shade off so imperceptibly one into the other, in the stories of the Olympians, or of 408 Homer. their first offspring, that we can never assure ourselves that we are on historic ground, or that, antecedent to the really historic age, there is any such ground to be found any- where. The old notion, that the heroes were deified men, is no longer tenable. With but few exceptions, we can trace their names as the names of the old gods of the Hel- lenic or Pelasgian races ; and if they appeared later in human forms, they descended from Olympus to assume them. Diomed was the CEtolian sun-god; Achilles was worshiped in Thessaly long before he became the hero of the tale of Troy. The tragedy of the house of Atreus, and the bloody bath of Agamemnon, as we are now told with appearance of certainty, 1 are humanized stories of the physical struggle of the opposing principles of life and death, light and darkness, night and day, winter and summer. And let them be so ; we need not be sorry to believe that there is no substantial basis for these tales of crime. The history of mankind is not so pure but that we can af- ford to lose a few dark pages out of the record. Let it be granted that of the times which Homer sung historically we know nothing literal at all not any names of any kings, of any ministers, wars, intrigues, revolutions, crimes. They are all gone dead passed away ; their vacant chronicles may be silent as the tombs in which their bones are buried. Of such stuff as that with which historians fill their pages there is no trace ; it is a blank, vacant as the annals of the Hottentot or of the Red Indian. Yet when all is said, there remain still to us in Homer's verse, materials richer, perhaps, than exist for any period of the ancient world, richer than even for the brilliant days of Pericles, or of the Cassars, to construct a history of another kind a his- tory, a picture not of the times of which he sang, but of the men among whom he lived. How they acted ; how they thought, talked, and felt; what they made of this 1 Mackay's Progress of the Intellect. Homer. 40 S earth, and of their place in it ; their private life and their public life ; men and women ; masters and servants ; rich and poor we have it all delineated in the marvelous verse of a poet who, be he what he may, was in this respect the greatest which the earth has ever seen. In extent, the information is little enough ; but in the same sense as it has been said that an hour at an Athenian supper-party would teach us more Grecian life and character than all Aristophanes, Homer's pictures of life and manners are so living, so distinct, so palpable, that a whole prose encyclo- pedia of disconnected facts could give us nothing like them. It is the marvelous property of verse one, if we rightly consider it, which would excuse any superstition on the origin of language that the metrical and rhythmic arrangement of syllable and sound is able to catch and ex- press back to us, not the stories of actions, but the actions themselves, with all the feelings which inspire them ; to call up human action, and all other outward things in which human hearts take interest to produce them, or to reproduce them, with a distinctness which shall produce the same emotions which they would themselves produce when really existing. The thing itself is made present be- fore us by an exercise of creative power as genuine as that of Nature herself; which, perhaps, is but the same power manifesting itself at one time in words, at another in out- ward phenomena. Whatever be the cause, the fact is so. Poetry has this life-giving power, and prose has it not; and thus the poet is the truest historian. Whatever is prop- erly valuable in history the poet gives us not events and names, but emotion, but action, but life. He is the heart of his age, and his verse expresses his age ; and what matter is it by what name he describes his places or his persons ? What matter is it what his own name was, Avhile we have himself, and while we have the originals, from which he drew ? The work and the life are all for which we need care, are all which can really interest us ; the 410 Homer. names are nothing. Though Phceacia was a dream-land, or a symbol of the Elysian fields, yet Homer drew his ma- terial, his island, his palaces, his harbor, his gardens of perennial beauty, from those fair cities which lay along the shores of his own Ionia ; and like his blind Demodocus, Homer doubtless himself sung those very hymns which now delight us so, in the halls of many a princely Al- cinous. The prose historian may give us facts and names ; he may catalogue the successions, and tell us long stories of battles, and of factions, and of political intrigues ; he may draw characters for us, of the sort which figure com- monly in such features of human affairs, men of the unhe- roic, unpoetic kind the Cleons, the Sejanuses, the Tibe- riuses, a Philip the Second or a Louis Quatorze, in whom the noble element died out into selfishness and vulgarity. But great men and all MEN properly so called (whatever is genuine and natural in them) lie beyond prose, and can only be really represented by the poet. This is the reason why such men as Alexander, or as Caesar, or as Cromwell, so perplex us in histories, because they and their actions are beyond the scope of the art through which we have looked at them. We compare the man as the historian represents him, with the track of his path through the world. The work is the work of a giant ; the man, stripped of the vulgar appendages with which the stunted imagination of his biographer may have set him off, is full of meannesses and littlenesses, and is scarcely greater than one of ourselves. Prose, that is, has attempted some- thing to which it is not equal. It describes a figure which it calls Caesar ; but it is not Caesar, it is a monster. For the same reason, prose fictions, novels, and the like, are worthless for more than a momentary purpose. The life which they are able to represent is not worth representing. There is no person so poor in his own eyes as not to gaze with pleasure into a looking-glass ; and the prose age may Homer. 411 value its own image in the novel. But the value of all such representations is ephemeral. It is with the poet's art as with the sculptor's sandstone will not carve like marble, its texture is too loose to retain a sharply moulded outline. The actions of men, if they are true, noble, and genuine, are strong enough to bear the form and bear the polish of verse ; if loose or feeble, they crumble away into the softer undulations of prose. What the life was whose texture bore shaping into Ho- mer's verse, we intend to spend these pages in examining. It is, of course, properly to be sought for in the poems themselves. But we shall here be concerned mainly with features which in the original are rather secondary than prominent, and which have to be collected out of frag- ments, here a line and there a line, out of little hints, let fall by Homer as it were by accident. Things too familiar to his own hearers to require dwelling on, to us, whose ob- ject is to make out just those very things which were fa- miliar, are of special and singular value. It is not an inquiry which will much profit us, if we come to it with any grand notions of the " progress of the species," for in many ways it will discourage the belief in progress. We have fallen into ways of talking of the childhood and infancy of the race, as if no beards had grown on any face before the modern Reformation ; and even people who know what old Athens was under Pericles, look commonly on earlier Greece as scarcely struggling out of its cradle. It would have fared so with all early history except for the Bible. The Old Testament has operated partially to keep us in our modest senses, and we can see something grand about the patriarchs ; but this is owing to excep- tional causes, which do not apply to other literature ; and in spite of our admiration of Homer's poetry, we regard his age, and the contemporary periods in the other people of the earth, as a kind of childhood little better than bar- barism. We look upon it, at all events, as too far re 412 Homer. moved in every essential of spirit or of form from our own, to enable us to feel for it any strong interest or sympathy. More or less, we have, every one of us, felt something of this kind. Homer's men are, at first sight, unlike any men that we have ever seen ; and it is not without a shock of surprise that, for the first time, we fall, in reading him, across some little trait of humanity which in form as well as spirit is really identical with our own experience. Then for the moment, all is changed with us gleams of light flash out, in which the drapery becomes transparent, and we see the human form behind it, and that entire old world in the warm glow of flesh and blood. Such is the effect of those few child-scenes of his, which throw us back into our old familiar childhood. With all these years between us, there is no difference between their children and ours, and child would meet child without sense of strangeness in common games and common pleasures. The little Ulysses climbing on the knees of his father's guest, coaxing for a taste of the red wine, and spilling it as he starts at the unusual taste ; or that other most beautiful picture of him running at Laertes's side in the garden at Ithaca, the father teaching the boy the names of the fruit- trees, and making presents to him of this tree and of that tree for his very own, to help him to remember what they were called; the partition wall of three thousand years melts away as we look back at scenes lil\e these; that broad, world-experienced man was once, then, such a little creature as we remember ourselves, and Laertes a calm, kind father of the nineteenth century. Then, as now, the children loved to sport upon the shore, and watch the in-roll- ing waves ; then, as now, the boy-architect would pile the moist sand into mimic town or castle, and when the work was finished, sweep it away again in wanton humor with foot and hand ; then, as now, the little tired maiden would cling to her mother's skirt, and trotting painfully along beside her, look up wistfully and plead with moist Homer. 413 eyes to be carried in her arms. Nay, .and among the grown ones, where time has not changed the occupation, and the forms of culture have little room to vary, we meet again with very familiar faces. There is Melantho, the not over-modest tittering waiting-maid saucy to her mis- tress and the old housekeeper, and always running after the handsome young princes. Unhappy Melantho, true child of universal Nature ! grievous work we should make with most households, if all who resemble thee were treated to as rough a destiny. And there are other old friends whom it is pleasant enough to recognize at so long a dis- tance. " Certain smooth-haired, sleek-faced fellows in- solent where their lords would permit them ; inquisitive and pert, living but to eat and drink, and pilfering the good things, to convey them stealthily to their friends out- side the castle wall." The thing that hath been, that shall be again. When Homer wrote, the type had settled into its long enduring form. " Such are they," he adds, in his good-natured irony, " as the valet race ever love to be." With such evidence of identity among us all, it is worth while to look closer at the old Greeks, to try to find in Ho- mer something beyond fine poetry, or exciting adventures, or battle-scenes, or material for scholarship ; for a while to set all that aside, and look in him for the story of real liv- ing men set to pilgrimize in the old way on the same old earth men such as we are, children of one family, with the same work to do, to live the best life they could and to save their souls with the same trials, the same passions, the same difficulties, if with weaker means of meeting them. And first for their religion. Let those who like it, lend their labor to the unraveling the secrets of the mythologies. Thcogonies and Theolo- gies are not religion ; they are but its historic dress and outward or formal expression, which, like a language, may be intelligible to those who see the inward meaning in the sign, 414 Homer. but no more thau confused sound to us who live in another atmosphere, and have no means of transferring ourselves into the sentiment of an earlier era. It is not in these forms of a day or of an age that we should look for the real belief the real feelings of the heart ; but in the natural expressions which burst out spontaneously ex- pressions of opinion on Providence, on the relation of man to God, on the eternal laws by which this world is governed. Perhaps we misuse the word in speaking of religion ; we ought rather to speak of piety : piety is always simple ; the emotion is too vast, too overpowering, whenever it is gen- uine, to be nice or fantastic in its form ; and leaving phi- losophies and cosmogonies to shape themselves in myth and legend, it speaks itself out with a calm and humble clear- ness. We may trifle with our own discoveries, and hand them over to the fancy or the imagination for elaborate decoration. We may shroud over supposed mysteries under an enigmatic veil, and adapt the degrees of initiation to the capacities of our pupils ; but before the vast facts of God and Providence, the difference between man and man dwarfs into nothing. They are no discoveries of our own with which we can meddle, but revelations of the Infinite, which, like the sunlight, shed themselves on all alike, wise and unwise, good and evil, and they claim and they permit no other acknowledgment from us than the simple obedience of our lives, and the plainest confession of pur lips. Such confessions, except in David's Psalms, we shall not anywhere find more natural or unaffected than in Homer most definite, yet never elaborate as far as may be from any complimenting of Providence, yet expressing the most unquestioning conviction. We shall not often re- member them when we set about religion as a business ; but when the occasions of life stir the feelings in us on which religion itself reposes, if we were as familiar with the " Iliad " as with the Psalms, the words of the old Ionian singer would leap as naturally to our lips as those of the Israelite king. Homer. 415 Zeus is not always the questionable son of Cronus, nor the gods always the mythologic Olympians. Generally, it is true, they appear as a larger order of subject beings beings like men, and subject to a higher control in a position closely resembling that of Milton's angels, and liable like them to passion and to error. But at times, the father of gods and men is the Infinite and Eternal Ruler the living Providence of the world and the lesser gods are the immortal administrators of his Divine will throughout the lower creation. Forever at the head of the universe there is an awful spiritual power ; when Zeus appears with a distinct and positive personality, he is him- self subordinate to an authority which elsewhere is one with himself. Wherever either he or the other gods are made susceptible of emotion, the Invisible is beyond and above them. When Zeus is the personal father of Sarpe- don, and his private love conflicts with the law of the eter- nal order, though he has power to set aside the law he dares not break it ; but in the midst of his immortality, and on his own awful throne, he weeps tears of blood in ineffectual sorrow for his dying child. And again, there is a power supreme both over Zeus and over Poseidon, of which Iris reminds the latter, when she is sent to rebuke him for his disobedience to his brother. It is a law, she says, that the younger shall obey the elder, and the Erin- nys will revenge its breach even on a god. But descending from the more difficult Pantheon among mankind, the Divine law of justice is conceived as clearly as we in this day can conceive it. The supreme power is the same immortal lover of justice and the same hater of iniquity ; and justice means what we mean by justice, and iniquity what we mean by iniquity. There is no diffidence, no skepticism on this matter ; the moral law is as sure as day and night, summer and winter. Thus in the sixteenth Iliad " When in the market-place men deal unjustly, and the rulers decree crooked judgment, not regarding the fear of 416 Homer. God," God sends the storm, and the earthquake, and the tempest, as the executors of his vengeance. Again, Ulysses says, " God looks upon the children of men, and punishes the wrong-doer." And ^Eumaeus, "The gods love not violence and wrong ; but the man whose ways are righteous, him they honor." Even when as mere Olympians they put off their celes- tial nature, and mix in earthly strife, and are thus laid open to earthly suffering, a mystery still hangs about them ; Diomed, even while he crosses the path of Ares, feels all the while " that they are short-lived who contend with the Immortals." Ajax boasts that he will save himself in spite of Heaven, and immediately the wave dashes him upon the rocks. One light word escaped Ulysses in the excitement of his escape from the Cyclops, which nine years of suffer- ing hardly expiated. The same spirit which teaches Christians that those who have no earthly friend have specially a friend above to care for and to avenge them, taught the lonians a proverb which appears again and again in Homer, that the stranger and the poor man are the patrimony of God ; and it taught them, also, that sometimes men entertained the Immortals unawares. It was a faith, too, which was more than words with them ; for we hear of no vagrant acts or alien acts, and it was sacrilege to turn away from the gate whoever asked its hospitality. Times are changed. The world was not so crowded as it is now, and perhaps rogues were less abundant ; but at any rate those antique Greeks did what they said. We say what they said, while in the same breath we say, too, that it is impossible to do it. In every way, the dependence of man on a special heavenly Providence was a matter of sure and certain con- viction with them. Telemachus appeals to the belief in the Council at Ithaca. He questions it at Pylos, and is at once rebuked by Athene. Both in " Iliad " and " Odyssey " to live Homer. 417 justly is the steady service which the gods require, and their favor as surely follows when that service is paid, as a Nemesis sooner or later follows surely, too, on the evil-doers. But without multiplying evidence, as we easily might, from every part of both " Iliad " and " Odyssey " the skepti- cal and the believing forms of thought and feeling on this very subject are made points of dramatic contrast, to show off the opposition of two separate characters ; and this is clear proof that such thoughts and feelings must have been familiar to Homer's hearers : if it were not so, his characters would have been without interest to his age they would have been individual, and not universal ; and no expenditure of intellect, or passion, would have made men care to listen to him. The two persons who through- out the "Iliad" standout in relief in contrast to each other, are, of course, Hector and Achilles ; and faith in God (as distinct from a mere recognition of Him) is as directly the characteristic of Hector as in Achilles it is entirely absent. Both characters are heroic, but the heroism in them springs from opposite sources. Both are heroic, because both are strong ; but the strength of one is in himself, and the strength of the other is in his faith. Hector is a patriot ; Achilles does not know what patriotism means ; Hector is full of tenderness and human affection ; Achilles is self- enveloped. Even his love for Patroclus is not pure, for Patroclus is as the moon to the sun of Achilles, and Achilles sees his own glory reflected on his friend. They have both a forecast of their fate ; but Hector, in his great brave way, scoffs at omens ; he knows that there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, and defies augury. To do his duty is the only omen for which Hector cares; and if death must be, he can welcome it like a gal- lant man, if it find him fighting for his country. Achilles is moody, speculative, and subjective ; he is too proud to attempt an ineffectual resistance to what he knows to be inevitable, but he alternately murmurs at it and scorns it 27 418 Komer* Till his passion is stirred by his friend's death, he seems equally to disdain the greatness of life and the littleness of it ; the glories of a hero are not worth dying for ; and like Solomon, and almost in Solomon's words, he complains that there is one event to all : "Ev 6s l Tij. $ v KdKbf qi Kdl eai)?.(>r, To gratify his own spleen, he will accept an inglorious age in Thessaly, in exchange for a hero's immortality ; as again in the end it is but to gratify his own wounded pride that he goes out to brave a fate which he scorns while he knows that it will subdue him. Thus, Achilles is the hero of the stern human, self-sufficing spirit, which does not deny or question destiny, but seeing nothing in it except a cold, iron law, meets force with force, and holds up against it an unbroken, unbending will. Human nature is at its best but a miserable business to him ; death and sorrow are its inevitable lot. As a brave man, he will not fear such things, but he will not pretend to regard them as any thing but detestable ; and he comforts the old, weeping king of Troy, whose age he was himself bringing down to the grave in sorrow, with philosophic meditations on the vanity of all things, and a picture of Zeus mixing the elements of life out of the two urns of good and evil. Turn to Hector, and we turn from shadow into sunlight. Achilles is all self, Hector all self-forgetfulness ; Achilles all pride, Hector all modesty. The confidence of Achilles is in himself and in his own arm ; Hector knows (and the strongest expressions of the kind in all the " Iliad " arc placed pointedly in Hector's mouth) that there is no strength except from above. " God's will," he says, " is over all; He makes the strong man to fear, and gives the victory to the weak, if it shall please Him." And at last, when he meets Achilles, he answers his bitter words, not with a defiance, but calmly saying, " I know that thou art mighty, and that my strength is far less than thine : but Homer. 419 these things lie in the will of the gods ; and I, though weaker far than thou, may yet take thy life from thee, if the immortals choose to have it so." So far, then, on the general fact of Divine Providence, the feeling of Homer, and therefore of his countrymen, is distinct Both the great poems bearing his name speak in the same language. But beyond the general fact, many questions rise in the application of the creed, and on one of these (it is among several remarkable differences which seem to mark the " Odyssey " as of a later age) there is a very sin- gular discrepancy. In the " Iliad," the life of man on this side the grave is enough for the completion of his destiny for his reward, if he lives nobly ; for his punishment, if he be base or wicked. Without repinings or skepticisms at the apparent successes of bad men, the poet is con- tented with what he finds, accepting cheerfully the facts of life as they are ; it never seems to occur to him as seriously possible that a bad man could succeed or a good one fail ; and as the ways of Providence, therefore, require no vindi- cating, neither his imagination nor his curiosity tempts him into penetrating the future. The house of Hades is the long home to which men go when dismissed out of their bodies ; but it is a dim, shadowy place, of which we see nothing, and concerning which no conjectures are ventured. Achilles, in his passion over Patroclus, cries out, that al- though the dead forget the dead in the halls of the de- parted, yet that he will remember his friend ; and through the " Iliad " there is nothing clearer than these vague words to show with what hopes or fears the poet looked for- ward to death. So far, therefore, his faith may seem im- perfect ; yet, perhaps, not the less noble because imperfect; religious men in general are too well contented with the promise of a future life, as of a scene where the seeming short-comings of the Divine administration will be carried out with larger equity. But whether imperfect or not, OT whatever be the account of the omission, the theory of 420 Homer. Hades in the " Odyssey " is developed into far greater dis- tinctness ; the future is still, indeed, shadowy, but it is no longer uncertain ; there is the dreadful prison-house, with the judge upon his throne and the darker criminals are overtaken by the vengeance which was delayed in life. The thin phantoms of the great ones of the past flit to and fro, mourning wearily for their lost mortality, and feed- ing on its memory. And more than this, as if it were beginning to be felt that something more was wanted after all to satisfy us with the completeness of the Divine rule, we have a glimpse it is but one, but it is like a ray of sunshine falling in upon the darkness of the grave " of the far-off Elysian fields where dwells Rhadamanthus with the golden hair, where life is ever sweet, and sorrow is not 7 nor winter, nor any rain or storm, and the never-dying zephyrs blow soft and cool from off the ocean." However vague the filling up of such a picture, the out- line is correct to the best which has been revealed even in Christianity, and it speaks nobly for the people among whom, even in germ, such ideas could root themselves. But think what we will of their notions of the future, the old Greek faith, considered as a practical and not a theo- logical system, is truly admirable, clear, rational, and moral ; if it does' not profess to deal with the mysteries of evil in the heart, it is prompt and stern with them in their darker outward manifestations, and, as far as it goes, as a guide in the common daily business of life, it scarcely leaves any thing unsaid. How far it went we shall see in the details of the life it- self, the most important of which in the eyes of a modern will be the social organization ; and when he looks for or- ganization, he will be at once at a loss, for lie will find the fact of government yet without defined form he will find law, but without a public sword to enforce it ; and a " so- cial machine " moving without friction under the easy con- trol of opinion. There are no wars of classes, no politics, Homer. 421 no opposition of interests, a sacred feeling of the will of the gods keeping every one in his proper subordination. It was a sacred duty that the younger should obey the el- der, that the servant should obey his master, that property should be respected ; in war, that the leader should be obeyed without questioning; in peace, that public ques- tions should be brought before the assembly of the people, and settled quietly as the Council determined. In this as- sembly the prince presided, and beyond this presidency his authority at home does not seem to have extended. Of course there was no millennium in Ionia, and men's pas- sions were pretty much what they are now. Without any organized means of repressing crime when it did appear, the people were exposed to, and often suffered under, ex- treme forms of violence violence such as that of the suitors at Ithaca, or of JEgisthus at Argos. On the other hand, what a state of cultivation it implies, what peace and comfort in all classes, when society could hold together for a day with no more complete defense. And, moreover, there are disadvantages in elaborate police systems. Self- reliance is one of the highest virtues in which this world is intended to discipline us ; and to depend upon ourselves even for our own personal safety, is a large element in moral training. But not to dwell on this, and to pass to the way in which the men of those days employed themselves. Our first boy's feeling with the " Iliad " is, that Homer is preeminently a poet of war ; that battles were his own passion, and tales of battles the delight of his listeners. His heroes appear like a great fighting aristocracy, such as the after Spartans were ; Homer himself like another Tyrtaeus, and the poorer occupations of life too menial for their notice or for his. They seem to live for glory the one glory worth caring for only to be won upon the battle- field, and their exploits the one worthy theme of the poet's song. This is our boyish impression, and, like other such, 422 Homer, it is very different from the truth. If war had been a pas sion with the lonians, as it was with the Teutons and the Norsemen, the god of battles would have been supreme in the Pantheon ; and Zeus would scarcely have called Ares the most hateful spirit in Olympus - most hateful, because of his delight in war and carnage. Mr. Carlvle looks for- O O / ward to a chivalry of labor. He rather wishes than expects that a time may come when the campaign of industry against anarchic Nature may gather into it those feelings of gal- lantry and nobleness which have found their vent hitherto in fighting only. The modern man's work, Mr. Carlyle says, is no longer to splinter lances or break down walls ; but to break soil, to build barns and factories, and to find a high employment for himself in what hitherto has been despised as degrading. How to elevate labor how to make it beautiful how to enlist the spirit in it (for in no other way can it be made humanly profitable), that is the problem which he looks wistfully to the future to solve for us. He may look to the past as well as to the future ; in the old Ionia he will find all for which he wishes. The wise Ulysses built his own house and carved his own bed. Princes killed and cooked their own food. It was a holy work with them their way of saying grace for it ; for they offered the animal in his death to the gods, and they were not butchers, but sacrificing priests. Even a keeper of swine is called noble, and fights like a hero ; and the young princess of Phoeacia the loveliest and graceful- est of Homer's women drove the clothes-cart and washed linen with her own beautiful hands. Not only was labor free, for so it was among the early Romans ; or honorable, so it was among the Israelites, but it was beautiful beautiful in the artist's sense, as perhaps else- where it has never been. In later Greece in what we call the glorious period toil had gathered about it its modern crust of supposed baseness it was left to slaves ; and wise men, in their philosophic lecture-rooms, spoke of Homer. 42S it as unworthy of the higher specimens of cultivated hu- manity. But Homer finds, in its most homely forms, fit illustra tions for the most glorious achievements of 'his heroes ; and in every page we find, in simile or metaphor, some com- mon scene of daily life worked out with elaborate beauty. What the popular poet chooses for his illustrations are as good a measure as we can have of the popular feeling, and the images which he suggests are, of course, what he knows his hearers will be pleased to dwell upon. There is much to be said about this, and we shall return to it presently ; in the mean time, we must not build on indirect evidence. The designs on the shield of Achilles are, together, a com- plete picture of Homer's microcosm ; Homer surely never thought inglorious or ignoble what the immortal art of Hephaistos condescended to imitate. The first groups of figures point a contrast which is ob- viously intentional ; and the significance becomes sadly earnest when we remember who it was that was to be.u* the shield. The moral is a very modern one, and the pict- ure might be called by the modern name of Peace and War. There are two cities, embodying in their condition the two ideas. In one, a happy wedding is going forward ; the pomp of the hymeneal procession is passing along the streets ; the air is full of music, and the women are stand- ing at their doors to gaze. The other is in the terrors of a siege ; the hostile armies glitter under the walls ; the women and children press into the defense, and crowd to the battlements. In the first city, a quarrel rises ; and wrong is made right, not by violence and fresh wrong, but by the majesty of law and order. The heads of the families are sitting gravely in the market-place, the cause is heard, the compensation set, the claim awarded. Under the walls of the other city an ambush lies, like a wild beast on the watch for its prey. The unsuspecting herdsmen pass on with their flocks to the waterside ; the spoilers spring from 424 Jffomer. their hiding-place, and all is strife, and death, and horror and confusion. If there were other war-scenes on the shield, it might be doubted whether Homer intended so strong a contrast as he executed ; but fighting for its own sake was evidently held in slight respect with him. The forms of life which were really beautiful to him follow in a series of exquisite Rubens-like pictures, harvest scenes and village festivals ; the ploughing and the vintage, or the lion-hunt on the reedy margin of the river ; and he de- scribes them with a serene, sunny enjoyment which no other old-world art or poetry gives us any thing in the least resembling. Even we ourselves, in our own pastor- als, are struggling with but half success, after what Homer entirely possessed. What a majesty he has thrown into his harvest scene ! The yellow corn falling, the boys fol- lowing to gather up the large armfuls as they drop behind the reapers ; in the distance, a banquet preparing under the trees ; in the centre, in the midst of his workmen, the king sitting in mellow silence, sceptre in hand, looking on with gladdened heart Again we see the ploughmen, un- like what are to be seen in our corn-grounds, turning their teams at the end of the furrow, and attendants standing ready with the wine-cup, to hand to them as they pass. Homer had seen these things, or he would not have sung of them ; and princes and nobles might have shared such labor without shame, when kings took part in it, and gods designed it, and the divine Achilles bore its image among his insignia in the field. Analogous to this, and as part of the same feeling, is that intense enjoyment of natural scenery, so keen in Ho- mer, and of which the Athenian poets show not a trace ; as, for instance, in that night landscape by the sea, finished off in a few lines only, but so exquisitely perfect ! The broad moon, gleaming through the mist as it parts sud- denly from off the sky ; the crags and headlands, and soft wooded slopes, shining out in the silver light, and earth and sea transformed into fairy land. Homer. 425 We spoke of Homer's similes as illustrative of the Ionic feelings about war. War, of course, was glorious to him but war in a glorious cause. Wars there were wars in plenty, as there have been since, and- as it is like there will be for some time to come ; and a just war, of all human employments, is the one which most calls out whatever nobleness there is in man. It was the thing itself, the actual fighting and killing, as apart from the heroism for which it makes opportunities, for which we said that he showed no taste. His manner shows that he felt like a cultivated man, and not like a savage. His spirit stirs in him as he goes out with his hero to the battle ; but there is no drunken delight in blood ; we never hear of warriors, as in that grim Hall of the " Nibelungcn," quenching their thirst in the red stream ; never any thing of that fierce exultation in carnage with which the war poetry of so many nations, late and old, is crimsoned. Every thing, on the contrary, is contrived so as to soften the merely horrible, and fix our interest only on what is grand or beautiful. We are never left to dwell long together on scenes of death, and when the battle is at its fiercest, our minds are called off by the rapid introduction (either by simile or some softer turn of human feeling) of other associations, not contrived, as an inferior artist would contrive, to deepen our emotions, but to soften and relieve them. Two warriors meet, and ex- change their high words of defiance ; we hear the grinding of the spear-head, as it pierces shield and breast-plate, and the crash of the armor, as this or that hero falls. But at once, instead of being left at his side to see him bleed, we are summoned away to the soft water meadow, the lazy river, the tall poplar, now waving its branches against the sky, now lying its length along in the grass beside the water, and the woodcutter with peaceful industry laboring and lopping at it. In the thick of the universal melee, when the stones and arrows are raining on the combatants, and some furious 426 Homer. hailstorm is the slightest illustration with which we should expect him to heighten the effect of the human tempest, so sure Homer is that he has painted the thing itself in its own intense reality, that his simile is the stillest phenome- non in all Nature a stillness of activity, infinitely ex- pressive of the density of the shower of missiles, yet falling like oil on water on the ruffled picture of the battle ; the snow descending in the still air, covering first hills, then plains and fields and farmsteads ; covering the rocks down to the very water's edge, and clogging the waves as they roll in. Again, in that fearful death-wrestle at the Grecian wall, when gates and battlements are sprinkled over with blood, and neither Greeks nor Trojans can force their way against the other, we have, first, as an image of the fight itself, two men in the field, with measuring rods, disputing over a land boundary ; and for the equipoise of the two armies, the softest of all home scenes, a poor working woman weighing out her wool before weaving it, to earn a scanty subsistence for herself and for her children. Of course the similes are not all of this land ; it would be monotonous if they were ; but they occur often enough to mark their meaning. In the direct narrative, too, we see the same tendency. Sarpedon struck through the thigh is borne off the field, the long spear trailing from the wound, and there is too much haste to draw it out. Hector flies . past him and has no time to speak ; all is dust, hurry, and confusion. Even Homer can only pause for a moment ; but in three lines he lays the wounded hero under a tree, he brings a dear friend to his side, and we refresh ourselves in a beautiful scene, when the lance is taken out, and Sarpedon faints, and comes slowly back to life, with the cool air fanning him. We may look in vain through the " Nibelungen Lied " for any thing like this. The Swabian poet can be tender before the battle, but in the battle itself his barbaric nature is too strong for him, and he scents nothing bat blood. In the " Iliad," on the contrary, the very Homer. 427 battles of the gods, grand and awful as they are, relieve rather than increase the human horror. In the magnifi- cent scene, where Achilles, weary with slaughter, pauses on the bank of the Scamander, and the angry river-god, whose course is checked by the bodies of the slain, swells up to revenge them and destroy him, the natural and the supernatural are so strangely blended, that when Poseidon lights the forest, and god meets god and element meets element, the convulsion is too tremendous to enhance the fierceness of Achilles ; it concentrates the interest on itself, and Achilles and Hector, flying Trojan and pursuing Greek, for the time melt out and are forgotten. \Ve do not forget that there is nothing of this kind, no relief, no softening, in the great scene at the conclusion of the " Odyssey." All is stern enough and terrible enough there ; more terrible, if possible, because more distinct, than its modern counterpart in Criemhildas Hall. But there is an obvious reason for this, and it does not make against what we have been saying. It is not delight in slaughter, but it is the stern justice of revenge which we have here ; not, as in the " Iliad," hero meeting hero, but the long crime receiving at last its Divine punishment ; the breaking of the one storm, which from the beginning has been slowly and awfully gathering. "With. Homer's treatment of a battle-field, and as illus- trating the conclusion which we argue from it, we are tempted to draw parallels from two modern poets one a German, who was taken away in the morning of his life ; the other, the most gifted of modern Englishmen. Each of these two has attempted the same subject, and the treat- ment in each case embodies, in a similar manner, modern ways of thinking about it. The first is from the " Albigenses " of young Lenau, who has since died lunatic, we have heard, as he was not un- likely to have died with such thoughts in him. It is the eve of one of those terrible struggles at Toulouse, and the 428 Homer. poet's imagination is hanging at moon-rise over the scene. u The low broad field scattered over thick with corpses, all silent, dead, the last sob spent," the priest's thanks- giving for the Catholic victory having died into an echo, and only the " vultures crying their Te Detini laudamus." " Hat Gott der Herr den Korperstoff erschaffen, Hat ihn hervorgebracht ein bbser Geist, Daruber stritten sie mit alien Waffen Und werden von den Vogeln nun gespeist, Die. ohne ihren Ursprung nachzufrageii, Die Korper da sich lassen vohl behagen." " Was it God the Lord who formed the substance of their bodies ? or did some evil spirit bring it forth ? It was for this with all their might fliey fought, and now they are devoured there by the wild birds, who sit gorg- ing merrily over their carrion, without asking from whence it came." In Homer, as we saw, the true hero is master over death death has no terror for him. He meets it, if it is to be, calmly and proudly, and then it is over; whatever offensive may follow after it. is concealed, or at least passed lightly over. Here, on the contrary, every thing most offensive is dwelt upon with an agonizing intensity, and the triumph of death is made to extend, not over the body only, but over the soul, whose heroism it turns to mockery. The cause in which a man dies, is what can make his death beautiful ; but here Nature herself, in her stern, awful way, is reading her sentence over the cause itself as a wild and frantic dream. "We ought to be revolted doubly revolted, one would think, and yet we are not so ; instead of being revolted, we are affected with a sense of vast, sad magnificence. Why is this ? Because we lose sight of the scene, or lose the sense of its horror, in the tragedy of the spirit. It is the true modern tragedy ; the note which sounds through Shakespeare's " Sonnets," through " Ham- let," through " Faust ; " all the deeper trials of the modern Homer. 129 heart might be gathered out of those few lines : the sense of wasted nobleness nobleness spending its energies upon what time seems to be pronouncing no better than a dream at any rate, misgivings, skeptic and distracting ; yet the heart the while, in spite of the uncertainty of the issue, remaining true at least to itself. If the spirit of the Al- bigensian warriors had really broken down, or if the poet had pointed his lesson so as to say, Truth is a lie ; faith is folly ; eat, drink, and die, then his picture would have been revolting ; but the noble spirit remains, though it is .borne down and trifled with by destiny, and therefore it is not revolting, but tragic. Far different from this as far inferior in tone to Lenau's lines, as it exceeds them in beauty of workman- ship is the well-known picture of the scene under the wall in the " Siege of Corinth " : " He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall Hold o'er the dead their carnival; Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb; They were too busy to bark at him ! From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh, As ye peel tho fig when its fruit is fresh ; And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull, As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull, As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed; So well had they broken a lingering fast With those who had fallen for that night's repast. And Alp knew, by the turbans that rolled on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band: The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw. Close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, There sate a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay." For a parallel to the horribleness of this wonderfully 430 Homer. painted scene we need not go to the " Nibelungen," for we shall find nothing like it there : we must go back to the carved slabs which adorned the banquet-halls of the As- syrian kings, where the foul birds hover over the stricken fields, and trail from their talons the entrails of the slain. And for what purpose does Byron introduce these frightful images? Was it in contrast to the exquisite moonlight scene which tempts the renegade out of his tent? "Was it to bring his mind into a fit condition to be worked upon by the vision of Francesca ? It does but mar and untune the softening influences of Nature, which might have been rendered more powerful, perhaps, by some slight touch to remind him of his past day's work, but are blotted out and paralyzed by such a mass of hor- rors. To go back to Homer. We must omit for the present any notice of the domestic pictures, of which there are so many, in the palaces of Ulysses, of Nestor, or of Alcinous ; of the games, so manly, yet, in point of refinement, so superior even to those of our own Middle Ages ; of the supreme good of life as the Greeks conceived it, and of the arts by which they en- deavored to realize that good. It is useless to notice such things briefly, and the detail would expand into a volume. But the impression which we gather from them is the same which we have gathered all along that if the proper aim of all human culture be to combine, in the highest measure in which they are compatible, the two elements of refinement and of manliness, then Homer's age was culti- vated to a degree the like of which the earth has not wit- nessed since. There was more refinement under Pericles, as there is more in modern London and Paris ; but there was, and there is, infinitely more vice. There was more fierceness (greater manliness there never was) in the times of feudalism. But take it for all in all, and in a mere human sense, apart from any other aspect of the wor'd Homer. 431 which is involved in Christianity, it is difficult to point to a time when life in general was happier, and the character of man set in a more noble form. If we have drawn the picture with too little shadow, let it be allowed for. The shadow was there, doubtless, though we see it only in a few dark spots. The " Margites " would have supplied the rest, but the " Margites," unhappily for us, is lost. Even heroes have their littlenesses, and Comedy is truer to the details of littleness than Tragedy or Epic. The grand is always more or less ideal, and the elevation of a moment is sublimed into the spirit of a life. Comedy, therefore, is essential for the representing of men ; and there were times, doubtless, when the complexion of Aga- memnon's greatness was discolored, like Prince Henry's, by remembering, when he was weary, that poor creature small beer i. e. if the Greeks had got any, A. more serious discoloration, however, we are obliged to say that we find in Homer himself, in the soil or taint which even he is obliged to cast over the position of women. In the " Iliad," where there is no sign of male slavery, women had already fallen under the chain, and though there does not seem to have been any practice of polygamy, the female prisoners fell, as a matter of course, into a more degraded position. It is painful; too, to ob- serve that their own feelings followed the practice of the times, and that they composed themselves to bear with- out reluctance whatever their destiny forced upon them. When Priam ventured into the Grecian camp for Hector's body, and stood under the roof of Achilles, he endured to do what, as he says, no mortal father had ever yet en- dured to give his hand to his son's. destroyer. Briseis, whose bed was made desolate by the hand of the same Achilles, finds it her one greatest consolation, that the con- queror stoops to choose her to share his own. And when Hector in his last sad parting scene anticipates a like fate for his own Andromache, it is not with the revolted agony 432 Homer. of horror with which such a possible future would be re- garded by a modern husband ; nor does Andromache, how- ever bitterly she feels the danger, protest, as a modern wife would do, that thero was no fear for her that death by sorrow's hand, or by her own, would preserve her to rejoin him. Xor, again, was unfaithfulness, of however long duration, conclusively fatal against u wife ; for we meet Helen, after a tweaty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mis- ires? f self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like de- spairing prostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet ever* in this respect the Homtric Greeks were better than their contemporaries in Palestii. 3 ; and on the whole there was, perhaps, no time anterior ij Christianity when women held a higher place, or the relt tion between wife and husband w r as of a more free and honorable kind. For we have given but one side of the picture. When a woman can be the theme of a poet, her nature cannot be held in slight esteem ; and there is no doubt that Penelope is Homer's heroine in the " Odyssey." One design, at least, which Homer had before him was to vindicate the character of the virtuous matron against the stain which Cfyiemnes- tra had inflicted on -it. Clytemnestra has every advan- tage ; Penelope every difficulty : the trial of the former lasted only half as long as that of the latter. Agamemnon in leaving her gave herself and his house in charge to a divine uoioos, a heaven-inspired prophet, who should stand between her and temptation, and whom she had to mur- der before her passion could have its way. Penelope had to bear up alone for twenty weary years, without a friend, without a counselor, and with even a child whose constancy was wavering. It is obvious that Homer designed this contrast. The story of the Argos tragedy is told again Homer. 433 and again. The shade of Agamemnon himself forebodes a fate like his own to Ulysses. It is Ulysses's first thought when he wakes from his sleep to find himself in his own land ; and the scene in Hades, in the last book, seems only introduced that the husband of Clytemnestra may meet the shades of the Ithacan suitors, and learn, in their own tale of the sad issue of their wooing, how far otherwise it had fared with Ulysses than with himself. Women, there- fore, according to Homer, were as capable of heroic virtue as men were, and the ideal of this heroism is one to which we have scarcely added. For the rest, there is no trace of any oriental seraglio system. The sexes lived together in easy unaffected in- tercourse. The ladies appeared in society naturally and gracefully, and their chief occupations were household matters, care of clothes and linen, and other domestic ar- rangements. When a guest came, they prepared his dress- ing-room, settled the bath, and arranged the convenience of his toilet-table. In their leisure hours, they were to be found, as now, in the hall or the saloon, and their work- table contained pretty much the same materials. Helen was winding worsted as she entertained Telemachus, and Andromache worked roses in very modern cross-stitch. A literalist like Mr. Mackay, who finds out that the Israelites were cannibals, from such expressions as "drinking the blood of the slain," might discover, perhaps, a similar un- pleasant propensity in an excited wish of Hecuba, that she might eat of the heart of Achilles ; but in the absence of other evidence, it is unwise in either case to press a meta- phor ; and the food of ladies, wherever Homer lets us see it, is very innocent cake and wine, with such fruits as were in season. To judge by Nausicaa, their breeding must have been exquisite. Nausicaa standing still, when the uncouth figure of Ulysses emerged from under the wood, all sea-slime and nakedness, and only covered with a girdle of leaves standing still to meet him when the other girls 434 Homer. ran away tittering and terrified, is the perfect conception of true female modesty ; and in the whole scene between them, Homer shows the most finished understanding of the delicate and tremulous relations which occur occasionally in the accidents of intercourse between highly cultivated men and women, and which he could only have learnt by living in a society where men and women met and felt in the way which he has described. Who, then, was Homer? What was he? When did he live ? History has absolutely nothing to answer. His poems were not written ; for the art of writing (at any rate for a poet's purpose) was unknown to him. There is a vague tradition that the " Iliad," and the * Odyssey," and a comic poem called the " Margites," were composed by an Ionian whose name was Homer, about four hundred years before Herodotus, or in the ninth century B. c. We know certainly that these poems were preserved by the Rhapso- dists, or popular reciters, who repeated them at private parties or festivals, until writing came into use, and they were fixed in a less precarious form. A later story was current, that we owe the collection to Pisistratus ; but an exclusive claim for him was probably only Athenian con- ceit. It is incredible that men of genius in Homer's own land Alcffius, for instance should have left such a work to be done by a foreigner. But this is really all which is known ; and the creation of the poems lies in impenetrable mystery. Nothing remains to guide us, therefore, except internal evidence (strangely enough, it is the same with Shakespeare), and it has led to wild conclu- sions ; yet the wildest is not without its use ; it has com- monly something to rest upon ; and internal evidence is only really valuable when outward testimony has been sifted to the uttermost. The present opinion seems to be, that each poem is unquestionably the work of one man ; but whether both poems are the work of the same is yet sub judice. The Greeks believed they were ; and that is much. There Homer. 435 are remarkable points of resemblance in style, yet not greater than the resemblances in the " Two Noble Kins- men " and in the " Yorkshire Tragedy " to " Macbeth " and " Hamlet ; " and there are more remarkable points of non- resemblance, which deepen upon iis the more we read. On the other hand, tradition is absolute. If the style of the " Odyssey " is sometimes unlike the " Iliad," so is one part of the " Iliad " sometimes unlike another. It is hard to conceive a genius equal to the creation of either " Iliad " or " Odyssey " to have existed without leaving at least a legend of his name ; and the difficulty of criticizing style accurately in an old language will be appreciated by those who have tried their hand in their own language with the disputed plays of Shakespeare. There are heavy difficulties every way ; and we shall best conclude our own subject by not- ing down briefly the most striking points of variation of which as yet no explanation has been attempted. We have already noticed several : the non-appearance of male slavery in the " Iliad " which is common in the " Odyssey " ; the notion of a future state ; and perhaps a fuller cultivation in the female character. Andromache is as delicate as Nau- sicaa, but she is not as grand as Penelope ; and in marked contrast to the feeling expressed by Briseis, is the passage where the grief of Ulysses over the song of Demodocus is compared to the grief of a young wife flinging herself on the yet warm body of her husband, and looking forward to her impending slavery with feelings of horror and repul- sion. But these are among the slightest points in which the two poems are dissimilar. Not only are there slaves in the " Odyssey," but there are 0/?res, or serfs, an order with which we are familiar in later times, but which again are not in the " Iliad." In the " Odyssey " the Trojans are called C7ri/3r?ro/)es iTTTrwy, which must mean riders. In the " Iliad " horses are never ridden ; they are always in harness. Wherever in the " Odyssey " the Trojan war is alluded to (and it is very often), in no one case is the allusion to any 436 Homer. thing which is mentioned in the " Iliad." We hear of the wooden horse, the taking of Troy, the death of Achilles, the contention of Ulysses with Ajax for his arms. It might be said that the poet wished to supply afterwards indirectly what he had left in the " Iliad " untold ; but again, this is impossible, for a very curious reason. The " Iliad " opens with the wrath of Achilles, which caused such bit- ter woe to the Achaians. In the " Odyssey " it is still the wrath of Achilles ; but singularly not with Agamemnon, lut with Ulysses. Ulysses to the author of the ' ; Odyssey " was a far grander person at Troy than he appears in the " Iliad." In the latter poem he is great, but far from one of the greatest ; in the other, he is evidently the next to Achilles ; and it seems almost certain that whoever wrote the " Odyssey " was working from some other legend of the war. There were a thousand versions of it. The tale of Ilium was set to every lyre in Greece, and the relative po- sition of the heroes Avas doubtless changed according to the sympathies or the patriotism of the singer. The char- acter of Ulysses is much stronger in the " Odyssey " ; and even when the same qualities are attributed to him his soft-flowing tongue, his cunning, and his eloquence they are held in very different estimation. The Homer of the " Iliad " has little liking for a talker. Thersites is his pattern specimen of such ; and it is the current scoff at unready warriors to praise their father's courage, and then to add oAAo Tt>;/ viov But the Phoeacian Lord who ventured to reflect, in the " Iliad " style, on the supposed unreadiness of Ulysses, is taught a different notion of human excellence. Ulysses tells him that he is a fool. " The gods," Ulysses says, " do not give all good things to all men, and often a man is made unfair to look upon, but over his ill favor they fling, like a garland, a power of lovely speech, and the people Homer. 437 delight to look on him. He speaks with modest dignity, and he shines among the multitude. As he walks through the city, men- gaze on him as on a god." Differences like these, however, are far from decisive. The very slightest external evidence would weigh them all down together. Perhaps the folloAving may be of more importance : In both poems there are " questionings of destiny," as the modern phrase goes. The thing which we call human life is looked in the face this little checkered island of lights and shadows, in the middle of an ocean of darkness ; and in each we see the sort of answer which the poet finds for himself, and which might be summed up briefly in the last words of Ecclesiastes, " Fear God and keep his com- mandments : for this is the whole duty of man." But the world bears a different aspect, and the answer looks differ- ent in its application. In the " Iliad," in spite of the gloom of Achilles, and his complaint of the double urn, the sense of life, on the whole, is sunny and cheerful. There is no yearning for any thing beyond nothing vague, nothing mystical. The earth, the men, the gods, have all a palpa- ble reality about them. From first to last we know where we are, and what we are about. In the " Odyssey " we are breathing another atmosphere. The speculations on the moral mysteries of our being hang like a mist over us from the beginning to the end ; and the cloud from time to time descends on the actors, and envelopes them with a preter- natural halo. The poet evidently dislikes the expression of " suffering being the lot of mortals," as if it had been abused already for ungodly purposes. In the opening of the first book, Zeus reproves the folly of mortal men for casting the blame upon the gods, when they themselves, in spite of all the gods can do to save them, persist in their o\vn perverseness ; and we never know as we go on, so fast we pass from one to the other, when we are among mere human beings, and when among the spiritual or the mysti- 438 Homer. cal. Those sea-nymphs, those cannibals, those enchant- resses, if intended to be real, are neither mortal nor divine at any rate, like nothing divine which we had seen in Olympus, or on the plains of Ilium ; and at times there is a strangeness even in the hero himself. Sometimes it is Ulysses painfully toiling his way home across the unknown ocean ; sometimes it is we that are Ulysses, and that un- known ocean is the life across which we are wandering, with too many Circes, and Sirens, and " Isles of Error " in our path. In the same spirit death is no longer the end ; and on every side long vistas seem to stretch away into the infinite, peopled with shadowy forms. But, as if this palpable initiation into the unseen were still insufficient or unconvincing, the common ground on which we are treading sometimes shakes under us, and we feel as Humboldt describes himself to have felt at the first shock of an earthquake. Strange pieces of mysterious wildncss are let fall in our way, coming suddenly on us like spectres, and vanishing without explanation or hint of their purpose. What are those Phoeacian ships meant for which required neither sail nor oar, but of their own selves read the hearts of those they carried, and bore them wherever they would go ? or the wild end of the ship which carried Ulysses home ? or that terrible piece of second sight in the Hall at Ithaca, for which the seer was brought from Pylos ? or those islands, one of which is forever wasting while another is born into being to com- plete the number? or those mystical sheep and oxen, which knew neither age nor death, nor ever had offspring born to them, and whose flesh upon the spits began to crawl and bellow ? or Helen singing round the horse in- side the Trojan walls, when every Grecian chiefs heart fainted in him as he thought he heard the voice of his own dear wife far away beyond the sea ? In the far gates of the Loestrygones, - where such a nar- row rim of night divided day from day, that a man who Homer. 439 needed not sleep might earn a double hire, and the cry of the shepherd at evening driving home his flock was heard by the shepherd going out in the morning to pasture," we have, perhaps, some tale of a Phoenician mariner, who had wandered into the North Seas, and seen " the Norway sun set into sunrise." But what shall we say to that Syrian isle, " where disease is not, nor hunger, nor thirst, and where, when men grow old, Apollo comes with Artemis, and slays them with his silver bow ? " There is nothing in the " Iliad " like any of these stories. Yet, when all is said, it matters little who wrote the poems. Each is so magnificent, that to have written both could scarcely have increased the greatness of the man who had written one ; and if there were two Homers, the earth is richer by one more divine-gifted man than we had known. After all, it is perhaps more easy to believe that the differences which we seem to see arise from Homer's own choice of the material which best suited two works so different, than that Nature was so largely prodigal as to have created in one age and in one people two such men ; for whether one or two, the authors of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " stand alone with Shakespeare far awav above mankind. THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. 1850. IF the enormous undertaking of the Bollandist editors had been completed, it would have contained the histories of 25,000 saints. So many the Catholic Church acknowl- edged and accepted as her ideals as men who had not only done her honor by the eminence of their sanctity, but who had received while on earth an openly divine recogni- tion of it in gifts of supernatural power. And this vast number is but a selection ; the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was most noteworthy and trust- worthy, and what was of catholic rather than of national interest. It is no more than a fraction of that singular mythology which for so many ages delighted the Christian world, which is still held in external reverence among the Romanists, and of which the modern historians, provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, and by the entire absence of critical ability among its writers to distinguish between fact and fable, have hitherto failed to speak a reasonable word. Of the attempt in our own day to revive an interest in them we shall say little in this place. The " Lives " have no form or beauty to give them attraction in them- selves ; and for their human interest the broad atmosphere of the world suited ill with these delicate plants, which had grown up under the shadow of the convent wall ; they were exotics, not from another climate, but from another age ; the breath of scorn fell on them, and having no root in the hearts and beliefs of men any more, but only in the sent!- The. Lives of the Saints. 441 mentalities and make-beliefs, they withered and sank. And yet, in their place as historical phenomena, the le- gends of the saints are as remarkable as any of the Pagan mythologies ; to the full as remarkable, perhaps far more so, if the length and firmness of hold they once possessed on the convictions of mankind is to pass for any thing in the estimate and to ourselves they have a near and peculiar interest, as spiritual facts in the growth of the Catholic faith. Philosophy has rescued the old theogonies from ridicule ; their extravagances, even the most grotesque of them, can be now seen to have their root in an idea, often a deep one, representing features of natural history or of meta- physical speculation, and we do not laugh at them any more. In their origin, they were the consecration of the first-fruits of knowledge ; the expression of a real reveren- tial belief. Then time did its work on them ; knowledge grew, and they could not grow ; they became monstrous and mischievous, and were driven out by Christianity with scorn and indignation. But it is with human institutions as it is with men themselves ; we are tender with the dead when their power to hurt us has passed away; and as Pa- ganism can never more be dangerous, we have been able to command a calmer attitude towards it, and to detect under its most repulsive features sufficient latent elements of genuine thought to satisfy us that even in their darkest aberrations men are never wholly given over to falsehood and absurdity. When philosophy has done for mediaeval mythology what it has done for Hesiod and for the " Ed da," we shall find there also at least as deep a sense of the awfulness and mystery of life, and we shall find a moral element which the Pagans never had. The lives of the saints are always simple, often childish, seldom beautiful 5 yet, as Goethe observed, if without beauty, they are always good. And as a phenomenon, let us not deceive ourselves on 442 -The Lives- of the Saints. the magnitude of the Christian hagiology. The Bollandists were restricted on many sides. They took only what was in Latin while every country in Europe had its own home growth in its own language and thus many of the most characteristic of the lives are not to be found at all in their collection. And again, they took but one life of each saint, composed in all cases late, and compiled out of the mass of various shorter lives which had grown up in different localities out of popular tradition ; so that many of their longer productions have an elaborate literary char- acter, with an appearance of artifice, which, till we know how they came into existence, might blind us to the vast width and variety of the traditionary sources from which they are drawn. In the twelfth century there were sixty- six lives extant of St. Patrick alone ; and that in a country where every parish had its own special saint and special legend of him. These sixty-six lives may have contained (Mr. Gibbon says must have contained) at least as many thousand lies. Perhaps so. To severe criticism, even the existence of a single apostle, St. Patrick, appears problem- atical. But at least there is the historical fact, about which there can be no mistake, that the stories did grow up in some way or other, that they were repeated, sung, listened to, written, and read ; that these lives in Ireland, and all over Europe and over the earth, wherever the Catholic faith was preached, stories like these, sprang out of the heart of the people, and grew and shadowed over the en- tire believing mind of the Catholic world. Wherever church was founded, or soil was consecrated for the long resting-place of those who had died in the faith ; wher- ever the sweet bells of convent or of monastery were heard in the evening air, charming the unquiet world to rest and remembrance of God, there dwelt the memory of some Apostle who had laid the first stone, there was the sepul- chre of some martyr whose relics reposed beneath the altar, of some confessor who had suffered there for his The Lives oj the Saints. 443 Master's sake, of some holy ascetic who in silent self -chosen austerity had woven a ladder there of prayer and penance, on which the angels of God were believed to have ascended and descended. It is not a phenomenon of an age or of a century ; it is characteristic of the history of Christianity. From the time when the first preachers of the faith passed out from their homes by that quiet Galilean lake, to go to and fro over the earth, and did their mighty work, and at last disappeared and were not any more seen, these sacred legends began to grow. Those who had once known the Apostles, who had drawn from their lips the blessed mes- sage of light and life, one and all would gather together what fragments they could find of their stories. Rumors blew in from all the' winds. They had been seen here, had been seen there, in the farthest corners of the earth, preaching, contending, suffering, prevailing. Affection did not stay to scrutinize. When some member of a family among ourselves is absent in some far place from which sure news of him comes slowly and uncertainly ; if he has been in the army, or on some dangerous expedition, or at sea, or anywhere where real or imaginary dangers stimu- late anxiety ; or when one is gone away from us altogether fallen perhaps in battle and when the story of his end can be collected but fitfully from strangers, who only knew his name, but had heard him nobly spoken of; the faint- est threads are caught at ; reports, the vagueness of which might be evident to indifference, are to love strong grounds of confidence, and " trifles light as air " establish them- selves as certainties. So, in those first Christian commu- nities, travellers came through from east and west ; legions on the march, or caravans of wandering merchants ; and one had been in Rome, and seen Peter disputing with Simon Magus ; another in India, where he had heard St. Thomas preaching to the Brahmins ; a third brought with him, from the wilds of Britain, a staff which he had cut, as he said, from a thorn-tree, the seed of which St. Joset>b 444 The Lives of the Saints. had sown there, and which had grown to its full size in a single night, making merchandise of the precious relic out of the credulity of the believers. So the legends grew, and were treasured up, and loved, and trusted ; and, alas ! all which we have been able to do with them is to call them lies, and to point a shallow moral on the impostures and credulities of the early Catholics. An atheist could not wish us to say more. If we can really believe that the Christian Church was made over in its very cradle to lies and to the father of lies, and was allowed to remain in his keeping, so to say, till yesterday, he will not much trouble himself with any faith which after such an admission we may profess to entertain. For, as this spirit began in the first age in which the Church began to have a history, so it continued so long as the Church as an integral body re- tained its vitality, and only died out in the degeneracy which preceded and which brought on the Reformation. For fourteen hundred years these stories held their place, and rang on from age to age, from century to century ; as the new faith widened its boundaries, and numbered ever more and more great names of men and women who had fought and died for it, so long their histories, living in the hearts of those for whom they labored, laid hold of them and filled them ; and the devout imagination, possessed with what was often no more than the rumor of a name r bodied it out into life, and form, and reality. And doubt- less, if we try them by any historical canon, we have to say that quite endless untruths grew in this way to be believed among men ; and not believed only, but held sacred, pas- sionately and devotedly ; not filling the history books only, not only serving to amuse and edify the refectory, or to furnish matter for meditation in the cell, but claiming clays for themselves of special remembrance, entering into litur- gies and inspiring prayers, forming the spiritual nucleus of the hopes and fears of millions of human souls. From the hard barren standing ground of the fact idol The Lives of the Saints. 445 ater, what a strange sight must be that still mountain-peak on the wild west Irish shore, where, for more than ten cen- turies, a rude old bell and a carved chip of oak have wit- nessed, or seemed to witness, to the presence long ago there of the Irish apostle ; and where, in the sharp crys- tals of the trap rock, a path has been worn smooth by the bare feet and bleeding knees of the pilgrims, who still, in the August weather, drag their painful way along it as they have done for a thousand years. Doubtless the " Lives of the Saints " are full of lies. Are there none in the " Iliad ? " or in the legends of JEneas ? Were the stories sung in the liturgy of Eleusis all so true ? so true as fact ? Are the songs of the Cid or of Siegfried true ? We say noth- ing of the lies in these ; but why ? Oh, it will be said, but they are fictions ; they were never supposed to be true. But they were supposed to be true, to the full as true as the " Legenda Aurea." Oh, then, they are poetry ; and besides, they have nothing to do with Christianity. Yes, that is it ; they have nothing to do with Christianity. Re- ligion has grown such a solemn business with us, and we bring such long faces to it, that we cannot admit or con- ceive to be at all naturally admissible such a light compan- ion as the imagination. The distinction between secular and religious has been extended even to the faculties ; and we cannot tolerate in others the fullness and freedom which we have lost or rejected for ourselves. Yet it has been a fatal mistake with the critics. They found them- selves off the recognized ground of Romance and Pagan- ism, and they failed to see the same principles at work, though at work with new materials. In the records of all human affairs, it cannot be too often insisted on that two kinds of truth run forever side by sirfe, or ~ather, crossing in and out with each other, form the warp and the woof of the colored web which we call history : the one, the literal and external truths corresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscovered laws of fact ; the other, the truths of feeling 446 The Lives of the Saints. and of thought, which embody themselves either in dis- torted pictures of outward things, or in some entirely new creation sometimes moulding and shaping real history ; sometimes taking the form of heroic biography, of tradi- tion, or popular legend ; sometimes appearing as recog- nized fiction in the epic, the drama, or the novel. It is useless to tell us that this is to confuse truth and falsehood. We are stating a fact, not a theory ; and if it makes truth and falsehood difficult to distinguish, that is Nature's fault, not ours. Fiction is only false, when it is false, not to fact, else how could it be fiction ? but when it is to laic. To try it by its correspondence to the real is pedantry. Imag- ination creates as Nature creates, by the force which is in man, which refuses to be restrained ; we cannot help it, and we are only false when we make monsters, or when we pre- tend that our inventions are facts, when we substitute truths of one kind for truths of another ; when we substitute, and again we must say when we intentionally substitute : whenever persons, and whenever facts seize strongly on the Imagination (and of course when there is any thing remarkable in them they must and will do so), invention glides into the images which form in our minds ; so it must be, and so it ever has been, from the first legends of a cos- mogony to the written life of the great man who died last year or century, or to the latest scientific magazine. "We cannot relate facts as they are ; they must first pass, through ourselves, and we are more or less than mortal if they gather nothing in the transit. The great outlines alone lie around us as imperative and constraining; the detail we each fill up variously, according to the turn of our sympathies, the extent of our knowledge, or our general the- ories of things : and therefore it may be said that the only literally true history possible is the history which mind has left of itself in all the changes through which it has passed. Suetonius is to the full as extravagant and superstitious as Surius, and Suetonius was most laborious and careful, The Lives of the Saints. 447 and was the friend of Tacitus and Pliny. Suetonius gives us prodigies, where Surius has miracles, but that is all the difference ; each follows the form of the supernatural which belonged to the genius of his age. Plutarch writes a life of Lycurgus, with details of his childhood, and of the trials and vicissitudes of his age ; and the existence of Lycurgus is now quite as questionable as that of St. Pa- trick or of St. George of England. No rectitude of intention will save us from mistakes. Sympathies and antipathies are but synonyms of prejudice, and indifference is impossible. Love is blind, and so is every other passion. Love believes eagerly what it de- sires ; it excuses or passes lightly over blemishes, it dwells on what is beautiful ; while dislike sees a tarnish on what is brightest, and deepens faults into vices. Do we believe that all this is a disease of unenlightened times, and that in our strong sunlight only truth can get received ? then let us contrast the portrait, for instance, of Sir Robert Peel as it is drawn in the Free Trade Hall at Manchesie, , l at the county meeting, and in the Oxford Common Room. It is not so. Faithful and literal history is possible only to an impassive spirit. Man will never write it, until per- fect knowledge and perfect faith in God shall enable him to see and endure every fact in its reality ; until perfect love shall kindle in him under its touch the one just emo- tion which is in harmony with the eternal order of all things. How far we are in these days from approximating to such a combination we need not here insist. Criticism in the hands of men like Niebuhr seems to have accomplished great intellectual triumphs ; and in Germany and France, and among ourselves, we have our new schools of the phi- losophy of history : yet their real successes have hitherto only been destructive. When philosophy reconstructs, it does nothing but project its own idea ; when it throws off i Written in 1850. 448 TJie Lives of the Saints* tradition, it cannot work without a theory : and what is a theory but an imperfect generalization caught up by a pre- disposition? What is Comte's great division of the eras but a theory, and facts are but as clay in his hands* which he can mould to illustrate it, as every clever man will find facts to be, let his theory be what it will ? Intellect can destroy, but it cannot restore life ; call in the creative fac- ulties call in Love, Idea, Imagination, and we have liv- ing figures, but we cannot tell whether they are figures which ever lived before. The high faith in which Love and Intellect can alone unite in their fullness, has not yet found utterance in modern historians. The greatest man who has as yet given himself to the recording of human affairs is, beyond question, Cornelius Tacitus. Alone in Tacitus a serene calmness of insight was compatible with intensity ot feeling. He took no side ; he may have been Imperialist, he may have been Repub- lican, but he has left no sign whether he was either ; he appears to have sifted facts with scrupulous integrity : to administer his love, his scorn, his hatred, according only to individual merit : and his sentiments are rather felt by the reader in the life-like clearness of his portraits, than ex- pressed in words by himself. Yet such a power of seeing into things was only possible to him, because there was no party left with which he could determinedly side, and no wide spirit alive in Rome through which he could feel. The spirit of Rome, the spirit of life had gone away to seek other forms, and the world of Tacitus was a heap of decaying institutions ; a stage where men and women, as they themselves were individually base or noble, played over their little parts. Life indeed was come into the world, was working in it, and silently shaping the old dead corpse into fresh and beautiful being. Tacitus alludes to it once only, in one brief scornful chapter ; and the most poorly gifted of those forlorn biographers whose unreason- ing credulity was piling up the legends of St. Mary and The Lives of the /Saints. 449 the Apostles, which now drive the ecclesiastical historian to despair, knew more, in his divine hope and faith, of the real spirit which had gone out among mankind, than the keenest and gravest intellect which ever set itself to con template them. And now having in some degree cleared the ground of difficulties, let us go back to the " Lives of the Saints." If Bede tells us lies about St. Cuthbert, we will disbelieve his stories ; but we will not call Bede a liar, even though he prefaces his life with a declaration that he has set down nothing but what he has ascertained on the clearest evi- dence. We are driven to no such alternative ; our canons of criticism are different from Bede's, and so are our no- tions of probability. Bede would expect a priori, and would therefore consider as sufficiently attested by a con- sent of popular tradition, what the oaths of living witnesses would fail to make credible to a modern English jury. We will call Bede a liar only if he put forward his picture of St. Cuthbert as a picture of a life which he considered admirable and excellent, as one after which he was en- deavoring to model his own, and which he held up as a pattern of imitation, when in his heart he did not consider it admirable at all, when he was making no effort at the austerities which he was lauding. The histories of the saints are written as ideals of a Christian life ; they have no elaborate and beautiful forms ; single and straight- forward as they are, if they are not this they are noth- ing. For fourteen centuries the religious mind of the Catholic world threw them out as its form of hero-wor- ship, as the heroic patterns of a form of human life which each Christian within his own limits was endeavoring to realize. The first martyrs and confessors were to those poor monks what the first Dorian conquerors were in the war songs of Tyrtaeus, what Achilles and Ajax and Aga- memnon and Diomed were wherever Homer was sung or read j or, in more modern times, what the Knights of 29 450 T7ie Lives of the Saints. the Eound Table were in the halls of the Norman castles. The Catholic mind was expressing its conception of the highest human excellence ; and the result is that immense and elaborate hagiology. As with the battle heroes, too, the inspiration lies in the universal idea ; the varieties of character (with here and there an exception) are slight and unimportant ; the object being to create examples for universal human imitation. Lancelot or Tristram were equally true to the spirit of chivalry ; and Patrick on the mountain, or Antony in the desert, are equal models of patieni. austerity. The knights fight with giants, enchant- ers, robbers, unknightly nobles, or furious wild beasts ; the Christians fight with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The knight leaves the comforts of home in quest of ad- ventures, the saint in quest of penance, and on the bare rocks or in desolate wildernesses subdues the devil in his flesh with prayers and penances ; and so alien is it all to the whole thought and system of the modern Christian, that he either rejects such stories altogether as monks' impostures, or receives them with disdainful wonder, as one more shameful form of superstition with which human nature has insulted Heaven and disgraced itself. O Leaving, however, for the present, the meaning of monastic asceticism, it seems necessary to insist that there really was such a thing ; there is no doubt about it. If the particular actions told of each saint are not literally true, as belonging to him, abundance of men did for many centuries lead the sort of life which saints are said to have led. We have got a notion that the friars were a snug, comfortable set, after all ; and the life in a monastery pretty much like that in a modern university, where the old monks' language and affectation of unworldliness does somehow contrive to coexist with as large a mass of bodily enjoyment as man's nature can well appropriate. Very likely this was the state into which many of the monasteries had fallen in the fifteenth century. It was a symptom of TJie Lives of the /Saints. 451 a very rapid disorder which had set in among them, and which promptly terminated in dissolution. But long, long ages lay behind the fifteenth century, in which, wisely or foolishly, these old monks and hermits did make them- selves a very hard life of it ; and the legend only exceeded the reality in being a very slightly idealized portrait. We are not speaking of the miracles ; that is a wholly different question. When men knew little of the order of Nature, whatever came to pass without an obvious cause was at once set down to influences beyond Nature and above it ; and so long as there were witches and enchanters, strong with the help of the bad powers, of course the especial servants of God would not be left without graces to outmatch and overcome the devil. And there were many other reasons why the saints should work miracles. They had done so under the old dispensation, and there was no obvious reason why Christians should be worse off than Jews. And again, although it be true, in the modern phrase, which is beginning to savor a little of cant, that the highest natural is the highest supernatural, nev- ertheless natural facts permit us to be so easily familiar with them, that they have an air of commonness ; and when we have a vast idea to express, there is always a disposition to the extraordinary. But the miracles are not the chief thing ; nor ever were they so. Men did not be- come saints by working miracles, but they worked miracles because they had become saints ; and the instructiveness and value of their lives lay in the means which they had used to make themselves what they were ; and as we said, in this part of the business there is unquestionable basis of truth scarcely even exaggeration. We have document- ary evidence, which has been filtered through the sharp ordeal of party hatred, of the way in which some men (and those, not mere ignorant fanatics, but men of vast mind and vast influence in their days) conducted themselves, where myth has no room to enter. We know something of 452 The Lives of the Saints. the hair-shirt of Thomas a Becket ; and there was another poor monk, whose asceticism imagination could not easily outrun ; he who, when the earth's mighty ones were banded together to crush him under their armed heels, spoke but one little word, and it fell among them like the spear of Cadmus ; the strong ones turned their hands against each other, and the armies melted away ; and the proudest mon- arch of the earth lay at that monk's threshold three winter nights in the scanty clothing of penance, suing miserably for forgiveness. Or again, to take a fairer figure. There is a poem extant, the genuineness of which, we believe, has not been challenged, composed by Columbia!!, commonly called St. Columba. He was a hermit in Arran, a rocky island in the Atlantic, outside GalwayBay; from which he was summoned, we do not know how, but in a manner which appeared to him to be a Divine call, to go away and be Bishop of lona. The poem is a " Farewell to Arran," which he wrote on leaving it ; and he lets us see some- thing of a hermit's life there. " Farewell," he begins (we are obliged to quote from memory), " a long farewell to thee, Arran of my heart. Paradise is with thee ; the gar- den of God witliin the sound of thy bells. The angels love Arran. Each day an angel comes there to join in its services." And then he goes on to describe his " dear cell," and the holy happy hours which he had spent there, " with the wind whistling through the loose stones, and the sea-spray hanging on his hair." Arran is no better than a wild rock. It is strewed over with the ruins which may still be seen of the old hermitages ; and at their best they could have been but such places as sheep would hud- dle under in a storm, and shiver in the cold and wet which would pierce through the chinks of the walls. Or, if written evidence be too untrustworthy, there are silent witnesses which cannot lie, that tell the same touch- ing story. Whoever loiters among the ruins of a mon- astery will see, commonly leading out of the cloisterSi Tim Lives of the Saints. 453 rows of cellars half under-ground, low, damp, and wretched- looking ; an earthen floor, bearing no trace of pavement ; a roof from which the mortar and the damp keep up (and always must have kept up) a perpetual ooze ; for a window a narrow slip in the wall, through which the cold and the wind find as free an access as the light. Such as they are, a well-kept dog would object to accept a night's lodging in them ; and if they had been prison cells, thousands of phi- lanthropic tongues would have trumpeted out their horrors. The stranger perhaps supposes that they were the very dungeons of which he has heard such terrible things. He asks his guide, and his guide tells him they were the monks' dormitories. Yes ; there on that wet soil, with that dripping roof above them, was the self-chosen home of those poor men. Through winter frost, through rain and storm, through summer sunshine, generation after generation of them, there they lived and prayed, and at last lay down and died. It is all gone now gone as if it had never been ; and it was as foolish as, if the attempt had succeeded, it would have been mischievous, to revive a devotional interest in the Lives of the Saints. It would have produced but one more unreality in an age already too full of such. No one supposes we should have set to work to live as they lived ; that any man, however earnest in his religion, would have gone looking for earth floors and wet dungeons, or wild islands to live in, when he could get any thing better Either we are wiser, or more humane, or more self-indul- gent ; at any rate we are something which divides us from mediaeval Christianity by an impassable gulf, which this age or this epoch will not see bridged over. Nevertheless, these modern hagiologists, however wrongly they went to work at it, had detected, and were endeavoring to fill, a very serious blank in our- educational system ; a very serious blank indeed, and one which, somehow, we must contrive to get filled if the education of character is ever to be more than a name with us. To try and teach people 454 The Lives of the Saints. how to live without giving them examples in which our rules are illustrated, is like teaching them to draw by the rules of perspective, and of light and shade, without designs in which to study the effects ; or to write verse by the laws of rhyme and metre, without song or poem in which rhyme and metre are exhibited. It is a principle which we have forgotten, and it is one which the old Catholics did not for- get. We do not mean that they set out with saying to themselves, "We must have examples, we must have ideals ; " very likely they never thought about it at all ; love for their holy men, and a thirst to know about them, pro- duced the histories ; and love unconsciously working gave them the best for which they could have wished. The boy at school at the monastery, the young monk disciplining himself as yet with difficulty under the austerities to which he had devoted himself, the old one halting on toward the close of his pilgrimage, all of them had before their eyes, in the legend of the patron saint, a personal realiza- tion of all they were trying after ; leading them on, beckon- ing to them, and pointing, as they stumbled among their difficulties, to the marks which his own footsteps had left, as he had trod that hard- path before them. It was as if the Church was forever saying to them: "You have doubts and fears, and trials and temptations, outward and inward ; you have sinned, perhaps, and feel the burden of your sin. Here was one who, like you, in this very spot, under the same sky, treading the same soil, among the same hills and woods and rocks and rivers, was tried like you, tempted like you, sinned like you ; but here he prayed, and persevered, and did penance, and washed out his sins ; he fought the fight, he vanquished the Evil One, he triumphed, and now he reigns a saint with Christ in heaven. The same ground which yields you your food, once supplied him ; he breathed, and lived, and felt, and died here ; and now, from his throne in the sky, he is still looking lovingly down on his children, making intercession The Lives of the Saints. for you that you may have grace to follow him, that by and by he may himself offer you at God's throne as his own." It is impossible to measure the influence which a personal reality of this kind must have exercised on the mind, thus daily and hourly impressed upon it through a life ; there is nothing vague any more, no abstract excellences to strain after ; all is distinct, personal, palpable. It is no dream. The saint's bones are under the altar ; nay, perhaps his very form and features undissolved. Under some late abbot the coffin may have been opened and the body seen without mark or taint of decay. Such things have been, and the emaciation of a saint will account for it without a miracle. Daily some incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of, or preached upon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives in light in the long chapel windows; and in the summer matins his figure, lighted up in splendor, gleams down on the congregation as they pray, or streams in mys- terious tints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in soft celestial glory, and shining as he shines in heaven. Alas, alas ! where is it all gone ? "VVe are going to venture a few thoughts on the wide question, what possibly may have been the meaning of so large a portion of the human race, and so many centuries of Christianity, having been surrendered and seemingly sacrificed to the working out this dreary asceticism. If right once, then it is right now ; if now worthless, then it could never have been more than worthless ; and the energies which spent themselves on it were like corn sown upon the rock, or substance given for that which is not bread. We supposed ourselves challenged recently for our facts. Here is an enormous fact which there is no evad- ing. It is not to be slurred over with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of superstition, of the twilight of the understanding, of barbarism, and of nursery credulity; it is matter for the philosophy of history, if the philosophy hap vet been born which can deal with it ; one of the solid, 456 The Lives of the Saints. experienced facts in the story of mankind which mist be accepted and considered with that respectful deference which all facts claim of their several sciences, and which w r ill certainly not disclose its meaning (supposing it to have a meaning) except to reverence, to sympathy, to love. We must remember that the men who wrote these stories, and who practiced these austerities, were the same men who composed our liturgies, who built our churches and our cathedrals and the Gothic cathedral is, perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificent creation which the mind of man has as yet thrown out of itself. If there be any such thing as a philosophy of history, real or possible, it is in virtue of there being certain progressive organizing laws in which the fretful lives of each of us are gathered into and subordinated in some larger unity, through which age is linked to age, as we move forward, with an hdrizon expand- ing and advancing. And if this is true, the magnitude of any human phenomenon is a criterion of its importance, and definite forms of thought working through long historic periods imply an effect of one of these vast laws imply a distinct step in human progress. Something previously unrealized is being lived out, and rooted into the heart of O ' mankind. Nature never half does her work. . She goes over it, and over it, to make assurance sure, and makes good her ground with wearying repetition. A single section of a short paper is but a small space to enter on so vast an enterprise ; nevertheless, a few very general words shall be ventured as a suggestion of what this monastic or saintly spirit may possibly have meant. First, as the spirit of Christianity is antagonistic to the world, whatever form the spirit of the world assumes, the ideals of Christianity will of course be their opposite ; as one verges into one extreme, the other will verge into the contrary. In those* rough times the law was the sword ; animal might of arm, and the strong animal heart which the Lives of the Saints. 457 guided it, were the excellences which the world rewarded ; and monasticism, therefore, in its position of protest, would be the destruction and abnegation of the animal nature. The war hero in the battle or the tourney-yard might be taken as the apotheosis of the fleshy man ; the saint in the desert, of the spiritual. But this interpretation is slight, imperfect, and if true at all only partially so. The animal and the spiritual are not contradictories ; they are the complements in the perfect character ; and in the Middle Ages, as in all ages of genuine earnestness, they interfused and penetrated each other. There were warrior saints and saintly warriors ; and those grand old figures which sleep cross-legged in the cathedral aisles were something higher than only one more form of the beast of prey. Monasticism represented something more positive than a protest against the world. We believe it to have been the realization of the infinite loveliness and beauty of personal purity. In the earlier civilization, the Greeks, however genuine their reverence for the gods, do not seem to have supposed any part of their duty to the gods to consist in keeping their bodies untainted. Exquisite as was their sense of beauty, of beauty of mind as well as beauty of form, with all their loftiness and their nobleness, with their ready love of moral excellence when manifested, as fortitude, or devotion to liberty and to home, they had little or no idea of what we mean by morality. With a few rare exceptions, pullution, too detestable to be even named among ourselves, was of familiar and daily occurrence among their greatest men ; was no reproach to philosopher or to statesman ; and was not supposed to be incompatible, and was not, in fact, in- compatible, with any of those especial excellences which we so admire in the Greek character. Among the Romans (that is, the early Romans of the republic), there was a sufficiently austere morality. A public officer of state, whose business was to inquire into 458 The Lives of the Saints. the private lives of the citizens, and to punish offenses against morals, is a phenomenon which we have seen only once on this planet. There was never a nation before, and there has been none since, with sufficient virtue to endure it. But the Roman morality was not lovely for its own sake, nor excellent in itself. It was obedience to law, prac- ticed and valued, loved for what resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not loved for itself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal ; and it submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon as that energy grew slack when the religion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the world was at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind ; there was no loveliness in virtue to make it desired ; and the Rome of the Caesars presents, in its later ages, a picture of enormous sensuality, of the coarsest .animal desire, with means unlimited to gratify it. In Latin literature, as little as in the Greek, is there any sense of the beauty of purity. Moral essays on temperance we may find, and praise enough of the wise man whose passions and whose appe- tites are trained into obedience to reason. But this is no more than the philosophy of the old Roman life, which got itself expressed in words when men were tired of the reality. It involves no sense of sin. If sin could be in- dulged without weakening self-command, or without hurt- ing other people. Roman philosophy would have nothing to say against it. The Christians stepped far out beyond philosophy. Without speculating on the why, they felt that indulgence of animal passion did, in fact, pollute them, and so much the more, the more it was deliberate. Philosophy, gliding into Manicheism, divided the forces of the universe, giving the spirit to God, but declaring matter to be eternally and incurably evil ; and looking forward to the time when the The Lives of the Saints. 459 spirit should be emancipated from the body, as the begin- ning of, or as the return to, its proper existence, a man like Plotinus took no especial care what became the mean- while of its evil tenement of flesh. If the body sinned, sin was its element ; it could not do other than sin ; purity of conduct could not make the body clean, and no amount of bodily indulgence could shed a taint upon the spirit a very comfortable doctrine, and one which, under various disguises, has appeared a good many times on the earth. But Christianity, shaking all this off, would present the body to God as a pure and holy sacrifice, as so much of the material world conquered from the appetites and lusts, and from the devil whose abode they were. This was the meaning of the fastings and scourgings, the penances and night-watchings ; it was this which sent St. Anthony to the tombs and set Simeon on his pillar, to conquer the devil in the flesh, and keep themselves, if possible, undefiled by so much as one corrupt thought. And they may have been absurd and extravagant. When the feeling is stronger than the judgment, men are very apt to be extravagant. If, in the recoil from Mani- cheism, they conceived that a body of a saint thus purified had contracted supernatural virtue and could work mira- cles, they had not sufficiently attended to the facts, and so far are not unexceptionable witnesses to them. Neverthe- less they did their work, and in virtue of it we are raised to a higher stage we are lifted forward a mighty step which we can never again retrace. Personal purity is not the whole for which we have to care : it is but one feature in the ideal character of man. The monks may have thought it was all, or more nearly all than it is ; and there- fore their lives may seem to us poor, mean, and emascu- late. Yet it is with life as it is with science ; generations of men have given themselves exclusively to single branches, which, when mastered, form but a little section m a cosmic philosophy ; and in life, so slow is progress, it 400 The 'Lives of the Saints. may take a thousand years to make good a single step. Weary and tedious enough it seems when we cease to speak in large language, and remember the numbers of individual souls who have been at work at the process ; but who knows whereabouts we are in the duration of the race ? Is humanity crawling out of the cradle, or tottering into the grave ? Is it in nursery, in school-room, or in opening manhood ? "Who knows ? It is enough for us to be sure of our steps when we have taken them, and thank- fully to accept what has been done for us. Henceforth it is impossible for us to give our unmixed admiration to any character which moral shadows overhang. Henceforth we O require, not greatness only, but goodness ; and not that goodness only which begins and ends in conduct correctly regulated, but that love of goodness, that keen pure feeling for it, which resides in a conscience as sensitive and sus- ceptible as woman's modesty. So much for what seems to us the philosophy of this matter. If we are right, it is no more than a first furrow in the crust of a soil which hitherto the historians have been contented to leave in its barrenness. If they are conscientious enough not to trifle with the facts, as they look back on them from the luxurious self-indulgence of modern Christianity, they either revile the superstition or pity the ignorance which made such large mistakes on the nature of religion - and, loud in their denunciations of priestcraft and of lying wonders, they point their moral with pictures of the ambition of mediaeval prelacy or the scandals of the annals of the papacy. For the inner life of all those millions of immortal souls who were stniggling, with such good or bad success as was given them, to carry Christ's cross along their journey through life, they set it by, pass it over, dismiss it out of history, with some poor commonplace simper of sorrow or of scorn. It will not do. Mankind have not been so long on this planet alto- gether that we can allow so large a chasm to be scooped out of their spiritual existence. The Live* of the Saints. 461 We intended to leave our readers with something lighter than all this in the shape of literary criticism, and a few specimens of the biographical style ; in both of these we must now, however, be necessarily brief. Whoever is curious to study the lives of the saints in their originals, should rather go anywhere than to the Bollandists, and universally never read a late life when he can command an early one ; for the genius in them is in the ratio of their antiquity, and, like river-water, is most pure nearest to the fountain. We are lucky in possessing several specimens of the mode of their growth in late and early lives of the same saints, and the process in all is similar. Out of the unnumbered lives of St. Bride, three are left ; out of the sixty-six of St. Patrick, there are eight ; the first of each belonging to the sixth century, the latest to the thirteenth. The earliest in each instance are in verse ; they belong to a time when there was no one to write such things, and were popular in form and popular in their origin. The flow is easy, the style graceful and natural ; but the step from poetry to prose is substantial as well as formal ; the imagination is ossified, and we exchange the exuberance of legendary creativeness for the dogmatic record of fact without reality, and fiction without grace. The marvelous in the poetical lives is comparatively slight ; the after-mira- cles being composed frequently out of a mistake of poets' metaphors for literal truth. There is often real, genial, human beauty in the old verse. The first two stanzas, for instance, of " St. Bride's Hymn " are of high merit, as may, perhaps, be imperfectly seen in a translation : " Bride the queen, she loved not the world ; She floated on the waves of the world As the sea-bird floats upon the billow. " Such sleep she slept as the mother sleeps In the far land of her captivity, Mourning for her child at home." What a picture is there of the strangeness and yearning of the poor human soul in this earthly pilgrimage ! 4G2 The Lives of the Saints. The poetical Life of St. Patrick," too, is full of fiue, wild, natural imagery. The boy is described as a shepherd on the hills of Down, and there is a legend, well told, of the angel Victor coming to him, and leaving a gigantic footprint on a rock from which he sprang back into heaven. The legend, of course, rose from some remark- able natural feature of the spot ; as it is first told, a shad- owy unreality hangs over it, and it is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the boy ; but in the later prose all is crystalline ; the story is drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail, into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrick is described, as the after-apostle, raising the dead Celts to life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natu- ral force, and we have a long, weary list of literal deaths and literal raisings. So in manj ways the freshness and individuality was lost with time. The larger saints swal- lowed up the smaller and appropriated their exploits ; chasms were supplied by an ever-ready fancy ; and, like the stock of good works laid up for general use, there was a stock of miracles ever ready when any defect was to be supplied. So it was that, after the first impulse, the pro- gressive life of a saint rolled on like a snowball down a mountain side, gathering up into itself whatever lay in its path, fact or legend, appropriate or inappropriate some- times real jewels of genuine old tradition, sometimes the debris of the old creeds and legends of heathenism ; and on, and on, till at length it reached the bottom, and was dashed in pieces on the Reformation. One more illustration shall serve as evidence of what the really greatest, most vigorous minds in the twelfth century could accept as possible or probable, which they could re- late (on what evidence we do not know) as really ascer- tained facts. We remember something of St. Anselm : both as a statesman and as a theologian, he was unques- tionably among the ablest men of his time alive in Europe. Here is a story which Anselm tells of a certain Cornish St. TJie Lives of the Saints. 463 Kieran. The saint, with thirty of his companions, was preaching within the frontiers of a lawless Pagan prince ; and, disregarding all orders to be quiet or to leave the coun- try, continued to agitate, to threaten, and to thunder even in the ears of the prince himself. Things took their natu- ral course. Disobedience provoked punishment. A guard of soldiers was sent, and the saint and his little band were decapitated. The scene of the execution was a wood, and the heads and trunks were left lying there for the wolves and the wild birds. But now a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of the holy Denis; was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these saints from prof- anation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and select- ing first his own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards performing the same sacred office for each of his companions, giving each body its own head, he dug graves for them and buried them, and last of all buried himself. It is even so. So it stands written in a life claiming Ansel m's authorship ; and there is no reason why the authorship should not be his. Out of the heart come the issues of evil and of good, and not out of the intellect or the understanding. Men are not good or bad, noble or base thank God for it! as they judge well or ill of the probabilities of Nature, but as they love God and hate the devil. And yet the story is instructive. We have heard grave good men men of intellect and influence with all the advantages of modern science, learning, ex- perience, men who would regard Anselm with sad and serious pity, yet tell us stories, as having fallen within their own experience, of the marvels of mesmerism, to the full as ridiculous (if any thing is ridiculous) as this of the poor decapitated Kieran. Mutato nomine, de te Tabula nnrratur. 464 The Lives of the Saints. We see our natural faces in the glass of history, and turn away and straightway forget what manner of men we are. The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith. REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 1850. FROM St. Anselm to Mr. Emerson, from the "Acta Sanctorum " to the " Representative Men ; " so far in seven centuries we have travelled. The races of the old Ideals have become extinct like the Preadamite Saurians ; and here are our new pattern specimens on which we are to look, and take comfort and encouragement to ourselves. The philosopher, the mystic, the poet, the skeptic, the man of the world, the writer ; these are the present moral categories, the summa genera of human greatness as Mr. Emerson arranges them. From every point of view an exceptionable catalogue. They are all thinkers, to begin with, except one ; and thought is but a poor business com- pared to action. Saints did not earn canonization by the number of their folios ; and if the necessities of the times are now driving our best men out of action into philosophy and verse-making, so much the worse for them and so much the worse for the world. The one pattern actor, " the man of the world," is Napoleon Bonaparte, not in the least a person, as we are most of us at present feeling, whose example the world desires to see followed. Mr. Emerson would have done better if he had kept to his own side of the Atlantic. He is paying his own countrymen but a poor compliment by coming exclusively to Europe for his heroes ; and he would be doing us in Europe more real good by a great deal if he would tell us something of the backwoodsmen in Kentucky and Ohio. However, to 30 466 Representative Men. let that pass ; it is not our business here to quarrel either with him or his book ; and the book stands at the head of our article rather because it presents a very noticeable de- ficiency of which its -writer is either unaware or careless* These six predicables, as the logician would call them, what are they ? Are they ultimate genera refusing to be classified further ? or is there any other larger type of greatness under which they fall ? In the naturalist's cata- logue, poet, skeptic, and the rest will all be classified as men man being an intelligible entity. Has Mr. Emer- son any similar clear idea of great man or good man ? If so, where is he ? what is he ? It is desirable that we should know. Men will not get to heaven because they lie under one or other of these predicables. What is that supreme type of character which is in itself good or great, unqualified with any further differential Is there any such ? and if there be, where is the representative of this ? It may be said that the generic man exists nowhere in an ideal unity that if considered at all, he must be ab- stracted from the various sorts of men, black and white, tame or savage. So if we would know what a great man or a good man means, we must look to some specific line in which he is good and abstract our general idea. And that is very well, provided we know what we are about ; provided we understand, in our abstracting, how to get the essential idea distinctly out before ourselves, without en- tangling ourselves in the accidents. Human excellence, after all the teaching of the last eighteen hundred years, ought to be something palpable by this time. It is the one thing which we are all taught to seek and to aim at forming in ourselves ; and if representative men are good for any thing at all, it can only be, not as they represent merely curious combinations of phenomena, but as they illustrate us in a completely realized form, what we are, every single one of us, equally interested in understanding. It is not the " great man " as " man of the world " that we Representative Men. 467 care for, but the " man of the world " as a " great man " which is a very different thing. Having to live in this world, how to live greatly here is the question for us ; not how, being great, we can cast our greatness in a worldly mould. There may be endless successful " men of the world " who are mean or little enough all the while ; and the Emersonian attitude will confuse success Avith great- ness, or turn our ethics into a chaos of absurdity. So it is with every thing which man undertakes and works in. Life has grown complicated ; and for one employment in old times there are a hundred now. But it is not they which are any thing, but we. We are the end, they are but the means, the material like the clay, or the marble, or the bronze in which the sculptor carves his statue. The form is every thing ; and what is the form ? From nursery to pulpit every teacher rings on the one note be good, be noble, be men. What is goodness then ? and what is nobleness ? and where are the examples ? We do not say that there are none. God forbid ! That is not what we are meaning at all. If the earth had ceased to bear men pleasant in God's sight, it would have passed away like the cities in the plain. But who are they ? which are they ? how are we to know them ? They are our leaders in this life campaign of ours. If we could see them, we would follow them, and save ourselves many and many a fall, and many an enemy whom we could have avoided, if we had known of him. It cannot be that the thing is so simple, when names of highest reputation are wrangled over, and such poor counterfeits are mobbed with applauding follow- ers. In art and science we can detect the charlatan, but in life we do not recognize him so readily we do not rec- ognize the charlatan, and we do not recognize the true man. Rajah Brooke is alternately a hero or a pirate ; and fifty of the best men among us are likely to have fifty opinions on the merits of Elizabeth or Cromwell. But surely, men say, the thing is simple. The con?.- 468 Representative Men. mandments are simple. It is not that people do not know, but that they will not act up to what they know. "We hear a great deal of this in sermons, and elsewhere ; and of course, as every body's experience will tell him, there is a great deal too much reason why we should hear of it. But there are two sorts of duty, positive and negative ; what we ought to do, and what we ought not to do. To the latter of these, conscience is pretty much awake ; but by cun- ningly concentrating its attention on one side of the mat- ter, conscience has contrived to forget altogether that any other sort exists at all. " Doing wrong " is breaking a commandment which forbids us to do some particular thing. That is all the notion which in common language is attached to the idea. Do not kill, steal, lie, swear, com- mit adultery, or break the Lord's Day these are the commandments ; very simple, doubtless, and easy to be known. But, after all, what are they ? They are no more than the very first and rudimental conditions of goodness. Obedience to these is not more than a small part of what is required of us ; it is no more than the foundation on which the superstructure of character is to be raised. To go through life, and plead at the end of it that we have not broken any of these commandments, is but what the un- profitable servant did, who kept his talent carefully un- spent, and yet was sent to outer darkness for his useless- ness. Suppose these commandments obeyed what then ? It is but a small portion of our time which, we will hope, is spent in resisting temptation to break them. What are we to do with the rest of it ? Or suppose them (and this is a high step indeed) resolved into love of God and love of our neighbor. Suppose we know that it is our duty to love our neighbor as ourselves. What are we to do, then, for our neighbor, besides abstaining from doing him in- jury ? The saints knew very well what they were to do ; but our duties, we suppose, lie in a different direction ; and it does not appear that we have found them. " We have Representative Men. 469 duties so positive to our neighbor," says Bishop Butler, " that if we give more of our time and of our attention to ourselves and our own matters than is our just due, we are taking what is not ours, and are guilty of fraud." What does Bishop Butler mean ? It is easy to answer gener- ally. In detail, it is not only difficult, it is impossible to answer at all. The modern world says, " Mind your own business, and leave others to take care of theirs ; " and whoever among us aspires to more than the negative abstaining from wrong, is left to his own guidance. There is no help for him, no instruction, no modern ideal which shall be to him what the heroes were to the young Greek or Roman, or the martyrs to the Middle Age Christian. There is neither track nor footprint in the course which he will have to follow, while, as in the old fairy tale, the hill- side which he is climbing is strewed with black stones mocking at him with their thousand voices. We have no moral criterion, no idea, no counsels of perfection ; and surely this is the reason why education is so little pros- perous with us ; because the only education worth any thing is the education of character, and we cannot educate a character unless we have some notion of what we would form. Young men, as we know, are more easily led than driven. It is a very old story that to forbid this and that (so curious and contradictory is our nature) is to stimulate a desire to do it. But place before a boy a figure of a noble man ; let the circumstances in which he has earned his claim to be called noble be such as the boy himself sees around himself; let him see this man rising over his temptation, and following life victoriously and beautifully forward, and, depend on it, you will kindle his heart as no threat of punishment here or anywhere will kindle it. People complain of the sameness in the " Lives of the Saints." It is that very sameness which is the secret of their excellence. There is a sameness in the heroes of ihe " Iliad ; " there is a sameness in the historical heroes of 470 Representative Men. Greece and Rome. A man is great as he contends best with the circumstances of his age, and those who fight best with the same circumstances, of course grow like each other. And so with our own age if we really could have the lives of our best men written for us (and written well, by men who knew what to look for, and what it was on which they should insist), they would be just as like each other too, and would for that reason be of such infi- nite usefulness. They would not be like the old Ideals. Times are changed ; they were one thing, we have to be another their enemies are not ours. There is a moral metempsychosis in the change of era, and probably no lin- eament of form or feature remains identical ; yet surely not because less is demanded of us not less, but more more, as we are again and again told on Sundays from the pulpits ; if the preachers would but tell us in what that "more" consists. The loftiest teaching we ever hear is that we are to work in the spirit of love ; but we are still left to generalities, while action divides and divides into ever smaller details. It is as if the Church said to the painter or to the musician whom she was training, you must work in the spirit of love and in the spirit of truth ; and then adding, that the Catholic painting or the Catho- lic music was what he was not to imitate, supposed that she had sent him out into the world equipped fully for his enterprise. And what comes of this ? Emersonianism has come, modem hagiology has come, and Ainsworth novels and Bulwer novels, and a thousand more unclean spirits. We have cast out the Catholic devil, and the Puritan has swept the house and garnished it ; but as yet we do not see any symptoms showing of a healthy incoming tenant, and there may be worse states than Catholicism. If we wanted proof of the utter spiritual disintegration into which we have fallen, it would be enough that we have no biographies, We do not mean that we have no written lives of our fel- Representative Men. 471 low-creatures; there are enough and to spare. But not any one is there in which the ideal tendencies of this age can be discerned in their true form ; not one, or hardly any one, which we could place in a young man's hands, with such warm confidence as would let us say of it, " Read that ; there is a man such a man as you ought to be ; read it, meditate on it ; see what he was, and how he made himself what he was, and try and be yourself like him." This, as \ve saw lately, is what Catholicism did. It had its one broad type of perfection, which in countless thousands of instances was perpetually reproducing itself a type of character not especially belonging to any one profession ; it was a type to which priest and layman, knight or bishop, king or peasant, might equally aspire : men of all sorts aspired to it, and men of all sorts attained to it ; and as fast as she had realized them (so to say), the Church took them in her arms, and held them up before the world as fresh and fresh examples of victory over the devil. This is what that Church was able to do, and I'. Is what we cannot do ; and yet, till we can learn to do it, no education which we can offer has any chance of prospering. Perfection is not easy ; it is of all things most difficult ; difficult to know and difficult to practice. Rules of life will not do ; even if our analysis of life in all its possible forms were as complete as it is in fact rudimentary, they would still be inefficient. The philosophy of the thing might be understood, but the practice would be as far off as ever. In life, as in art, and as in mechanics, the only profitable teaching is the teaching by example. Your mathematician, or your man of science, may discourse ex- cellently on the steam-engine, yet he cannot make one ; he cannot make a bolt or a screw. The master workman in the engine-room does not teach his apprentice the theory of expansion, or of atmospheric pressure ; he guides his hand upon the turncock, he practices his eye upon the index, and he leaves the science to follow when the practice has 472 Representative Men. become mechanical. So it is with every thing which man learns to do ; and yet for the art of arts, the trade of trades, for life, we content ourselves with teaching our children the catechism and the commandments ; we preach them sermons on the good of being good, and the evil of being evil ; in our higher education we advance to the the- ory of habit and the freedom of the will ; and then, when failure follows failure, ipsa experientia reclamanle, we hug ourselves with a complacent self-satisfied reflection that the fault is not ours, that all which men could do we have done. The freedom of the will ! as if a blacksmith would ever teach a boy to make a horseshoe, by telling him he could make one if he chose. In setting out on our journey through life, we are like strangers set to find their way across a difficult and entan- gled country. It is not enough for us to know that others have set out as we set out, that others have faced the lions in the path and overcome them, and have arrived at last at the journey's end. Such a knowledge may give us heart but the help it gives is nothing beyond teaching us that the difficulties are not insuperable. It is the track, which these others, these pioneers of godliness, have beaten in, that we cry to have shown us ; not a mythic " Pilgrim's Progress," but a real path trodden in by real men. Here is a crag, and there is but one spot where it can be climbed ; here is a morass or a river, and there is a bridge in one place, and a ford in another. There are robbers in this forest, and wild beasts in that ; the tracks cross and recross, and, as in the old labyrinth, only one will bring us right. The age of the saints has passed; they are no longer any service- to us ; we must walk in their spirit, but not along their road; and in this sense w r e say, that we have no pattern great men, no biographies, no history, which are of real service to us. It is the remarkable char- acteristic of the present time, as far as we know a new phenomenon since history began to be written ; one more Representative Men. 473 proof, if we wanted proof, that we are entering on another era. In our present efforts at educating, we are like work- men setting about to make a machine which they know is to be composed of plates and joints, and wheels and screws and springs : they temper their springs, and smooth their plates, and carve out carefully their wheels and screws, but having no idea of the machine in its combination, they either fasten them together at random, and create some monster of disjointed undirected force, or else pile the fin- ished materials into a heap together, and trust to some organic spirit in themselves which will shape them into unity. We do not know what we would be at. Make our children into men, says one but what sort of men ? The Greeks were men, so were the Jews, so were the Komans, so were the old Saxons, the Normans, the Duke of Alva's Spaniards, and Cromwell's Puritans. These were all men, and strong men too ; yet all different, and all differently trained. " Into Christian men," say others : but the saints were Christian men ; yet the modern Englishmen have been offered the saints' biographies, and have with sufficient clearness expressed their opinion of them. Alas ! in all this confusion, only those keen-eyed chil- dren of this world find their profit ; their idea does not readily forsake them. In their substantial theory of life, the business of man in it is to get on, to thrive, to prosper, to have riches in possession. They will have their little ones taught, by the law of demand, what will fetch its price in the market; and this is clear, bold, definite, straight- forward and therefore it is strong, and works its way. It works and will prevail for a time ; for a time but not forever, unless indeed religion be all a dream, and our airy notions of ourselves a vision out of which our wise age is the long-waited-for awakening. It would be a weary and odious business to follow out all the causes which have combined to bring us into our present state. Many of them lie deep down in the roots 474 Representative Men. of humanity, and many belong to that large system of moral causation which works through vast masses of man- kind which, impressing peculiar and necessary features on the eras as they succeed, leaves individuals but a limited margin within which they may determine what they will be. One cause, however, may be mentioned, which lies near the surface, and which for many reasons it may be advantageous to consider. At first thought it may seem superficial and captious ; but we do not think it will at the second, and still less at the third. Protestantism, and even Anglo-Protestantism, has not been without its great men. In their first fierce struggle for existence, these creeds gave birth to thousands whose names may command any rank in history. But alone of all forms of religion, past or present, and we will add (as we devoutly hope), to come (for in her present form, at least, the Church of England cannot long remain), Protest- antism knows not what to do with her own offspring ; she is unable to give them open and honorable recognition. Entangled in speculative theories of human depravity, of the worthlessness of the best which the best men can do, Protestantism is unable to say heartily of any one, " Here is a good man to be loved and remembered with rever- ence." There are no saints in the English Church. The English Church does not pretend to saints. Her children may live purely, holily, and beautifully, but her gratitude for them must be silent ; she may not thank God for them she may not hold them up before her congregation. They may or they may not have been really good, but she may not commit herself to attributing a substantial value to the actions of a nature so corrupt as that of man. Among Protestants, the Church of England is the worst, for she is not wholly Protestant. In the utterness of the self-abnegation of the genuine Protestant there is some- thing approaching the heroic. But she, ambitious of being Catholic as well as Protestant, like that old Church of Representative Men. 475 evil memory which would be neither hot nor cold, will neither wholly abandon merit, nor wholly claim it ; but halts on between two opinions, claiming and disclaiming, saying and in the next breath again unsaying. The Ox- ford student being asked for the doctrine of the Anglican Church on good works, knew the rocks and whirlpools among which an unwary answer might involve him, and steering midway between Scylla and Charybdis, replied, with laudable caution, " A few of them would not do a man any harm." It is scarcely a caricature of the prudence of the Articles. And so at last it has come to this with us. The soldier can raise a column to his successful general ; the halls of the law courts are hung round with portraits of the ermined sages ; Newton has his statue, and Harvey and Watt, in the academies of the sciences ; and each young aspirant after fame, entering for the first time upon the calling which he has chosen, sees high excellence highly honored ; sees the high career, and sees its noble ending, marked out each step of it in golden letters. But the Church's aisles are desolate, and desolate they must remain. There is no statue for the Christian. The empty niches stare out like hollow eye-sockets from the walls. Good men live in the Church and die in her, whose story written out or told would be of inestimable benefit, but she may not write it. She may speak of goodness, but not of the good man ; as she may speak of sin, but may not cen- sure the sinner. Her position is critical; the Dissenters would lay hold of it. She may not do it, but she will do what she can. She cannot tolerate an image indeed, or a picture of her own raising ; she has no praise to utter at her children's graves, when their lives have witnessed to her teaching. But if others will bear the expense and will risk the sin, she will offer no objection. Pier walls are naked. The wealthy ones among her congregation may adorn them as they please ; the splendor of a dead man's memorial rhall be, not as his virtues were, but as his purse ; 476 Representative Men. and his epitaph may be brilliant according as there are means to pay for it. They manage things better at the museums and the institutes. Let this pass, however, as the worst case. There are other causes at work besides the neglect of churches ; the neglect itself being as much a result as a cause. There is a common dead level over the world, to which churches and teachers, however seemingly opposite, are alike con- demned. As it is here in England, so it is with the Amer- ican Emerson. The fault is not in them, but in the age of which they are no more than the indicators. We are passing out of old forms of activity into others new and on their present scale untried ; and how to work nobly in them is the one problem for us all. Surius will not profit us, nor the ' Mort d' Arthur." Our calling is neither to the hermitage nor to the Eound Table. Our work lies now in those peaceful occupations which, in ages called heroic, were thought unworthy of noble souls. In those it was the slave who tilled the ground, and wove the garments. It was the ignoble burgher who covered the sea with his ships, and raised up factories and workshops ; and how far such occupations influenced the character, how they could be made to minister to loftiness of heart, and high and beautiful life, was a question which could not occur while the atmosphere of the heroic was on all sides believed so alien to them. Times have changed. The old hero wor- ship has vanished with the need of it ; but no other has risen in its stead, and without it we wander in the dark. The commonplaces of morality, the negative command- ments, general exhortations to goodness, while neither speaker nor hearer can tell what they mean by goodness these are all which now remain to us ; and thrown into a life more complicated than any which the earth has yet ex- perienced, we are left to wind our way through the laby- rinth of its details without any clew except our own in- stincts, our own knowledge, our own hopes and desires. Representative Men. 477 We complain of generalities ; we will not leave ourselves exposed to the same charge. We will mention a few of the thousand instances in which we cry for guidance and find none ; instances on which those who undertake to teach us ought to have made up their minds. On the surface at least of the Prayer-book, there seems to be something left remaining of the Catholic penitential system. Fasting is spoken of and abstinence, and some form or other of self-inflicted self-denial is necessarily meant. This thing can by no possibility be unimportant, an.d we may well smile at the exclusive claims of a church to the cure of our souls, who is unable to say what she thinks about it. Let us ask her living interpreters then, and what shall we get for an answer ? Either no answer at all, or contradictory answers ; angrily, violently, passion- ately contradictory. Among the many voices, what is a young man to conclude ? He, will conclude naturally ac- cording to his inclination ; and if he chooses right, it will most likely be on a wrong motive. Again, courage is, on all hands, considered as an essen- tial of high character. Among all fine people, old and modern, wherever we are able to get an insight into their training system, we find it a thing particularly attended to. The Greeks, the Romans, the old Persians, our own nation till the last two hundred years, whoever of mankind have turned out good for any thing anywhere, knew very well, that, to exhort a boy to be brave without training him in it, would be like exhorting a young colt to submit to the bri- dle without breaking him in. Step by step, as he could bear it, the boy was introduced to danger, till his pulse ceased to be agitated, and he became familiarized with peril as his natural element. It was a matter of carefully con- sidered, thoroughly recognized, and organized education. But courage nowadays is not a paying virtue. Courage does not help to make money, and so we have ceased to care about it ; and boys are left to educate one another by 478 Representative Men. their own semi-brutal instincts, in this, which is perhaps the most important of all features in the human character. Schools, as far as the masters are concerned with them, are places for teaching Greek and Latin that, and nothing more. At the universities, fox-hunting is, perhaps, the only discipline of the kind now to be found, and fox-hunt- ing, by forbidding it and winking at it, the authorities have contrived to place on as demoralizing a footing as ingenu- ity could devise. 1 To pass from training to life. A boy has done with school and college ; he has become a man, and has to choose his profession. It is the one most serious step which he has yet taken. In most cases, there is no recall- ing it. He believes that he is passing through life to eter- nity ; that his chance of getting to heaven depends on what use he makes of his time ; he prays every day that he may be delivered from temptation ; it is his business to see that he does not throw himself into it. Xow, every one of the many professions has a peculiar character of its own, which, with rare exceptions, it inflicts on those who follow it. There is the shopkeeper type, the manufacturer type, the lawyer type, the medical type, the clerical type, the soldier's, the sailor's. The nature of a man is, " Like the dyers hand, Subdued to what it works in; " and we can distinguish with ease, on the slightest inter- course, to what class a grown person belongs. It is to be seen in his look, in his words, in his tone of thought, his voice, gesture, even in his handwriting ; and in every thing which he does. Every human employment has its espe- cial moral characteristic, its peculiar temptations, its pecul- iar influences of a subtle and not easily analyzed kind, and only to be seen in their effects. Here, therefore here, if anywhere, we want Mr. Emerson with his represent- atives, or the Church with her advice and warning. But, i Written 1850. Representative Men. 479 in fact, what attempt do we see to understand any of this, or even to acknowledge it ; to master the moral side of the professions ; to teach young men entering them what they are to expect, what to avoid, or what to seek ? Where are the highest types the pattern lawyer, and shopkeeper, and merchant ? Are they all equally favorahle to excel- lence of character ? Do they offer equal opportunities ? Which best suits this disposition, and which suits that? Alas ! character is little thought of in the choice. It is rather, which shall I best succeed in ? Where shall I make most money ? Suppose an anxious boy to go for counsel to his spiritual mother ; to go to her, and ask her to guide him. Shall I be a soldier ? he says. What will she tell him ? This and no more You may, without sin. Shall I be a lawyer, merchant, manufacturer, tradesman, engineer ? Still the same answer. But which is best ? he demands. We do not know : we do not know. There is no guilt in either ; you may take which you please, pro- vided you go to church regularly, and are honest and good. If he is foolish enough to persist further, and ask in what honesty and goodness consist in his especial department (whichever he selects), he will receive the same answer ; in other words, he will be told to give every man his due, and be left to find out for himself in what " his due " consists. It is like an artist telling his pupil to put the lights and shadows in their due places, and leaving it to the pupil's ingenuity to interpret such instructive directions. One more instance of an obviously practical kind. Masters, few people will now deny, owe certain duties to their workmen beyond payment at the competition price for their labor, and the workmen owe something to their masters beyond making their own best bargain. Courtesy, on the one side, and respect on the other, are at least due ; and wherever human beings are brought in contact, a num- ber of reciprocal obligations at once necessarily arise out of the conditions of their position. It is this question 480 Representative Men. which at the present moment is convulsing an entire branch of English trade. It is this question which has shaken the Continent like an earthquake, and yet it is one which, the more it is thought about, the more clearly seems to refuse to admit of being dealt with by legislation. It is a question for the Gospel and not for the law. The duties are of the kind which it is the business, not of the State, but of the Church, to look to. Why is the Church silent? There are duties ; let her examine them, sift them, prove them, and then point them out. Why not why not ? Alas ! she cannot, she dare not give offense, and there- fore must find none. It is to be feared that we have a rough trial to pass through, before we find our w r ay and understand our obligations. Yet far off we seem to see a time when the lives, the actions of the really great, great good masters, great good landlords, great good working men, will be laid out once more before their several orders, laid out in the name of God, as once the saints' lives were ; and the same sounds shall be heard in factory and in counting-house as once sounded through abbey, chapel, and cathedral aisle, " Look at these men ; bless God for them, and follow them." And let no one fear that, if such happy time were come, it would result in a tame and weary sameness ; that the beautiful variety of individual form would be lost, drilled away in regimental uniformity. Even if it were so, it need not be any the worse for us ; we are not told to develop our individualities, we are told to bear fruit. The poor vagabond, with all his individualities about him, if by luck he falls into the hands of the recruiting sergeant, finds himself, a year later, with his red coat and his twelve months' training, not a little the better for the loss of them. But such schooling as we have been speaking of will drill out only such individualities as are of the unworthy kind, and will throw the strength of the nature into the develop- ment of the healthiest features in it. Far more, as things Representative Men. 481 now are, we see men sinking into sameness an inorganic, unwholesome sameness, in which the higher nature is sub- dued, and the man is sacrificed to the profession. The circumstances of his life are his world ; and he sinks under them, he does not conquer them. If he has to choose be- tween the two, God's uniform is better than the world's. The first gives him freedom ; the second takes it from him. Only here, as in every thing, we must understand the nature of the element in which we work ; understand it ; under- stand the laws of it. Throw off the lower laws ; the selfish, debasing influences of the profession ; obey the higher ; follow love, truthfulness, manliness ; follow these first, and make the profession serve them ; and that is freedom ; there is none else possible for man. " Das Gesetz soil nur uns Freiheit geben; " and whatever individuality is lost in the process, we may feel assured that the devil has too much to do with, to make us care to be rid of it. But how to arrive at this ? so easy as it is to suggest on paper, so easy to foretell in words. Raise the level of pub- lic opinion, we might say ; insist on a higher standard ; in the economist's language, increase the demand for good- ness, and the supply will follow ; or, at any rate, men will do their best. Until we require more of one another, more will not be provided. But this is but to restate the prob- lem in other words. How are we to touch the heart ; how to awaken the desire ? "We believe that the good man, the great man, whatever he be, prince or peasant, is really lovely ; that really and truly, if we can only see him, he more than any thing will move us ; and at least, we have a right to demand that the artificial hinderances which pre- vent our lifting him above the crowd, shall be swept away. He in his beautiful life is a thousand times more God's witness than any preacher in a pulpit, and his light must not be concealed any more. As we said, what lies in the 31 482 Representative Men. way of our sacred recognition of great men is more than any thing else the Protestant doctrine of good works. We do not forget what it meant when the world first heard of it. It was a cry from the very sanctuary of the soul, fling- ing off and execrating the accursed theory of merits, the sickening parade of redundant saintly virtues, which the Roman Church had converted into stock, and dispensed for the benefit of the believers. This is not the place to pour out nausea on so poor, yet so detestable a farce. But it seems with all human matters, that as soon as spiritual truths are petrified into doctrines, it is another name for their death. They die, corrupt, and breed a pestilence. The doctrine of good works was hurled away by an instinct of generous feeling, and this feeling itself has again become dead, and a fresh disease has followed upon it Nobody (or, at least, nobody good for any thing) will lay a claim to merit for this or that good action which he may have done. Exactly in proportion as a man is really good, will be the eagerness with which he will refuse all credit for it; he will cry out, with all his soul, " Not unto us not unto us." And yet, practically, we all know and feel that between man and man there is an infinite moral difference ; one is good, one is bad, another hovers between the two; the whole of our conduct to each other is necessarily governed by a recognition of this fact, just as it is in the analogous question of the will. Ultimately, we are nothing of our- selves ; we know that we are but what God has given us grace to be we did not make ourselves we do not keep ourselves here we are but what, in the eternal order of Providence, we were designed to be exactly that and nothing else ; and yet we treat each other as responsible ; we cannot help it. The most rigid Calvinist cannot elimi- nate his instincts ; his loves and hatreds seem rather to deepen in intensity of coloring as, logically, his creed should lead him to conquer them as foolish. It is useless, it is im Representative Men. 483 possible, to bring down these celestial mysteries upon our earth, to try to- see our way by them, or determine our feelings by them ; men are good, men are bad, relatively to us and to our understandings if you will, but still really, and so they must be treated. There is no more mischievous falsehood than to persist in railing at man's nature, as if it were all vile together, as if the best and the worst which comes of it were in God's sight equally without worth. These denunciations tend too fatally to realize themselves. Tell a man that no good which he can do is of any value, and depend upon it he will take you at your word most especially will the wealthy, comfortable, luxurious man, just the man who has most means to do good, and whom of all things it is most necessary to stimulate to it. Surely we should not be afraid. The instincts which God has placed in our hearts are too mighty for us to be able to extinguish them with doctrinal sophistry. We love the good man, we praise him, we admire him we cannot help it ; and surely it is mere cowardice to shrink from recognizing it openly thankfully, divinely recognizing it. If true at all, there is no truth in heaven or earth of deeper practical impor- tance to us ; and Protestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if it persists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch of which is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high or noble endeavors after excellence. " Drive out Nature with a fork, she ever comes running back ; " and while we leave out of consideration the re- ality, we are filling the chasm with inventions of our own. The only novels which are popular among us are those which picture the successful battles of modern men and women with modern life, which are imperfect shadows of those real battles which every reader has seen in some form or other, or has longed to see in his own small sphere. It 484 Representative Men. shows where the craving lies if we had but the courage to meet it ; why need we fall back on imagination to create what God has created ready for us ? In every department of human life, in the more and the less, there is always one man who is the best, and one type of man which is the best, living and working his silent way to heaven in the very middle of us. Let us find this type then let us see what it is which makes such men the best, and raise up their excellences into an acknowledged and open standard, of which they themselves shall be the living witnesses. Is there a landlord who is spending his money, not on pin- eries and hot-houses, but on schools, and wash-houses, and drains ; who is less intent on the magnificence of his own grand house, than in providing cottages for his people . where decency is possible ; then let us not pass him by with a torpid wonder or a vanishing emotion of pleasure rather let us seize him and raise him up upon a pinnacle, that other landlords may gaze upon him, if, perhaps, their hearts may prick them ; and the world shall learn from what one man has done what they have a right 'to require that others shall do. So it might be through the thousand channels of .life. It should not be so difficult ; the machinery is ready, both to find your men and to use them. In theory, at least, every parish has its pastor, and the state of every soul is or ought to be known. We know not what turn things may take, or what silent changes are rushing on below us. Even while the present organization remains but, alas ! no ; it is no use to urge a Church bound hand and foot in State shackles to stretch its limbs in any wholesome activity. If the teachers of the people really were the wisest and best and noblest men among us, this and a thousand other blessed things would follow from it ; till then let us be content to work and pray, and lay our hand to the wheel wherever we can find a spoke to grasp. Cor- Representative Men. 485 ruptio optimi est pessima ; the national Church as it ought to be is the soul and conscience of the body politic, but a man whose body has the direction of his conscience we do not commonly consider in the most hopeful moral con- dition. REYNARD THE FOX. 1 LORD MACAULAY, in his Essay on Machiavelli, pro- pounds a singular theory. Declining the various solutions which have been offered to explain how a man supposed to be so great could have lent his genius to the doctrine of " The Prince," he has advanced a hypothesis of his own, which may or may not be true, as an interpretation of Machiavelli's character, but which, as an exposition of a universal ethical theory, is as questionable as what it is brought forward to explain. TVe will not show Lord Macaulay the disrespect of supposing that he has attempted an elaborate piece of irony. It is possible that he may have been exercising his genius with a paradox, but the subject is not of the sort in which we can patiently permit such exercises. It is hard work with all of us to keep our- selves straight, even when we see the road with all plain- ness as it lies out before us ; and clever men must be good enough to find something else to amuse themselves with, instead of dusting our eyes with sophistry. According to this conception of human nature, the base- nesses and the excellences of mankind are no more than accidents of circumstance, the results of national feeling and national capabilities ; and cunning and treachery, and lying, and such other " natural defenses of the weak against the strong," are in themselves neither good nor bad, except as thinking makes them so. They are the virtues of a l Fraser's Mar/azinc, 1852. Reynard the Fox. 487 weak people, and they will be as much admired, and are as justly admirable ; they are to the full as compatible with the highest graces and most lofty features of the heart and intellect as any of those opposite so-called heroisms which we are generally so unthinking as to allow to monopolize the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble ; and why may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong ? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of lago and Othello. To our Northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor is wrecked through a single infirmity, by a fiend in the human form. To one of Machiavelli's Italians, lago's keen-edged intellect would have appeared as admirable as Othello's daring appears to us, and Othello himself little better than a fool and a savage. It is but a change of scene, of climate, of the animal qualities of the frame, and evil has become good, and good has become evil. Now, our displeasure with Lord Macaulay is, not that he has advanced a novel and mischievous theory : it was elabo- rated long ago in the finely tempered dialectics of the schools of Rhetoric at Athens ; and so long as such a phenomenon as a cultivated rogue remains possible among mankind, it will reappear in all languages and under any number of philosophical disguises. Seldom or never, how- ever, has it appeared with so little attempt at disguise. It has been left for questionable poets and novelists to idealize the rascal genus ; philosophers have escaped into the am- biguities of general propositions, and we do not remember elsewhere to have met with a serious ethical thinker de- liberately laying two whole organic characters, with their vices and virtues in full life and bloom, side by side, asking himself which is best, and answering gravely that it is a matter of taste. 488 Reynard the Fox. Lord Macaulay has been bolder than his predecessors ; he has shrank from no conclusion, and has looked directly into the very heart of the matter ; he has struck, as we believe, the very lowest stone of our ethical convictions, and declared that the foundation quakes under it. For, ultimately, how do we know that right is right, and wrong is wrong ? People in general accept it on authority ; but authority itself must repose on some ulterior basis ; and what is that ? Are we to say that in morals there is a sys- tem of primary axioms, out of which we develop our con- clusions, and apply them, as they are needed, to life ? It does not appear so. The analogy of morals is rather with art than with geometry. The grace of Heaven gives us good men, and gives us beautiful creations ; and we, per- ceiving by the instincts within ourselves that celestial presence in the objects on which we gaze, find out for our- selves the laws which make them what they are, not by comparing them with any antecedent theory, but by careful analysis of our own impressions, by asking ourselves what it is which we admire in them, and by calling that good, and calling that beautiful. So, then, if admiration be the first fact if the sense of it be the ultimate ground on which the after temple of morality, as a system, upraises itself if we can be chal- lenged here on our own ground, and fail to make it good, what we call the life of the soul becomes a dream of a feeble enthusiast, and we moralists a mark for the skeptic's finger to point at with scorn. Bold and ably urged arguments against our own convic- tions, if they do not confuse us, will usually send us back over our ground to reexamine the strength of our posi- tions ; and if we are honest with ourselves, we shall very often find points of some uncertainty left unguarded, of which the show of the strength of our enemy will oblige us to see better to the defense. It was not without some shame, and much uneasiness, that, while we were ourselves Reynard the Fox. 489 engaged in this process, full of indignation with Lord Macaulay, we heard a clear voice ringing in our ear, " Who art thou that judgest another ? " and warning us of the presence in our own heart of a sympathy, which we could not " deny," with the sadly questionable hero of the German epic, " Reynard the Fox." With our vulpine friend, we were on the edge of the very same abyss, if, indeed, we were not rolling in the depth of it. By what sophistry could we justify ourselves, if not by the very same which we had just been so eagerly condemning? And our con- science whispered to us that we had been swift to detect a fault in another, because it was the very fault to which, in our own heart of hearts, we had a latent leaning. Was it so indeed, then ? Was Reineke no better than lago? Was the sole difference between them, that the fates sacer who had sung the exploits of Reineke loved the wicked rascal, and entangled us in loving him ? It was a question to be asked. And yet we had faith enough in the straightforwardness of our own sympathies to feel sure that it must admit of some sort of answer. And, indeed, we rapidly found an answer satisfactory enough to give us time to breathe, in remembering that Reineke, with all his roguery, has no malice in him. It is not in his nature to hate ; he could not do it if he tried. The characteristic of lago is that deep motiveless malignity which rejoices in evil as its proper element which loves evil as good men love virtue. In calculations on the character of the Moor, lago despises Othello's unsuspicious trustingness as imbe- cility, while he hates him as a man because his nature is the perpetual opposite and perpetual reproach of his own. Now, Reineke would not have hurt a creature, not even Scharfenebbe, the crow's wife, when she came to peck his eyes out, if he had not been hungry; and that yao-rpos dvayKT?, that craving of the stomach, makes a difference quite infinite. It is true that, like lago, Reineke rejoices in the exercise of his intellect ; the sense of his power and 490 Reynard the Fox. the scientific, employment of his time are a real delight to him ; but tV,p, as we said, he does not love evil for its own cake ; hs is only somewhat indifferent to it. If the other inimals venture to take liberties with him, he will repay them in their own coin, and get his quiet laugh at them at the same time ; but the object generally for which he lives is the natural one of getting his bread for himself and his family ; and, as the great moralist says, " It is better to be bad for something than for nothing." Badness generally is undesirable ; but badness in its essence, which may be called heroic badness, is gratuitous. But this first thought served merely to give us a mo- mentary relief from our alarm, and we determined we would sift the matter to the bottom, and no more expose ourselves to be taken at such disadvantage. We went again to the poem, with our eyes open, and our moral sense as keenly awake as a genuine wish to understand our feel- ings cculd make it. We determined that we would really know what we did feel and what we did not. We would not be lightly scared away from our friend, but neither would we any more allow our judgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his ; he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it lay with us to discern justice and to render it. And really on this deliberate perusal it did seem little less than impossible that we could find any conceivable at- tribute illustrated in Eeineke's proceedings which we could dare to enter in our catalogue of virtues, and not blush to read it there. What sin is there in the Decalogue in which he has not steeped himself to the lips ? To the lips, shall we say ? nay, over head and ears rolling and rollicking in sin. Murder, and theft, and adultery; sacrilege, per- jury, lying his very life is made of them. On he goes to the end, heaping crime on crime, and lie on lie, and at last, when it seems that justice, which has been so long vainly halting after him. has him really in her iron grasp, Reynard the Fox. 491 there is a solemn appeal to Heaven, a challenge, a battle ordeal, in which, by means we may not venture even to whisper, the villain prospers, and comes out glorious, vic- torious, amidst the applause of a gazing world. To crown it all, the poet tells us that, under the disguise of the an- imal name and form, the world of man is represented, and the true course of it ; and the idea of the book is, that we who read it may learn therein to discern between good and evil, and choose the first and avoid the last. It seemed beyond the power of sophistry to whitewash Eei- neke, and the interest which still continued to cling to him seemed too nearly to resemble the unwisdom of the multi- tude, with whom success is the one virtue, and failure the only crime. It appeared, too, that although the animal disguises were too transparent to endure a moment's reflection, yet that they were so gracefully worn that such moment's reflection was not to be come at without an effort. Our imagination following the costume, did imperceptibly betray our judg- ment; we admired the human intellect, the ever-ready prompt sagacity and presence of mind. We delighted in the satire on the foolishnesses and greedinesses of our own fellow-creatures ; but in our regard for the hero we forgot his humanity wherever it was his interest that we should forget it, and while we admired him as a man we judged him only a fox. We doubt whether it would have been possible, if he had been described as an open ac- knowledged biped in coat and trousers, to have retained our regard for him. Something or other in us, either real rightmindedness, or humbug, or hypocrisy, would have obliged us to mix more censure with our liking than most of us do in the case as it stands. It may be that the dress of the fox throws us off our guard, and lets out a secret or two which we commonly conceal even from our- selves. When we have to pass an opinion upon bad people, who at the sume time are clever and attractive, we say 492 Reynard ike Fox. rather what \re think that we ought to feel than what we feel in reality ; while with Reineke, being but an animal, we forget to make ourselves up, and for once our genuine tastes show themselves freely. Some degree of truth there undoubtedly is in this. But making all allowance for it making all and over allowance for the trick which is passed upon our senses, there still remained a feeling un- resolved. The poem was not solely the apotheosis of a rascal in whom we were betrayed into taking an interest ; and it was not a satire merely on the world, and on the men whom the world delight to honor. There was still something which really deserved to be liked in Reineke, and what it was we had as yet failed to discover. ' Two are better than one," and we resolved in our diffi- culty to try what our friends might have to say about it. The appearance of the Wurtemburg animals at the Exhi- bition came fortunately apropos to our assistance ; a few years ago it was rare to find a person who had read the Fox Epic ; and still more, of course, to find one whose judgment would be worth taking about it. But now the charming figures of Reineke himself, and the Lion King r and Isegrim, and Bruin, and Bellyn, and Hintze, and Grim- bart, had set all the world asking who and what they were, and the story began to get itself known. The old editions, which had long slept unbound in reams upon the shelves, began to descend and clothe themselves in green and crim- son. Mr. Dickens sent a summary of it round the house- holds of England. Every body began to talk of Reineke ; and now, at any rate, we said to ourselves, we shall see whether we are alone in our liking whether others share in this strange sympathy, or whether it be some unique and monstrous moral obliquity in ourselves. We set to work, therefore, with all earnestness, feeling our way first with fear and delicacy as conscious of our own delinquency, to gather judgments which should be riser than ovir own, and correct ourselves, if it proved Reynard the Fox. 493 that we required correction, with whatever severity might be necessary. The result of this labor of ours was not a little surprising. "We found that women invariably, with that clear moral instinct of theirs, at once utterly repro- bated and detested our poor Reynard ; detested the hero and detested the bard who sang of him with so much sym- pathy ; while men we found almost invariably feeling just as we felt ourselves, only with this difference, that we saw no trace of uneasiness in them about the matter. It was no little comfort to us, moreover, to find that the exceptions were rather among the half-men, the would-be extremely good, but whose goodness was of that dead and passive kind which spoke to but a small elevation of thought or activity ; while just in proportion as a man was strong, and real, and energetic, was his ability to see good in Reineke. It was really most strange ; one near friend of ours a man who, as far as we knew (and we knew him well), had never done a wrong thing when we ventured to hint something about roguery, replied, " You see he was such a clever rogue, that he had a right." Another, whom we pressed more closely with that treacherous cannibal feast at Malepartus, on the body of poor Lampe, said off-hand and with much impatience of such questioning, " Such fellows were made to be eaten." What could we do ? It had come to this ; as in the exuberance of our pleasure with some dear child, no ordinary epithet will sometimes reach to express the vehemence* of our affection, and bor- rowing language out of the opposites, we call him little rogue or little villain, so here, reversing the terms of the analogy, we bestow the fullness of our regard on Reineke because of that transcendently successful roguery. When we asked our friends how they came to feel as they did, they had little to say. They were not persons who could be suspected of any latent disposition towards evil-doing ; and yet though it appeared as if they were fall- ing under the description of those unhappy ones who, ii 494 Reynard the Fox. they did not such things themselves, yet " had pleasure in those who did them," they did not care to justify them- selves. The fact was so : ap^q TO on : it was a fact what could we want more ? Some few attempted feebly to maintain that the book was a satire. But this only moved the difficulty a single step ; for the fact of the sympathy remained unimpaired, and if it was a satire we were our- selves the objects of it. Others urged what we said above, that the story was only of poor animals that, according to Descartes, not only had no souls, but scarcely had even life in any original and sufficient sense, and therefore we need not trouble ourselves. But one of two alternatives it seemed we were bound to choose, either of which was fatal to the proposed escape. Either there was a man hiding under the fox's skin ; or else, if real foxes have such brains as Reineke was furnished withal, no honest doubt could be entertained that some sort of conscience was not forgotten in the compounding of him, and he must be held answer- able according to his knowledge. What would Mr. Carlyle say of it, we thought, with his might and right? " The just thing in the long run is the strong thing.". But Reineke had a long run out and came in winner. Does he only " seem to succeed ? " Who does succeed, then, if he no more than seems? The vulpine intellect knows where the geese live, it is elsewhere said ; but among Reineke's victims we do not remember one goose, in the literal sense of goose ; and as to geese meta- phorical, the whole visible world lies down complacently at his feet. Nor does Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poem serve any better to help us nay, it seems as if he feels uneasy in the neighborhood of so strong a rascal, so briefly he dismisses him. " Worldly prudence is the only virtue which is certain of its reward." Nay, but there is more in it than that no worldly prudence would command the voices which have been given in to us for Reineke. Reynard the Fox. 495 Three only possibilities lay now before us: either we should, on searching, find something solid in the Fox's do- ings to justify success ; or else the just thing was not always the strong thing ; or it might- be, that such very semblance of success was itself the most miserable failure ; that the wicked man who was struck down and foiled, and foiled again, till he unlearnt his wickedness, or till he was disabled from any more attempting it, was blessed in his disappointment ; that to triumph in wickedness, and to continue in it and to prosper to the end, was the last, worst penalty inflicted by the divine vengeance. "lv' aOdvaTos y aSiKos &v to go on with injustice through this world and through all eternity, uncleansed by any purgatorial fire, untaught by any untoward consequence to open his eyes and to see in its true accursed form the miserable demon to which he has sold himself this, of all catastrophes which could befall an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savoring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could reason out for himself, under wMi \\ third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted by us with thankfulness. It appeared, therefore, at any rate, to have to come to this that if we wanted a solution for our sphinx enigma, no CEdipus was likely to rise and find it for us ; and that if we wanted help, we must make it for ourselves. This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard for the un- worthy animal, we shared our sin with the largest number of our own sex : comforted with the sense of good fellow- ship, we went boldly to work upon our consciousness ; and the imperfect analysis which we succeeded in accomplish- ing, we here lay before you, whoever you may be, who have felt, as we have felt, a regard which was a moral dis- turbance lo you, and which you will be pleased if we ena- ble you to justify " Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidas imperti; si non, his utere niecum." 496 Reynard the Fox. Following the clew which was thrust into our hand by the marked difference of the feelings of men upon the sub- ject, from those of women, we were at once satisfied that Reineke's goodness, if he had any, must lay rather in the active than the passive department of life. The negative obedience to prohibitory precepts, under which women are bound as well as men, as was already too clear, we were obliged to surrender as hopeless. But it seemed as if, with respect to men whose business is to do, and to labor, and to accomplish, this negative test was a seriously imperfect one ; and it was quite as possible that a man who unhap- pily had broken many prohibitions might yet exhibit posi- tive excellences, as that he might walk through life pick- ing his way with the utmost assiduity, risking nothing, and doing nothing, not committing a single sin, but keeping his talent carefully wrapt up in a napkin, and get sent, in the end, to outer darkness for his pains, as an unprofitable servant. And this appeared the more important to us, as it was very little dwelt upon by religious or moral teach- ers ; at the end of six thousand years, the popular notion of virtue, as far as it could get itself expressed, had not risen beyond the mere abstinence from certain specific bad actions. The king of the beasts forgives Eeineke on account of the substantial services which at various times he has ren- dered. His counsel was always the wisest, his hand the promptest in cases of difficulty ; and all that dexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite culture had not been learnt without an effort, or without conquering many undesirable tendencies in himself. Men are not born with any art in its perfection, and Reineke had made himself valuable by his own sagacity and exertion. Now, on the human stage, a man who had made himself valuable is cer- tain to be valued. However we may pretend to estimate men according to the wrong things which they have done, or abstained from doing, we in fact follow the example of Reynard the Fox. 497 Nobel, the king of the beasts ; we give them their places among us according to the serviceableness and capability which they display. We might mention not a few eminent public servants, whom the world delights to honor min- isters, statesmen, lawyers, men of science, artists, poets, soldiers, who, if they were tried by the negative test, would show but a poor figure ; yet their value is too real to be dispensed with ; and we tolerate unquestionable wrong to secure the services of eminent ability. The world really does this, and it always has really done it from the begin- ning of the human history ; and it is only indolence or cowardice which has left our ethical teaching halting so far behind the universal and necessary practice. Even questionable prima donnas, in virtue of their sweet voices, have their praises hymned in drawing-room and newspaper ; and applause rolls over them, and gold and bouquets shower on them from lips and hands which, except for those said voices, would treat them to a ruder reward. In real fact, we take our places in this world, not according to what we are not, but according to what we are. His Holi- ness Pope Clement, when his audience-room rang with furious outcries for justice on Benvenuto Cellini, who, as far as half-a-dozen murders could form a title, was as fair a candidate for the gallows as ever swung from that unlucky wood, replied, " All this is very well, gentlemen ; these murders are bad things ; we know that. But where am I to get another Benvenuto if you hang this one for me ? " Or, to take an acknowledged hero, one of the old Greek sort, the theme of the song of the greatest of human poets, whom it is less easy to refuse to admire than even our friend Reineke. Take Ulysses. It cannot be said that he kept his hands from taking what was not his, or his tongue from speaking what was not true ; and if Frau Ermelyn had to complain (as indeed there was too much reason for her complaining) of certain infirmities in her good husband Reineke, Penelope, too, might have urged a thing or two 32 498 Reynard the Fox. if she had known as much about the matter as we know, which the modern moralist would find it hard to excuse. After all is said, the capable man is the man to be ad- mired. The man who tries and fails, what is the use of him ? We are in this world to do something not to fail in doing it. Of your bunglers helpless, inefficient per- sons, " unfit alike for good or ill," who -try one thing, and fail because they are not strong enough ; and another, be- cause they have not energy enough ; and a third, because they have no talent inconsistent, unstable, and therefore never to excel, what shall we say of them ? what use is there in them ? what hope is there of them ? what can we wish for them ? TO /ATJ-OT' drai TTO.VT apurrov. It were better for them they had never been born. To be able to do what a man tries to do, that is the first requi- site ; and given that, we may hope all things for him. " Hell is paved with good intentions," the proverb says ; and the enormous proportion of bad successes in this life lie between the desire and the execution. Give us a man who is able to do what he settles that he desires to do, and we have the one thing indispensable. If he can succeed doing ill, much more he can succeed doing well. Show him better, and, at any rate, there is a chance that he will do better. We are not concerned here with Benvenuto or with Ulysses further than to show, through the position which we all consent to give them, that there is much unreality in our common moral talk, against which we must be on our guard. And if we fling off an old friend, and take to affecting a hatred of him which we do not feel, we have scarcely gained by the exchange, even though originally our friendship may have been misplaced. Capability no one will deny to Reineke. That is the very differentia of him. An " animal capable " would be his sufficient definition. Here is another very genuinely valuable feature about him his wonderful singleness of Reynard the Fox. 499 character. Lying, treacherous, cunning scoundrel as he is, there is a wholesqme absence of humbug about him. Cheating all the world, he never cheats himself; and while he is a hypocrite, he is always a conscious hypocrite a form of character, however paradoxical it may seem, a great deal more accessible to good influences than the other of the unconscious sort. Ask Reineke for the prin- ciples of his life, and if it suited his purpose to tell you, he could do so with the greatest exactness. There would be no discrepancy between the profession and the practice. He is most truly single-minded, and therefore stable in his ways, and therefore, as the world goes, and in the world's sense, successful. "Whether really successful is a question we do not care here to enter on ; but only to say this that of all unsuccessful men in every sense, either divine, or human, or devilish, there is none equal to Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways the fellow with one eye on heaven and one on earth who sincerely preaches one thing, and sincerely does another ; and from the intensity of his un- reality is unable either to see or feel the contradiction. Serving God with his lips, and with the half of his mind which is not bound up in the world, and serving the devil with his actions, and with the other half, he is substantially trying to cheat both God and the devil, and is, in fact, only cheating himself and his neighbors. This, of all characters upon the earth, appears to us to be the one of whom there is no hope at all a character becoming, in these days, alarmingly abundant ; and the abundance of which makes us find even in a Reineke an inexpressible relief. But what we most thoroughly value in him is his ca- pacity. He can do what he sets to work to do. That blind instinct with which the world shouts and claps its hand for the successful man, is one of those latent im- pulses in us which are truer than we know ; it is the uni- versal confessional to which Nature leads us, and, in her intolerance of disguise and hypocrisy, compels us to be our 500 Reynard the Fox. own accusers. Whoever can succeed in a given condition of society, can succeed only in virtue of fulfilling the terms which society exacts of him ; and if he can fulfill them tri- umphantly, of course it rewards him and praises him. He is what the rest of the world would be if their powers were equal to their desires. He has accomplished what they all are vaguely, and with imperfect consistency, strug- gling to accomplish ; and the character of the conqueror the means and appliances by which he has climbed up that great pinnacle on which he stands victorious, the ob- served of all observers, is no more than a very exact indi- cator of the amount of real virtue in the age, out of which he stands prominent. We are forced to acknowledge that it was not a very virtuous age in which Reineke made himself a great man ; but that was the fault of the age as much as the fault of him. His nature is to succeed wherever he is. If the age had required something else of him, then he would have been something else. Whatever it had said to him, u Do, and I will make you my hero," that Reineke would have done. No appetite makes a slave of him no faculty refuses obedience to his will. His entire nature is under perfect organic control to the one supreme authority. And the one object for which he lives, and for which, let his lot have been cast in whatever century it might, he would always have lived, is to rise, to thrive, to prosper, and become great. The world as he found it said unto him, Prey upon us ; we are your oyster, let your wit open us. If you will only do it cleverly if you will take care that we shall not close upon your fingers in the process, you may devour us at your pleasure, and we shall feel ourselves highly honored. Can we wonder at a fox of Reineke's abilities taking such a world at its word ? And let it not be supposed that society in this earth of ours is ever so viciously put together, is ever so totally Reynard the Fox. 501 without organic life, that a rogue, unredeemed by any merit, can prosper in it. There is no strength in rotten- ness ; and when it comes to that, society dies and falls in pieces. Success, as it is called, even worldly success, is impossible, without some exercise of what is called moral virtue, without some portion of it, infinitesimally small, perhaps, but still some. Courage, for instance, steady self- confidence, self- trust, self-reliance that only basis and foundation stone on which a strong character can rear itself do we not see this in Reineke ? While he lives, he lives for himself; but if he comes to dying, he can die like his betters ; and his wit is not of that effervescent sort which will fly away at the sight of death and leave him panic-stricken. It is true there is a meaning to that word courage, which was perhaps not to be found in the dictionary in which Eeineke studied. " I hope I am afraid of nothing, Tim," said my Uncle Toby, " except doing a wrong thing." With Reineke there was no "except." His digestive powers shrank from no action, good or bad, which would serve his turn. Yet it required no slight measure of courage to treat his fellow- creatures with the steady disrespect with which Reineke treats them. To walk along among them, regardless of any interest but his own ; out of mere wantonness to hook them up like so many cockchafers, and spin them for his pleasure; not like Domitian, with an imperial army to hold them down during the operation, but with no other assistance but his own little body and large wit ; it was something to ven ture upon. And a world which would submit to be so treated, what could he do but despise ? To the animals utterly below ourselves, external to our own species, we hold ourselves bound by no law. We say to them, vos non vobis, without any uneasy misgivings. We rob the bees of their honey, the cattle of their lives, the horse and the ass of their liberty. We kill the wild animals that they may not interfere with our pleasures ; 502 Reynard the Fox. and acknowledge ourselves bound to them by no terms except what are dictated by our own convenience. And why should Reineke have acknowledged an obligation any more than we, to creatures so utterly below himself? He was so clever, as our friend said, that he had a right. That he could treat them so, Mr. Carlyle would say, proves that he had a right. But it is a mistake to say he is without a conscience. Xo bold creature is ever totally without one. Even lago shows some sort of conscience. Respecting nothing else in heaven or earth, he respects and even reverences his own intellect. After one of those sweet interviews with Roderigo, his, what we must call conscience, takes him to account for his company ; and he pleads to it in his own justification, "For I mine 'own gained knowledge should profane Were I to waste myself with such a snipe But for my sport and profit." Reineke, if we take the mass of his misdeeds, preyed chiefly, like our own Robin Hood, on rogues who were greater rogues than himself. If Bruin chose to steal Rusteviel's honey, if Hintze trespassed in the priest's granary, they were but taken in their own evil-doings. .And what is Isegrim, the worst of Reineke's victims, but a great heavy, stupid, lawless brute ? fair type, we will suppose, of not a few Front-de-Boeufs and other so-called nobles of the poet's era, whose will to do mischief was happily limited by their obtuseness. We remember that French baron Gilbert de Retz, we believe, was his name who, like Isegrim, had studied at the universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinner pastime for many years, as it proved at last, was to cut children's throats for the pleasure of watching them die. We may well feel gratitude that a Reineke was provided to be the scourge of such monsters as these ; and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in seeing the intel Reynard the Fox. 503 lect in that little weak body triumph over them and tram- ple them down. This, indeed, this victory of intellect over brute force, is one great secret of our pleasure in the poem, and goes far, in the Carlyle direction, to satisfy us, that, at any rate, it is not given to mere base physical strength to win in the battle of life, even in times when physical strength is apparently the only recognized power. We are insensibly falling from our self-assumed judicial office into that of advocacy ; and sliding into what may be plausibly urged, rather than standing fast on what we can surely affirm. Yet there are cases when it is fitting for the judge to become the advocate of an undefended prisoner ; and advocacy is only plausible when a few words of truth are mixed with what we say, like the few drops of wine which color and faintly flavor the large draught of water. Such few grains or drops, whatever they may be, we must leave to the kindness of Reynard's friends to distill for him, while we continue a little longer in the same strain. After all, it may be said, what is it in man's nature which is really admirable ? It is idle for us to waste our labor in passing Eeineke through the moral crucible unless we shall recognize the results when we obtain them ; and in these moral sciences our analytical tests can only be obtained by a study of our own internal experience. If we desire to know what we admire in Reineke, we must look for what we admire in ourselves. And what is that ? Is it what on Sundays, and on set occasions, and when we are mounted on our moral stilts, we are pleased to call goodness, probity, obedience, humility? Is it? Is it really ? Is it not rather the face and form which Nature made the strength which is ours, we know not how our talents, our rank, our possessions ? It appears to us that we most value in ourselves and most admire in our neighbor, not acquisitions, but gifts. A man does not praise himself for being good. If he praise himself he is 504 Reynard tlie Fox. not good. The first condition of goodness is forgetfulness of self; and where self has entered, tinder however plausi- ble a form, the health is but skin-deep, and underneath there is corruption. And so through every thing : we value, we are vain of, proud of, or whatever you please to call it, not what we have done for ourselves, but what has been done for us what has been given to us by the upper powers. We look up to high-born men, to wealthy men, to fortunate men, to clever men. Is it not so? Whom do we choose for the county member, the magis- trate, the officer, the minister ? The good man we leave to the humble enjoyment of his goodness, and we look out for the able or the wealthy. And again of the wealthy, as if on every side to witness to the same universal law, the man who with no labor of his own has inherited a for- tune, ranks higher in the world's esteem than his father who made it. We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the farthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain, the fouler the stream ; and that first ancestor, who has soiled his fingers by labor, is no better than a parvenu. And as it is with what we value, so it is with what we blame. It is an old story, that there is no one who would not in his heart prefer being a knave to being a fool ; and when we fail in a piece of attempted roguery, as Coleridge has wisely observed, though reasoning unwisely from it, Wb lay the blame, not on our own moral nature, for which we are responsible, but on our intellectual, for which we are not responsible. We do not say what knaves, we say what fools, we have been ; perplexing Coleridge, who regards it as a phenomenon of some deep moral disorder ; whereas it is but one more evidence of the universal fact that gift* are the true and proper object of appreciation ; and as we admire men for possessing gifts, so we blame them for their absence. The noble man is the gifted man ; the ignoble Reynard the Fox. 505 is the ungifted; and therefore we have only to state a simple law in simple language to have a full solution of the enigma of Reineke. He has gifts enough : of that, at least, there can be no doubt ; and if he lacks the gift to use them in the way which we call good, at least he uses them successfully. His victims are less gifted' than he, and therefore less noble ; and therefore he has a right to use them as he pleases. And, after all, what are these victims ? Among the heaviest charges which were urged against him was the killing and eating of that wretched Scharfenebbe Sharp- beak the crow's wife. It is well that there are two sides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, was not to be allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine but what an unclean carrion bird must come down and take a peck at him. We can feel no sympathy with the outcries of the crow husband over the fate of the unfortunate Sharpbeak. Wofully, he says, he flew over the place where, a few mo- ments before, in the glory of glossy plumage, a loving wife sat croaking out her passion for him, and found nothing nothing but a little blood and a few torn feath- ers all else clean gone and utterly abolished. Well, and if it was so, it was a blank prospect for him, but the earth was well rid of her ; and for herself, it was a higher fate to be assimilated into the body of Reineke than to re- main in a miserable individuality to be a layer of carrion crows' eggs. And then for Bellyn, and for Bruin, and for Hintze, and the rest, who would needs be meddling with what was no concern of theirs what is there in them to challenge either regret or pity ? They made love to their occupation. " 'T is dangerous when the baser nature falls Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites : They lie not near our conscience." Ah ! if they were all. But there is one misdeed, ono 506 Reynard the Fox. which outweighs all others whatsoever a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased ; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sat heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. Lampe had told tales of him ; he had complained that Reineke, under pretense of teach- ing him his Catechism, had seized him and tried to mur- der him ; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting himself, after such a warning, into the jaws of Malepartus, Reineke betrays an uneasiness about it in confession ; and, unlike himself, feels it necessary to make some sort of an excuse. Grimbart, the badger, Reineke's father confessor, had been obliged to speak severely of the seriousness of the offense. " You see," Reineke answers, " To help oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business : one can- not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at, our fingers. Lampe sorely provoked me ; he frisked about this way and that way, Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and so jolly, Really I could not resist it. I entirely forgot how I loved him. And then he was so stupid." But even this acknowledgment does not satisfy Reineke. His mind is evidently softened, and it was on that occasion that he poured out his pathetic lamentation over the sad condition of the world so fluent, so musical, so touching, that Grimbart listened with wide eyes, unable, till it had run to the length of a sermon, to collect himself. It is true that at last his office as ghostly father obliged him to put in a slight demurrer : '' Uncle, the badger replied, why these are the sins of your neighbors ; Yours,! should think, were sufficient, and rather more now to the purpose." But he sighs to think what a bishop Reineke would have made. Reynard the Fox. 507 And now, for the present, farewell to Reineke Fuchs, and to the song in which his glory is enshrined the Welt Bibel, Bible of this world, as Goethe called it, the most ex- quisite moral satire, as we will call it, which has ever been composed. It is not addressed to a passing mode of folly or of profligacy, but it touches the perennial nature of mankind, laying bare our own sympathies, and tastes, and weaknesses, with as keen and true an edge as when the living world of the old Swabian poet winced under its ear- liest utterance. Humorous in the high pure sense, every laugh which it gives may have its echo in a sigh, or may glide into it as ex- citement subsides into thought ; and yet, for those who do not care to find matter there either for thought or sadness, may remain innocently as a laugh. Too strong for railing, too kindly and loving for the bitterness of irony, the poem is, as the world itself, a book where each man will find what his nature enables him to see, which gives us back each our own image, and teaches us each the lesson which each of us desires to learn. THE CAT'S PILGRIMAGE. 1850. PART I. " IT is all very fine," said the Cat, yawning, and stretch- ing herself against the fender, " but it is rather a bore ; I don't see the use of it." She raised herself, and arranging her tail into a ring, and seating herself in the middle of it, with her fore-paws in a straight line from her shoulders, at right angles to the hearth-rug, she looked pensively at the fire. " It is very odd," she went on : " there is my poor Tom ; he is gone. I saw him stretched out in the yard. I spoke to him, and he took no notice of me. He won't, I suppose, ever any more, for they put him under the earth. Nice, fellow he was. It is wonderful how little one cares about it. So many jolly evenings we spent together; and now I seem to get on quite as well without him. I wonder what has become of him ; and my last children, too, what has become of them ? What are we here for ? I would ask the men, only they are so conceited and stupid they can't understand what we say. I hear them droning away, teaching their little ones every day ; telling them to be good, and to do what they are bid, and all that. Nobody ever tells me to do any thing ; if they do I don't do it, and I am very good. I wonder whether I should be any better if I minded more. I '11 ask the Dog. " Dog," said she, to a little fat spaniel coiled up on a mat. The Cat's Pilgrimage. 509 like a lady's muff with a head and tail stuck on to it, " Dog, what do you make of it all ? " The Dog faintly opened his languid eyes, looked sleepily at the Cat for a moment, and dropped them again. " Dog," she said, " I want to talk to you ; don't go to sleep. Can't you answer a civil question ? " " Don't bother me," said the Dog, " I am tired. I stood on my hind-legs ten minutes this morning before I could get my breakfast, and it has n't agreed with me." " Who told you to do it ? " said the Cat " Why, the lady I have to take care of me," replied the Dog. " Do you feel any better for it, Dog, after you have been standing on your legs ? " asked she. " Hav'n't I told you, you stupid Cat, that it has n't agreed with me ; let me go to sleep and don't plague me." " But I mean," persisted the Cat, " do you feel improved, as the men call it ? They tell their children that if they do what they are told they will improve, and grow good and great. Do you feel good and great ? " " What do I know ? " said the Dog. " I eat my break- fast and am happy. Let me alone." " Do you never think, O Dog without a soul ! Do you never wonder what dogs are, and what this world is ? " The Dog stretched himself, and rolled his eyes lazily round the room. " I conceive," he said, " that the world is for dogs, and men and women are put into it to take care of dogs ; women to take care of little dogs like me, and men for the big dogs like those in the yard and cats," he con- tinued, " are to know their place, and not to be trouble- some." " They beat you sometimes," said the Cat. ' : Why do they do that ? They never beat me." " If they forget their places, and beat me," snarled the Dog, " I bite them, and they don't do it again. I should like to bite you, too. you nasty Cat ; you have woke me up." 510 The Cat's Pilgrimage. u There may be truth in what you say," said the Cat, calmly ; " but I think your view is limited. If you listened like me you would hear the men say it was all made for them, and you and I were made to amuse them." " They don't dare to say so," said the Dog. " They do, indeed," said the Cat. " I hear many things which you lose by sleeping so much. They think I am asleep, and so they are not afraid to talk before me ; but my ears are open when my eyes are shut." " You surprise me," said the Dog. " I never listen to them, except when I take notice of them, and then they never talk of any thing except of me." " I could tell you a thing or two about yourself which you don't know," said the Cat. " You have never heard, I dare say, that once upon a time your fathers lived in a temple, and that people prayed to them." " Prayed ! what is that ? " " Why, they went on their knees to you to ask you to give them good things, just as you stand on your toes to them now to ask for your breakfast. You don't know either that you have got one of those bright things we see up in the air at night called after you." " "Well, it is just what I said," answered the Dog. " I told you it was all made for us. They never did any thing of that sort for you ? " " Did n't they ? Why, there was a whole city where the people did nothing else, and as soon as we got stiff and could n't move about any more, instead of being put under the ground like poor Tom, we used to be stuffed full of all sorts of nice things, and kept better than we were when we were alive." " You are a very wise Cat," answered her companion ; " but what good is it knowing all this ? " " Why, don't you see," said she, " they don't do it any more. We are going down in the world, we are, and that is why living on in this way is such an unsatisfactory Tlie Cat's Pilgrimage. 511 sort of thing. I don't mean to complain for myself, and you need n't, Dog ; we have a quiet life of it ; but a quiet life is not the thing, and if there is nothing to be done ex- cept sleep and eat, and eat and sleep, why, as I said before, I don't ^ see the use of it. There is something more in it than that ; there was once, and there will be again, and I sha'n't be happy till I find it out. It is a shame, Dog, I say. The men have been here only a few thousand years, and we why, we have been here hundreds of thousands ; if we are older, we ought to be wiser, I '11 go and ask the creatures in the woods." " You '11 learn more from the men," said the Dog. " They are stupid, and they don't know what I say to them ; besides, they are so conceited they care for nothing except themselves. No, I shall try what I can do in the woods. I 'd as soon go after poor Tom as stay living any- longer like this." " And where is poor Tom ? " yawned the Dog. " That is just one of the things I want to know," an- swered she. " Poor Tom is lying under the yard, or the skin of him, but whether that is the whole I don't feel so sure. They did n't think so in the city I told you about. It is a beautiful day, Dog ; you won't take a trot out with me ? " she added, wistfully. Who I ? " said the Dog. Not quite." " You may get so wise," said she. " Wisdom is good," said the Dog ; " but so is the hearth- rug, thank you ! " " But you may be free," said she. " I shall have to hunt for my own dinner," said he. " But, Dog, they may pray to you again," said she. " But I sha'n't have a softer mat to sleep upon, Cat, and as I am rather delicate, that is a consideration." 512 The Cat's Pilgrimage. PART II. So the Dog would n't go, and the Cat set off by herself to learn how to be happy, and to be all that a Cat could be. It was a fine sunny morning. She determined to try the meadow first, and, after an hour or two, if she had not suc- ceeded, then to go off to the wood. A Blackbird was piping away on a thornbush as if his heart was running over with happiness. The Cat had breakfasted, and so was able to lis- ten without any mixture of feeling. She did n't sneak. She walked boldly up under the bush, and the bird, seeing she had no bad purpose, sat still and sung on. " Good morning, Blackbird ; you seem to be enjoying yourself this fine day." " Good morning, Cat." " Blackbird, it is an odd question, perhaps, What ought one to do to be as happy as you ? " Do your duty, Cat." " But what is my duty, Blackbird ? " " Take care of your little ones, Cat." " I hav'n't any," said she. " Then sing to your mate," said the bird. " Tom is dead," said she. " Poor Cat ! " said the bird. " Then sing over his grave. If your song is sad, you will find your heart grow lighter for it." " Mercy ! " thought the Cat. I could do a little sing- ing with a living lover, but I never heard of singing for a dead one. But you see, bird, it is n't Cats' nature. When I am cross, I mew. When I am pleased, I purr ; but I must be pleased first. I can't purr myself into happiness." " I am afraid there is something the matter with your heart, my Cat. It wants warming ; good-by." The Blackbird flew away. The Cat looked sadly after him. " He thinks I am like him ; and he does n't know The Cat's Pilgrimage. 513 that a Cat is a Cat," said she. " As it happens ow, I feel a great deal for a Cat. If I had n't got a heart I should n't be unhappy. I won't be angry. " I '11 try that great fat fellow." The Ox lay placidly chewing, with content beaming out of his eyes and playing on his mouth. " Ox," she said, " what is the way to be happy ? " " Do your duty," said the Ox. " Bother," said the Cat ; " duty again ! What is it, Ox?" " Get your dinner," said the Ox. " But it is got for me, Ox ; and I have nothing to do but to eat it." " Well, eat it, then, like me." " So I do ; but I am not happy for all that." " Then you are a very wicked, ungrateful Cat." The Ox munched away. A Bee buzzed into a buttercup under the Cat's nose. " I beg your pardon," said the Cat ; " it is n't curiosity what are you doing ? " " Doing my duty ; don't stop me, Cat," " But, Bee, what is your duty ? " " Making honey," said the Bee. " I wish I could make honey," sighed the Cat. " Do you mean to say you can't ? " said the Bee. " How stupid you must be. What do you do, then ? " " I do nothing, Bee. I can't get any thing to do." " You won't get any thing to do, you mean, you lazy Cat ! You are a good-for-nothing drone. Do you know what we do to our drones J* We kill them ; and that is all they are fit for. Good morning to you." " Well, I am sure," said the Cat, " they are treating me civilly ; I had better have stopped at home at this rate. Stroke my whiskers ! Heartless ! wicked ! good-for-noth- ing ! stupid ! and only fit to be killed ! This is a pleasant beginning, anyhow. I must look for some wiser creatures 33 514 The Cat's Pilgrimage. than these are. What shall I do ? I know. I know where I will go." It was in the middle of the wood. The bush was very dark, but she found him by his wonderful eye. Presently, as she got used to the light, she distinguished a sloping roll of feathers, a rounded breast, surmounted by a round head, set close to the body, without an inch of a neck intervening. " How wise he looks ! " she said ; " what a brain ! what a forehead ! His head is not long, but what an expanse ! and what a depth of earnestness ! The Owl sloped his head a little on one side ; the Cat slanted hers upon the other. The Owl set it straight again, the Cat did the same. They stood looking in this way for some minutes ; at last, in a whispering voice, the Owl said, " What are you who pre- sume to look into my repose ? Pass on upon your way, and carry elsewhere those prying eyes." " O wonderful Owl," said the Cat, " you are wise, and I want to be wise ; and I am come to you to teach me." A film floated backwards and forwards over the Owl's eyes ; it was his way of showing that he was pleased. " I have heard in our school-room," went on the Cat, " that you sat on the shoulder of Pallas, and she told you all about it." " And what wo\ild you know, O my daughter ? " said the Owl. " Every thing," said the Cat, " every thing. First of all, how to be happy." " Mice content you not, my child, even as they content not me," said the Owl. " It is good." " Mice, indeed ! " said the Cat ; " no, Parlor Cats don't eat mice. I have better than mice, and BO trouble to get it ; but I want something more." " The body's meat is provided. You would now fill your soul." " I want to improve," said the Cat. " I want something to do 1 want to find out what the creatures call my duty." The CaCs Pilgrimage. 515 " You would learn how to employ those happy hours of your leisure rather how to make them happy by a wor- thy use. Meditate, O Cat ! meditate ! meditate ! " " That is the very thing," said she. " Meditate ! that is what I like above all things. Only I want to know how : I want something to meditate about. Tell me, Owl, and I will bless you every hour of the day as I sit by the parlor fire." " I will tell you," answered the Owl, " what I have been thinking of ever since the moon changed. You shall take it home with you and think about it too ; and the next full moon you shall come again to me ; we will compare our conclusions." Delightful ! delightful ! " said the Cat. " What is it ? I will try this minute." " From the beginning," replied the Owl, " our race have been considering which first existed, the Owl or the egg. The Owl comes from the egg, but likewise the egg from the Owl." Mercy ! " said the Cat. " From sunrise to sunset I ponder on it, Cat ! When I reflect on the beauty of the complete Owl, I think that must have been first, as the cause is greater than the effect. When I remember my own childhood, I incline the other way." " Well, but how are we to find out ? " said the Cat. " Find out ! " said the Owl. " We can never find out. The beauty of the question is, that its solution is impossi- ble. What would become of all our delightful reasonings, unwise Cat ! if we were so unhappy as to know ? " " But what in the world is the good of thinking about it, if you can't, O Owl?" " My child, that is a foolish question. It is good, in or- der that the thoughts on these things may stimulate won- der. It is in wonder that the Owl is great." " Then you don't know any thing at all," said the Cat. 616 The Catfs Pilgrimage. " What did you sit on Pallas's shoulder for ? You must have gone to sleep." " Your tone is over-flippant, Cat, for philosophy. The highest of all knowledge is to know that we know nothing." The Cat made two great arches with her hack and her tail. " Bless the mother that laid you," said she. " You were dropped by mistake in a goose-nest. You won't do. I don't know much, but I am not such a creature as you, any- how. A great white thing ! " She straightened her body, stuck her tail up on end, and marched off with much dignity. But, though she respected herself rather more than before, she was not on the way to the end of her difficulties. She tried all the creatures she met without advancing a step. They had all the old story, " Do your duty." But each had its own, and no one could tell her what hers was. Only one point they all agreed upon the duty of getting their dinner when they were hungry. The day wore on, and she began to think she would like hers. Her meals came so regularly at home thet she scarcely knew what hunger was ; but now the sensation came over her very palpably, and she experi- enced quite new emotions as the hares and rabbits skipped about her, or as she spied a bird upon a tree. For a mo- ment she thought she would go back and eat the Owl he was the most useless creature she had seen ; but on second thought she did n't fancy he would be nice : besides that, his claws were sharp and his beak too. Presently, however, as she sauntered down the path, she came on a little open patch of green, in the middle of which a fine fat Rabbit was sitting. There was no escape. The path ended there, and the bushes were so thick on each side that he could n't get away except through her paws. " Really," said the Cat, " I don't wish to be troublesome ; I would n't do it if I could help it ; but I am very hungry, The Cat's Pilgrimage. 617 I am afraid I must eat you. It is very unpleasant, I as* sure you, to me as well as to you." The poor Kabbit begged for mercy. " Well, " said she, " I think it is hard ; I do really and, if the law could be altered, I should be the first to welcome it. But what can a Cat do ? You eat the grass ; I eat you. But, Rabbit, I wish you would do me a favor." " Any thing to save my life," said the Rabbit. " It is not exactly that," said the Cat ; " but I have n't been used to killing my own dinner, and it is disagreeable. Could n't you die ? I shall hurt you dreadfully if I kill you." . " Oh ! " said the Rabbit, " you are a kind Cat ; I see it in your eyes, and your whiskers don't curl like those of the cats in the woods. I am sure you will spare me." " But, Rabbit, it is a question of principle. I have to do my duty ; and the only duty I have, as far as I can make out, is to get my dinner." " If you kill me, Cat, to do your duty, I sha'n't be able to do mine." It was a doubtful point, and the Cat was new to casu- istry. " What is your duty ? " said she. " I have seven little ones at home seven little ones, and they will all die without me. Pray let me go." "What! do you take care of your children?" said the Cat. " How interesting ! I should like to see that ; take me." " Oh ! you would eat them, you would," said the Rabbit. " No ! better eat me than them. No, no." " Well, well," said the Cat, " I don't know ; I suppose I could n't answer for myself. I don't think I am right, for duty is pleasant, and it is very unpleasant to be so hungry ; but I suppose you must go. You seem a good Rabbit. Are you happy, Rabbit ? " " Happy ! dear beautiful Cat ! if you spare me to my poor babies ! " 618 The Oafs Pilgrimage. " Pooh, pooh ! " said the Cat, peevishly ; " I don't want fine speeches ; I meant whether you thought it worth while to be alive ! Of course you do ! It don't matter. Go, and keep out of my way ; for, if I don't get my dinner, you may not get off another time. Get along, Rabbit." PART III. IT was a great day in the Fox's cave. The eldest cub had the night before brought home his first goose, and they were just sitting down to it as the Cat came by. "Ah, my young lady! what, you in the woods? Bad feeding at home, eh ? Come out to hunt for yourself?" The goose smelt excellent; the Cat couldn't help a wistful look. She was only come, she said, to pay her respects to her wild friends. " Just in time," said the Fox. " Sit down and take a bit of dinner ; I see you want it. Make room, you cubs ; place a seat for the lady." " Why, thank you," said the Cat, " yes ; I acknowledge it is not unwelcome. Pray, don't disturb yourselves, young Foxes. I am hungry. I met a Rabbit on my way here. I was going to eat him, but he talked so prettily I let him go." The cubs looked up from their plates, and burst out laughing. " For shame, young rascals ! " said their father. " Where are your manners? Mind your dinner, and don't be rude." " Fox," she said, when it was over, and the cubs were gone to play, " you are very clever. The other creatures are all stupid." The Fox bowed. "Your family were always clever," she continued. " I have heard about them The Cat's Pilgrimage. 519 in the books they use in our school-room. It is many years since your ancestor stole the crow's dinner." " Don't say stole, Cat ; it is not pretty. Obtained by superior ability." " I beg your pardon, 55 said the Cat ; " it is all living with those men. That is not the point. Well, but I want to know whether you are any wiser or any better than Foxes were then ? " " Really," said the Fox, " I am what Nature made me. I don't know. I am proud of my ancestors, and do my best to keep up the credit of the family." " Well, but Fox, I mean do you improve ? do I ? do any of you ? The men are always talking about doing their duty, and that, they say, is the way to improve, and to be happy. And as I was not happy, I thought that had, perhaps, something to do with it, so I came out to talk to the creatures. They also had the old chant duty, duty, duty ; but none of them could tell me what mine was, or whether I had any." The Fox smiled. "Another leaf out of your school- room," said he. " Can't they tell you there ? " " Indeed," she said, " they are very absurd. They say a great deal about themselves, but they only speak disre- spectfully of us. If such creatures as they can do their duty, and improve, and be happy, why can't we ? " They say they do, do they ? " said the Fox. " What do they say of me ? " The Cat hesitated. " Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, Cat. Out with it" " They do all justice to your abilities, Fox," said she ; " but your morality, they say, is not high. They say you are a rogue." " Morality ! " said the Fox. " Very moral and good they are. And you really believe all that ? What do they mean by calling me a rogue ? " 520 Tlie Cat's Pilgrimage. "They mean you take whatever you can get, without caring whether it is just or not." "My dear Cat, it is very well for a man, if he can't bear his own face, to paint a pretty one on a panel and call it a Ipoking-glass ; but you don't mean that it takes you in ? " " Teach me," said the cat " I fear I am weak." " Who get justice from the men unless they can force it? Ask the sheep that are cut into mutton. Ask the horses that draw their ploughs. I don't mean it is wrong of the men to do as they do ; but they need n't lie about it." " You surprise me," said the Cat. " My good Cat, there is but one law in the world. The weakest goes to the wall. The men are sharper-witted than the creatures, and so they get the better of them and use them. They may call it just if they like ; but when a tiger eats a man, I guess he has just as much justice on his side as the man when he eats a sheep." "And that is the whole of it," said the Cat. " Well, it is very sad. What do you do with yourself? " " My duty, to be sure," said the Fox ; " use my wits and enjoy myself. My dear friend, you and I are on the lucky side. We eat and are not eaten." " Except by the hounds now and then," said the Cat. " Yes ; by brutes that forget their nature, and sell their freedom to the men," said the Fox, bitterly. "In the mean time my wits have kept my skin whole hitherto, and I bless Nature for making me a Fox and not a goose." " And are you happy, Fox ? " " Happy ! yes, of course. So would you be if you would do like me, and use your wits. My good Cat, I should be as miserable as you if I found my geese every day at the cave's mouth. I have to hunt for them, lie for them, sneak for them, fight for them ; cheat those old fat farmers, and bring out what there is inside me ; and then I am happy of course I am. And then. Cat, think of The Cat's Pilgrimage. 521 my feelings as a father last night, when my dear boy came home with the very young gosling which was marked for the Michaelmas dinner ! Old Reineke himself was n't more than a match for that young Fox at his years. You know our epic ? " " A little of it, Fox. They don't read it in our school- room. They say it is not moral ; but I have heard pieces of it. I hope it is not all quite true." "Pack of stuff! it is the only true book that ever was written. If it is not, it ought to be. Why, that book is the law of the world la carriere aux talents and writ- ing it was the honestest thing ever done by a man. That fellow knew a thing or two, and was n't ashamed of himself when he did know. They are all like him, too, if they would only say so. There never was one of them yet who was n't more ashamed of being called ugly than of being called a rogue, and of being called stupid than of being called naughty." "It has a roguish end, this life of yours, if you keep clear of the hounds, Fox," said the Cat. " "What ! a rope in the yard ! Well, it must end some day ; and when the farmer catches me I shall be getting old, and my brains will be taking leave of me ; so the sooner I go the better, that I may disgrace myself the less. Better be jolly while it lasts, than sit mewing out your life and grumbling at it as a bore." " Well," said the Cat, " I am very much obliged to you. I suppose I may even get home again. I shall not find a wiser friend than you, and perhaps I shall not find another good-natured enough to give me so good a dinner. But it is very sad." " Think of what I have said," answered the Fox. " I '11 call at your house some night ; you will take me a walk round the yard, and then I '11 show you." " Not quite," thought the Cat, as she trotted off; " one good turn deserves another, that is true ; and you have 522 The Cat's Pilgrimage. given me a good dinner. But they have given me many at home, and I mean to take a few more of them ; so I think you must n't go round our yard." PART 'IV. THE next morning, when the Dog came down to break- fast, he found his old friend sitting in her usual place on the hearth-rug. " Oh ! so you have come hack," said he. " How d 'ye do ? You don't look as if you had had a very pleasant journey." " I have learnt something," said the Cat. " Knowledge is never pleasant" " Then it is better to be without it," said the Dog. " Especially, better to be without knowing how to stand on one's hind legs, Dog," said the Cat ; " still, you see, you are proud of it ; but I have learnt a great deal, Dog. They won't worship you any more, and it is better for you ; you wouldn't be any happier. What dH you do yester- day ? " " Indeed," said the Dog, " I hardly remember. I slept after you went away. In the afternoon I took a drive in the carriage. Then I had my dinner. My maid washed me and put me to bed. There is the difference between you and me : you have to wash yourself and put yourself to bed." " And you really don't find it a bore, living like this ? Would n't you like something to do ? Would n't you like some children to play with ? The Fox seemed to find it very pleasant." " Children, indeed ! " said the Dog, " when I have got men and women. Children are well enough for foxes and wild creatures ; refined dogs know better ; and, for doing Tlie CaC s Pilgrimage. 523 can't I stand on my toes ? can't I dance ? at least, could n't I before I was so fat ? " " Ah ! I see every body likes what he was bred to," sighed the Cat " I was bred to do nothing, and I must like that. Train the cat as the cat should go, and the cat will be happy and ask no questions. Never seek for impos- sibilities, Dog. That is the secret." " And you have spent a day in the woods to learn that," said he. " I could have taught you that. Why, Cat, one day when you were sitting scratching your nose before the fire, I thought you looked so pretty that I should have liked to marry you ; but I knew I could n't, so I did n't make myself miserable." The Cat looked at him with her odd green eyes. "I never wished to marry you, Dog ; I should n't have pre- sumed. But it was wise of you not to fret about it. But, listen to me, Dog listen. I met many creatures in the wood, all sorts of creatures, beasts and birds. They were all happy ; they did n't find it a bore. They went about their work, and did it, and enjoyed it, and yet none of them had the same story to tell. Some did one thing, some another ; and, except the Fox, each had got a sort of notion of doing its duty. The Fox was a rogue ; he said he was ; but yet he was not unhappy. His conscience never troubled him. Your work is standing on your toes, and you are happy. I have none, and that is why I am unhappy. When I came to think about it, I found every creature out in the wood had to get its own living. I tried to get mine, but I did n't like it, because I was n't used to it ; and as for knowing, the Fox, who did n't care to know any thing except how to cheat greater fools than himself, was the cleverest fellow I came across. Oh ! the Owl, Dog -r- you should have heard the Owl. But I came to this, that it was no use trying to know, and the only way to be jolly was to go about one's own business like a decent Cat. Cats' business seems to be killing rabbits and such-like ; 524 The Cat's Pilgrimage. and it is not the pleasantest possible ; so the sooner one is bred to it the better. As for me, that have been bred to do nothing, why, as I said before, I must try to like that ; but I consider myself an unfortunate Cat." " So don't I consider myself an unfortunate Dog," said her companion. " Very likely you do not," said the Cat. By this time their breakfast was come in. The Cat ate hers, the Dog did penance for his ; and if one might judge by the purring on the hearth-rug, the Cat, if not the hap- piest of the two, at least was not exceedingly miserable. FABLES. I. THE LIONS AND THE OXEN. ONCE upon a time a number of cattle came out of the desert to settle in the broad meadows by a river. They were poor and wretched, and they found it a pleasant ex- change, except for a number of lions, who lived in the mountains near, and who claimed a right, in consideration of permitting the cattle to remain, to eat as many as they wanted among them. The cattle submitted, partly because they were too weak to help it, partly because the lions said it was the will of Jupiter ; and the cattle believed them. And so they went on for many ages, till at last, from better feeding, the cattle grew larger and stronger, and multiplied into great numbers; and at the same time, from other causes, the lions had much diminished : they were fewer smaller, and meaner-looking than they had been ; and ex- cept in their own opinion of themselves, and in their appe- tites, which were more enormous than ever, there was nothing of the old lion left in them. One day a large Ox was quietly grazing, when one of these lions came up, and desired the Ox to lie down, for he wanted to eat him. The Ox raised his head, and gravely protested ; the Lion growled ; the Ox was mild, yet firm. The Lion insisted upon his legal right, and they agreed to refer the matter to Minos. When they came into court, the Lion accused the Ox of having broken the laws of the beasts. The Lion was king, and the others were bound to obey. Prescriptive usage 526 Fables. was clearly on the Lion's side. Minos called on the Ox for his defense. The Ox said that, without consent of his own being asked, he had been born into the meadow. He did not con- sider himself much of a beast, but, such as he was, he was very happy, and gave Jupiter thanks. Now, if the Lion could show that the existence of lions was of more impor- tance than that of oxen in the eyes of Jupiter, he had nothing more to say ; he was ready to sacrifice himself. But this Lion had already eaten a thousand oxen. Lions' appetites were so insatiable that he was forced to ask whether they were really worth what was done for them, whether the life of one lion was so noble that the lives of thousands of oxen were not equal to it? He was ready to own that lions had always eaten oxen, but lions when they first came to the meadow were a different sort of creature, and they themselves, too (and the Ox looked complacently at himself), had improved since that time. Judging by appearances, though they might be fallacious, he himself was quite as good a beast as the Lion. If the lions would lead lives more noble than oxen could live, once more he would not complain. As it was, he submitted that the cost was too great. Then the Lion put on a grand face and tried to roar ; but when he opened his mouth he disclosed a jaw so drearily furnished that Minos laughed, and told the Ox that it was his own fault if he let himself be eaten by such a beast as that If he persisted in declining, he did not think the Lion would force him. II. THE FARMER AND THE Fox. A FARMER, whose poultry-yard had suffered severely from the foxes, succeeded at last in catching one in a trap. Fables. 527 u Ah, you rascal ! " said he, as he saw him struggling, " 1 11- teach you to steal my fat geese ! you shall hang on the tree yonder, and your brothers shall see what comes of thieving ! " The Farmer was twisting a halter to do what he threatened, when the Fox, whose tongue had helped him in hard pinches before, thought there could "be no harm in trying whether it might not do him one more good turn. " You will hang me," he said, " to frighten by brother foxes. On the word of a fox they won't care a rabbit-skin for it ; they '11 come and look at me ; but you may depend upon it, they will dine at your expense before they go home again ! " "Then I shall hang you for yourself, as a rogue and a rascal," said the Farmer. " I am only what Nature, or whatever you call the thing, chose to make me," the Fox answered. " I did n't make myself." " You stole my geese," said the man. " Why did Nature make me like geese, then ? " said the Fox. " Live and let live ; give me my share, and I won't touch yours : but you keep them all to yourself." " I don't understand your fine talk," answered the Farmer ; " but I know that you are a thief, and that you deserve to be hanged." His head is too thick to let me catch him so, thought the Fox ; I wonder if his heart is any softer ! " You are taking away the life of a fellow-creature," he said ; " that 's a re- sponsibility it is a curious thing that life, and who knows what comes after it ? You say I am a rogue I say I am not ; but at any rate I ought not to be hanged for if I am not, I don't deserve it ; and if I am, you should give me time to repent ! " I have him now, thought the Fox ; let him get out if he can. " Why, what would you have me do with you ? " said the man. " My notion is that you should let me go, and give me a 528 Fables. lamb, or goose or two, every month, and then I could live without stealing ; but perhaps you know better than me, and I am a rogue ; my education may have been neglected ; you should shut me up, and take care of me, and teach me. Who knows but in the end I may turn into a dog ? " " Very pretty," said the Farmer ; " we have clogs enough, and more, too, than we can take care of, without you. No, no, Master Fox, I have caught you, and you shall swing, whatever is the logic of it. There will be one rogue less in the world, anyhow." " It is mere hate and unchristian vengeance," said the Fox. " No, friend," the Farmer answered ; " I don't hate you, and I don't want to revenge myself on you ; but you and I can't get on together, and I think I am of more importance than you. If nettles and thistles grow in my cabbage- garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cab- bages. I just dig them up. I don't hate them ; but I feel somehow that they must n't hinder me with my cab- bages, and that I must put them away ; and so, my poor friend, I am sorry for you, but I am afraid you must swing." PARABLE OF THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE. IT was after one of those heavy convulsions which have divided era from era, and left mankind to start again from the beginning, that a number of brave men gathered to- gether to raise anew from the ground a fresh green home for themselves. The rest of the surviving race were shel- tering themselves amidst the old ruins, or in the caves on the mountains, feeding on husks and shells ; but these men with clear heads and brave hearts ploughed and harrowed the earth, and planted seeds, and watered them, and watched them ; and the seeds grew and shot up with the spring, but one was larger and fairer than the rest, and the other plants seemed to know it, for they crawled along till they reached the large one ; and they gathered round it, and clung to it, and grew into it ; and soon they became one great stem, with branching roots feeding it as from many fountains. Then the men got great heart in them when they saw that, and they labored more bravely, dig- ging about it in the hot sun, till at last it became great and mighty, and its roots went down into the heart of the earth, and its branches stretched over all the plain. Then many others of mankind, when they saw the tree was beautiful, came down and gathered under it, and those who had raised it received them with open arms, and they all sat under its shade together, and gathered its fruits, and made their homes there, rejoicing in its loveliness. And ages passed away, and all that generation passed away, and still the tree grew stronger and fairer, and their children's 34 530 Parable of the Bread-fruit Tree.. children watched it age afler age, as it lived on and flow- ered and seecled. And they said in their hearts, The tree is immortal it will never die. They took no care of the seed ; the scent of the flowers and the taste of the sweet fruit was all they thought of; and the winds of heaven, and the wild birds, and the beasts of the field caught the stray fruits and seed-dust, and bore the seed away, and scattered it in far-off soils. And by and by, at a great, great age, the tree at last be gan to cease to grow, and then to faint and droop : its leaves were not so thick, its flowers were not so fragrant ; and from time to time the night winds, which before had passed away, and had been never heard, came moaning and sighing among the branches. And the men for a while doubted and denied they thought it was the accident of the seasons ; and then a branch fell, and they said it was a storm, and such a storm as came but once in a thousand years. At last there could be no doubt that the leaves were thin and sear and scanty that the sun shone through them that the fruit was tasteless. But the gen- eration was gone away which had known the tree in its beauty, and so men said it was always so its fruits were never better its foliage never was thicker. So things went on, and from time to time strangers would come among them, and would say, Why are you sit- ting here under the old tree ? there are young trees grown of the seed of this tree, far away, more beautiful than it ever was ; see, we have brought you leaves and flowers to show you. But the men would not listen. They were angry, and some they drove away, and some they killed, and poured their blood round the roots of the tree, saying, They have spoken evil of our tree ; let them feed it now with their blood. At last some of their own w r iser ones brought out specimens of the old fruits, which had been laid up to be preserved, and compared them with the pres- ent bearuig, and they saw that the tree was "not as it had Parable of the Bread-fruit Tree. 531 been ; and such of them as were good men reproached themselves, and said it was their own fault. They had not watered it ; they had forgotten to manure it. So, like their first fathers, they labored with might and main, and for a while it seemed as if they might succeed, and for a few years branches, which were almost dead when the spring came round, put out some young green shoots again. But it was only for a few years ; there M r as not enough of living energy in the tree. Half the labor which was wasted on it would have raised another nobler one far away. So the men grew soon weary, and looked for a shorter way: and some gathered up the leaves and shoots which the strangers had brought, and grafted them on, if perhaps they might grow ; but they could not grow on a dying stock, and they, too, soon drooped and became as the rest. And others said, Come, let us tie the preserved fruits on again ; perhaps they will join again to the stem, and give it back its life. But there were not enough, for only a few had been preserved ; so they took painted paper and wax and clay, and cut sham leaves and fruits of the old pattern, which for a time looked bright and gay, and the world, who did not know what had been done, said, See, the tree is immortal : it is green again. Then some believed, but mauy saw that it was a sham, and liking better to bear the sky and sun, without any shade at all, than to live in a lie, and call painted paper leaves and flowers, they passed out in search of other homes. But the larger number stayed behind ; they had lived so long in falsehood that they had forgotten there was any such thing as truth at all ; the tree had clone very well for them it would do very well for their children. And if their children, as they grew up, did now and then happen to open their eyes and see how it really was, they learned from their fathers to hold their tongues about it. If the little ones and the weak ones believed, it answered all purposes, and change was inconvenient. They might smile to themselves at the 532 Parable of the Bread-Fruit Tree. folly which they countenanced, but they. were discreet, and they would not expose it. This is the state of the tree, and of the men who are under it at this present time : they say it still does very well. Perhaps it does but, stem and boughs and paper leaves, it is dry for the burn- ing, and if the lightning touches it, those who sit beneath will suffer. COMPENSATION. ONE day an Antelope was lying with her fawn at the foot of the flowering Mimosa. The weather was intensely sultry, and a Dove, who had sought shelter from the heat among the leaves, was cooing above her head. " Happy bird ! " said the Antelope. " Happy bird ! to whom the air is given for an inheritance, and whose flight is swifter than the wind. At your will you alight upon the ground, at your will you sweep into the sky, and fly races with the driving clouds ; while I, poor I, am bound a pris- oner to this miserable earth, and wear out my pitiable life crawling to and fro upon its surface." Then the Dove answered, " It is sweet to sail along the sky, to fly from land to land, and coo among the valleys ; but, Antelope, when I have sat above amidst the branches and watched your little one close its tiny lips upon your breast, and feed its life on yours, I have felt that I could strip off my wings, lay down my plumage, and remain all my life upon the ground only once to know such blessed enjoyment." The breeze sighed among the boughs of the Mimosa, and a voice came trembling out of the rustling leaves : " If the Antelope mourns her destiny, what should the Mimosa do ? The Antelope is the swiftest among the animals. It rises in the morning ; the ground flies under its feet in the evening it is a hundred miles away. The Mimosa is feeding its old age on the same soil which quickened its seed-cell into activity. The seasons roll by me and leave 534 Compensation. me in the old place. The winds sway among inj branches, as if they longed to bear me away with them, but they pass on and leave me behind. The wild birds come and go. The flocks move by me in the evening on their way to the pleasant waters. I can never move. My cradle must be niy grave." Then from below, at the root of the tree, came a voice which neither bird, nor antelope, nor tree had ever heard, as a Rock Crystal from its prison in the limestone followed on the words of the Mimosa. " Are ye all unhappy ?" it said. " If ye are, then what am I ? Ye all have life. You ! O Mimosa, you ! whose fair flowers j-ear by year come again to you, ever young, and fresh, and beautiful you who can drink the rain with your leaves, who can wanton with the summer breeze, and open your breast to give a home to the wild birds, look at me and be ashamed. I only am truly wretched." " Alas ! " said the Mimosa, " we have life, which you have not, it is true. We have also what you have not, its shadow death. My beautiful children, which year by year I bring out into being, expand in their loveliness only to die. Where they are gone I too shall soon follow, while you will flash in the light of the last sun which rises upon the earth." THE END. , Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.