GIFT OF
Gladys Isaacson
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE
From an engraving by Augustin de St. Aubin
Great Essays
J
By
Montaigne, Sidney, Milton, Cowley,
Disraeli, Lamb, Irving, Lowell,
Jefferies, and Others
With Biographical Notes and a Critical Introduction
by Helen Kendrick Johnson
Illustrated
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1904
9/7
6-78 G
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
GIFT OF .
*
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
EVERY fctm of literature has its appropriate time
and use, and -1 philosophical study appears to show
that each form reaches a culmination at some stage
of a nation's history or in the history of the world. When
the stage of progress which called it forth is gone by it is
hardly possible for future writers to surpass that form of
literature in which a nation or an era found its true ex-
pression. There is much of falsehood in the apparent
truism " history repeats itself," for there are senses in which
the world's history is a series of completions. The truth
of this may be best realized in regard to other forms of
art than the literary, because the spoken and written lan-
guage which is its medium is more evidently a living
growth.
The twentieth century will turn back beyond the pres-
ent era for its greatest models in sculpture; to the four-
teenth century for its models in architecture; to the fif-
teenth for painting; and to the eighteenth for music. Each
of these arts has a variety of forms, and each form has its
own completion. Egypt and the Orient possessed the
greatest temples, the noblest palaces, and the grandest
tombs; but whether the expression was that of pre-Chris-
tian or Christian civilization, when the culmination of the
ideal toward which each was tending was reached, progress
in that special path was ended. There was no beyond
iii
iv ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
for the art that wrought the Venus of Milo, or for that
which erected the European cathedrals; for that which
gave us " The Last Supper " and " The Last Judgment,"
or for that which found utterance in " The Messiah " and
the great symphonies. Henceforth we are imitators and
combiners in all these matters.
The question arises, Are any of the great forms of liter-
ary art finished ? Have poetry and the drama reached their
culmination? Must the twentieth century look back upon
thought temples and statues and pictures that can never
be surpassed in their own order? It is not well to dog-
matize. We must remember with Montesquieu, that the
success of the greater part of things depends upon know-
ing how long it takes to succeed. Especially is this warn-
ing to be observed in regard to such literature as is the
expression of a living language and a living people. But
there are facts which indicate that this art is subject to the
same conditions that are more evident in the others.
Poetry belongs to youth to the youth of a writer, of
a nation, of the world. We should therefore expect to
find, as is the case, that the earlier literature of the race
and of nations contains its perfected poems. In the Old
Testament are to be found the grandest models for all poetic
thought. Hope and trust are the gift of childhood, and
they are the purest inspirers of imagination and of spiritual
insight. Poetic prophecy reached its culmination with the
ancient Hebrews, and lyric poetry found its perfect ex-
pression in the Psalms. The highest reach of pathos and
triumph, both of feeling and imagery, is embodied in the
work of an unknown time and author; dramatic and epic
poetry are combined in the sublimity of the book of Job.
The " Iliad," the " Vedas," and the " Eddas " also belong
to the times of earliest inspiration.
The opening century may reveal marvels of achieve-
ment in many fields of thought; but in the work of Shakes-
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS V
peare the English-speaking peoples have given the world
another evidence of climax. The future is not likely to
show a repetition of " Hamlet " or of " Lear."
Prose has many subdivisions. The oration appears to
be one of the earliest as well as one of the most lasting
forms. It is a direct address on a subject of commanding
interest; and such writings as our Declaration of Inde-
pendence belong to this field. The oration lends itself
to great occasions when mind must act quickly upon mind
and when feeling is to be stirred to action.
The essay is addressed to the eye rather than to the
ear. It asks for time. It presents a silent appeal from
the printed page. Like the oration, it should possess a
single purpose, should be forcible in statement, and should
demand attention from both the reason and the feeling.
The essay implies leisurely thought on the part of the
reader, and it belongs to the fireside and the study. The
essay should be more philosophical than the oration. The
style may be simple or ornate, but its theme must be elab-
orated in order to be seen in its full bearing. The essay
is speculative and questioning, and sometimes apparently
inconclusive. Its mission may be either persuasion or
entertainment. The essay that proclaims its own infallible-
ness fails at the outset. Firm conviction on the writer's
part is generally essential, but it should unfold itself grad-
ually. The essay must beguile and invite discussion and
pursuit. It is a roamer and a gleaner in the fields of
thought, and the result it brings must be so presented to
the reader that his own mind shall roam and glean. Part
of the pleasure given will be the pleasure of comparing his
own reflections and adjusting his own beliefs. The ideal
essay must be imaginative, sympathetic, and instructive.
It naturally follows that the essay is more widely adapt-
ive than any other form of writing. It grows with a na-
tion's life, and changes with its varying pulsations. It
vi ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
never has reached the commanding place attained by the
oration, but, on the other hand, it never has been lost sight
of as a valuable form of literature. It is perhaps less easy
to make a collection of essays that would be agreed upon
as among the world's greatest than of any other kind of
composition. The nature of the essay itself suggests an
illusive quality of opinion concerning it.
English literature is deeply indebted to Montaigne.
Shakespeare, Bacon, Swift, Pope, and Sterne were directly
influenced by him. Among modern writers, Emerson
loved him, and Stevenson speaks of the spell thrown from
his pages. In Florio's translation we have a classic that
seems to make of Montaigne an English writer of singular
purity and beauty. He is winning and ingenuous. In the
preface to his volume of essays he says : " Had my inten-
tions been to forestall and purchase the world's opinion
and favour, I would surely have adorned myself more
quaintly or kept a more grave and solemn march. I desire
therein to be delineated in mine own genuine and simple
fashion, without contention, art, or study; for it is myself
I portray. My imperfections shall therein be read to the
life, and my natural form discerned, so far forth as public
reverence hath permitted me." Again he says: " I erect
not here a statue to be set up in the market-place of a
town, or in a church, or in any other public place. It is
for the corner of a library, or to amuse a neighbour, a
kinsman, or a friend of mine withal, who by this image
may happily take pleasure to renew acquaintance and to
reconverse with me. And if it happen no man read me,
have I lost my time to have entertained myself so many
idle hours about so pleasing and profitable thoughts? "
Of that desultoriness to which the essay naturally lends
itself, and which, rightly used, may prove to be the truest
method for absorbing a theme, Montaigne says in his essay
on books: '* If in reading I fortune to meet with any dif-
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS vii
ficult points, I do not fret myself about them, but after
I have given them a charge or two I leave them as I found
them. Should I earnestly plod upon them I should lose
both time and myself, for I have a skipping wit. What I
see not at the first view I shall less see it if I opinionate
myself upon it. I do nothing without blitheness; and an
over-obstinate continuation and plodding contention doth
dazzle, dull, and weary the same: my sight is thereby con-
founded and diminished. I must therefore withdraw it,
and at fits go at it again. If one look seems tedious to me,
I take another. I am not greatly affected to new books,
because ancient authors, in my judgment, are more full and
pithy." Surely this is the spirit and the work of a prince
of essay writing and essay reading a man who takes his
learning lightly, and can presume upon that friendship with
knowledge that has stood the test of years.
Sir Philip Sidney is always pictured as grave and dig-
nified beyond his years and his time, but in his " Defence
of Poesy " there is a " blitheness " that Montaigne did not
possess. Sidney had nothing of that irony which Mon-
taigne had carried into retirement from the court of
France. Both men were the favourites of the highest cir-
cles of their time; but while Montaigne contented himself
with the sobriety of a man who had drunk deep of folly's
cup and found it bitter, Sidney preserved a lofty purity
and reverence where so much was vile. Both were learned,
but Sidney's learning became wisdom. All these qualities
appear in his famous " Defence," and make more conspicu-
ous the quaint mirthfulness with which he tingles the dulled
ears of his countrymen who had cast scorn upon that art
which was to find so soon its highest exemplification in
their own land, for the " Faerie Queene " of Spenser was
probably begun, and the first of Shakespeare's plays to see
the light of print appeared within ten years.
The next essay Milton's is, on the contrary, a stir-
viii ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
ring appeal to emotion. Like the others, it exhibits the
author's great learning, but in many respects it is what
Milton calls it a speech. It is an elaborated oration, and
the elaboration is a hindrance to its effectiveness. The
classic model chosen that of the address of the Greeks
before their Areopagus is followed with laboured exact-
ness, and this causes the essay to be very unequal Parts
of it are magnificent in their simple, straightforward force.
Invective, appeal, argument, are used with moving effect.
But invective has rarely been put into such fascinating
form as that used by Cowley for a denunciation of Crom-
well and the Commonwealth as a loyalist saw them. His
essay is stately, picturesque, fiery, lofty in diction, and at-
tractive by the curious form selected. Like Milton's, this
essay is political, but there could be no greater contrast
than the form in which the two author statesmen cast their
appeals. Nothing is gained for this essay by the insertion
of the poems that are characteristic of Cowley's work.
His ambition was to be a poet, but apparently he is to be
remembered only as a writer of elegant and forcible prose.
Oliver Goldsmith's prose has little of the poetic quality
that might be expected from the author of " The Deserted
Village." His essays are witty, wise, and agreeable. They
are didactic, and are aimed frequently at the weaknesses
or follies of his age. The clever idea of holding the cus-
toms of his country up to that country's ridicule by pre-
tending to look at them through the eyes of a foreigner
did not originate with Goldsmith, but has been used most
effectively by him in his essays entitled " A Citizen of the
World." These are, however, so frank in picturing coarse
and repulsive conditions that many of them are unpleasant
reading for a more refined era, though they may have had
an influence in producing that greater refinement.
Nearly all the essays thus far mentioned have been
called forth by the author's desire to effect a change in his
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS ix
own time, but of none of them is this so true as of the
splendid oration-essay entitled " The Crisis." Liberty and
literature are alike indebted to Thomas Paine' s series of
brilliant pamphlets.
We have next a strong contrast in Disraeli's theme,
drawn as it is from the oldest form of literature the prov-
erbs in which nations have unconsciously set down their
own history in concrete phrases that pass current from lip
to lip. A falsehood sanctioned by a proverb is doubly false,
or, rather, doubly mischievous ; a truth in such a setting is
likely to play a continual part in history; and the tracing
of proverbs to their origin and through their adventurous
wanderings is a task peculiarly suited to the genius of the
essay.
We think of Charles Lamb as the type of what the
modern essay writer should be genial, gentle, dreamy,
poetic, able to write out his own heart and personality, and
yet reveal no overweening self-confidence or pride of intel-
lect. This Lamb could do to perfection. Thus in his essay
entitled " Imperfect Sympathies" he says: "That the au-
thor of the ' Religio Medici/ mounted upon the airy stilts
of abstraction, conversant about notional and conjectural
essences, in whose categories of being the possible took the
upper hand of the actual, should have overlooked the im-
pertinent personalities of such poor concretions as man-
kind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be won-
dered at that in the genus of animal he should have con-
descended to distinguish that species at all. For myself,
earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities,
' standing on earth, not wrapped above the sky/ I confess
that I do feel the differences of mankind, national and
individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is
to me a matter of taste or distaste, for when once it becomes
indifferent it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer
X ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
words, a bundle of prejudices made up of likings and dis-
likings the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipa-
thies. In a certain sense I hope it may be said of me that
I am a lover of my species I can feel for all indifferently,
but I can not feel toward all equally. The more purely
English word that expresses my sympathy will better ex-
press my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man,
who upon another account can not be my mate or fellow.
I can not like all people alike." Lamb himself is likeable
in both his likes and his dislikes. His essays are of un-
equal merit, and they are seldom profound in thought;
but his life of hidden self-devotion somehow permeated the
literature through which it found relief.
Washington Irving in many respects suggests Charles
Lamb. He is an ideal essayist of the thoughtful, sympa-
thetic, humorous kind. The man of leisure, the student
and writer, was rare in our country when Irving published
his earliest work. Literature as a profession was not yet
at home here. Prose was still dwelling in its log cabin as
a frontiersman, and poetry was in the air, but had not
alighted even in the tree-tops. We owe much of the
hearthstone happiness of our expanding love of letters to
the genius that gave us the " Sketch Book."
Whittier's prose is too little known and read. A half-
restrained merriment lends a charm to his terse and simple
Saxon phrasing, which was seldom called out by the themes
that stirred his Muse. His wide sympathies appear in his
range of subjects, but one chain of thought unites them
all the human element that gave interest to his essentially
philanthropic soul.
Whipple is one of the strongest essayists our country
has produced. His power of argument, his persuasive
appeal, his elevation of thought and elegance of language,
render him a fireside writer of commanding interest. His
work has also some essentials of the oration; it is forcible
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS xi
when used as an address. The best essays lend themselves
peculiarly to loud reading, and none more so than those
of Whipple.
Religious themes are not often chosen by the essayist,
and for that reason we are the more indebted to one who
presents a single spiritual idea in fascinating form. This
Principal Shairp has done. His beautiful essay appears to
grow naturally out of a securely rooted affection for the
truth. The task he set himself was, to use his own words,
" to offer such suggestions as have been gathered from
a number of years not unobservant of what has been going
on in that borderland where faith and knowledge meet."
This field is apparently the one next to be gleaned by the
student, and such trained knowledge and intelligent faith
as Shairp's are of great value therein.
Lowell did many things well, and some supremely well.
It seems to me not only that he is the greatest American
poet, but that his " Commemoration Ode " is the finest
elegiac poem in our language. I also believe he leads
his countrymen as an essayist of the fireside. He is not
an orator in prose; he is a philosopher and a dreamer. He
is singularly humorous, is forcible, full of conviction, and
has a lover's instinct in making language serve occasion.
His later political essays are inferior to his earlier work.
Matthew Arnold's " Sweetness and Light " has been
so thoroughly discussed that added words are needless,
except to say that it seems to stand as the mouthpiece of
that philanthropic socialism which has held a place among
a large body of England's literary men for many years,
and which, in this country at least, in municipal socialism,
seems to be tending rapidly to unite with the state social-
ism against which at the outset it protested. Arnold says,
" The men of culture are the true apostles of equality."
This remains to be proved, but the essay here given is a
notable plea in its favour.
xii ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS
There are few essayists among women, but Gail Hamil-
ton found this form of literature exactly suited to the cast
of her mind. She is a natural essay writer, and gives us
humour, pathos, good sense, and suggestion in a proverb-
like fashion that is quite her own. She has more nearly
made a fine art of quotation than has any other writer
whom I recall. The homely Saxon of her essays never
descends to the commonplace, and often rises to eloquence.
What she says remains in the memory; it is not given to
playing hide-and-go-seek with the reader. She herself is
eminently quotable, and she puts the reader at once en
rapport with her own mood. Hers is not the form of essay
that arouses questioning and sets one thinking. We take
her word for it, however startling and original her propo-
sitions. This is a rare art in an essayist, and is worthy
of profounder themes than those on which Gail Hamil-
ton usually wrote.
Richard Jefferies presents a fine specimen of the highly
ornamented essay. The loving student of Nature has
always found responsive minds, and the world cherishes
White's "Selborne" and Walton's "Complete Angler"
for the sake of the thing interpreted as much as for the
method of interpretation.
In Robert Louis Stevenson we lost an almost ideal
essayist. His pictures of Nature and art and life come
naturally into the fireside world. When one has read them
in solitude he feels that he can not rest until he has read
them aloud with a congenial friend. Stevenson is gay and
tender, picturesque, suggestive, illuminating. Will not
some children of a future generation be better understood
and more wisely guided because of a glimpse of the child's
world seen through his soul window, with its transparent
setting of pure English words?
The essay is a happy form of literature. It gains mel-
lowness with age, and yet keeps the freshness of youth.
ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS xiii
And it is perhaps the most democratic of all forms, for
there is no supreme essayist towering above his fellows.
This throws a peculiar interest about the essay, and makes
explicable its many decadences and revivals. It is now
in fashion, and now out of fashion, to write essays or to
read them; and this state of things is likely to continue
until some future crisis calls forth a many-sided genius
who shall fulfil all the conditions of the perfect essay.
HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON.
CONTENTS
OF THE INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN PAGB
By Michel Eyquem de Montaigne ...... i
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
By Sir Philip Sidney 47
AREOPAGITICA : A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED
PRINTING
By John Milton 99
A DISCOURSE, BY WAY OF VISION, CONCERNING THE GOVERN-
MENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
By Abraham Cowley 147
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND
By Oliver Goldsmith 183 '
COMMON SENSE
By Thomas Paine 195
THE CRISIS
By Thomas Paine 228
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
By Isaac Disraeli 2 37
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
By Charles Lamb 2 75
THE CONVALESCENT
By Charles Lamb 28 5
RURAL FUNERALS
By Washington Irving 2 9*
xvi GREAT ESSAYS
THOMAS ELLWOOD PAGE
By John Greenleaf Whittier 33
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
By James Russell Lowell 329
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE
By Edwin Percy Whipple 355
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH
By John Campbell Shairp 379
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
By Matthew Arnold 397
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
By Gail Hamilton 4 2 7
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
By Richard Jefferies 447
CHILD'S PLAY
By Robert Louis Stevenson 467
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE Frontispiece
From an engraving by Augustin de St. Aubin.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 52
From an engraving after a painting by Isaac Oliver.
CHARLES LAMB 282
From an etching after a painting by Henry Meyer.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 338
From an engraving by Alfred B. Hall.
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 47 2
From an etching by Samuel Hollyer.
OF THE
INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION
OF CHILDREN
BY
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE
TRANSLATED BY JOHN FLORIO
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE was born at his father's chateau, in
the old province of Perigord, France, February 28, 1533. The boy had a
German tutor who could not speak French, and many of those about him
were required by his eccentric father to learn Latin, that his son might
become familiar with that tongue, in which, it is said, he was able to con-
verse at the age of six. He was sent to college at Bordeaux, and then
studied law. He succeeded to the estate and retired from business at the
age of thirty-eight, and soon afterward began to write his " Essays," the
first edition of which appeared in 1580. He was remarkable for his bad
memory, which may have been the result of too much linguistic study in
his infancy and youth ; and the list of ordinary things that he could not
do is amazing. It is said that he could not swim, fence, carve, guess a
riddle, saddle a horse, make a pen, or tell the use of the common agri-
cultural implements. He disliked to read, and never revised his manu-
scripts. He was familiar at court, and was called to mediate between
Henry of Navarre and the Duke of Guise. In middle life he travelled
extensively on the continent, and afterward he was Mayor of Bordeaux
for four years. He died September 13, 1592. The two romantic episodes
in his life were his friendship with tienne la Boetie, who died early, and
whose literary remains Montaigne edited, and, in later life, that with
Mademoiselle de Gournay, who after his death published an excellent
edition of his " Essays." His biography has been written by Boyle St.
John (1857). JOHN FLORIO, the first translator of Montaigne's " Essays,"
was the son of an Italian exile, and was born in London about 1553. He
was a private tutor, did a large amount of work in the way of translating
and compiling, and wrote an Italian and English dictionary. His trans-
lation of Montaigne was published in 1603. The British Museum has
two copies of it, one containing the autograph of Ben Jonson, the other
that of Shakespeare. It is the only book that Shakespeare is known to
have owned, and some doubt has been thrown even on this autograph.
OF THE INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF
CHILDREN
I NEVER knew father, how crooked and deformed so-
ever his son were, that would either altogether cast him
off or not acknowledge him for his own; and yet
(unless he be merely besotted or blinded in his affection)
it may not be said but he plainly perceiveth his defects,
and hath a feeling of his imperfections. But so it is, he
is his own. So it is in myself. I see better than any man
else that what I have set down is naught but the fond
imaginations of him who in his youth hath tasted nothing
but the paring, and seen but the superfices of true learn-
ing, whereof he hath retained but a general and shapeless
form: a smack of everything in general, but nothing to the
purpose in particular. After the French manner. To be
short, I know there is an art of physic, a course of laws,
four parts of the mathematics, and I am not altogether
ignorant what they tend unto. And perhaps I also know
the scope and drift of sciences in general to be for the
service of our life. But to wade farther, or that ever I
tired myself with plodding upon Aristotle (the monarch
of our modern doctrine), or obstinately continued in search
of any one science, I confess I never did it. Nor is there
any one art whereof I am able so much as to draw the first
lineaments. And there is no scholar (be he of the lowest
form) that may not repute himself wiser than I, who am
not able to oppose him in his first lesson; and if I be forced
to it, I am constrained very impertinently to draw in matter
from some general discourse, whereby I examine and give
a guess at his natural judgment: a lesson as much unknown
to them as theirs is to me. I have not dealt or had com-
merce with any excellent book, except Plutarch or Seneca,
from whom (as the Danaides) I draw my water, incessantly
3
4 MONTAIGNE
filling, and as fast emptying; something whereof I fasten
to this paper, but to myself nothing at all. And touching
bopksj history, is .my chief study, poesy my only delight,
to which I li'mi pairtjpularly affected ; for as Cleanthes said,
,tha. as -{he, -voice, being- forcibly pent in the narrow gullet
of a''lram'pet' sUisi'isiieth forth more strong and shriller,
so meseems that a sentence cunningly and closely couched
in measure-keeping poesy darts itself forth more furiously
and wounds me even to the quick. And concerning the
natural faculties that are in me (whereof behold here an
essay), I perceive them to faint under their own burden;
my conceits and my judgment march but uncertain, and
as it were groping, staggering, and stumbling at every
rush. And when I have gone as far as I can I have no
whit pleased myself, for the farther I sail the more land
I descry, and that so dimmed with fogs, and overcast
with clouds, that my sight is so weakened I can not dis-
tinguish the same. And then undertaking to speak indif-
ferently of all that presents itself unto my fantasy, and
having nothing but mine own natural means to employ
therein, if it be my hap (as commonly it is) among good
authors, to light upon those very places which I have un-
dertaken to treat of, as even now I did in Plutarch, reading
his discourse of the power of imagination, wherein in re-
gard of those wise men I acknowledge myself so weak and
so poor, so dull and gross-headed, as I am forced both to
pity and disdain myself, yet am I pleased with this, that my
opinions have often the grace to jump with theirs, and
that I follow them aloof off, and thereby possess at least
that which all other men have not, which is, that I know
the utmost difference between them and myself; all which
notwithstanding I suffer my inventions to run abroad, as
weak and faint as I have produced them, without bungling
and botching the faults which this comparison hath dis-
covered to me in them. A man had need have a strong
back to undertake to march foot to foot with this kind of
men. The indiscreet writers of our age, amid their trivial
compositions, intermingle and wrest in whole sentences
taken from ancient authors, supposing by such filching
theft to purchase honour and reputation to themselves,
do clean contrary. For this infinite variety and dissem-
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 5
blance of lustres makes a face so wan, so ill-favoured, and
so ugly, in respect of theirs, that they lose much more than
gain thereby. These were two contrary humours: the phi-
losopher Chrisippus was wont to foist in among his books
not only whole sentences and other long-long discourses,
but whole books of other authors, as in one he brought
in Euripides's " Medea." And Apollodorus was wont to
say of him that if one should draw from out his books what
he had stolen from others, his paper would remain blank.
Whereas Epicurus, clean contrary to him, in three hundred
volumes he left behind him, had not made use of one alle-
gation. It was my fortune not long since to light upon
such a place: I had languishingly traced after some French
words, so naked and shallow, and so void either of sense
or matter, that at last I found them to be naught but mere
French words; and after a tedious and wearisome travel
I chanced to stumble upon a high, rich, and even to the
clouds raised piece, the descent whereof had it been some-
what more pleasant or easy, or the ascent reaching a little
farther, it had been excusable, and to be borne withal; but
it was such a steepy downfall, and by mere strength hewn
out of the main rock, that by reading of the first six words
methought I was carried into another world: whereby I
perceive the bottom whence I came to be so low and deep,
as I durst never more adventure to go through it; for, if
I did stuff any one of my discourses with those rich spoils,
it would manifestly cause the sottishness of others to ap-
pear. To reprove mine own faults in others seems to me
no more insufferable than to reprehend (as I do often)
those of others in myself. They ought to be accused every-
where, and have all places of sanctuary taken from them;
yet do I know how over-boldly at all times I adventure
to equal myself unto my filchings, and to march hand in
hand with them; not without a fond hardy hope that I
may perhaps be able to blear the eyes of the judges from
discerning them. But it is as much for the benefit of my
application as for the good of mine invention and force.
And I do not furiously front, and body to body wrestle with
those old champions: it is but by flights, advantages, and
false offers I seek to come within them, and if I can to
give them a fall. I do not rashly take them about the neck,
6 MONTAIGNE
I do but touch them, nor do I go so far as by my bargain
I would seem to do; could I but keep even with them, I
should then be an honest man; for I seek not to venture
on them, but where they are strongest. To do as I have
seen some, that is, to shroud themselves under other arms,
not daring so much as to show their fingers' ends unarmed,
and to botch up all their works (as it is an easy matter in
a common subject, namely, for the wiser sort) with ancient
inventions, here and there huddled up together. And in
those who endeavoured to hide what they have filched
from others, and make it their own, it is first a manifest
note of injustice, then a plain argument of cowardliness;
who having nothing of any worth in themselves to make
show of, will yet under the countenance of others' suffi-
ciency go about to make a fair offer: moreover (oh, great
foolishness!), to seek by such cozening tricks to forestall
the ignorant approbation of the common sort, nothing
fearing to discover their ignorance to men of understand-
ing (whose praise only is of value) who will soon trace out
such borrowed ware. As for me, there is nothing I will
do less. I never speak of others but that I may the more
speak of myself. This concerneth not those mingle-man-
gles of many kinds of stuff, or, as the Grecians call them,
Rhapsodies, that for such are published, of which kind
I have (since I came to years of discretion) seen divers most
ingenious and witty; among others, one under the name
of Capilupus; besides many of the ancient stamp. These
are wits of such excellence as both here and elsewhere they
will soon be perceived, as our late famous writer Lipsius,
in his learned and laborious work of the " Politics": yet
whatsoever come of it, forsomuch as they are but follies,
my intent is not to smother them, no more than a bald and
hoary picture of mine, where a painter hath drawn not a
perfect visage, but mine own. For, howsoever, these are
but my humours and opinions, and I deliver them but to
show what my conceit is, and not what ought to be be-
lieved. Wherein I aim at nothing but to display myself,
who peradventure (if a new prenticeship change me) shall
be another to-morrow. I have no authority to purchase
belief, neither do I desire it; knowing well that I am not
sufficiently taught to instruct others. Some, having read
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 7
my precedent chapter, told me not long since, in mine
own house, I should somewhat more have extended myself
in the discourse concerning the institution of children.
Now, madam, if there were any sufficiency in me touching
that subject, I could not better employ the same than to
bestow it as a present upon that little lad, which ere long
threateneth to make a happy issue from out your honour-
able womb; for, madam, you are too generous to begin
with other than a man child. And having had so great
a part in the conduct of your successful marriage, I may
challenge some right and interest in the greatness and
prosperity of all that shall proceed from it: moreover, the
ancient and rightful possession, which you from time to
time have ever had, and still have, over my service, urgeth
me, with more than ordinary respects, to wish all honour,
welfare, and advantage to whatsoever may in any sort con-
cern you and yours. And truly my meaning is but to
show that the greatest difficulty, and importing all human
knowledge, seemeth to be in this point, where the nurture
and institution of young children is in question. For, as
in matters of husbandry, the labour that must be used be-
fore sowing, setting, and planting yea, in planting itself
is most certain and easy. But when that which was sown,
set, and planted cometh to take life, before it come to
ripeness much ado and great variety of proceeding be-
longeth to it. So in men; it is no great matter to get
them, but, being born, what continual cares, what diligent
attendance, what doubts and fears, do daily wait to their
parents and tutors, before they can be nurtured and brought
to any good ! The foreshow of their inclination while they
are young is so uncertain, their humours so variable, their
promises so changing, their hopes so false, and their pro-
ceedings so doubtful, that it is very hard (yea, for the
wisest) to ground any certain judgment or assured success
upon them. Behold Cymon, view Themistocles, and a
thousand others, how they have differed, and fallen to
better from themselves, and deceive the expectation of such
as knew them. The young whelps both of dogs and bears
at first sight show their natural disposition, but men head-
long embracing this custom or fashion, following that
humour or opinion, admitting this or that passion, allow-
8 MONTAIGNE
ing of that or this law, are easily changed and soon dis-
guised; yet it is hard to force the natural propension or
readiness of the mind, whereby it followeth that for want
of heedy foresight in those that could not guide their course
well, they often employ much time in vain to address young
children in those matters whereunto they are not naturally
addicted. All which difficulties notwithstanding, mine
opinion is, to bring them up in the best and most profit-
able studies, and that a man should slightly pass over those
fond presages and deceiving prognostics which we over-
precisely gather in their infancy. And (without offence
be it said) methinks that Plato in his " Commonwealth "
allowed them too-too much authority.
Madam, learning joined with true knowledge is an
especial and graceful ornament, and an implement of won-
derful use and consequence namely, in persons raised to
that degree of fortune wherein you are. And, in good
truth, Learning hath not her own true form, nor can she
make show of her beauteous lineaments if she fall into
the hands of base and vile persons. [For, as famous Tor-
quato Tasso saith: " Philosophy being a rich and noble
queen, and knowing her own worth, graciously smileth
upon and lovingly embraceth princes and noblemen if they
become suitors to her, admitting them as her minions, and
gently affording them all the favours she can; whereas,
upon the contrary, if she be wooed and sued unto by
clowns, mechanical fellows, and such base kind of people,
she holds herself disparaged and disgraced, as holding no
proportion with them. And therefore see we by experi-
ence that if a true gentleman or nobleman follow her with
any attention, and wooed her with importunity, he shall
learn and know more of her, and prove a better scholar
in one year than an ungentle or base fellow shall in seven,
though he pursue her never so attentively."] She is much
more ready and fierce to lend her furtherance and direction
in the conduct of a war, to attempt honourable actions,
to command a people, to treat a peace with a prince of
foreign nation, than she is to form an argument in logic,
to devise a syllogism, to canvass a case at the bar, or to
prescribe a receipt of pills. So (noble lady) forsomuch as
I can not persuade myself that you will either forget or
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 9
neglect this point, concerning the institution of yours,
especially having tasted the sweetness thereof, and being
descended of so noble and learned a race for we yet pos-
sess the learned compositions of the ancient and noble
Earls of Foix, from out whose heroic loins your husband
and you take your offspring; and Francis, Lord of Can-
dale, your worthy uncle, doth daily bring forth such fruits
thereof as the knowledge of the matchless quality of your
house shall hereafter extend itself to many ages I will
therefore make you acquainted with one conceit of mine,
which is contrary to the common use I hold, and that is all
I am able to afford you concerning that matter, the charge
of the tutor which you shall appoint your son, in the choice
of whom consisteth the whole substance of his education
and bringing up; on which are many branches depending,
which (forasmuch as I can add nothing of any moment
to it) I will not touch at all. And for that point, wherein
I presume to advise him, he may so far forth give credit
unto it as he shall see just cause. To a gentleman born
of noble parentage, and heir of a house that aimeth at true
learning, and in it would be disciplined, not so much for
game or commodity to himself (because so abject an end
is far unworthy the grace and favour of the Muses, and
besides hath a regard or dependency of others), nor for
external show and ornament, but to adorn and enrich his
inward mind, desiring rather to shape and institute an able
and sufficient man than a bare learned man; my desire is
therefore that the parents or overseers of such a gentle-
man be very circumspect and careful in choosing his di-
rector, whom I would rather commend for having a well-
composed and temperate brain than a full-stuffed head,
yet both will do well. And I would rather prefer wisdom,
judgment, civil customs, and modest behaviour than bare
and mere literal learning; and that in his charge he hold
a new course. Some never cease brawling in their schol-
ars' ears (as if they were still pouring in a tunnel) to follow
their book, yet is their charge nothing else but to repeat
what hath been told them before. I would have a tutor
to correct this part, and that at first entrance, according
to the capacity of the wit he hath in hand, he should begin
to make show of it, making him to have a smack of all
I0 MONTAIGNE
things, and how to choose and distinguish them, without
help of others, sometimes opening him the way, other times
leaving him to open it by himself. I would not have him
to invent and speak alone, but suffer his disciple to speak
when his turn cometh. Socrates, and after him Arcesilaus,
made their scholars to speak first, and then would speak
themselves. Obest plerumque iis qui discere volunt,
auctoritas eorum qui docent l " Most commonly the au-
thority of them that teach hinders them that would learn."
It is therefore meet that he make him first trot on before
him, whereby he may the better judge of his pace, and
so guess how long he will hold out, that accordingly he
may fit his strength, for want of which proportion we often
mar all. And to know how to make a good choice, and
how far forth one may proceed (still keeping a due meas-
ure), is one of the hardest labours I know. It is a sign
of a noble, and effect of an undaunted spirit, to know how
to second, and how far forth he shall condescend to his
childish proceedings, and how to guide them. As for
myself, I can better and with more strength walk up than
down a hill. Those who, according to our common fash-
ion, undertake with one selfsame lesson, and like manner
of education, to direct many spirits of divers forms and
different humours, it is no marvel if among a multitude
of children they scarce meet with two or three that reap
any good fruit by their discipline, or that come to any
perfection. I would not only have him to demand an
account of the words contained in his lesson, but of the
sense and substance thereof, and judge of the profit he
hath made of it, not by the testimony of his memory, but
by the witness of his life. That what he lately learned he
causes him to set forth and portray the same into sundry
shapes, and then to accommodate it to as many different
and several subjects, whereby he shall perceive whether he
have yet apprehended the same, and therein enfeoffed him-
self, at due times taking his instruction from the institution
given by Plato. It is a sign of crudity and indigestion for
a man to yield up his meat even as he swallowed the same;
the stomach hath not wrought its full operation unless it
has changed form and altered fashion of that which was
given him to boil and concoct.
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN n
We see men gape after no reputation but learning, and
when they say such a one is a learned man, they think they
have said enough. Our mind doth move at others' pleasure,
and tied and forced to serve the fantasies of others, being
brought under by authority, and forced to stoop to the lure
of their bare lesson; we have been so subjected to harp upon
one string that we have no way left us to descant upon vol-
untary; our vigour and liberty are clean extinct. Nunquam
tutelse suae fiunt ' They never come to their own tuition."
It was my hap to be familiarly acquainted with an honest
man at Pisa, but such an Aristotelian as he held this infal-
lible position, that a conformity to Aristotle's doctrine was
the true touchstone and square of all solid imaginations and
perfect verity; for whatsoever had no coherency with it was
but fond chimeras and idle humours; inasmuch as he had
known all, seen all, and said all. This proposition of his be-
ing somewhat over-amply and injuriously interpreted by
some made him a long time after to be troubled in the In-
quisition of Rome. I would have him make his scholar nar-
rowly to sift all things with discretion, and harbour nothing
in his head by mere authority or upon trust. Aristotle's
principles shall be no more axioms unto him than the Stoics
or Epicureans. Let this diversity of judgments be pro-
posed unto him: if he can, he shall be able to distinguish
the truth from falsehood; if not, he will remain doubtful.
Che non men che saper dubbiar m'aggrata."
" No less it pleaseth me
To doubt, than wise to be."
For if by his own discourse he embrace the opinions of
Xenophon or of Plato, they shall be no longer theirs, but
his. He that merely followeth another traceth nothing,
and seeketh nothing: Non sumus sub Rege, sibi quisque se
vindicet 3 "We are not under a king's command; every
one may challenge himself, for let him at least know that
he knoweth." It is requisite he endeavour as much to
feed himself with their conceits as labour to learn their pre-
cepts; which, so he know how to apply, let him hardly
forget where or whence he had them. Truth and reason
are common to all, and are no more proper unto him that
spake them heretofore than unto him that shall speak them
12 MONTAIGNE
hereafter. And it is no mgre according to Plato's opinion
than to mine, since both he and I understand and see alike.
The bees do here and there suckle this and cull that flower,
but afterward they produce the honey, which is peculiarly
their own, then is it no more thyme or marjoram. So of
pieces borrowed of others, he may lawfully alter, transform,
and confound them, to shape out of them a perfect piece
of work, altogether his own; always provided his judg-
ment, his travel, study, and institution tend to nothing but
to frame the same perfect. Let him hardly conceal where
or whence he hath had any help, and make no show of
anything, but of that which he hath made himself. Pirates,
pilchers, and borrowers make a show of their purchases and
buildings, but not of that which they have taken from
others: you see not the secret fees or bribes lawyers take
of their clients, but you shall manifestly discover the alli-
ances they make, the honours they get for their children,
and the goodly nouses they build. No man makes open
show of his receipts, but every one of his gettings. The
good that comes of study (or at least should come) is to
prove better, wiser, and honester. It is the understanding
power (said Epicharmus) that seeth and heareth, it is it
that profiteth all and disposeth all, that moveth, swayeth,
and ruleth all: all things else are but blind, senseless, and
without spirit. And truly in barring him of liberty to do
anything of himself we make him thereby more servile and
more coward. Who would ever inquire of his scholar what
he thinketh of rhetoric, of grammar, of this or of that
sentence of Cicero? Which things thoroughly feathered
(as if they were oracles) are let fly into our memory; in
which both letters and syllables are substantial parts of
the subject. To know by rote is no perfect knowledge,
but to keep what one hath committed to his memory's
charge is commendable: what a man directly knoweth that
will he dispose of, without turning still to his book or
looking to his pattern. A mere bookish sufficiency is un-
pleasant. All I expect of it is an embellishing of my
actions, and not a foundation of them, according to Plato's
mind, who saith constancy, faith, and sincerity are true phi-
losophy; as for other sciences, and tending elsewhere, they
are but garish paintings. I would fain have Paluel or Pom-
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN ! 3
pey, those two excellent dancers of our time, with all their
nimbleness, teach any man to do their lofty tricks and
high capers, only with seeing them done, and without stir-
ring out of his place, as some pedantical fellows would
instruct our minds without moving or putting it in prac-
tice. And glad would I be to find one that would teach
us how to manage a horse, to toss a pike, to shoot off a
piece, to play -upon the lute, or to warble with the voice,
without any exercise, as these kind of men would teach us
to judge, and how to speak well, without any exercise of
speaking or judging. In which kind of life, or, as I may
term it, prenticeship, what action or object soever presents
itself unto our eyes may serve us instead of a sufficient
book. A pretty prank of a boy, a knavish trick of a page,
a foolish part of a lackey, an idle tale, or any discourse else,
spoken either in jest or earnest, at the table or in company,
are even as new subjects for us to work upon: for further-
ance whereof commerce or common society among men,
visiting of foreign countries, and observing of strange fash-
ions are very necessary, not only to be able (after the man-
ner of our young gallants of France) to report how many
paces the Church of Santa Rotonda is in length or breadth;
or what rich garments the courtesan Signora Livia wear-
eth, and the worth of her hosen; or, as some do, nicely to
dispute how much longer or broader the face of Nero is
which they have seen in some old ruins of Italy than that
which is made for him in other old monuments elsewhere.
But they should principally observe and be able to make
certain relation of the humours and fashions of those coun-
tries they have seen, that they may the better know how
to correct and prepare their wits by those of others. I
would therefore have him begin even from his infancy to
travel abroad; and first, that at one shoot he may hit two
marks, he should see neighbour countries, namely, where
languages are most different from ours; for unless a man's
tongue be fashioned unto them in his youth, he shall never
attain to the true pronunciation of them if he once grow
in years. Moreover, we see it received as a common opin-
ion of the wiser sort, that it agreeth not with reason that
a child be always nuzzled, cockered, dandled, and brought
up in his parents' lap or sight; forsomuch as their natural
14 MONTAIGNE
kindness, or (as I may call it) tender fondness, causeth
often even the wisest to prove so idle, so overnice, and
so base-minded. For parents are not capable, neither can
they find in their hearts to see them checked, corrected,
or chastised, nor endure to see them brought up so meanly,
and so far from daintiness, and many times so dangerously,
as they must needs be. And it would grieve them to see
their children come home from those exercises that a gen-
tleman must necessarily acquaint himself with, sometimes
all wet and bemired, other times sweaty and full of dust,
and to drink being either extreme hot or exceeding cold;
and it would trouble them to see him ride a rough, un-
tamed horse, or with his weapon furiously encounter a skil-
ful fencer, or to handle or shoot off a musket; against which
there is no remedy, if he will make him prove a sufficient,
complete, or honest man: he must not be spared in his
youth; and it will come to pass that he shall many times
have occasion and be forced to shock the rules of physic.
Vitamque sub dio et trepidis agat
In rebus. 4
" Lead he his life in open air,
And in affairs full of despair."
It is not sufficient to make his mind strong, his muscles
must also be strengthened: the mind is over-borne if it be
not seconded; and it is too much for her alone to discharge
two offices. I have a feeling how mine panteth, being
joined to so tender and sensible a body, and that lieth so
heavy upon it. And in my lecture I often perceive how
my authors in their writings sometimes commend exam-
ples for magnanimity and force, that rather proceed from
a thick skin and hardness of the bones. I have known men,
women, and children born of so hard a constitution that
a blow with a cudgel would less hurt them than a fillip
would do me, and so dull and blockish that they will nei-
ther stir tongue nor eyebrows, beat them never so much.
When wrestlers go about to counterfeit the philosophers'
patience, they rather show the vigour of their sinews than
of their heart. For the custom to bear travail is to tolerate
grief: Labor callum obducit dolori 5 " Labour worketh
a hardness upon sorrow/' He must be inured to suffer
the pain and hardness of exercises that so he may be in-
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN r $
duced to endure the pain of the colic, of cautery, of falls,
of sprains, and other diseases incident to man's body: yea,
if need require, patiently to bear imprisonment and other
tortures, by which sufferance he shall come to be had in
more esteem and account; for according to time and place
the good as well as the bad man may haply fall into them;
we have seen it by experience. Whosoever striveth against
the laws threatens good men with mischief and extortion.
Moreover, the authority of the tutor (who should be sover-
eign over him) is by the cockering and presence of the
parents hindered and interrupted: besides the awe and re-
spect which the household bears him, and the knowledge
of the means, possibilities, and greatness of his house, are
in my judgment no small lets in a young gentleman. In
this school of commerce and society among men I have
often noted this vice, that in lieu of taking acquaintance
of others we only endeavour to make ourselves known to
them; and we are more ready to utter such merchandise
as we have than to engross and purchase new commodities.
Silence and modesty are qualities very convenient to civil
conversation. It is also necessary that a young man be
rather taught to be discreetly sparing and close-handed
than prodigally wasteful and lavish in his expenses, and
moderate in husbanding his wealth when he shall come
to possess it. And not to take pepper in the nose for
every foolish tale that shall be spoken in his presence,
because it is an uncivil importunity to contradict what-
soever is not agreeing to our humour: let him be pleased
to correct himself. And let him not seem to blame that
in others which he refuseth to do himself, nor go about
to withstand common fashions, Licet sapere sine pompa,
sine invidia 6 " A man may be wise without ostentation,
without envy." Let him avoid those imperious images
of the world, those uncivil behaviours and childish ambi-
tion wherewith, God wot, too too many are possessed;
that is, to make a fair show of that which is not in him;
endeavouring to be reputed other than indeed he is; and
as if reprehension and new devices were hard to come by,
he would by that means acquire unto himself the name
of some peculiar virtue. As it pertaineth but to great
poets to use the liberty of arts, so is it tolerable but in
l6 MONTAIGNE
noble minds and great spirits to have a pre-eminence above
ordinary fashions. Si quid Socrates et Aristippus contra
morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur
licere; Magis enim illi et divinis bonis hanc licentiam asse-
quebantur 7 " If Socrates and Aristippus have done aught
against custom or good manner, let not a man think he
may do the same; for they obtained this license by their
great and excellent good part.". He shall be taught not
to enter rashly into discourse or contesting, but when he
shall encounter with a champion worthy of his strength.
And then would I not have him employ all the tricks that
may fit his turn, but only such as may stand him in most
stead. That he be taught to be curious in making choice
of his reasons, loving pertinency, and by consequence brev-
ity. That, above all, he be instructed to yield, yea, to quit
his weapons unto truth, as soon as he shall discern the
same, whether it proceed from his adversary or upon bet-
ter advice from himself; for he shall not be preferred to
any place of eminence above others for repeating of a
prescribed part; and he is not engaged to defend any
cause further than he may approve it; nor shall he be
of that trade where the liberty for a man to repent and
readvise himself is sold for ready money. Neque, ut
omnia, que praescripta et imperata sint, defendat, necessi-
tate ulla cogitur 8 " Nor is he enforced by any necessity
to defend and make good all that is prescribed and com-
manded him." If his tutor agree with my humour, he
shall frame his affection to be a most loyal and true sub-
ject to his prince, and a most affectionate and courageous
gentleman in all that may concern the honour of his sover-
eign or the good of his country, and endeavour to sup-
press in him all manner of affection to undertake any
action otherwise than for a public good and duty. Besides
many inconveniences, which greatly prejudice our liberty
by reason of these particular bonds, the judgment of a
man that is waged and bought, either it is less free and
honest, or else it is blemished with oversight and ingrati-
tude. A mere and precise courtier can neither have law
nor will to speak or think otherwise than favourably of
his master, who among so many thousands of his subjects
hath made choice of him alone, to institute and bring him
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN i;
up with his own hand. These favours, with the commodi-
ties that follow minion courtiers, corrupt (not without
some colour of reason) his liberty and dazzle his judg-
ment. It is therefore commonly seen that the courtier's
language differs from other men's in the same state, and
to be of no great credit in such matters. Let, therefore,
his conscience and virtue shine in his speech, and reason
be his chief direction. Let him be taught to confess such
faults as he shall discover in his own discourses, albeit none
other perceive them but himself; for it is an evident show
of judgment and effect of sincerity which are the chiefest
qualities he aimeth at. That wilfully to strive and obsti-
nately to contest in words, are common qualities, most
apparent in basest minds; that to readvise and correct him-
self, and when one is most earnest, to leave an ill opinion,
are rare, noble, and philosophical conditions. Being in
company, he shall be put in mind to cast his eyes round
about and everywhere; for I note that the chief places
are usually seized upon by the most unworthy and less
capable, and that height of fortune is seldom joined with
sufficiency. I have seen that while they at the upper end
of a board were busy entertaining themselves with talking
of the beauty of the hangings about a chamber, or of the
taste of some good cup of wine, many good discourses
at the lower end have utterly been lost. He shall weigh
the carriage of every man in his calling, a herdsman, a
mason, a stranger, or a traveller; all must be employed,
every one according to his worth, for all help to make up
a household; yea, the folly and the simplicity of others
shall be as instructions to him. By controlling the graces
and manners of others, he shall acquire unto himself envy
of the good and contempt of the bad. Let him hardly
be possessed with an honest curiosity to search out the
nature and causes of all things; let him survey whatso-
ever is rare and singular about him; a building, a foun-
tain, a man, a place where any battle hath been fought,
or the passages of Caesar or Charlemagne:
Quae tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab^aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat.
" What land is parched with heat, what clogged with frost,
What wind drives kindly to th' Italian coast.
18 MONTAIGNE
He shall endeavour to be familiarly acquainted with
the customs, with the means, with the state, with the de-
pendencies and alliances of all princes; they are things
soon and pleasant to be learned, and most profitable to
be known. In this acquaintance of men my intending is
that he chiefly comprehend them that live but by the
memory of books. He shall, by the help of histories, in-
form himself of the worthiest minds that were in the best
ages. It is a frivolous study, if a man list, but of invalu-
able worth to such as can make use of it, and, as Plato
saith, the only study the Lacedaemonians reserved for
themselves. What profit shall he not reap, touching this
point, reading the lives of our Plutarch? Always condi-
tioned, the master bethinketh himself whereto his charge
tendeth, and that he imprint not so much in his scholar's
mind the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners
of Hannibal and Scipio, nor so much where Marcellus died,
as because he was unworthy of his devoir he died there;
that he teach him not so much to know histories as to
judge of them. It is among things that best agree with
my humour, the subject to which our spirits do most
diversely apply themselves. I have read in Titus Livius
a number of things, which peradventure others never read,
in whom Plutarch haply read a hundred more than ever
I could read, and which perhaps the author himself did
never intend to set down. To some kind of men it is a
mere grammatical study, but to others a perfect anatomy
of philosophy; by means whereof the secretest part of our
nature is searched into. There are in Plutarch many
ample discourses most worthy to be known; for in my
judgment he is the chief work-master of such works,
whereof there are a thousand, whereat he hath but slightly
glanced; for with his finger he doth but point us out a
way to walk in if we list; and is sometimes pleased to
give but a touch at the quickest and main point of a dis-
course, from whence they are by diligent study to be drawn,
and so brought into open market. As that saying of his,
That the inhabitants of Asia served but one alone, be-
cause they could not pronounce one only syllable, which
is Non, gave perhaps both subject and occasion to my
friend Boetie to compose his book of voluntary servitude.
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 19
If it were no more but to see Plutarch wrest a slight action
to man's life, or a word that seemeth to bear no such sense,
it will serve for a whole discourse. It is pity men of un-
derstanding should so much love brevity; without doubt
their reputation is thereby better, but we the worse. Plu-
tarch had rather we should commend him for his judgment
than for his knowledge; he loveth better to leave a kind
of longing desire in us of him than a satiety. He knew
very well that even in good things too much may be said;
and that Alexandridas did justly reprove him who spake
very good sentences to the Ephores, but they were over-
tedious. " Oh, stranger," quoth he, " thou speakest what
thou oughtest, otherwise than thou shouldest." Those
that have lean and thin bodies stuff them up with bom-
basting. And such as have but poor matter will puff it
up with lofty words. There is a marvellous clearness, or,
as I may term it, an enlightening of man's judgment drawn
from the commerce of men, and by frequenting abroad in
the world; we are all so contrived and compact in our-
selves that our sight is made shorter by the length of our
nose. When Socrates was demanded whence he was, he
answered, Not of Athens, but of the world; for he, who
had his imagination more full and further stretching, em-
braced all the world for his native city, and extended his
acquaintance, his society, and affections to all mankind;
and not as we do, that look no farther than our feet. If
the frost chance to nip the vines about my village, my
priest doth presently argue that the wrath of God hangs
over our head, and threateneth all mankind; and judgeth
that the pip is already fallen upon the cannibals.
In viewing these intestine and civil broils of ours, who
doth not exclaim that this world's vast frame is near unto
a dissolution, and that the day of judgment is ready to fall
on us? never remembering that many worse revolutions
have been seen, and that while we are plunged in grief
and overwhelmed in sorrow a thousand other parts of the
world besides are blessed with happiness, and wallow in
pleasures, and never think on us; whereas, when I behold
our lives, our license, and impunity, I wonder to see them
so mild and easy. He on whose head it haileth thinks all
the hemisphere besides to be in a storm and tempest. And
20 MONTAIGNE
as that dull-pated Savoyard said, that if the silly King of
France could cunningly have managed his fortune, he
might very well have made himself chief steward of his
lord's household, whose imagination conceived no other
greatness than his master's; we are all insensible of this
kind of error, an error of great consequence and prejudice.
But whosoever shall present unto his inward eyes, as it
were in a table, the idea of the great image of our universal
mother Nature, attired in her richest robes, sitting in the
throne of her majesty, and in her visage shall read so gen-
eral and so constant a variety; he that therein shall view
himself, not himself alone, but a whole kingdom, to be
in respect of a great circle but the smallest point that can
be imagined, he only can value things according to their
essential greatness and proportion. This great universe
(which some multiply as species under one genus) is the
true looking-glass wherein we must look if we will know
whether we be of a good stamp or in the right bias. To
conclude, I would have this world's frame to be my schol-
ar's choice book. So many strange humours, sundry sects,
varying judgments, divers opinions, different laws, and
fantastical customs teach us to judge rightly of ours, and
instruct our judgment to acknowledge his imperfections
and natural weakness, which is no easy an apprenticeship.
So many innovations of estates, so many falls of princes
and changes of public fortune, may and ought to teach
us not to make so great account of ours. So many names,
so many victories, and so many conquests buried in dark
oblivion, makes the hope to perpetuate our names but
ridiculous, by the surprising of ten Argo-letters, or of a
small cottage, which is known but by his fall. The pride
and fierceness of so many strange and gorgeous shows;
the pride-puffed majesty of so many courts, and of their
greatness, ought to confirm and assure our sight, undaunt-
edly to bear the affronts and thunder-claps of ours, with-
out feeling our eyes. So many thousands of men, low-
laid in their graves before us, may encourage us not to
fear, or be dismayed to go meet so good company in the
other world; and so of all things else. Our life (said Py-
thagoras) draws near unto the great and populous assem-
blies of the Olympic games, wherein some, to get the
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 21
glory and to win the goal of the games, exercise their
bodies with all industry; others, for greediness of gain,
bring thither merchandise to sell; others there are (and
those be not the worst) that seek after no other good, but
to mark how, wherefore, and to what end, all things are
done; and to be spectators or observers of other men's
lives and actions, that so they may the better judge and
direct their own. Unto examples may all the most profit-
able discourses of philosophy be sorted, which ought to
be the touchstone of human actions, and a rule to square
them by, to whom may be said:
quid fas optare, quid asper
Utile nummus habet, patriae charisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat, quern te Deus esse
lussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re. 10
Quid sumus, aut quidnam victuri gignimur. 11
" What thou may'st wish, what profit may come clear,
From new-stamped coin, to friends and country dear
What thou ought'st give: whom God would have thee be,
And in what part among men he placed thee,
What we are, and wherefore,
To live here we were born."
What it is to know, and not to know (which ought to
be the scope of study), what valour, what temperance, and
what justice is: what difference there is between ambition
and avarice, bondage and freedom, subjection and liberty,
by which marks a man may distinguish true and perfect
contentment, and how far forth one ought to fear or ap-
prehend death, grief, or shame:
Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem."
" How ev'ry labour he may ply,
And bear, or ev'ry labour fly."
What wards or springs move us, and the causes of
so many motions in us. For meseemeth that the first dis-
courses wherewith his conceit should be sprinkled, ought
to be those that rule his manners and direct his sense;
which will both teach him to know himself, and how to
live and how to die well. Among the liberal sciences, let
us begin with that which makes us free. Indeed, they
may all in some sort stead us, as an instruction to our life,
and use of it, as all other things else serve the same to
some purpose or other. But let us make especial choice of
22 MONTAIGNE
that which may directly and pertinently serve the same.
If we could restrain and adapt the appurtenances of our
life to their right bias and natural limits, we should find
the best part of the sciences that now are in use, clean out
of fashion with us; yea, and in those that are most in use,
there* are certain by-ways and deep-flows most profitable,
which we should do well to leave, and, according to the
institution of Socrates, limit the course of our studies in
those where profit is wanting:
-sapere aude,
Incipe: vivendi qui recte prorogat horam,
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille,
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."
" Be bold to be wise: to begin, be strong,
He that to live well doth the time prolong,
Clown-like expects, till down the stream be run,
That runs, and will run, till the world be done."
It is mere simplicity to teach our children,
Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua. 14
" What Pisces move, or hot breath'd Leos beams,
Or Capricornus bathed in western streams,"
the knowledge of the stars, and the motion of the eighth
sphere, before their own:
Ti n\tid$T<Ti K0.fj.ol rl 8* affrpdcri
" What longs it to the seven stars, and me,
Or those about Bootes be."
Anaximenes, writing to Pythagoras, saith, " With what
sense can I amuse myself in the secrets of the stars, hav-
ing continually death or bondage before mine eyes? " For
at that time the Kings of Persia were making preparations
to war against his country. All men ought to say so.
Being beaten with ambition, with avarice, with rashness,
and with superstition, and having such other enemies unto
life within him. Wherefore shall I study and take care
about the mobility and variation of the world? When he
is once taught what is fit to make him better and wiser,
he shall be entertained with logic, natural philosophy,
geometry, and rhetoric, then having settled his judgment,
look what science he doth most addict himself unto, he
shall in short time attain to the perfection of it. His lee-
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 33
ture shall be sometimes by way of talk and sometimes by
book; his tutor may now and then supply him with the
same author, as an end and motive of his institution; some-
times giving him the pith and substance of it ready chewed.
And if of himself he be not so thoroughly acquainted with
books that he may readily find so many notable discourses
as are in them to effect his purpose, it shall not be amiss
that some learned man be appointed to keep him company,
who at any time of need may furnish him with such muni-
tion as he shall stand in need of; that he may afterward
distribute and dispense them to his best use. And that
this kind of lesson be more easy and natural than that of
Gaza, who will make question? Those are but harsh,
thorny, and unpleasant precepts; vain, idle, and immaterial
words, on which small hold may be taken; wherein is noth-
ing to quicken the mind. In this the spirit findeth sub-
stance to bide and feed upon. A fruit without all com-
parison much better, and that will soon be ripe. It is a
thing worthy consideration to see what state things are
brought unto in this our age; and how philosophy, even
to the wisest, and men of best understanding, is but an idle,
vain, and fantastical name, of small use and less worth,
both in opinion and effect. I think these sophistries are
the cause of it, which have forestalled the ways to come
unto it. They do very ill that go about to make it seem
as it were inaccessible for children to come unto, setting
it forth with a wrinkled, ghastly, and frowning visage; who
hath masked her with so counterfeit, pale, and hideous a
countenance? There is nothing more beauteous, nothing
more delightful, nothing more gamesome; and, as I may
say, nothing more fondly wanton: for she presenteth noth-
ing to our eyes, and preacheth nothing to our ears, but
sport and pastime. A sad and lowering look plainly de-
clareth that that is not her haunt. Demetrius the gram-
marian, finding a company of philosophers sitting close
together in the Temple of Delphos, said unto them, "Either
I am deceived or by your plausible and pleasant looks you
are not in any serious and earnest discourse among your-
selves "; to whom one of them, named Heracleon the Me-
garian, answered: " That belongeth to them who busy
themselves in seeking whether the future tense of the verb
24 MONTAIGNE
pd\\cd hath a double \, or that labour to find the derivation
of the comparatives x i P ov > Pe\riov, and of the superlatives
Xeipio-Tov, /3e\rurrov, it is they that must chafe in entertain-
ing themselves with their science: as for discourses of phi-
losophy they are wont to glad, rejoice, and not to vex and
molest those that use them ":
Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro
Corpore, deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque
Inde habitum facies. 1 *
" You may perceive the torments of the mind,
Hid in sick body, you the joys may find;
The face such habit takes in either kind."
That mind which harboureth philosophy ought by rea-
son of her sound health make that body also sound and
healthy; it ought to make her contentment to through-
shine in all exterior parts; it ought to shapen and model
all outward demeanours to the model of it; and by conse-
quence arm him that doth possess it with a gracious stout-
ness and lively audacity, with an active and pleasing ges-
ture, and with a settled and cheerful countenance. The
most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is
a constant and unconstrained rejoicing, whose estate is
like unto all things above the moon, that is ever clear,
always bright. It is Baroco and Baralipton that makes
their followers prove so base and idle, and not philosophy;
they know her not but by hearsay: what? Is it not she
that cleareth all storms of the mind? And teacheth mis-
ery, famine, and sickness to laugh? Not by reason of some
imaginary epicycles, but by natural and palpable reasons.
She aimeth at nothing but virtue; it is virtue she seeks
after; which, as the school saith, is not pitched on the top
of a high, steepy, or inaccessible hill; for they that have
come unto her affirm that clean contrary she keeps her
stand, and holds her mansion in a fair, flourishing, and
pleasant plain, whence, as from a high watch tower, she
surveyeth all things, to be subject unto her, to whom any
man may with great facility come if he but know the way
or entrance to her palace; for the paths that lead unto her
are certain fresh and shady green allies, sweet and flowery
ways, whose ascent is even, easy, and nothing wearisome,
like unto that of heaven's vaults. Forsomuch as they have
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 2$
not frequented this virtue, who gloriously, as in a throne
of majesty sits sovereign, goodly, triumphant, lovely,
equally delicious and courageous, protesting herself to be
a professed and irreconcilable enemy to all sharpness, au-
sterity, fear, and compulsion; having Nature for her guide,
fortune and voluptuousness for her companions; they ac-
cording to their weakness have imaginarily fained her to
have a foolish, sad, grim, quarrelous, spiteful, threatening,
and disdainful visage, with a horrid and unpleasant look;
and have placed her upon a craggy, sharp, and unfrequented
rock, amid desert cliffs and uncouth crags, as a scarecrow,
or bugbear, to affright the common people with. Now
the tutor, which ought to know that he should rather seek
to fill the mind and store the will of his disciple, as much,
or rather more, with love and affection, than with awe,
and reverence unto virtue, may show and tell him that
poets follow common humours, making him plainly to
perceive, and as it were palpably to feel, that the gods have
rather placed labour and sweat at the entrances which lead
to Venus's chambers than at the doors that direct to Pal-
las's cabinets.
And when he shall perceive his scholar to have a sen-
sible feeling of himself, presenting Bradamant or Angelica
before him, as a mistress to enjoy, embellished with a nat-
ural, active, generous, and unspotted beauty not ugly or
giant-like, but blithe and lively, in respect of a wanton, soft,
affected, and artificial flaring beauty; the one attired like
unto a young man, coifed with a bright shining helmet,
the other disguised and dressed about the head like unto
an impudent harlot, with embroideries, frizzlings, and car-
canets of pearls: he will no doubt deem his own love to
be a man and no woman, if in his choice he differ from
that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia. In this new kind of
lesson he shall declare unto him that the prize, the glory,
and height of true virtue consisted in the facility, profit,
and pleasure of his exercises; so far from difficulty and in-
cumbrances that children as well as men, the simple as
soon as the wise, may come unto her. Discretion and tem-
perance, not force or waywardness, are the instruments to
bring him unto her. Socrates (virtue's chief favourite),
that he might the better walk in the pleasant, natural, and
26 MONTAIGNE
open path of her progresses, doth voluntarily and in good
earnest quit all compulsion. She is the nurse and foster-
mother of all human pleasures, who in making them just
and upright she also makes them sure and sincere. By
moderating them she keepeth them in ure and breath. In
limiting and cutting them off whom she refuseth she whets
us on toward those she leaveth unto us; and plenteously
leaves us them which Nature pleaseth, and like a kind
mother giveth us over unto satiety, if not unto wearisome-
ness, unless we will peradventure say that the rule and
bridle which stayeth the drunkard before drunkenness, the
glutton before surfeiting, and the letcher before the losing
of his hair, be the enemies of our pleasures. If common
fortune fail her, it clearly scapes her; or she cares not for
her, or she frames another unto herself, altogether her own,
not so fleeting nor so rowling. She knoweth the way how
to be rich, mighty, and wise, and how to lie in sweet-
perfumed beds. She loveth life; she delights in beauty,
in glory, and in health. But her proper and particular
office is, first to know how to use such goods temperately,
and how to lose them constantly. An office much more
noble than severe, without which all course of life is un-
natural, turbulent, and deformed, to which one may law-
fully join those rocks, those incumbrances, and hideous
monsters. If so it happen that his disciple prove of so dif-
ferent a condition, that he rather love to give ear to an
idle fable than to the report of some noble voyage, or other
notable and wise discourse, when he shall hear it; that at
the sound of a drum or clang of a trumpet, which are wont
to rouse and arm the youthly heat of his companions, turn-
eth to another that calleth him to see a play, tumbling, jug-
gling tricks, or other idle lose-time sports; and who for
pleasure's sake doth not deem it more delightsome to re-
turn all sweaty and weary from a victorious combat, from
wrestling, or riding of a horse, than from a tennis-court or
dancing-school, with the prize or honour of such exercises.
The best remedy I know for such a one is, to put him pren-
tice to some base occupation, in some good town or other,
yea, were he the son of a duke; according to Plato's rule,
who saith, " That children must be placed not according to
their father's conditions, but the faculties of their mind."
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 2 /
Since it is Philosophy that teacheth us to live, and that
infancy, as well as other ages, may plainly read her lessons
in the same, why should it not be imparted unto young
scholars?
Udum et molle lutum est, nunc nunc properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota."
" He's moist and soft mould, and must by-and-by
Be cast, made up, while wheel whirls readily."
We are taught to live when our life is well-nigh spent.
Many scholars have been infected with that loathsome and
marrow-wasting disease before ever they came to read
Aristotle's treatise of " Temperance." Cicero was wont to
say, " That could he outlive the lives of two men, he
should never find leisure to study the lyric poets." And I
find these sophisters both worse and more unprofitable.
Our child is engaged in greater matters, and but the first
fifteen or sixteen years of his life are due unto pedantism,
the rest unto action; let us therefore employ so short time
as we have to live in more necessary instructions. It is an
abuse; remove these thorny quiddities of logic, whereby
our life can no whit be amended, and betake ourselves to
the simple discourses of philosophy; know how to choose
and fitly to make use of them: they are much more easy
to be conceived than one of Boccaccio's tales. A child
coming from nurse is more capable of them than he is to
learn to read or write. Philosophy hath discourses, whereof
infancy as well as decaying old age may make good use.
I am of Plutarch's mind, which is, that Aristotle did not
so much amuse his great disciple about the arts how to
frame syllogisms, or the principles of geometry, as he en-
deavoured to instruct him with good precepts concerning
valour, prowess, magnanimity, and temperance, and an un-
daunted assurance not to fear anything; and with such
munition he sent him, being yet very young, to subdue the
empire of the world, only with thirty thousand footmen,
four thousand horsemen, and forty-two thousand crowns
in money. As for other arts and sciences, he saith Alex-
ander honoured them, and commended their excellency and
comeliness; but for any pleasure he took in them, his affec-
tion could not easily be drawn to exercise them:
28 MONTAIGNE
petite hinc juvenesque senesque
Finem animo certum, miserisque viatica canis. 11
" Young men and old, draw hence (in your affairs)
Your minds' set mark, provision for gray hairs."
It is that which Epicurus said in the beginning of his
letter to Memiceus: " Neither let the youngest shun nor
the oldest weary himself in philosophizing, for who doth
otherwise seemeth to say, that either the season to live
happily is not yet come, or is already past." Yet would I
not have this young gentleman pent up, nor carelessly cast
off to the heedless choler, or melancholy humour of the
hasty schoolmaster. I would not have his budding spirit
corrupted with keeping him fast tied, and, as it were, la-
bouring fourteen or fifteen hours a day poring on his book,
as some do, as if he were a day-labouring man; neither do
I think it fit if at any time, by reason of some solitary or
melancholy complexion, he should be seen with an over-
indiscreet application given to his book, it should be cher-
ished in him, for that doth often make him both inapt for
civil conversation and distracts him from better employ-
ments. How many have I seen in my days, by an over-
greedy desire of knowledge, become as it were foolish?
Carneades was so deeply plunged and, as I may say, be-
sotted in it, that he could never have leisure to cut his hair
or pare his nails; nor would I have his noble manners ob-
scured by the incivility and barbarism of others. The
French wisdom hath long since proverbially been spoken
of as very apt to conceive study in her youth, but most
inapt to keep it long. In good truth, we see at this day
that there is nothing lovelier to behold than the young chil-
dren of France; but for the most part they deceive the
hope which was fore-apprehended of them; for when they
once become men there is no excellency at all in them. I
have heard men of understanding hold this opinion, that
the colleges to which they are sent (of which there are
store) do thus besot them; whereas to our scholar, a cabi-
net, a garden, the table, the bed, a solitariness, a company,
morning and evening, and all hours shall be alike unto him,
all places shall be a study for him; for philosophy (as a
former of judgments and modeller of customs) shall be his
principal lesson, having the privilege to intermeddle herself
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
2 9
with all things and in all places. Isocrates the orator, being
once requested at a great banquet to speak of his art, when
all thought he had reason to answer, said: " It is not now
time to do what I can, and what should now be done I
can not do it; for to present orations, or to enter into dis-
putation of rhetoric, before a company assembled together
to be merry, and make good cheer, would be but a medley
of harsh and jarring music." The like may be said of all
other sciences. But touching Philosophy namely, in that
point where it treateth of man, and of his duties and offices
it hath been the common judgment of the wisest that in
regard of the pleasantness of her conversation she ought
not to be rejected, neither at banquets nor at sports. And
Plato having invited her to his solemn feast, we see how
kindly she entertaineth the company with a mild behaviour,
fitly suiting herself to time and place, notwithstanding it
be one of his most learned and profitable discourses.
jEque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque,
Et neglecta aeque pueris senibusque nocebit. 19
" Poor men alike, alike rich men it easeth,
Alike it, scorned, old and young displeaseth."
So doubtless he shall less be idle than others; for even
as the paces we bestow walking in a gallery, although they
be twice as many more, weary us not so much as those we
spend in going a set journey; so our lesson being passed
over, as it were, by chance, or way of encounter, without
strict observance of time or place, being applied to all our
actions, shall be digested and never felt. All sports and
exercises shall be a part of his study; running, wrestling,
music, dancing, hunting, and managing of arms and horses.
I would have the exterior demeanour or decency and the
disposition of his person to be fashioned together with his
mind; for it is not a mind, it is not a body that we erect,
but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.
And, as Plato saith, they must not be erected one without
another, but equally be directed, no otherwise than a couple
of horses matched to draw in one selfsame team. And to
hear him, doth he not seem to employ more time and care
in the exercises of his body; and to think that the mind is
together with the same exercised, and not the contrary?
As for other matters, this institution ought to be directed
30 MONTAIGNE
by a sweet-severe mildness. Not as some do, who in lieu
of gently bidding children to the banquet of letters, pre-
sent them with nothing but horror and cruelty. Let me
have this violence and compulsion removed, there is noth-
ing that, in my seeming, doth more bastardize and dizzy
a well-born and gentle nature. If you would have him
stand in awe of shame and punishment, do not so much
inure him to it; accustom him patiently to endure sweat
and cold, the sharpness of the wind, the heat of the sun,
and how to despise all hazards. Remove from him all nice-
ness and quaintness in clothing, in lying, in eating, and in
drinking; fashion him to all things, that he prove not a
fair and wanton, puling boy, but a lusty and vigorous boy.
When I was a child, when I became a man, and now when
I am old, I have ever judged and believed the same. But
among other things I could never away with this kind of
discipline used in most of our colleges. It had peradven-
ture been less hurtful if they had somewhat inclined to mild-
ness or gentle entreaty. It is a very prison of captivated
youth, and proves dissolute in punishing it before it be so.
Come upon them when they are going to their lesson, and
you hear nothing but whipping and brawling, both of chil-
dren tormented and masters besotted with anger and chafT
ing. How wide are they which go about to allure a child's
mind to go to its book, being yet but tender and fearful,
with a stern, frowning countenance, and with hands full
of rods! Oh, wicked and pernicious manner of teaching!
which Quintilian hath very well noted, that this imperious
kind of authority namely, this way of punishing of chil-
dren draws many dangerous inconveniences within. How
much more decent were it to see their schoolhouses and
forms strewed with green boughs and flowers than with
bloody birchen twigs! If it lay in me I would do as the
philosopher Speusippus did, who caused the pictures of
Gladness and Joy, of Flora and of the Graces, to be set
up round about his schoolhouse. Where their profit lieth,
there should also be their recreation. Those meats ought
to be sugared over that are healthful for children's stom-
achs, and those made bitter that are hurtful for them. It
is strange to see how careful Plato showeth himself in fram-
ing of his laws about the recreation and pastime of the
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 3!
youth of his city, and how far he extends himself about
their exercises, sports, songs, leaping, and dancing, whereof
he saith that severe antiquity gave the conduct and patron-
age unto the gods themselves namely, to Apollo, to the
Muses, and to Minerva. Mark but how far forth he en-
deavoureth to give a thousand precepts to be kept in his
places of exercises both of body and mind. As for learned
sciences, he stands not much upon them, and seemeth in
particular to commend poesy but for music's sake. All
strangeness and self-particularity in our manners and con-
ditions is to be shunned as an enemy to society and civil
conversation. Who would not be astonished at Demo-
phon's complexion, chief steward of Alexander's household,
who was wont to sweat in the shadow and quiver for cold
in the sun? I have seen some to startle at the smell of an
apple more than at the shot of a piece; some to be frighted
with a mouse, some ready to cast their gorge at the sight
of a mess of cream, and others to be scared with seeing
a feather bed shaken; as Germanicus, who could not abide
to see a cock or hear his crowing. There may haply be
some hidden property of Nature which in my judgment
might easily be removed if it were taken in time. Institu-
tion hath gotten this upon me (I must confess with much
ado), for, except beer, all things else that are man's food
agree indifferently with my taste. The body being yet
supple, ought to be accommodated to all fashions and cus-
toms; and (always provided his appetites and desires be
kept under) let a young man boldly be made fit for all
nations and companies, yea, if need be, for all disorders
and surfeitings; let him acquaint himself with all fashions,
that he may be able to do all things, and love to do none
but those that are commendable. Some strict philosophers
commend not, but rather blame Calisthenes for losing the
good favour of his master Alexander, only because he would
not pledge him as much as he had drunk to him. He shall
laugh, jest, dally, and debauch himself with his prince.
And in his debauching I would have him outgo all his
fellows in vigour and constancy, and that he omit not to
do evil, neither for want of strength or knowledge, but
for lack of will. Multum interest utrum peccare quis nolit,
aut nesciat 20 " There is a great difference, whether one
32 MONTAIGNE
have no will or no wit to do amiss/' I thought to have
honoured a gentleman (as great a stranger, and as far
from such riotous disorders as any is in France) by in-
quiring of him in very good company how many times
in all his life he had been drunk in Germany during the
time of his abode there, about the necessary affairs of our
king; who took it even as I meant it, and answered three
times, telling the time and manner how. I know some
who for want of that quality have been much perplexed
when they have had occasion to converse with that na-
tion. I have often noted with great admiration that won-
derful nature of Alcibiades, to see how easily he could suit
himself to so divers fashions and different humours, with-
out prejudice unto his health; sometimes exceeding the
sumptuousness and pomp of the Persians, and now and
then surpassing the austerity and frugality of the Lacedae-
monians; as reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia.
Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res. 21
" All colours, states, and things are fit ,
For courtly Aristippus's wit."
Such a one would I frame my disciple:
-quern duplici panno patientia velat,
Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit.
" Whom patience clothes with suits of double kind,
I muse, if he another way will find."
Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque. 22
" He not unfitly may
Both parts and persons play."
Lo, here my lessons, wherein he that acteth them
profiteth more than he that but knoweth them, whom if
you see you hear, and if you hear him you see him. God
forbid, saith somebody in Plato, that to philosophize be to
learn many things, and to exercise the arts. Hanc amplis-
simam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinary vita magis
quam litteris persequnti sunt 23 " This discipline of living
well, which is the amplest of all other arts, they followed
rather in their lives than in their learning or writing." Leo,
Prince of the Phliasians, inquiring of Heraclides Ponticus
what art he professed, he answered, " Sir, I profess neither
art nor science, but I am a philosopher." Some reproved
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 33
Diogenes that, being an ignorant man, he did neverthe-
less meddle with philosophy; to whom he replied, " So
much the more reason have I, and to greater purpose do
I meddle with it." Hegesias prayed him upon a time to
read some book unto him. ' You are a merry man," said
he; " as you choose natural and not painted right and not
counterfeit figs to eat, why do you not likewise choose not
the painted and written, but the true and natural exer-
cises? " He shall not so much repeat as act his lesson.
In his actions shall he make repetition of the same. We
must observe whether there be wisdom in his enterprises,
integrity in his demeanour, modesty in his gestures, justice
in his actions, judgment and grace in his speech, courage
in his sickness, moderation in his sports, temperance in
his pleasures, order in the government of his house, and
indifference in his taste, whether it be flesh, fish, wine, or
water, or whatsoever he feedeth upon. Qui disciplinam
suam non ostentationem scientiae sed legem vitae putet:
quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat 24 " Who
thinks his learning not an ostentation of knowledge, but
a law of life, and himself obeys himself, and doth what is
decreed."
The true mirror of our discourses is the course of our
lives. Zeuxidamus answered one that demanded of him
why the Lacedaemonians did not draw into a book the
ordinances of prowess, that so their young men might read
them. " It is," saith he, " because they would rather ac-
custom them to deeds and actions than to books and writ-
ings." Compare at the end of fifteen or sixteen years one
of these collegial Latinizers, who hath employed all that
while only in learning how to speak, to such a one as I
mean. The world is nothing but babbling and words, and
I never saw man that doth not rather speak more than
he ought than less. Notwithstanding half our age is con-
sumed that way. We are kept four or five years learning
to understand bare words, and to join them into clauses,
then as long in proportioning a great body extended into
four or five parts; and five more at least ere we can suc-
cinctly know how to mingle, join, and interlace them hand-
somely into a subtle fashion and into one coherent orb.
Let us leave it to those whose profession is to do nothing
34 MONTAIGNE
else. Being once on my journey to Orleans, it was my
chance to meet upon that plain that lieth on this side Clery
with two masters of arts, travelling toward Bordeaux,
about fifty paces one from another; far off behind them
I descried a troop of horsemen, their master riding fore-
most, who was the Earl of Rochefoucauld; one of my serv-
ants inquiring of the first of those masters of arts what gen-
tleman he was that followed him; supposing my servant
had meant his fellow-scholar, for he had not yet seen the
earl's train, answered pleasantly, " He is no gentleman, sir,
but a grammarian, and I am a logician." Now we that
contrariwise seek not to frame a grammarian, nor a logician,
but a complete gentleman, let us give them leave to mis-
spend their time; we have elsewhere, and somewhat else
of more import to do. So that our disciple be well and
sufficiently stored with matter; words will follow apace,
and if they will not follow gently, he shall hail them on
perforce. I hear some excuse themselves that they can
not express their meaning, and make a semblance that their
heads are so full stuffed with many goodly things, but for
want of eloquence they can neither utter nor make show
of them. It is a mere foppery. And will you know what,
in my seeming, the cause is? They are shadows and chi-
meras, proceeding of some formless conceptions, which
they can not distinguish or resolve within, and by con-
sequence are not able to produce them inasmuch as they
understand not themselves; and if you but mark their ear-
nestness, and how they stammer and labour at the point
of their delivery, you would deem that what they go withal
is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing near down-
lying; and that they do but lick that imperfect and shape-
less lump of matter. As for me, I am of opinion, and Socra-
tes would have it so, that he who had a clear and lively
imagination in his mind may easily produce and utter the
same, although it be in Bergamasc or Welsh, and if he be
dumb, by signs and tokens.
Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur."
" When matter we foreknow,
Words voluntary flow."
As one said, as poetically in his prose, Cum res animum
occupavere, verba ambiunt 26 " When matter hath pos-
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 35
sessed their minds, they hunt after words"; and another:
Ipsae res verba rapiunt 27 " Things themselves will catch
and carry words." He knows neither ablative, conjunctive,
substantive, nor grammar, no more doth his lackey, nor
any oyster-wife about the streets, and yet if you have a
mind to it he will entertain you your fill, and peradventure
stumble as little and as seldom against the rules of his
tongue as the best Master of Arts in France. He hath
no skill in rhetoric, nor can he with a preface forestall and
captivate the gentle reader's good-will; nor careth he
greatly to know it. In good sooth, all this garish paint-
ing is easily defaced by the lustre of an inbred and simple
truth; for these dainties and quaint devices serve but to
amuse the vulgar sort, unapt and incapable to taste the
most solid and firm meat; as Afer very plainly declareth
in Cornelius Tacitus. The ambassadors of Samos being
come to Cleomenes, King of Sparta, prepared with a long
prolix oration to stir him up to war against the tyrant Po-
licrates, after he had listened a good while upon them, his
answer was: " Touching your exordium or beginning I
have forgotten it; the middle I remember not; and for
your conclusion I will do nothing in it." A fit and (to my
thinking) a very good answer; and the orators were put
to such a shift as they knew not what to reply. And what
said another? The Athenians, from out two of their cun-
ning architects, were to choose one to erect a notable great
frame; the one of them more affected and self-presuming,
presented himself before them, with a smooth fore-pre-
meditated discourse about the subject of that piece of work,
and thereby drew the judgments of the common people
unto his liking; but the other in few words spake thus,
" Lords of Athens, what this man hath said I will per-
form." In the greatest earnestness of Cicero's eloquence
many were drawn into a kind of admiration; but Cato,
jesting at it, said, " Have we not a pleasant consul? " A
quick, cunning argument, and a witty saying, whether it
go before or come after, it is never out of season. If it
have no coherence with that which goeth before, nor with
what cometh after, it is good and commendable in itself.
I am none of those that think a good rhyme to make a
good poem; let him hardly (if so he please) make a short
36 MONTAIGNE
syllable long, it is no great matter; if the invention be
rare and good, and his wit and judgment have cunningly
played their part. I will say to such a one, he is a good
poet but an ill versifier.
Emunctae naris, durus componere versus. 18
" A man whose sense could finely pierce,
But harsh and hard to make a verse."
Let a man (saith Horace) make his work lose all seams,
measures, and joints.
Tempora certa modosque, et quod prius, ordine verbum est. 29
Posterius facias, praeppnens ultima primis:
Invenias etiam disjecti membra Poetae. 10
" Set times and moods, make you the first word last,
The last word first, as if they were new cast:
Yet find th' unjointed poet's joints stand fast."
He shall for all that nothing gainsay himself, every
piece will make a good show. To this purpose answered
Menander those that chid him, the day being at hand in
which he had promised a comedy, and had not begun the
same. "Tut-tut!" said he, "it is already finished; there
wanteth nothing but to add the verse unto it " ; for, hav-
ing ranged and cast the plot in his mind, he made small
account of feet, of measures, or cadences of verses, which,
indeed, are but of small import in regard of the rest. Since
great Ronsard and learned Bellay have raised our French
poesy unto that height of honour where it now is, I see
not one of these petty ballad-makers, or prentice doggerel
rhymers, that doth not bombast his labours with high-swell-
ing and heaven-disembowelling words, and that doth not
marshal his cadences very near as they do. Plus sonat
quam valet 31 " The sound is more than the weight or
worth." And for the vulgar sort there were never so many
poets and so few good; but as it hath been easy for them
to represent their rhymes, so come they far short in imitat-
ing the rich descriptions of the one and rare inventions of
the other. But what shall he do if he be urged with sophis-
tical subtilties about a syllogism? A gammon of bacon
makes a man drink, drinking quencheth a man's thirst;
ergo, a gammon of bacon quencheth a man's thirst. Let
him mock at it, it is more witty to be mocked at than to
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
37
be answered. Let him borrow this pleasant counter-craft
of Aristippus, " Why shall I unbind that which, being
bound, doth so much trouble me? " Some one proposed
certain logical quiddities against Cleanthes, to whom Chri-
sippus said, " Use such juggling tricks to play with chil-
dren, and divert not the serious thoughts of an aged man
to such idle matters." If such foolish wiles, Contorta et
aculeata sophismata 23 " Intricate and stinged sophisms,"
must persuade a lie, it is dangerous; but if they prove void
of any effect, and move him but to laughter, I see not why
he shall beware of them. Some there are so foolish that
will go a quarter of a mile out of the way to hunt after
a quaint new word if they once get in chase: Aut qui non
verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus arcessunt, quibus
verba conveniant "Or such as fit not words to matter,
but fetch matter from abroad, whereto words be fitted."
And another, Qui alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur
ad id quod non proposuerant scribere 33 " Who are al-
lured by the grace of some pleasing word to write what
they intended not to write." I do more willingly wind up
a witty notable sentence, that so I may sew it upon me,
than unwind my thread to go fetch it. Contrariwise, it is
for words to serve and wait upon the matter, and not for
matter to attend upon words, and if the French tongue
can not reach unto it, let the Gascony, or any other. I
would have the matters to surmount, and so fill the im-
agination of him that hearkeneth, that he have no remem-
brance at all of the words. It is a natural, simple, and un-
affected speech that I love, so written as it is spoken, and
such upon the paper as it is in the mouth, a pithy, sinewy,
full, strong, compendious and material speech, not so deli-
cate and affected as vehement and piercing.
Haec demum sapiet dictio quae feriet. 84
" In fine, that word is wisely fit
Which strikes the fence, the mark doth hit."
Rather difficult than tedious, void of affection, free,
loose, and bold, that every member of it seems to make a
body; not pedantical, nor friar-like, nor lawyer-like, but
rather downright, soldier-like. As Suetonius calleth that
of Julius Caesar, which I see no reason wherefore he call-
3
38 MONTAIGNE
eth it. I have sometimes pleased myself in imitating that
licentiousness or wanton humour of our youths, in wearing
of their garments; as carelessly to let their cloaks hang
down over one shoulder; to wear their cloaks scarf or
bawdrikwise, and their stockings loose hanging about their
legs. It represents a kind of disdainful fierceness of these
foreign embellishments, and neglect carelessness of art.
But I commend it more being employed in the course and
form of speech. All manner of affectation, namely, in the
liveliness and liberty of France, is unseemly in a courtier.
And in a monarchy every gentleman ought to address
himself unto a courtier's carriage. Therefore do we well
somewhat to incline to a native and careless behaviour.
I like not a contexture where the seams and pieces may
be seen. As in a well-compact body, what need a man dis-
tinguish and number all the bones and veins severally?
Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et sim-
plex. 35 Quis accurate loquitur nisi qui vult putide loqui? 36
" The speech that intendeth truth must be plain and un-
polished: who speaketh elaborately but he that means to
speak unfavourably? " That eloquence offereth injury
unto things which altogether draws us to observe it. As
in apparel it is a sign of pusillanimity for one to mark
himself in some particular and unusual fashion, so likewise
in common speech for one to hunt after new phrases and
unaccustomed quaint words proceedeth from a scholastical
and childish ambition. Let me use none other than are
spoken in the halls of Paris. Aristophanes the grammarian
was somewhat out of the way when he reproved Epicurus
for the simplicity of his words, and the end of his art ora-
tory which was only perspicuity in speech. The imitation
of speech, by reason of the facility of it, followeth presently
a whole nation. The imitation of judging and inventing,
comes more slow. The greater number of readers, because
they have found one selfsame kind of gown, suppose most
falsely to hold one like body. Outward garments and
cloaks may be borrowed, but never the sinews and strength
of the body. Most of those that converse with me speak
like unto these essays; but I know not whether they think
alike. The Athenians (as Plato averreth) have for their
part great care to be fluent and eloquent in their speech;
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
39
the Lacedaemonians endeavour to be short and compendi-
ous; and those of Crete labour more to be plentiful in con-
ceits than in language. And these are the best. Zeno
was wont to say that he had two sorts of disciples: the
one he called <t>i\o\byov$, curious to learn things, and those
were his darlings; the other he termed Xo7o$/Xoiw?, who
respected nothing more than the language. Yet can no
man say but that to speak well is most gracious and com-
mendable, but not so excellent as some make it; and I am
grieved to see how we employ most part of our time about
that only. I would first know mine own tongue perfectly,
then my neighbours' with whom I have most commerce.
I must needs acknowledge that the Greek and Latin
tongues are great ornaments in a gentleman, but they are
purchased at over-high a rate. Use it who list, I will tell
you how they may be gotten better, cheaper, and much
sooner than is ordinarily used, which was tried in myself.
My late father having, by all the means and industry that
is possible for a man, sought among the wisest and men
of best understanding to find a most exquisite and ready
way of teaching, being advised of the inconveniences then
in use, was given to understand that the lingering while
and best part of our youth that we employ in learning the
tongues, which cost them nothing, is the only cause we
can never attain to that absolute perfection of skill and
knowledge of the Greeks and Romans. I do not believe
that to be the only cause. But so it is, the expedient my
father found out was this: that being yet at nurse, and
before the first loosing of my tongue, I was delivered to a
German, who died since (a most excellent physician in
France), he being then altogether ignorant of the French
tongue, but exquisitely ready and skilful in the Latin.
This man, whom my father had sent for the purpose, and
to whom he gave very great entertainment, had me con-
tinually in his arms, and was mine only overseer. There
were also joined unto him two of his countrymen, but not
so learned, whose charge was to attend and now and then
to play with me; and all these together did never enter-
tain me with other than the Latin tongue. As for others
of his household, it was an inviolable rule that neither him-
self, nor my mother, nor man- nor maid-servant, were suf-
40 MONTAIGNE
fered to speak one word in my company except such Latin
words as every one had learned to chat and prattle with
me. It were strange to tell how every one in the house
profited therein. My father and my mother learned so
much Latin that for a need they could understand it when
they heard it spoken, even so did all the household serv-
ants, namely, such as were nearest and most about me. To
be short, we were all so Latinized that the towns round
about us had their share of it; insomuch as even at this
day many Latin names, both of workmen and of their tools,
are yet in use among them. And as for myself, I was about
six years old, and could understand no more French or
Perigordine than Arabic; and that without art, without
books, rules, or grammar, without whipping or whining, I
had gotten as pure a Latin tongue as my master could speak,
the rather because I could neither mingle nor confound
the same with other tongues. If for an essay they would
give me a theme, whereas the fashion in colleges is to give
it in French, I had it in bad Latin, to reduce the same into
good. And Nicolas Grouchy, who hath written " De
comitiis Romanorum "; William Guerente, who hath com-
mented Aristotle; George Buchanan, that famous Scottish
poet; and Mark Antony Muret, whom (while he lived)
both France and Italy to this day acknowledge to have
been the best orator all which have been my familiar
tutors, have often told me that in mine infancy I had the
Latin tongue so ready and so perfect that themselves feared
to take me in hand. And Buchanan, who afterward I saw
attending on the Marshal of Brissac, told me he was about
to write a treatise of the institution of children, and that
he took the model and pattern from mine; for at that time
he had the charge and bringing up of the young Earl of
Brissac, whom since we have seen prove so worthy and
so valiant a captain. As for the Greek, wherein I have
but small understanding, my father purposed to make me
learn it by art; but by new and unaccustomed means
that is, by way of recreation and exercise. We did toss
our declinations and conjugations to and fro, as they do
who by way of a certain game at tables learn both arith-
metic and geometry. For, among other things, he had
especially been persuaded to make me taste and apprehend
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 4I
the fruits of duty and science by an unforced kind of will,
and of mine own choice, and without any compulsion or
rigour to bring me up in all mildness and liberty; yea, with
such kind of superstition that, whereas some are of opinion
that suddenly to awaken young children, and as it were by
violence to startle and fright them out of their dead sleep
in a morning (wherein they are more heavy and deeper
plunged than we), doth greatly trouble and distemper their
brains, he would every morning cause me to be awakened
by the sound of some instrument; and I was never without
a servant who to that purpose attended upon me. This
example may serve to judge of the rest; as also to com-
mend the judgment and tender affection of so careful and
loving a father: who is not to be blamed, though he reaped
not the fruits answerable to his exquisite toil and painful
manuring. Two things hindered the same: first, the bar-
renness and unfit soil; for howbeit I were of a sound and
strong constitution, and of a tractable and yielding con-
dition, yet was I so heavy, so sluggish, and so dull that
I could not be roused (yea, were it to go to play) from
out mine idle drowsiness. What I saw I saw it perfectly;
and under this heavy and, as it were, Lethe complexion
did I breed hardy imaginations and opinions far above
my years. My spirit was very slow, and would go no
further than it was led by others; my apprehension block-
ish, my invention poor; and, besides, I had a marvellous
defect in my weak memory: it is therefore no wonder if
my father could never bring me to any perfection. Sec-
ondly, as those that in some dangerous sickness, moved
with a kind of hopeful and greedy desire of perfect health
again, give ear to every leech or empiric, and follow all
counsels, the good man being exceedingly fearful to com-
mit any oversight, in a matter he took so to heart, suf-
fered himself at last to be led away by the common opinion
which, like unto the cranes, followeth over those that go
before, and yielded to custom, having those no longer
about him that had given him his first directions, and
which they had brought out of Italy. Being but six years
old, I was sent to the College of Guienne, then most flour-
ishing and reputed the best in France, where it is impos-
sible to add anything to the great care he had both to
42 MONTAIGNE
choose the best and most sufficient masters that could be
found to read unto me, as also for all other circumstances
pertaining to my education; wherein, contrary to usual
customs of colleges, he observed many particular rules.
But so it is, it was ever a college. My Latin tongue was
forthwith corrupted, whereof by reason of discontinuance
I afterward lost all manner of use; which new kind of in-
stitution stood me in no other stead but that at my first
admittance it made me to overskip some of the lower
forms and to be placed in the highest. For at thirteen
years of age, that I left the college, I had read over the
whole course of philosophy (as they call it), but with
so small profit that I can now make no account of it.
The first taste or feeling I had of books was of the pleas-
ure I took in reading the fables of Ovid's " Metamor-
phoses "; for, being but seven or eight years old, I would
steal and sequester myself from all other delights, only to
read them: forasmuch as the tongue wherein they were
written was to me natural; and it was the easiest book I
knew, and by reason of the matter therein contained most
agreeing with my young age. For of King Arthur, of
Launcelot du Lake, of Amadis, of Huon of Bordeaux, and
such idle time-consuming and wit-besotting trash of books
wherein youth doth commonly amuse itself, I was not so
much as acquainted with their names, and to this day
know not their bodies nor what they contain, so exact was
my discipline. Whereby I became more careless to study
my other prescribed lessons. And well did it fall out for
my purpose that I had to deal with a very discreet mas-
ter, who out of his judgment could with such dexterity
wink at and second my untowardness, and such other
faults that were in me. For by that means I read over
Virgil's " yEneados," Terence, Plautus, and other Italian
comedies, allured thereunto by the pleasantness of their
several subjects. Had he been so foolishly severe or so
severely froward as to cross this course of mine, I think
verily I had never brought anything from the college but
the hate and contempt of books, as doth the greatest part
of our nobility. Such was his discretion, and so warily
did he behave himself that he saw and would not see: he
would foster and increase my longing, suffering me but
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN . 43
by stealth and by snatches to glut myself with those books,
holding ever a gentle hand over me concerning other regu-
lar studies. For the chiefest thing my father required at
their hands (unto whose charge he had committed me)
was a kind of well-conditioned mildness and facility of
complexion. And, to say truth, mine had no other fault
but a certain dull languishing and heavy slothfulness. The
danger was not, I should do ill, but that I should do
nothing.
No man did ever suspect I would prove a bad but an
unprofitable man, foreseeing in me rather a kind of idle-
ness than a voluntary craftiness. I am not so self-con-
ceited but I perceive what hath followed. The complaints
that are daily buzzed in mine ears are these: that I am
idle, cold, and negligent in offices of friendship and duty
to my parents and kinsfolks; and touching public offices,
that I am over-singular and disdainful. And those that
are most injurious can not ask, wherefore I have taken,
and why I have not paid? but may rather demand, why I
do not quit, and wherefore I do not give? I would take
it as a favour they should wish such effects of superero-
gation in me. But they are unjust and over-partial that
will go about to exact that from me which I owe not
with more rigour than they will exact from themselves
that which they owe; wherein if they condemn me they
utterly cancel both the gratifying of the action and the
gratitude which thereby would be due to me. Whereas
the active well-doing should be of more consequence, pro-
ceeding from my hand, in regard I have no passive at
all. Wherefore I may so much the more freely dispose
of my fortune, by how much more it is mine, and of my-
self that am most mine own. Notwithstanding, if I were
a great blazoner of mine own actions, I might peradven-
ture bar such reproaches, and justly upbraid some, that
they are not so much offended because I do not enough
as for that I may, and it lies in my power to do much
more than I do. Yet my mind ceased not at the same
time to have peculiar unto itself well-settled motions, true
and open judgments concerning the objects which it knew;
which alone, and without any help or communication, it
would digest. And among other things I verily believe
44 MONTAIGNE
it would have proved altogether incapable and unfit to
yield unto force or stoop unto violence. Shall I account
or relate this quality of my infancy, which was a kind of
boldness in my looks, and gentle softness in my voice, and
affability in my gestures, and a dexterity in conforming
myself to the parts I undertook? for before the age of the
Alter ab undecimo turn me vix ceperat annus."
" Years had I (to make even)
Scarce two above eleven."
I have undergone and represented the chiefest parts in the
Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and of Muret,
which in great state were acted and played in our College
of Guienne; wherein Andreas Goveanus, our rector prin-
cipal, who, as in all other parts belonging to his charge,
was without comparison the chiefest rector of France, and
myself (without ostentation be it spoken) was reputed, if
not a chief master, yet a principal actor in them. It is an
exercise I rather commend than disallow in young gentle-
men; and have seen some of our princes (in imitation of
some of former ages), both commendably and honestly,
in their proper persons act and play some parts in trage-
dies. It hath heretofore been esteemed a lawful exercise
and a tolerable profession in men of honour, namely, in
Greece. Aristoni tragico actori rem aperit: huic et genus
et fortuna honesta erant: nee ars, quia nihil tale apud
Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat 38 " He imparts the
matter to Ariston, a player of tragedies, whose progeny
and fortune were both honest; nor did his profession dis-
grace them, because no such matter is a disparagement
among the Grecians."
And I have ever accused them of impertinency that
condemn and disallow such kinds of recreations, and blame
those of injustice that refuse good and honest comedians,
or (as we call them) players, to enter our good towns,
and grudge the common people such public sports. Politic
and well-ordered commonwealths endeavour rather care-
fully to unite and assemble their citizens together; as in
serious offices of devotion, so in honest exercises of recre-
ation. Common society and loving friendship is thereby
cherished and increased. And, besides, they can not have
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
45
more formal and regular pastimes allowed them than such
as are acted and represented in open view of all, and in
the presence of the magistrates themselves. And if I might
bear sway, I would think it reasonable that princes should
sometimes, at their proper charges, gratify the common
people with them, as an argument of a fatherly affection
and loving goodness toward them; and that in populous
and frequented cities there should be theatres and places
appointed for such spectacles, as a diverting of worse in-
conveniences and secret actions. But to come to my in-
tended purpose, there is no better way to allure the affec-
tion and to entice the appetite; otherwise a man shall breed
but asses laden with books. With jerks of rods they have
their satchels full of learning given them to keep. Which
to do well one must not only harbour in himself, but wed
and marry the same with his mind.
NOTES
1 Cic., " De Nat.," 1. i.
1 Dante, " Inferno," cant, xi, 93.
* Sen., " Epist," xxxiii.
* Hor., 1. i, " Od.," ii, 4-
* , it. rv* s~\. 99 4
10 Pers., " Sat.," iii, 69.
11 Ibid., 67.
11 Virg., " ^n.," 1. iii, 853.
Sat.," V, 64.
Epist.," cxxv.
Hor., " Epist," xvii, 23.
Hor., " Epist.," xvii, 25.
Ibid., 29.
Cic., " Tusc. Qu.," 1. iv.
Cic., " Tusc. Qu.," 1. ii.
Hor., " Art. Poet," 311.
Sen., " Controv.," 1. vii, proae.
Cic., " De Fin.," 1. iii, c. 5.
Hor., 1. i, " Sat.," iv, 8.
Hor., 1. i, " Sat.," iv, 58.
Ibid., 62.
Sen., " Epist.," xl.
Cic., " Acad. Qu.," 1. iv.
Sen., " Epist," liii.
" Epitaph on Lucan," 6.
Sen., " Epist," xl.
Ibid., " Epist.," Ixxv.
Virg., " Buc.," Eel. viii, 39-
Liv., " Deo.," iii, 1. iv.
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
BY
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
.SIR PHILIP SIDNEY was born in Penshurst, Kent, November 29, 1554.
The scenery about his birthplace is described in Ben Jonson's " Forest."
His father, Sir Henry Sidney, was ambassador of Edward VI at the
French court. His friend and biographer, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,
says of Sir Philip : " Of his youth I will report no other wonder but this,
that though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never
knew him other than a man ; with such staidness of mind, lovely and
familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years.
His talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his
mind." He was educated at Oxford, and then travelled in France, Ger-
many, and Italy. On his return, he became a familiar character at the
court of Elizabeth, where his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, was for a time
powerful. Sidney was ambassador first to Rudolph II of Austria, and
then to William of Orange. He retired to Wilton in 1580, and there
wrote his "Arcadia" and his "Defence of Poesy" at first entitled
"Apology for Poetry" which was not published till 1591. He returned
to court in 1583, was knighted, and married a daughter of Sir Francis
Walsingham. He accompanied his uncle, who commanded the forces
sent to the Netherlands to take part in the war against the Spaniards,
and in an action at Zutphen, October 2, 1586, received a mortal wound,
of which he died on the iyth. Besides the works mentioned above, Sid-
ney wrote a poem in sonnets, entitled " Astrophel and Stella." Charles
Lamb devotes one of his essays to these sonnets, which he greatly ad-
mired. Sidney stands as the historical model for a perfect gentleman,
and his character is universally admired. His biography has been writ-
ten over and over again. Some lines in an elegy on him by his friend
Mathew Roydon are famous :
"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books
I trow that countenance can not lie
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye."
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
WHEN the right virtuous E. W. 1 and I were at
the emperor's court together we gave ourselves
to learn horsemanship of Gio. Pietro Pugliano;
one that, with great commendation, had the place of an
esquire in his stable: and he, according to the fertileness
of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstra-
tion of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with
the contemplation therein, which he thought most precious.
But with none, I remember, mine ears were at any time
more laden than when (either angered with slow payment
or moved with our learner-like admiration) he exercised
his speech in the praise of his faculty.
He said soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind,
and horsemen the noblest of soldiers. He said they were
the masters of war and ornaments of peace, speedy goers,
and strong abiders, triumphers both in camps and courts:
nay, to so unbelieved a point he proceeded as that no
earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince as to be a good
horseman: skill of government was but a " pedanteria " in
comparison. Then would he add certain praises, by tell-
ing what a peerless beast the horse was, the only service-
able courtier, without flattery, the beast of most beauty,
faithfulness, courage, and such more that if I had not been
a piece of a logician before I came to him I think he would
have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse. But
thus much, at least, with his no few words he drove into
me that self-love is better than any gilding to make that
seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.
Wherein, if Pugliano's strong affection and weak argu-
ments will not satisfy you, I will give you a nearer ex-
ample of myself, who, I know not by what mischance, in
these my not old years and idlest times, having slipped
49
50 SIDNEY
into the title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto
you in the defence of that my unelected vocation; which
if I handle with more good-will than good reasons bear
with me, since the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth
the steps of his master.
And yet I must say that, as I have more just cause
to make a pitiful defence of poor poetry, which, from
almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to be
the laughing-stock of children; so have I need to bring
some more available proofs, since the former is by no
man barred of his deserved credit, whereas the silly latter
hath had even the names of philosophers used to the de-
facing of it, with great danger of civil war among the
Muses.
And first, truly, to all them that, professing learning,
inveigh against poetry, may justly be objected that they
go very near to ungratefulness to seek to deface that which,
in the noblest nations and languages that are known, hath
been the first light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse,
whose milk, by little and little, enabled them to feed after-
ward of tougher knowledges. And will you play the
hedge-hog that, being received into the den, drove out his
host? or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their
parents?
Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be
able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and
Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any
history be brought that can say any writers were there
before them if they were not men of the same skill, as
Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who, having
been the first of that country that made pens deliverers
of their knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to
be called their fathers in learning. For not only in time
they had this priority (although in itself antiquity be ven-
erable), but went before them, as causes to draw, with their
charming sweetness, the wild untamed wits to an admira-
tion of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move
stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be
listened to by beasts; indeed, stony and beastly people: so
among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and Ennius:
so in the Italian language, the first that made it to aspire
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 51
to be a treasure-house of science were the poets Dante,
Boccace, and Petrarch: so in our English were Gower and
Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their
excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our
mother tongue, as well in the same kind as other arts.
This did so notably show itself that the philosophers of
Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but under
the mask of poets: so Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides
sang their natural philosophy in verses: so did Pythagoras
and Phocylides their moral counsels; so did Tyrtaeus in
war matters; and Solon in matters of policy; or rather
they, being poets, did exercise their delightful vein in those
points of highest knowledge which before them lay hidden
to the world: for that wise Solon was directly a poet it
is manifest, having written, in verse, the notable fable of
the Atlantic island, which was continued by Plato. And,
truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth, shall find
that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength
were philosophy, the skin, as it were, and beauty, depended
most of poetry. For all stands upon dialogues; wherein
he feigns many honest burgesses of Athens speaking of
such matters that if they had been set on the rack they
would never have confessed them: besides, his poetical de-
scribing the circumstances of their meetings, as the well
ordering of a banquet, the delicacy of a walk, with inter-
lacing mere tales, as Gyges's "Ring," and others; which
who knows not to be flowers of poetry did never walk into
Apollo's garden.
And even historiographers, although their lips sound
of things done, and verity be written in their foreheads,
have been glad to borrow both fashion and, perchance,
weight of the poets: so Herodotus entitled the books of
his history by the names of the nine Muses; and both he,
and all the rest that followed him, either stole or usurped,
of poetry, their passionate describing of passions, the many
particularities of battle which no man could affirm; or, if
that be denied me, long orations, put in the mouths of
great kings and captains, which it is certain they never
pronounced.
So that, truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer
could, at the first, have entered into the gates of popular
52 SIDNEY
judgments if they had not taken a great disport of poetry;
which in all nations, at this day, where learning flourisheth
not, is plain to be seen; in all which they have some feel-
ing of poetry. In Turkey, besides their lawgiving divines
they have no other writers but poets. In our neighbour-
country Ireland, where, truly, learning goes very bare, yet
are their poets held in a devout reverence. Even among
the most barbarous and simple Indians, where no writing
is, yet have they their poets, who make and sing songs,
which they call " arentos," both of their ancestors' deeds
and praises of their gods. A sufficient probability that if
ever learning come among them it must be by having
their hard, dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet
delight of poetry; for until they find a pleasure in the
exercise of the mind great promises of much knowledge
will little persuade them that know not the fruits of knowl-
edge. In Wales the true remnant of the ancient Britons,
as there are good authorities to show the long time they
had poets, which they called bards, so through all the con-
quests of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, some
of whom did seek to ruin all memory of learning from
among them, yet do their poets, even to this day, last;
so as it is not more notable in the soon beginning than
in long continuing.
But since the authors of most of our sciences were
the Romans, and, before them, the Greeks, let us a little
stand upon their authorities, but even so far as to see what
names they have given unto this now scorned skill. Among
the Romans a poet was called " vates," which is as much
as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words
" vaticinium " and " vaticinari " is manifest, so heavenly
a title did that excellent people bestow upon this heart-
ravishing knowledge! And so far were they carried into
the admiration thereof that they thought in the change-
able hitting upon any such verses great foretokens of their
following fortunes were placed. Whereupon grew the
word of " sortes Virgilianae " ; when, by sudden opening
of Virgil's book, they lighted upon some verse, as it is
reported by many, whereof the histories of the emperors'
lives are full: as of Albinus, the governor of our island,
who, in his childhood, met with this verse:
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
From an engraving after a painting by Isaac Oliver
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 53
" Arma amens capio, nee sat rationis in armis ";
and in his age performed it. Although it were a very vain
and godless superstition; as also it was to think spirits
were commanded by such verses: whereupon this word
charms, derived of " carmina," cometh, so yet serveth it
to show the great reverence those wits were held in; and
altogether not without ground, since both the oracles of
Delphi and the Sibyl's prophecies were wholly delivered
in verses; for that same exquisite observing of number
and measure in the words, and that high-flying liberty of
conceit proper to the poet did seem to have some divine
force in it.
And may not I presume a little further to show the
reasonableness of this word " vates," and say that the holy
David's Psalms are a divine poem? If I do, I shall not
do it without the testimony of great learned men, both
ancient and modern. But even the name of Psalms will
speak for me, which, being interpreted, is nothing but
songs: then, that it is fully written in metre, as all learned
Hebricians agree, although the rules be not yet fully found.
Lastly, and principally, his handling his prophecy, which
is merely poetical. For what else is the awakening his mu-
sical instruments; the often and free changing of persons;
his notable prosopopoeias, when he maketh you, as it were,
see God coming in his majesty; his telling of the beasts'
joyfulness, and hills leaping, but a heavenly poesy; wherein
almost he showeth himself a passionate lover of that un-
speakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes
of the mind, only cleared by faith? But, truly, now, hav-
ing named him, I fear I seem to profane that holy name,
applying it to poetry, which is, among us, thrown down
to so ridiculous an estimation. But they that, with quiet
judgments, will look a little deeper into it, shall find the
end and working of it such as, being rightly applied, de-
serveth not to be scourged out of the church of God.
But now let us see how the Greeks have named it, and
how they deemed of it. The Greeks named him TroiijTrjv,
which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through
other languages; it cometh of this word TTOU-IV, which is
" to make "; wherein, I know not whether by luck or wis-
dom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling
54 SIDNEY
him " a maker," which name, how high and incomparable
a title it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope
of other sciences than by any partial allegation. There is
no art delivered unto mankind that hath not the works
of Nature for his principal object, without which they could
not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become
actors and players, as it were, of what Nature will have
set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars,
and by that he seeth set down what order Nature hath
taken therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician
in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician
in times tell you, which by Nature agree, which not. The
natural philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral
philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or
passions of man: and follow Nature, saith he, therein, and
thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men have de-
termined. The historian, what men have done. The gram-
marian speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhet-
orician and logician, considering what in Nature will soon-
est prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which
still are compassed within the circle of a question, accord-
ing to the proposed matter. The physician weigheth the
nature of man's body, and the nature of things helpful and
hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic, though it be in the
second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted
supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth
of Nature. Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any
such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own in-
vention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature: in mak-
ing things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or
quite anew; forms such as never were in Nature, as the
heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like;
so as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not inclosed
within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging
within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth
the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done;
neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved
earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only de-
liver a golden.
But let those things alone, and go to man; for whom
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 55
as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her utter-
most cunning is employed; and know, whether she have
brought forth so true a lover as Theagenes; so constant
a friend as Pylades; so valiant a man as Orlando: so right
a prince as Xenophon's Cyrus; and so excellent a man
every way as Virgil's ^neas? Neither let this be jestingly
conceived, because the works of the one be essential, the
other in imitation or fiction; for every understanding know-
eth the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea, or fore-
conceit of the work, and not in the work itself. And
that the poet hath that idea is manifest by the delivering
them forth in such excellency as he had imagined them:
which delivering forth, also, is not wholly imaginative, as
we are wont to say by them that build castles in the air;
but so far substantially it worketh not only to make a
Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency, as Na-
ture might have done; but to bestow a Cyrus upon the
world to make many Cyruses; if they will learn aright,
why and how that maker made him. Neither let it be
deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the highest
point of man's wit with the efficacy of Nature; but rather
give right honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker,
who, having made man to his own likeness, set him be-
yond and over all the works of that second nature; which
in nothing he showeth so much as in poetry; when, with
the force of a divine breath, he bringeth things forth sur-
passing her doings, with no small arguments to the in-
credulous of that first accursed fall of Adam; since our
erected wit maketh us know what perfection is, and yet
our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it. But
these arguments will by few be understood, and by fewer
granted: thus much I hope will be given me that the
Greeks, with some probability of reason, gave him the
name above all names of learning.
Now let us go to a more ordinary opening of him, that
the truth may be the more palpable; and so, I hope, though
we get not so unmatched a praise as the etymology of
his names will grant, yet his very description, which no
man will deny, shall not justly be barred from a principal
commendation.
Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle
56 SIDNEY
termeth it in the word JJU/JLTJO-K ; that is to say, a represent-
ing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphor-
ically, a speaking picture; with this end to teach and de-
light.
Of this have been three general kinds: the chief, both
in antiquity and excellency, were they that did imitate
the inconceivable excellencies of God: such were David
in his Psalms; Solomon in his Song of Songs, in his Ec-
clesiastes, and Proverbs; Moses and Deborah in their
hymns; and the writer of Job; which, beside others, the
learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. Junius do entitle the
poetical part of the Scripture: against these none will
speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy reverence. In
this kind, though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Am-
phion, Homer in his hymns, and many others, both Greeks
and Romans. And this poesy must be used by whosoever
will follow St. Paul's counsel, in singing psalms when they
are merry; and I know is used with the fruit of comfort
by some when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing
sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving good-
ness.
The second kind is of them that deal with matters philo-
sophical; either moral, as Tyrtaeus, Phocylides, Cato; or
natural, as Lucretius, Virgil's " Georgics "; or astronomi-
cal, as Manilius and Pontanus; or historical, as Lucan;
which who mislike the fault is in their judgment, quite out
of taste, and not in the sweet food of sweetly uttered
knowledge.
But because this second sort is wrapped within the
fold of the proposed subject, and takes not the free course
of his own invention; whether they properly be poets, or
no, let grammarians dispute, and go to the third, indeed
right poets, of whom chiefly this question ariseth: betwixt
whom and these second is such a kind of difference as
betwixt the meaner sort of painters, who counterfeit only
such faces as are set before them; and the more excellent,
who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon
you which is fittest for the eye to see; as the constant,
though lamenting look of Lucretia, when she punished in
herself another's fault: wherein he painteth not Lucretia,
whom he never saw, but painteth the outward beauty of
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
57
such a virtue. For these three be they which most prop-
erly do imitate to teach and delight; and to imitate, bor-
row nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be; but range
only, reined with learned discretion, into the divine con-
sideration of what may be and should be. These be they
that, as the first and most noble sort, may justly be termed
"vates": so these are waited on in the excellentest lan-
guages and best understandings, the fore-described name
of poets. For these, indeed, do merely make to imitate,
and imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move
men to take that goodness in hand which, without delight,
they would fly as from a stranger; and teach to make them
know that goodness whereunto they are moved: which
being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was
directed, yet want there not idle tongues to bark at them.
These be subdivided into sundry more special denom-
inations: the most notable be the heroic, lyric, tragic,
comic, satiric, iambic, elegiac, pastoral, and certain others;
some of these being termed according to the matter they
deal with; some by the sort of verse they liked best to
write in; for indeed the greatest part of poets have appar-
elled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of
writing which is called verse. Indeed but apparelled verse,
being but an ornament, and no cause to poetry, since there
have been many most excellent poets that never versified,
and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer
to the name of poets. For Xenophon, who did imitate
so excellently as to give us " effigiem justi imperii," the
portraiture of a just empire, under the name of Cyrus, as
Cicero saith of him, made therein an absolute heroical
poem. So did Heliodorus, in his sugared invention of
that picture of love in " Theagenes and Chariclea"; and
yet both these wrote in prose; which I speak to show that
it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet (no more
than a long gown maketh an advocate, who, though he
pleaded in armour, should be an advocate and no soldier);
but it is that, feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or
what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be
the right describing note to know a poet by. Although,
indeed, the senate of poets have chosen verse as their fit-
test raiment; meaning, as in matter they passed all in all,
58 SIDNEY
so in manner to go beyond them; not speaking, table-talk
fashion, or like men in a dream, words as they chanceably
fall from the mouth, but piecing each syllable of each word
by just proportion, according to the dignity of the subject.
Now, therefore, it shall not be amiss, first, to weigh
this latter sort of poetry by his works, and then by his
parts; and if in neither of these anatomies he be commend-
able, I hope we shall receive a more favourable sentence.
This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling
of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly
we call learning, under what name soever it come forth,
or to what immediate end soever it be directed; the final
end is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our
degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can
be capable of. This, according to the inclination of man,
bred many formed impressions: for some that thought this
felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no
knowledge to be so high or heavenly as to be acquainted
with the stars, gave themselves to astronomy; others, per-
suading themselves to be demi-gods if they knew the causes
of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers.
Some an admirable delight drew to music; and some the
certainty of demonstrations to the mathematics; but all,
one and other, having this scope, to know, and by knowl-
edge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body
to the enjoying his own divine essence. But when, by the
balance of experience, it was found that the astronomer,
looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the inquir-
ing philosopher might be blind in himself; and the mathe-
matician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked
heart; then To! did proof, the overruler of opinions, make
manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as
they have a private end in themselves, so yet are they
all directed to the highest end of the mistress-knowledge,
by the Greeks called apxireicroviKr), which stands, as I
think, in the knowledge of a man's self; in the ethic and
politic consideration, with the end of well-doing, and not
of well-knowing only: even as the saddler's next end is
to make a good saddle, but his further end to serve a nobler
faculty, which is horsemanship; so the horseman's to sol-
diery; and the soldier not only to have the skill, but to
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
59
perform the practice of a soldier. So that the ending end
of all earthly learning being virtuous action, those skills
that most serve to bring forth that have a most just title
to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show it
rightly, the poet is worthy to have it before any other com-
petitors.
Among whom principally to challenge it, step forth the
moral philosophers; whom, methinks, I see coming toward
me with a sullen gravity (as though they could not abide
vice by daylight), rudely clothed, for to witness outwardly
their contempt of outward things, with books in their hands
against glory, whereto they set their names; sophistically
speaking against subtlety, and angry with any man in
whom they see the foul fault of anger. These men, cast-
ing largesses as they go, of definitions, divisions, and dis-
tinctions, with a scornful interrogative do soberly ask,
Whether it be possible to find any path so ready to lead
a man to virtue as that which teacheth what virtue is;
and teacheth it not only by delivering forth his very being,
his causes and effects; but also by making known his
enemy, vice, which must be destroyed, and his cumber-
some servant, passion, which must be mastered; by show-
ing the generalities that contain it, and the specialities that
are derived from it: lastly, by plain setting down how it
extends itself out of the limits of a man's own little world,
to the government of families, and maintaining of public
societies?
The historian scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to
say so much, but that he, laden with old mouse-eaten
records, authorizing himself, for the most part, upon other
histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the
notable foundation of hearsay; having much ado to accord
differing writers, and to pick truth out of partiality; better
acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the pres-
ent age, and yet better knowing how this world goes than
how his own wit runs; curious for antiquities, and inquisi-
tive of novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant
in table-talk, denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for
teaching of virtue and virtuous actions is comparable to
him. I am " testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae,
magistra vitse, nuncia vetustatis." The philosopher, saith
60 SIDNEY
he, teacheth a disputative virtue, but I do an active; his
virtue is excellent in the dangerless academy of Plato, but
mine showeth forth her honourable face in the battles of
Marathon, Pharsalia, Poitiers, and Agincourt: he teach-
eth virtue by certain abstract considerations; but I only
bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before
you: old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-witted
philosopher; but I give the experience of many ages:
lastly, if he make the song-book, I put the learner's hand
to the lute; and if he be the guide, I am the light. Then
would he allege you innumerable examples, confirming
story by stories, how much the wisest senators and princes
have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus, Al-
phonsus of Aragon (and who not, if need be?). At length,
the long line of their disputation makes a point in this, that
the one giveth the precept, and the other the example.
Now whom shall we find, since the question standeth
for the highest form in the school of learning, to be mod-
erator? Truly, as me seemeth, the poet; and if not a
moderator, even the man that ought to carry the title from
them both, and much more from all other serving sciences.
Therefore compare we the poet with the historian, and
with the moral philosopher; and if he go beyond them
both, no other human skill can match him: for as for the
divine, with all reverence, he is ever to be excepted, not
only for having his scope as far beyond any of these, as
eternity exceedeth a moment, but even for passing each
of these in themselves: and for the lawyer, though " Jus "
be the daughter of Justice, the chief of virtues, yet because
he seeks to make men good rather " formidine pcenae "
than " virtutis amore," or, to say righter, doth not en-
deavour to make men good, but that their evil hurt not
others, having no care, so he be a good citizen, how bad
a man he be: therefore, as our wickedness maketh him
necessary, and necessity maketh him honourable, so is he
not in the deepest truth to stand in rank with these, who
all endeavour to take naughtiness away, and plant good-
ness even in the secretest cabinet of our souls. And these
four are all that any way deal in the consideration of men's
manners, which being the supreme knowledge, they that
best breed it deserve the best commendation.
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 6 r
The philosopher, therefore, and the historian are they
which would win the goal, the one by precept, the other
by example; but both, not having both, do both halt. For
the philosopher, setting down with thorny arguments the
bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be con-
ceived, that one that hath no other guide but him shall
wade in him until he be old, before he shall find sufficient
cause to be honest. For his knowledge standeth so upon
the abstract and general that happy is that man who may
understand him, and more happy that can apply what he
doth understand. On the other side, the historian, want-
ing the precept, is so tied not to what should be, but to
what is, to the particular truth of things, and not to the
general reason of things, that his example draweth no ne-
cessary consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine.
Now doth the peerless poet perform both; for what-
soever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a
perfect picture of it, by some one by whom he presupposeth
it was done, so as he coupleth the general notion with the
particular example. A perfect picture, I say; for he yield-
eth to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof
the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which
doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the
soul, so much as that other doth. For as, in outward
things, to a man that had never seen an elephant or a rhi-
noceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their
shape, colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gor-
geous palace, in architecture, who, declaring the full beau-
ties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were,
by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward
conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowl-
edge: but the same man, as soon as he might see those
beasts well painted, or that house well in model, should
straightway grow, without need of any description, to a
judicial comprehending of them: so, no doubt, the philoso-
pher, with his learned definitions, be it of virtues or vices,
matters of public policy or private government, replenish-
eth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom,
which, notwithstanding, lie dark before the imaginative and
judging power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth
by the speaking picture of poesy.
62 SIDNEY
Tully taketh much pains, and many times not without
poetical helps, to make us know the force love of our coun-
try hath in us. Let us but hear old Anchises, speaking
in the midst of Troy's flames, or see Ulysses, in the fulness
of all Calypso's delights, bewail his absence from barren
and beggarly Ithaca. Anger, the Stoics said, was a short
madness; let but Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage,
killing or whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the
army of Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and
Menelaus; and tell me if you have not a more familiar in-
sight into anger than finding in the schoolmen his genius
and difference? See whether wisdom and temperance in
Ulysses and Diomedes, valour in Achilles, friendship in
Nisus and Euryalus, even to an ignorant man, carry not an
apparent shining; and contrarily, the remorse of conscience
in CEdipus; the soon-repenting pride in Agamemnon; the
self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus; the violence of
ambition in the two Theban brothers; the sour sweetness
of revenge in Medea; and, to fall lower, the Terentian
Gnatho, and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we
now use their names to signify their trades: and, finally, all
virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural states
laid to the view that we seem not to hear of them y but
clearly to see through them?
But even in the most excellent determination of good-
ness what philosopher's counsel can so readily direct a
prince as the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon? Or a virtuous
man in all fortunes, as ^Eneas in Virgil? Or a whole com-
monwealth, as the way of Sir Thomas M ore's " Utopia "?
I say the way, because where Sir Thomas More erred it
was the fault of the man, and not of the poet: for that
way of patterning a commonwealth was most absolute,
though he, perchance, hath not so absolutely performed
it. For the question is, whether the feigned image of
poetry, or the regular instruction of philosophy, hath the
more force in teaching. Wherein, if the philosophers
have more rightly showed themselves philosophers
than the poets have attained to the high top of their
profession (as in truth,
" Mediocribus esse poetis
Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae "),
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 63
it is, I say again, not the fault of the art, but that by few
men that art can be accomplished. Certainly even our
Saviour Christ could as well have given the moral common-
places of uncharitableness and humbleness as the divine
narration of Dives and Lazarus; or of disobedience and
mercy as the heavenly discourse of the lost child and the
gracious father; but that his thorough searching wisdom
knew the estate of Dives burning in hell, and of Lazarus
in Abraham's bosom, would more constantly, as it were,
inhabit both the memory and judgment. Truly, for myself
(meseems), I see before mine eyes the lost child's dis-
dainful prodigality turned to envy a swine's dinner: which,
by the learned divines, are thought not historical acts, but
instructing parables.
For conclusion, I say the philosopher teacheth, but
he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can under-
stand him ; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already
taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest stom-
achs; the poet is, indeed, the right popular philosopher.
Whereof ^sop's tales give good proof; whose pretty alle-
gories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, make
many, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound
of virtue from those dumb speakers.
But now may it be alleged that if this managing of
matters be so fit for the imagination, then must the his-
torian needs surpass, who brings you images of true mat-
ters, such as, indeed, were done, and not such as fantas-
tically or falsely may be suggested to have been done.
Truly Aristotle himself, in his "Discourse of Poesy,"
plainly determineth this question, saying that poetry is
<f>i\o(To<l>a)Tpov ical (TJrov^aioTepov that is to say, it is more
philosophical and more ingenious than history. His reason
is, because poesy dealeth with Ka0o\0v, that is to say, with the
universal consideration, and the history na& ereavrov, the
particular. " Now," saith he, " the universal weighs what
is fit to be said or done, either in likelihood or necessity;
which the poesy considereth in his imposed names: and
the particular only marks whether Alcibiades did or suf-
fered this or that": thus far Aristotle. Which reason of
his, as all his, is most full of reason. For, indeed, if the
question were, whether it were better to have a particular
64 SIDNEY
act truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to
be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have
Vespasian's picture right as he was, or, at the painter's
pleasure, nothing resembling. But if the question be, for
your own use and learning, whether it be better to have
it set down as it should be, or as it was, then, certainly, is
more doctrinable the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon than the
true Cyrus in Justin; and the feigned yEneas in Virgil than
the right ^neas in Dares Phrygius: as to a lady that de-
sired to fashion her countenance to the best grace, a painter
should more benefit her, to portrait a most sweet face,
writing Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as she was,
who, Horace sweareth, was full ill favoured. If the poet
do his part aright, he will show you in Tantalus, Atreus,
and such like, nothing that is not to be shunned; in Cyrus,
^Eneas, Ulysses, each thing to be followed: where the his-
torian, bound to tell things as things were, can not be lib-
eral, without he will be poetical, of a perfect pattern; but,
as in Alexander, or Scipio himself, show doings, some to
be liked, some to be misliked; and then how will you dis-
cern what to follow, but by your own discretion, which
you had, without reading Q. Curtius? And whereas a man
may say, though in universal consideration of doctrine, the
poet prevaileth, yet that the history, in his saying such a
thing was done, doth warrant a man more in that he shall
follow; the answer is manifest: that if he stand upon that
was, as if he should argue, because it rained yesterday
therefore it should rain to-day; then, indeed, hath it some
advantage to a gross conceit. But if he know an example
only enforms a conjectured likelihood, and so go by reason,
the poet doth so far exceed him, as he is to frame his
example to that which is most reasonable, be it in warlike,
politic, or private matters; where the historian in his bare
was hath many times that which we call fortune to over-
rule the best wisdom. Many times he must tell events
whereof he can yield no cause; or if he do, it must be
poetically.
For that a feigned example hath as much force to teach
as a true example (for as for to move, it is clear, since the
feigned may be tuned to the highest key of passion), let
us take one example wherein a historian and a poet did
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 65
concur. Herodotus and Justin do both testify that Zopy-
rus, King Darius's faithful servant, seeing his master long
resisted by the rebellious Babylonians, feigned himself in
extreme disgrace of his king; for verifying of which, he
caused his own nose and ears to be cut off, and so flying
to the Babylonians, was received; and, for his known val-
our, so far credited, that he did find means to deliver them
over to Darius. Much-like matters doth Livy record of
Tarquinius and his son. Xenophon excellently feigned
such another stratagem, performed by Abradates in Cyrus's
behalf. Now would I fain know, if occasion be presented
unto you, to serve your prince by such an honest dissimu-
lation, why do you not as well learn it of Xenophon's fic-
tion as of the others' verity? and, truly, so much the better,
as you shall save your nose by the bargain; for Abradates
did not counterfeit so far. So, then, the best of the his-
torians is subject to the poet; for, whatsoever action or fac-
tion, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war stratagem the his-
torian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with
his imitation, make his own, beautifying it both for further
teaching and more delighting, as it please him; having
all, from Dante's heaven to his hell, under the authority
of his pen. Which if I be asked, What poets have done
so? as I might well name some, so yet, say I, and say
again, I speak of the art, and not of the artificer.
Now, to that which commonly is attributed to the praise
of history, in respect of the notable learning which is got
by marking the success, as though therein a man should
see virtue exalted and vice punished: truly, that com-
mendation is peculiar to poetry, and far off from history;
for, indeed, poetry ever sets virtue so out in her best
colours making fortune her well-waiting handmaid that
one must needs be enamoured of her. Well may you
see Ulysses in a storm, and in other hard plights; but
they are but exercises of patience and magnanimity, to
make them shine the more in the near following pros-
perity. And, on the contrary part, if evil men come to the
stage, they ever go out (as the tragedy writer answered
to one that misliked the show of such persons) so man-
acled, as they little animate folks to follow them. But
history being captived to the truth of a foolish world, is
66 SIDNEY
many times a terror from well-doing, and an encourage-
ment to unbridled wickedness. For see we not valiant
Miltiades rot in his fetters? The just Phocion and the
accomplished Socrates put to death like traitors? The
cruel Severus live prosperously? The excellent Severus
miserably murdered? Sylla and Marius dying in their
beds? Pompey and Cicero slain then when they would
have thought exile a happiness? See we not virtuous Cato
driven to kill himself, and rebel Caesar so advanced that his
name yet, after sixteen hundred years, lasteth in the high-
est honour? And mark but even Caesar's own words of
the forenamed Sylla (who in that only did honestly to put
down his dishonest tyranny), " literas nescivit ": as if want
o learning caused him to do well. He meant it not by
poetry, which, not content with earthly plagues, deviseth
new punishments in hell for tyrants: nor yet by philoso-
phy, which teacheth " occidentes esse": but, no doubt,
by skill in history; for that, indeed, can afford you Cyp-
selus, Periander, Phalaris, Dionysius, and I know not how
many more of the same kennel, that sped well enough in
their abominable injustice of usurpation.
I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth history not only
in furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it
forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted
good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing,
indeed, setteth the laurel crown upon the poets as victori-
ous, not only of the historian, but over the philosopher,
howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable. For sup-
pose it be granted that which I suppose, with great reason,
may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his me-
thodical proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet,
yet do I think that no man is so much <^Xo</>X6<ro<o5 as to
compare the philosopher in moving with the poet. And
that moving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may
by this appear, that it is well-nigh both the cause and effect
of teaching; for who will be taught if he be not moved
with desire to be taught? And what so much good doth
that teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine)
as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach? For
as Aristotle saith, it is not yvaxw but Trpa&s must be the
fruit: and how Trpafys can be, without being moved to
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
6 7
practise, it is no hard matter to consider. The philosopher
showeth you the way, he informeth you of the particu-
larities, as well of the tediousness of the way and of the
pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is
ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you
from your way; but this is to no man but to him that will
read him, and read him with attentive, studious painful-
ness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath
already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore
is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay,
truly, learned men have learnedly thought that where once
reason hath so much overmastered passion as that the mind
hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind
hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book: since in
Nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well
and what is evil, although not in the words of art which
philosophers bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit the
philosophers drew it: but to be moved to do that which
we know, or to be moved with desire to know, " hoc opus,
hie labor est."
Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human,
and according to the human conceit) is our poet the mon-
arch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth
so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man
to enter into it: nay, he doth, as if your journey should
lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a
cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to
pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions,
which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load
the memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with
words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with
or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of music; and
with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which
holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-
corner; 2 and, pretending no more, doth intend the win-
ning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the
child is often brought' to take most wholesome things, by
hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which,
if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or
rhubarbarum they should receive, would sooner take their
physic at their ears than at their mouth: so is it in men
68 SIDNEY
(most of whom are childish in the best things, till they
be cradled in their graves); glad they will be to hear the
tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, yEneas; and hearing
them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom,
valour, and justice; which, if they had been barely (that is
to say, philosophically) set out, they would swear they
be brought to school again. That imitation whereof poetry
is hath the most conveniency to Nature of all other:
insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in
themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural mon-
sters, are made, in poetical imitation, delightful. Truly,
I have known men that even with reading Amadis de Gaul,
which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy,
have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy,
liberality, and especially courage. Who readeth yEneas
carrying old Anchises on his back, that wisheth not it were
his fortune to perform so excellent an act? Whom doth
not those words of Turnus move (the tale of Turnus hav-
ing planted his image in the imagination) :
" fugientem haec terra videbit?
Usque adeone mori miserum est? " (Virgil.)
Where the philosophers (as they think) scorn to delight,
so much they be content little to move, saving wrangling
whether " virtus " be the chief or the only good; whether
the contemplative or the active life do excel: which Plato
and Boethius well knew; and therefore made Mistress Phi-
losophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy.
For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue
a school name, and know no other good but " indulgere
genio," and therefore despise the austere admonitions of
the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they stand
upon; yet will be content to be delighted, which is all the
good-fellow poet seems to promise; and so steal to see
the form of goodness, which seen, they can not but love,
ere themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine of
cherries.
Infinite proofs of the strange effects of this poetical
invention might be alleged; only two shall serve, which
are so often remembered as, I think, all men know them.
The one of Menenius Agrippa, who, when the whole peo-
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 69
pie of Rome had resolutely divided themselves for the
Senate, with apparent show of utter ruin, though he were,
for that time, an excellent orator, came not among them
upon trust either of figurative speeches or cunning insinu-
ations, and much less with far-fetched maxims of philoso-
phy, which, especially if they were Platonic, they must
have learned geometry before they could have conceived:
but, forsooth, he behaveth himself like a homely and famil-
iar poet. He telleth them a tale that there was a time
when all the parts of the body made a mutinous conspiracy
against the belly, which they thought devoured the fruits
of each other's labour: they concluded they would let so
unprofitable a spender starve. In the end, to be short (for
the tale is notorious, and as notorious that it was a tale),
with punishing the belly they plagued themselves. This,
applied by him, Wi ought such effect in the people as I
never read that only words brought forth; but then so
sudden, and so good an alteration, for upon reasonable con-
ditions a perfect reconcilement ensued.
The other is of Nathan the prophet, who, when the holy
David had so far forsaken God as to confirm adultery with
murder, when he was to do the tenderest office of a friend,
in laying his own shame before his eyes, being sent by
God to call again so chosen a servant, how doth he it but
by telling of a man whose beloved lamb was ungratefully
taken from his bosom? The application most divinely
true, but the discourse itself feigned; which made David
(I speak of the second and instrumental cause) as in a glass
see his own filthiness, as that heavenly psalm of mercy
well testifieth.
By these, therefore, examples and reasons, I think it
may be manifest that the poet, with that same hand of
delight, doth draw the mind more effectually than any
other art doth. And so a conclusion not unfitly ensues;
that as virtue is the most excellent resting place for all
worldly learning to make his end of, so poetry, being the
most familiar to teach it, and most princely to move to-
ward it, in the most excellent work is the most excellent
workman.
But I am content not only to decipher him by his works
(although works in commendation and dispraise must ever
5
70 SIDNEY
hold a high authority), but more narrowly will examine his
parts; so that (as in a man) though all together may carry
a presence full of majesty and beauty, perchance in some
one defectuous piece we may find blemish.
Now, in his parts, kinds, or species, as you list to term
them, it is to be noted that some poesies have coupled
together two or three kinds; as the tragical and comical,
whereupon is risen the tragi-comical ; some, in the manner,
have mingled prose and verse, as Sannazzaro and Boethius;
some have mingled matters heroical and pastoral; but that
cometh all to one in this question; for, if severed they be
good, the conjunction can not be hurtful. Therefore, per-
chance, forgetting some, and leaving some as needless to
be remembered, it shall not be amiss, in a word, to cite
the special kinds, to see what faults may be found in the
right use of them.
Is it then the pastoral poem which is misliked? (For,
perchance, where the hedge is lowest they will soonest
leap over.) Is the poor pipe disdained which sometimes,
out of Maelibeus's mouth, can show the misery of people
under hard lords and ravening soldiers? and again, by
Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie low-
est from the goodness of them that sit highest; sometimes
under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep can include
the whole considerations of wrong-doing and patience;
sometimes show that contentions for trifles can get but a
trifling victory; where, perchance, a man may see, that
even Alexander and Darius, when they strove who should
be cock of this world's dunghill, the benefit they got was,
that the after-livers may say :
" Haec memini et victum frustra contendere Thyrsim;
Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tempore nobis." (Virgil.)
Or is it the lamenting elegiac, which, in a kind heart,
would move rather pity than blame; who bewaileth, with
the great philosopher Heraclitus, the weakness of man-
kind and the wretchedness of the world; who, surely, is to
be praised, either for compassionately accompanying just
causes of lamentations or for rightly painting out how weak
be the passions of woefulness?
Is it the bitter but wholesome iambic, who rubs the
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 7 !
galled mind, making shame the trumpet of villainy, with
bold and open crying out against naughtiness?
Or the satiric? who,
" Omne vafer vitium ridenti tangit amico ";
who sportingly never leaveth, until he make a man laugh
at folly, and, at length, ashamed to laugh at himself, which
he can not avoid without avoiding the folly; who, while
"circum praecordia ludit," giveth us to feel how many
headaches a passionate life bringeth us to; who when all
is done,
" Est Ulubris, animus si nos non deficit aequus."
No, perchance it is the comic; whom naughty play-
makers and stage-keepers have justly made odious. To
the arguments of abuse I will after answer; only thus much
now is to be said that the comedy is an imitation of the
common errors of our life, which he represented in the
most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is
impossible that any beholder can be content to be such
a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known
as well as the right, and in arithmetic the odd as well
as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not
the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the
beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our
private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get,
as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of
a niggardly Demea, of a crafty Davus, of a flattering
Gnatho, of a vainglorious Thraso; and not only to know
what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such,
by the signifying badge given them by the comedian. And
little reason hath any man to say that men learn the evil
by seeing it so set out; since, as I said before, there is no
man living, but by the force truth hath in Nature, no
sooner seeth these men play their parts, but wisheth them
in " pistrinum " ; although perchance the sack of his own
faults lie so behind his back that he seeth not himself to
dance the same measure, whereto yet nothing can more
open his eyes than to see his own actions contemptibly set
forth, so that the right use of comedy will, I think, by no-
body be blamed.
And much less of the high arid excellent tragedy that
72 SIDNEY
openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers
that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be
tyrants, and tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours;
that with stirring the effects of admiration and commisera-
tion teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon how
weak foundations gilded roofs are builded: that maketh us
know, " qui sceptra saevus duro imperio regit, timet timen-
tes, metus in authorem redit." But how much it can
move, Plutarch yieldeth a notable testimony of the abomi-
nable tyrant Alexander Pheraeus; from whose eyes a
tragedy, well made and represented, drew abundance of
tears, who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers,
and some of his own blood; so as he that was not ashamed
to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist the
sweet violence of a tragedy. And if it wrought no further
good in him, it was that he, in despite of himself, with-
drew himself from hearkening to that which might mollify
his hardened heart. But it is not the tragedy they do mis-
like, for it were too absurd to cast out so excellent a repre-
sentation of whatsoever is most worthy to be learned.
Is it the lyric that most displeaseth, who with his tuned
lyre and well-accorded voice giveth praise, the reward of
virtue, to virtuous acts; who giveth moral precepts and
natural problems; who sometimes raiseth up his voice to
the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds of the im-
mortal God? Certainly I must confess mine own barba-
rousness; I never heard the old song of " Percy and Doug-
las " 3 that I found not my heart moved more than with
a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder,
with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so
evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age,
what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence
of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the manner at all
feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of
their ancestors' valour, which that right soldier-like nation
think one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage. The
incomparable Lacedaemonians did not only carry that kind
of music ever with them to the field, but even at home,
as such songs were made, so were they all content to be
singers of them; when the lusty men were to tell what
they did, the old men what they had done, and the young
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
73
what they would do. And where a man may say that
Pindar many times praiseth highly victories of small mo-
ment, rather matters of sport than virtue; as it may be
answered, it was the fault of the poet, and not of the poetry;
so, indeed, the chief fault was in the time and custom of
the Greeks, who set those toys at so high a price that
Philip of Macedon reckoned a horse-race won at Olympus
among his three fearful felicities. But as the inimitable
Pindar often did, so is that kind most capable, and most
fit, to awake the thoughts from the sleep of idleness, to
embrace honourable enterprises.
There rests the heroical, whose very name, I think,
should daunt all backbiters. For by what conceit can a
tongue be directed to speak evil of that which draweth with
him no less champions than Achilles, Cyrus, vEneas, Tur-
nus, Tydeus, Rinaldo? who doth not only teach and move
to truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and
excellent truth; who maketh magnanimity and justice shine
through all misty fearfulness and foggy desires; who, if the
saying of Plato and Tully be true, that who could see
Virtue, would be wonderfully ravished with the love of her
beauty; this man setteth her out to make her more lovely,
in her holiday apparel, to the eye of any that will deign not
to disdain until they understand. But if anything be al-
ready said in the defence of sweet poetry, all concurreth to
the maintaining the heroical, which is not only a kind, but
the best and most accomplished kind of poetry'. For, as
the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind,
so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind
with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to
be worthy. Only let ^Eneas be worn in the tablet of your
memory how he governeth himself in the ruin of his coun-
try; in the preserving his old father, and carrying away his
religious ceremonies; in obeying God's commandments, to
leave Dido, though not only all passionate kindness, but
even the human consideration of virtuous gratefulness,
would have craved other of him; how in storms, how in
sports, how in war, how in peace, how a fugitive, how
victorious, how besieged, how besieging, how to stran-
gers, how to allies, how to enemies, how to his own; lastly,
how in his inward self, and how in his outward gov-
74
SIDNEY
ernment; and I think, in a mind most prejudiced with a
prejudicating humour, he will be found in excellency fruit-
ful. Yea, as Horace saith, " melius Chrysippo et Cran-
tore." But, truly, I imagine it falleth out with these poet-
whippers as with some good women who often are sick, but
in faith they can not tell where. So the name of poetry is
odious to them, but neither his cause nor effects, neither the
sum that contains him, nor the particularities descending
from him, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise.
Since, then, poetry is of all human learnings the most
ancient, and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence
other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so
universal that no learned nation doth despise it, nor bar-
barous nation is without it; since both Roman and Greek
gave such divine names unto it, the one of " prophesying,"
the other of "making," and that indeed that name of "mak-
ing " is fit for him, considering, that where all other arts
retain themselves within their subject, and receive, as it
were, their being from it, the poet only, only bringeth his
own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of a matter,
but maketh matter for a conceit; since neither his descrip-
tion nor end containeth any evil, the thing described can
not be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach good-
ness, and delight the learners of it; since therein (namely,
in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges) he doth not
only far pass the historian, but, for instructing, is well-nigh
comparable to the philosopher, for moving, leaveth him
behind him; since the holy scripture (wherein there is no
uncleanliness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even
our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it;
since all his kinds are not only in their united forms, but
in their several dissections fully commendable: I think, and
think I think rightly, the laurel crown appointed for trium-
phant captains, doth worthily, of all other learnings, honour
the poet's triumph.
But because we have ears as well as tongues, and that
the lightest reasons that may be will seem to weigh greatly
if nothing be put in the counter-balance, let us hear, and,
as well as we can, ponder what objections be made against
this art, which may be worthy either of yielding or an-
swering.
THE DEFENCE OF POESY ^
First, truly, I note, not only in these fuo-opovo-oi, poet-
haters, but in all that kind of people who seek a praise by
dispraising others, that they do prodigally spend a great
many wandering words in quips and scoffs, carping and
taunting at each thing, which, by stirring the spleen, may
stay the brain from a thorough beholding the worthiness
of the subject. Those kind of objections, as they are full
of a very idle easiness (since there is nothing of so sacred
a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon
it), so deserve they no other answer, but, instead of laugh-
ing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. We know a playing
wit can praise the discretion of an ass, the comfortableness
of being in debt, and the jolly commodities of being sick
of the plague; so, of the contrary side, if we will turn
Ovid's verse:
" Ut lateat virtus proximitate mali,"
" that good lies hid in nearness of the evil/' Agrippa will
be as merry in the showing the vanity of science, as Eras-
mus was in the commending of folly; neither shall any man
or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But
for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than
the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other
pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb before they
understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge be-
fore they confirm their own; I would have them only re-
member that scofring cometh not of wisdom; so as the
best title in true English they get with their merriments
is to be called good fools, for so have our grave forefathers
ever termed that humorous kind of jesters.
But that which giveth greatest scope to their scorning
humour is rhyming and versing. It is already said, and,
as I think, truly said, it is not rhyming and versing that
maketh poesy; one may be a poet without versing, and a
versifier without poetry. But yet, presuppose it were in-
separable, as, indeed, it seemeth Scaliger judgeth truly, it
were an inseparable commendation : for if " oratio " next
to " ratio," speech next to reason, be the greatest gift be-
stowed upon mortality, that can not be praiseless which
doth most polish that blessing of speech; which considereth
each word, not only as a man may say by his forcible
quality, but by his best measured quantity; carrying even in
76 SIDNEY
themselves a harmony; without, perchance, number, meas-
ure, order, proportion be in our time grown odious.
But lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only
fit speech for music music, I say, the most divine striker
of the senses; thus much is undoubtedly true, that if read-
ing be foolish without remembering, memory being the
only treasure of knowledge, those words which are fittest
for memory are likewise most convenient for knowledge.
Now that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of
the memory, the reason is manifest: the words, besides
their delight, which hath a great affinity to memory, being
so set as one can not be lost but the whole work fails;
which, accusing itself, calleth the remembrance back to it-
self, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one
word so, as it were, begetting another, as, be it in rhyme or
measured verse, by the former a man shall have a near
guess to the follower. Lastly, even they that have taught
the art of memory, have showed nothing so apt for it as
a certain room divided into many places, well and thor-
oughly known; now that hath the verse in effect per-
fectly, every word having his natural seat, which seat must
needs make the word remembered. But what needs more
in a thing so known to all men? Who is it, that ever
was a scholar, that doth not carry away some verses of
Virgil, Horace, or Cato, which in his youth he learned,
and even to his old age serve him for hourly lessons? as:
" Percontatorem fugito: nam garrulus idem est."
" Dum sibi quisque placet, credula turba sumus."
But the fitness it hath for memory is notably proved by
all delivery of arts, wherein, for the most part, from gram-
mar to logic, mathematics, physic, and the rest, the rules
chiefly necessary to be borne away, are compiled in verses.
So that verse being in itself sweet and orderly, and being
best for memory, the only handle of knowledge, it must
be in jest that any man can speak against it.
Now, then, go we to the most important imputations
laid to the poor poets; for aught I can yet learn, they
are these: V
First, that there being many other more fruitful knowl-
edges, a man might better spend his time in them than
in this.
THE DEFENCE OF POESY ;;
Secondly, that it is the mother of lies.
Thirdly, that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with
many pestilent desires, with a siren sweetness drawing
the mind to the serpent's tail of sinful fancies; and herein
especially, comedies give the largest field to ear, 4 as
Chaucer saith; how, both in other nations and ours, before
poets did soften us, we were full of courage, given to
martial exercises, the pillars of manlike liberty, and not
lulled asleep in shady idleness with poets' pastimes.
And lastly, and chiefly, they cry out with open mouth,
as if they had overshot Robin Hood, that Plato banished
them out of his commonwealth. Truly, this is much, if
there be much truth in it.
First, to the first, that a man might better spend his
time, is a reason indeed; but it doth, as they say, but
" petere principinm." For if it be, as I affirm, that no
learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to
virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto
so much as poesy, then is the conclusion manifest, that
ink and paper can not be to a more profitable purpose em-
ployed. And certainly, though a man should grant their
first assumption, it should follow, methinks, very unwil-
lingly, that good is not good, because better is better.
But I still and utterly deny that there is sprung out of
earth a more fruitful knowledge.
To the second, therefore, that they should be the prin-
cipal liars, I answer paradoxically, but truly, I think truly,
that of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar;
and though he would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar.
The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can
hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the
height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physi-
cians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which
afterward send Charon a great number of souls drowned
in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less
of the rest which take upon them to affirm. Now for
the poet: he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth;
for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which
is false; so as the other artists, and especially the historian,
affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of
mankind, hardly escape from many lies. But the poet, as
6
7 g SIDNEY
I said before, never affirmeth; the poet never maketh any
circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe
for true what he writeth; he citeth not authorities of other
histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses
to inspire into him a good invention; in troth, not labour-
ing to tell you what is or is not, but what should or
should not be. And, therefore, though he recount things
not true, yet because he telleth them not for true he lieth
not; without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech,
before alleged, to David; which, as a wicked man durst
scarce say, so think I none so simple would say that
lied in the tales of his beasts; for who thinketh that
wrote it for actually true were well worthy to have
his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of.
What child is there, that cometh to a play, and seeing
Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth
believe that it is Thebes? If, then, a man can arrive to
the child's age, to know that the poets' persons and doings
are but pictures what should be, and not stories what have
been, they will never give the lie to things not affirma-
tively but allegorically and figurately written; and there-
fore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away
full fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, looking but for
fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative
ground-plot of a profitable invention.
But hereto is replied that the poets give names to
men they write of, which argueth a conceit of an actual
truth, and so, not being true, proveth a falsehood. And
doth the lawyer lie, then, when, under the names of John
of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he putteth his case?
But that is easily answered: their naming of men is but to
make their picture the more lively, and not to build any
history. Painting men, they can not leave men nameless:
we see we can not play at chess, but that we must give
names to our chessmen; and yet, methinks, he were a very
partial champion of truth that would say we lied for giv-
ing a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop. The
poet nameth Cyrus and ^Eneas no other way than to show
what men of their fames, fortunes, and estates should do.
Their third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, training
it to a wanton sinfulness and lustful love. For, indeed,
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 79
that is the principal if not only abuse I can hear alleged.
They say the comedies rather teach than reprehend
amorous conceits; they say the lyric is larded with pas-
sionate sonnets; the elegiac weeps the want of his mistress;
and that even to the heroical Cupid hath ambitiously
climbed. Alas! Love, I would thou couldst as well de-
fend thyself as thou canst offend others! I would those
on whom thou dost attend could either put thee away or
yield good reason why they keep thee! But grant love
of beauty to be a beastly fault, although it be very hard,
since only man, and no beast, hath that gift to discern
beauty ; grant that lovely name of love to deserve all hate-
ful reproaches, although even some of my masters the
philosophers spent a good deal of their lamp oil in setting
forth the excellency of it; grant, I say, what they will
have granted, that not only love, but lust, but vanity, but,
if they list, scurrility, possess many leaves of the poets'
books; yet, think I, when this is granted, they will find
their sentence may, with good manners, put the last words
foremost; and not say that poetry abuseth man's wit, but
that man's wit abuseth poetry. For I will not deny but
that man's wit may make poesy, which should be (frpcurntcr),
which some learned have defined, figuring forth good
things, to be fyavravTucr), which doth contrariwise infect
the fancy with unworthy objects; as the painter, who
should give to the eye either some excellent perspective,
or some fine picture fit for building or fortification, or
containing in it some notable example, as Abraham sac-
rificing his son Isaac, Judith killing Holofernes, David
fighting with Goliath, may leave those, and please
an ill-pleased eye with wanton shows of better-hidden
matters.
But what! shall the abuse of a thing make the right
use odious? Nay, truly, though I yield that poesy may
not only be abused, but that, being abused, by the reason
of his sweet charming force, it can do more hurt than
any other army of words, yet shall it be so far from con-
cluding that the abuse shall give reproach to the abused,
that, contrariwise, it is a good reason that whatsoever be-
ing abused doth most harm, being rightly used (and upon
the right use each thing receives. his title) doth most
80 SIDNEY
good. Do we not see skill of physic, the best rampire to
our often-assaulted bodies, being abused, teach poison, the
most violent destroyer? Doth not knowledge of law,
whose end is to even and right all things, being abused,
grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries? Doth not
(to go in the highest) God's word abused breed heresy,
and his name abused become blasphemy? Truly, a needle
can not do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies
be it spoken) it can not do much good. With a sword thou
mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou mayest de-
fend thy prince and country; so that, as in their calling
poets fathers of lies, they said nothing, so in this their
argument of abuse they prove the commendation.
They allege herewith that before poets began to be in
price, our nation had set their heart's delight upon action,
and not imagination; rather doing things worthy to be
written, than writing things fit to be done. What that
before time was, I think scarcely Sphinx can tell, since
no memory is so ancient that gives not the precedence to
poetry. And certain it is that, in our plainest homeli-
ness, yet never was the Albion nation without poetry.
Marry, this argument, though it be levelled against poetry,
yet is it indeed a chain-shot against all learning or book-
ishness, as they commonly term it. Of such mind were
certain Goths, of whom it is written that, having in the
spoil of a famous city taken a fair library, one hangman,
belike fit to execute the fruits of their wits, who had mur-
dered a great number of bodies, would have set fire in it.
"No," said another, very gravely; "take heed what you
do; for while they are busy about those toys we shall with
more leisure conquer their countries." This, indeed, is
the ordinary doctrine of ignorance, and many words some-
times I have heard spent in it; but because this reason is
generally against all learning, as well as poetry, or rather
all learning but poetry; because it were too large a digres-
sion to handle it, or at least too superfluous, since it is
manifest that all government of action is to be gotten
by knowledge, and knowledge best by gathering many
knowledges, which is reading; I only say with Horace, to
him that is of that opinion:
"Jubeo stultum esse libenter";
THE DEFENCE OF POESY $!
for as for poetry itself, it is the freest from this objection,
for poetry is the companion of camps. I dare undertake
Orlando Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will never dis-
please a soldier; 'but the quiddity of " ens " and " prima
materia," will hardly agree with a corselet. And, there-
fore, as I said in the beginning, even Turks and Tartars
are delighted with poets. Homer, a Greek, flourished be-
fore Greece flourished; and if to a slight conjecture a con-
jecture may be opposed, truly it may seem that, as by him
their learned men took almost their first light of knowl-
edge, so their active men received their first motions of
courage. Only Alexander's example may serve, who by
Plutarch is accounted of such virtue, that fortune was not
his guide, but his footstool; whose acts speak for him,
though Plutarch did not; indeed, the phoenix of warlike
princes. This Alexander left his schoolmaster, living
Aristotle, behind him, but took dead Homer with him.
He put the philosopher Callisthenes to death, for his seem-
ing philosophical, indeed, mutinous, stubbornness; but the
chief thing he was ever heard to wish for was that Homer
had been alive. He well found he received more bravery
of mind by the pattern of Achilles than by hearing the
definition of fortitude. And, therefore, if Cato misliked
Fulvius for carrying Ennius with him to the field, it may
be answered, that if Cato misliked it the noble Fulvius
liked it, or else he had not done it; for it was not the
excellent Cato Uticensis, whose authority I would much
more have reverenced, but it was the former, in truth, a
bitter punisher of faults, but else a man that had never
sacrificed to the Graces. He misliked and cried out
against all Greek learning; and yet, being fourscore years
old, began to learn it, belike fearing that Plato under-
stood not Latin. Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no
person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the
soldiers' roll. And, therefore, though Cato misliked his
unmustered person, he misliked not his work. And if he
had, Scipio Nasica (judged by common consent the best
Roman) loved him; both the other Scipio brothers, who
had by their virtues no less surnames than of Asia and
Afric so loved him that they caused his body to be buried
in their sepulture. So as Cato's authority being but
g2 SIDNEY
against his person, and that answered with so far greater
than himself, is herein of no validity.
But now, indeed, my burden is great, that Plato's
name is laid upon me, whom I must confess, of all philoso-
phers, I have ever esteemed most worthy of reverence;
and with good reason, since of all philosophers he is the
most poetical. Yet if he will defile the fountain out of
which his flowing streams have proceeded, let us boldly
examine with what reason he did.
First, truly, a man might maliciously object that Plato,
being a philosopher, was a natural enemy of poets; for,
indeed, after the philosophers had picked out of the sweet
mysteries of poetry the right discerning true points of
knowledge, they forthwith, putting it in method, and mak-
ing a school art of that which the poets did only teach
by a divine delightfulness, beginning to spurn at their
guides, like ungrateful apprentices, were not content to
set up shop for themselves, but sought by all means to dis-
credit their masters; which, by the force of delight being
barred them, the less they could overthrow them the
more they hated them; for, indeed, they found for Homer
seven cities strove who should have him for their citizen,
where many cities banished philosophers, as not fit mem-
bers to live among them. For only repeating certain
of Euripides's verses, many Athenians had their lives
saved of the Syracusans, where the Athenians themselves
thought many philosophers unworthy to live. Certain
poets, as Simonides and Pindar, had so prevailed with
Hiero the First that of a tyrant they made him a just
king; where Plato could do so little with Dionysius that
he himself, of a philosopher, was made a slave. But who
should do thus, I confess, should requite the objections
made against poets with like cavillations against philoso-
phers; as likewise one should do that should bid one read
Phaedrus or Symposium in Plato, or the discourses of love
in Plutarch, and see whether any poet do authorize abomi-
nable filthiness as they do.
Again, a man might ask out of what commonwealth
Plato doth banish them. In sooth, thence where he him-
self alloweth community of women. So as belike this ban-
ishment grew not for effeminate wantonness, since little
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 83
should poetical sonnets be hurtful when a man might have
what woman he listed. But I honour philosophical in-
structions, and bless the wits which bred them, so as they
be not abused, which is likewise stretched to poetry.
Saint Paul himself sets a watchword upon philosophy;
indeed, upon the abuse. So doth Plato upon the abuse,
not upon poetry. Plato found fault that the poets of his
time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods,
making light tales of that unspotted essence, and, there-
fore, would not have the youth depraved with such opin-
ions. Herein may much be said; let this suffice: the poets
did not induce such opinions, but did imitate those opin-
ions already induced. For all the Greek stories can well
testify that the very religion of that time stood upon many
and many-fashioned gods; not taught so by poets, but fol-
lowed according to their nature of imitation. Who list
may read in Plutarch the discourses of Isis and Osiris, of
the cause why oracles ceased, of the divine providence,
and see whether the theology of that nation stood not
upon such dreams, which the poets indeed superstitiously
observed ; and truly, since they had not the light of Christ,
did much better in it than the philosophers, who, shaking
off superstition, brought in atheism.
Plato, therefore, whose authority I had much rather
justly construe than unjustly resist, meant not in general
of poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith,
" qua authoritate barbari quidam atque insipidi abuti velint
ad poetas e republica exigendos "; but only meant to drive
out those wrong opinions of the Deity, whereof now, with-
out further law, Christianity hath taken away all the hurt-
ful belief, perchance as he thought, nourished by then
esteemed poets. And a man need go no farther than to
Plato himself to know his meaning; who, in his dialogue
called Ion, giveth high and rightly divine commendation
unto poetry. So as Plato, banishing the abuse, not the
thing, not banishing it, but giving due honour to it, shall
be our patron, and not our adversary. For, indeed, J
had much rather, since truly I may do it, show their mis-
taking of Plato, under whose lion's skin they would make
an ass-like braying against poesy, than go about to over-
throw his authority; whom, the wiser a man is, the
84 SIDNEY
more just cause he shall find to have in admiration,
especially since he attributeth unto poesy more than
myself do namely, to be a very inspiring of a divine
force, far above man's wit, as in the forenamed dialogue
is apparent.
Of the other side, who would show the honours have
been by the best sort of judgments granted them, a whole
sea of examples would present themselves: Alexanders,
Caesars, Scipios, all favourers of poets; Laelius, called the
Roman Socrates, himself a poet, so as part of " Heauton-
timoroumenos," in Terence, was supposed to be made by
him. And even the Greek Socrates, whom Apollo con-
firmed to be the only wise man, is said to have spent
part of his old time in putting ^sop's Fables into verse;
and, therefore, full evil should it become his scholar, Plato,
to put such words in his master's mouth against poets.
But what needs more? Aristotle writes the Art of Poesy;
and why, if it should not be written? Plutarch teacheth
the use to be gathered of them; and how, if they should
not be read? And who reads Plutarch's either history or
philosophy shall find he trimmeth both their garments
with gards of poesy.
But I list not to defend poesy with the help of his
underling historiographer. Let it suffice to have showed
it is a fit soil for praise to dwell upon, and what dispraise
may be set upon it is either easily overcome or trans-
formed into just commendation. So, that since the excel-
lencies of it may be so easily and so justly confirmed, and
the low, creeping objections so soon trodden down, it
not being an art of lies, but of true doctrine; not of effemi-
nateness, but of notable stirring of courage ; not of abusing
man's wit, but of strengthening man's wit; not banished,
but honoured by Plato, let us rather plant more laurels for
to ingarland the poets' heads (which honour of being
laureate, as besides them only triumphant captains were,
is a sufficient authority to show the price they ought to
be held in) than suffer the ill-favoured breath of such
wrong speakers once to blow upon the clear springs of
poesy.
But since I have run so long a career in this matter,
methinks, before I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but
THE DEFENCE OF POESY gr
a little more lost time to inquire why England, the mother
of excellent minds, should be grown so hard a stepmother
to poets, who, certainly, in wit ought to pass all others,
since all only proceeds from their wit; being, indeed,
makers of themselves, not takers of others. How can I
but exclaim:
" Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso! "
Sweet poesy! that hath anciently had kings, emperors,
senators, great captains, such as, besides a thousand others,
David, Adrian, Sophocles, Germanicus, not only to favour
poets, but to be poets; and of our nearer times can pre-
sent for her patrons a Robert, King of Sicily; the great
King Francis of France; King James of Scotland; such
cardinals as Bembus and Bibiena; such famous preachers
and teachers as Beza and Melanchthon; so learned philoso-
phers as Fracastorius and Scaliger; so great orators as
Pontanus and Muretus; so piercing wits as George Bu-
chanan; so grave counsellors as, besides many, but before
all, that Hospital of France, than whom, I think, that
realm never brought forth a more accomplished judgment
more firmly builded upon virtue; I say these, with numbers
of others, not only to read others' poesies, but to poetize
for others' reading; that poesy, thus embraced in all other
places, should only find, in our time, a hard welcome in
England, I think the very earth laments it, and therefore
decks our soil with fewer laurels than it was accustomed.
For heretofore poets have in England also flourished; and,
which is to be noted, even in those times when the trumpet
of Mars did sound loudest. And now, that an over-faint
quietness should seem to strew the house for poets, they
are almost in as good reputation as the mountebanks at
Venice. Truly, even that, as of the one side it giveth great
praise to poesy, which, like Venus (but to better purpose),
had rather be troubled in the net with Mars, than enjoy
the homely quiet of Vulcan; so serveth it for a piece of
a reason why they are less grateful to idle England, which
now can scarce endure the pain of a pen. Upon this neces-
sarily followeth that base men, with servile wits, under-
take it, who think it enough if they can be rewarded of
the printer; and so as Epaminondas is said, with the hon-
86 SIDNEY
our of his virtue, to have made an office, by his exer-
cising it, which before was contemptible, to become highly
respected, so these men, no more but setting their names
to it, by their own disgracefulness disgrace the most grace-
ful poesy. For now, as if all the Muses were got with
child to bring forth bastard poets, without any commission
they do post over the banks of Helicon, until they make
their readers more weary than post-horses; while, in the
meantime, they,
" Queis meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan,"
are better content to suppress the outflowings of their wit,
than by publishing them to be accounted knights of the
same order.
But I that, before ever I durst aspire unto the dignity,
am admitted into the company of the paper-blurrers, do
find the very true cause of our wanting estimation, is want
of desert, taking upon us to be poets in despite of Pallas.
Now, wherein we want desert were a thankworthy labour
to express. But if I knew, I should have mended myself;
but as I never desired the title, so have I neglected the
means to come by it, only, overmastered by some thoughts,
I yielded an inky tribute unto them. Marry, they that de-
light in poesy itself should seek to know what they do,
and how they do especially look themselves in an unflat-
tering glass of reason, if they be inclinable unto it.
For poesy must not be drawn by the ears; it must be
gently led, or rather it must lead, which was partly the
cause that made the ancient learned affirm it was a divine
and no human skill, since all other knowledges lie ready
for any that have strength of wit; a poet no industry can
make if his own genius be not carried into it. And there-
fore is an old proverb, " Orator fit, poeta nascitur." Yet
confess I always that, as the fertilest ground must be
manured, so must the highest flying wit have a Daedalus
to guide him. That Daedalus, they say, both in this and
in other, hath three wings to bear itself up into the air
of due commendation that is, art, imitation, and exercise.
But these, neither artificial rules nor imitative patterns,
we much cumber ourselves withal. Exercise, indeed, we
do, but that very f orebackwardly ; for where we should
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 87
exercise to know, we exercise as having known; and so is
our brain delivered of much matter which never was be-
gotten by . knowledge, for, there being two principal parts,
matter to be expressed by words, and words to express
the matter, in neither we use art or imitation rightly. Our
matter is " quodlibet," indeed, although wrongly perform-
ing Ovid's verse,
" Quicquid conabor dicere, versus erit";
never marshalling it into any assured rank, that almost
the readers can not tell where to find themselves.
Chaucer, undoubtedly, did excellently in his " Troilus
and Cressida "; of whom, truly, I know not whether to mar-
vel more, either that he, in that misty time, could see so
clearly, or that we, in this clear age, go so stumblingly
after him. Ye^ had he great wants, fit to be forgiven in
so reverend antiquity. I account the " Mirror of Magis-
trates " 5 meetly furnished of beautiful parts. And in the
Earl of Surrey's Lyrics, 6 many things tasting of a noble
birth, and worthy of a noble mind. The " Shepherds' Kalen-
dar " 7 hath more poesy in his eclogues, indeed, worthy the
reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his
style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since
neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sanna-
zaro in Italian, did affect it. Besides these I do not re-
member to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed
that have poetical sinews in them. For proof whereof,
let but most of the verses be put in prose and then ask
the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but
beget another, without ordering, at the first, what should
be at the last, which becomes a confused mass of words,
with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with
reason.
Our tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are
cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civility
nor skilful poetry. Excepting " Gorboduc " 8 (again I say
of those that I have seen), which notwithstanding, as it is
full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climb-
ing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable
morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so
obtain the very end of poesy; yet, in truth, it is very de-
88 SIDNEY
fectuous in the circumstances, which grieves me, because
it might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies.
For it is faulty both in place and time, the two necessary
companions of all corporal actions. For where the stage
should always represent but one place, and the uttermost
time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's pre-
cept and common reason, but one day, there is both many
days and many places inartificially imagined.
But if it be so in " Gorboduc," how much more in all
the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and
Afric of the other, and so many other under kingdoms,
that the player when he comes in must ever begin with
telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.
Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather flowers,
and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By-
and-by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place; then
we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon
the back of that comes a hideous monster with fire and
smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take
it for a cave; while, in the meantime, two armies fly in,
represented with four swords and bucklers, and then, what
hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
Now of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary
it is that two young princes fall in love; after many trav-
erses she is got with child; delivered of a fair boy; he
is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get
another child; and all this in two hours' space, which, how
absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and art
hath taught, and all ancient examples justified, and at this
day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will
some bring in an example of the " Eunuch " in Terence,
that containeth matter of two days, yet far short of twenty
years. True it is, and so was it to be played in two days,
and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though Plautus
have in one place done amiss, let us hit it with him, and
not miss with him. But they will say, How then shall
we set forth a story which contains both many places and
many times? And do they not know that a tragedy is tied
to the laws of poesy, and not of history; not bound to
follow the story, but having liberty either to feign a quite
new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
89
convenience? Again, many things may be told which
can not be showed, if they know the difference betwixt
reporting and representing. As, for example, I may speak,
though I am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from
that to the description of Calicut; but in action I can not
represent it without Pacolet's horse. And so was the
manner the ancients took by some " Nuntius," to recount
things done in former time, or other place.
Lastly, if they will represent a history, they must not,
as Horace saith, begin " ab ovo," but they must come to
the principal point of that one action which they will repre-
sent. By example this will be best expressed: I have a
story of young Polydorus, delivered, for safety's sake, with
great riches, by his father Priamus, to Polymnestor, King
of Thrace, in the Trojan war time. He, after some years,
hearing of the overthrow of Priamus, for to make the
treasure his own, murdereth the child; the body of the
child is taken up: Hecuba, she, the same day, findeth a
sleight to be revenged most cruelly of the tyrant. Where
now would one of our tragedy-writers begin but with the
delivery of the child? Then should he sail over into
Thrace, and so spend I know not how many years, and
travel numbers of places. But where doth Euripides?
Even with the finding of the body, leaving the rest to be
told by the spirit of Polydorus. This needs no further to
be enlarged; the dullest wit may conceive it.
But besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays
be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling
kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it,
but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a
part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor dis-
cretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration,
nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy
obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a
thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one
moment; and I know the ancients have one or two ex-
amples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath " Amphytrio."
But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or
very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth
it out that, having indeed no right comedy in that comical
part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, un-
90 SIDNEY
worthy of any chaste ears; or some extreme show of dolt-
ishness, indeed, fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing
else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full
of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a
well-raised admiration.
But our comedians think there is no delight without
laughter, which is very wrong, for though laughter may
come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight as though
delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one
thing breed both together. Nay, in themselves they have,
as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely
do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or
to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of
things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. De-
light hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter
hath only a scornful tickling. For example, we are rav-
ished with delight to see a fair woman, and yet are far
from being moved to laughter; we laugh at deformed
creatures, wherein certainly we can not delight; we delight
in good chances, we laugh at mischances; we delight to
hear the happiness of our friends and country, at which
he were worthy to be laughed at that would laugh; we
shall, contrarily, sometimes laugh to find a matter quite
mistaken, and go down the hill against the bias, in the
mouth of some such men, as for the respect of them, one
shall be heartily sorry he can not choose but laugh, and
so is rather pained than delighted with laughter. Yet
deny I not but that they may go well together; for, as
in Alexander's picture well set out, we delight without
laughter, and in twenty mad antics we laugh without de-
light; so in Hercules, painted with his great beard and
furious countenance, in a woman's attire, spinning at
Omphale's commandment, it breeds both delight and
laughter, for the representing of so strange a power in
love procures delight, and the scornfulness of the action
stirreth laughter.
But I speak to this purpose that all the end of the
comical part be not upon such scornful matters as stir
laughter only, but mix with it that delightful teaching
which is the end of poesy. And the great fault, even in
that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle,
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 9 !
is that they stir laughter in sinful things, which are rather
execrable than ridiculous; or in miserable, which are rather
to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks
gape at a wretched beggar, and a beggarly clown; or,
against the law of hospitality, to jest at strangers because
they speak not English so well as we do? what do we
learn, since it is certain,
" Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
Quam quod ridicules homines facit?"
But rather a busy, loving courtier, and a heartless,
threatening Thraso; a self-wise, seeming schoolmaster; a
wry-transformed traveller; these, if we saw walk in stage
names, which we play naturally, therein were delightful
laughter and teaching delightfulness; as in the other, the
tragedies of Buchanan do justly bring forth a divine ad-
miration.
But I have lavished out too many words of this play
matter; I do it because, as they are excelling parts of
poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none
can be more pitifully abused; which, like an unmannerly
daughter showing a bad education, causeth her mother
Poesy's honesty to be called in question.
Other sorts of poetry, almost, have we none, but that
lyrical kind of songs and sonnets, which, if the Lord gave
us so good minds, how well it might be employed, and with
how heavenly fruits, both private and public, in singing
the praises of the immortal beauty, the immortal goodness
of that God, who giveth us hands to write, and wits to
conceive; of which we might well want words, but never
matter; of which we could turn our eyes to nothing, but
we should ever have new budding occasions.
But, truly, many of such writings as come under the
banner of unresistible love, if I were a mistress, would
never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply
fiery speeches, as men that had rather read lovers' writings,
and so caught up certain swelling phrases, which hang
together like a man that once told me " the wind was
at northwest and by south," because he would be sure to
name winds enough; than that, in truth, they feel those
passions, which easily, as I think, may be bewrayed by
9 2 SIDNEY
that same forcibleness, or " energia " (as the Greeks call
it) of the writer. But let this be a sufficient, though short
note, that we miss the right use of the material point of
poesy.
Now for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I
may term it) diction, it is even well worse; so is that
honey-flowing matron eloquence, apparelled, or rather dis-
guised, in a courtesanlike painted affectation: one time
with so far-fetched words that many seem monsters, but
most seem strangers to any poor Englishman; another
time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to
follow the method of a dictionary; another time with fig-
ures and flowers, extremely winter-starved.
But I would this fault were only peculiar to versifiers,
and had not as large possession among prose-printers, and,
which is to be marvelled, among many scholars, and, which
is to be pitied, among some preachers. Truly, I could
wish (if at least I might be so bold to wish, in a thing be-
yond the reach of my capacity) the diligent imitators of
Tully and Demosthenes, most worthy to be imitated, did
not so much keep Nizolian paper-books of their figures
and phrases, as by attentive translation, as it were, devour
them whole, and make them wholly 'theirs. For now they
cast sugar and spice upon every dish that is served at the
table; like those Indians, not content to wear ear-rings
at the fit and natural place of the ears, but they will thrust
jewels through their nose and lips, because they will be
sure to be fine. Tully, when he was to drive out Catiline,
as it were with a thunderbolt of eloquence, often useth the
figure of repetition, as " Vivit et vincit, imo in senatum
venit, imo in senatum venit," etc. Indeed, inflamed with
a well-grounded rage, he would have his words, as it were,
double out of his mouth; and so do that artificially, which
we see men in choler do naturally. And we, having noted
the grace of those words, hale them in sometimes to a
familiar epistle, when it were too much choler to be
choleric.
How well store of " similiter cadences " doth sound
with the gravity of the pulpit I would but invoke Demos-
thenes's soul to tell, who with a rare daintiness useth them.
Truly, they have made me think of the sophister, that with
THE DEFENCE OF POESY
93
too much subtlety would prove two eggs three, and
though he 'might be counted a sophister, had none for his
labour. So these men, bringing in such kind of eloquence,
well may they obtain an opinion of a seeming fineness, but
persuade few, which should be the end of their fineness.
Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses, I
think all herbalists, all stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes
are rifled up, that they may come in multitudes to wait
upon any of our conceits, which certainly is as absurd a
surfeit to the ears as is possible. For the force of a simili-
tude not being to prove anything to a contrary disputer,
but only to explain to a willing hearer; when that is done,
the rest is a most tedious prattling, rather overswaying the
memory from the purpose whereto they were applied than
any whit informing the judgment, already either satisfied,
or by similituues not to be satisfied.
For my part, I do not doubt, when Antonius and
Crassus, the great forefathers of Cicero in eloquence, the
one (as Cicero testifieth of them) pretended not to know
art, the other not to set by it, because with a plain sen-
sibleness they might win credit of popular ears, which
credit is the nearest step to persuasion (which persuasion
is the chief mark of oratory), I do not doubt, I say, but
that they used these knacks very sparingly; which who
doth generally use, any man may see, doth dance to his
own music; and so to be noted by the audience, more
careful to speak curiously than truly. Undoubtedly (at
least to my opinion undoubtedly) I have found in divers
small-learned courtiers, a more sound style, than in some
professors of learning; of which I can guess no other cause
but that the courtier, following that which by practice he
findeth fittest to Nature, therein (though he know it not)
doth according to art, though not by art; where the other,
using art to show art, and not hide art (as in these cases
he should do), flieth from Nature, and indeed abuseth art.
But what! methinks I deserve to be pounded for stray-
ing from poetry to oratory; but both have such an affinity
in the wordish considerations that I think this digression
will make my meaning receive the fuller understanding,
which is not to take upon me to teach poets how they
should do, but only finding myself sick among the rest, to
94 SIDNEY
show some one or two spots of the common infection
grown among the most part of writers; that, acknowledg-
ing ourselves somewhat awry, we may bend to the right
use both of matter and manner, whereto our language
giveth us great occasion, being, indeed, capable of any
excellent exercising of it. I know some will say it is a
mingled language; and why not so much the better, tak-
ing the best of both the other? Another will say it wanteth
grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wants
not grammar, for grammar it might have, but needs it
not, being so easy in itself, and so void of those cumber-
some differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses;
which, I think, was a piece of the tower of Babylon's curse,
that a man should be put to school to learn his mother
tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the
conceit of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath
it equally with any other tongue in the world, and is par-
ticularly happy in compositions of two or three words
together, near the Greek, far beyond the Latin; which is
one of the greatest beauties can be in a language.
Now, of versifying there are two sorts, the one ancient,
the other modern; the ancient marked the quantity of each
syllable, and according to that framed his verse; the modern
observing only number, with some regard of the accent,
the chief life of it standeth in that like sounding of the words,
which we call rhyme. Whether of these be the more ex-
cellent would bear many speeches; the ancient, no doubt,
more fit for music, both words and time observing quan-
tity, and more fit lively to express divers passions by the
low or lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable. The latter,
likewise, with his rhyme striketh a certain music to the
ear; and, in fine, since it doth delight, though by another
way, it obtaineth the same purpose; there being in either,
sweetness, and wanting in neither, majesty. Truly, the
English, before any vulgar language I know, is fit for both
sorts; for, for the ancient, the Italian is so full of vowels
that it must ever be cumbered with elisions; the Dutch so,
of the other side, with consonants that they can not yield
the sweet sliding fit for a verse. The French, in his whole
language, hath not one word that hath his accent in the
last syllable saving two, called antepenultima, and little
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 95
more hath the Spanish; and therefore very gracelessly may
they use dactyles. The English is subject to none of these
defects.
Now for rhyme, though we do not observe quantity,
yet we observe the accent very precisely, which other lan-
guages either can not do, or will not do so absolutely.
That " caesura," or breathing-place, in the midst of the
verse, neither Italian nor Spanish have, the French and we
never almost fail of. Lastly, even the very rhyme itself the
Italian can not put in the last syllable, by the French
named the masculine rhyme, but still in the next to the
last, which the French call the female; or the next before
that, which the Italian calls " sdrucciola " : 9 the example
of the former is, " buono," " suono -" ; of the " sdrucciola " is,
" femina," " semina." The French, of the other side, hath
both the male, as " bon," " son/' and the female, as
"plaise," "raise"; but the "sdrucciola" he hath not;
where the English hath all three, as "due," "true,"
" father," " rather," motion," " potion "; with much more
which might be said, but that already I find the trifling of
this discourse is much too much enlarged.
So that since the ever-praiseworthy poesy is full of vir-
tue, breeding delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought
to be in the noble name of learning, since the blames laid
against it are either false or feeble;, since the cause why it
is not esteemed in England is the fault of poet-apes, not
poets; since, lastly, our tongue is most fit to honour poesy
and to be honoured by poesy, I conjure you all that have
had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even
in the name of the nine Muses, no more to scorn the
sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name
of poets as though they were next inheritors to fools; no
more to jest at the reverend title of "a rhymer"; but to
believe with Aristotle that they were the ancient treasurers
of the Grecians' divinity; to believe, with Bembus, that
they were the first bringers-in of all civility; to believe,
with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner
make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil; to
believe, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it
pleased the heavenly deity by Hesiod and Homer, under
the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric,
96 SIDNEY
philosophy, natural and moral, and " quid non? " to be-
lieve, with me, that there are many mysteries contained in
poetry which of purpose were written darkly, lest by pro-
fane wits it should be abused; to believe, with Landin,
that they are so beloved of the gods that whatsoever they
write proceeds of a divine fury; lastly, to believe them-
selves, when they tell you they will make you immortal by
their verses.
Thus doing, your names shall flourish in the printers'
shops; thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical
preface; thus doing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most
wise, most all, you shall dwell upon superlatives; thus
doing, though you be " libertino patre natus," you shall
suddenly grow " Herculea proles,"
" Si quid mea carmina possunt ":
thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix,
or Virgil's Anchises.
But if (fie of such a but!) you be born so near the dull-
making cataract of Nilus that you can not hear the planet-
like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind
that it can not lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or
rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a
morhe as to be a Momus of poetry, then, though I will not
wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by
a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to
be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet
thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets:
that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour,
for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your mem-
ory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.
NOTES
^his was Edward, the elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton. His
name appeared at full length in the first edition of the " Defence," and
the initials were only substituted in the second, which accompanied
the Arcadia.
2 This is conceived to have suggested Shakespeare's exquisite de-
scription:
" That aged ears played truant at his tales,
And younger hearings were quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble was his discourse," etc.
(" Love's Labour's Lost," act ii, scene i.)
8 Ben Jonson, charmed with the beauties of this old song of
Chevy Chase, was wont to say that he would rather have been the
THE DEFENCE OF POESY 97
author of that little poem than of all his own works. The ballad, on
which there is a beautiful critique in the " Spectator," Nos. 70 and 74,
is conjectured to have been written after this eulogium of Mr. Sidney,
who probably had in contemplation a poem of an older date, which is
inserted in Percy's " Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." (Dr.
Zouch.)
" To ear " or " ere " is " to till " or " plough," and is a verb some-
times used by Shakespeare, Fletcher, and many others of the old
writers. In the present case the expression " comedies give the largest
field to ear " probably means that they afford the largest matter for
discourse. It is in this sense, according to Urry, that the phrase is em-
ployed by Chaucer in the passage referred to. (" Ch. Pro!.," v, 888.)
* The " Mirror for Magistrates " was the joint production of Thomas
Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, and other ingenious
persons of less note, his contemporaries and friends. It first appeared
in print in 1559. Buckhurst contributed the " Induction," which has
ever been esteemed one of the most vigorous remnants of old English
poetry. Walpole styles him " the patriarch of a race of genius and wit."
* Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was the son of Thomas, Duke of
Norfolk. He was the author of several minor poems, of much elegance
and spirit; and he afforded the earliest specimen of blank verse in our
language in his translation of the fourth book of the " JEne'id." The
jealousy of Henry VIII brought him to the scaffold in i546-'47.
1 Written by Spenser, and dedicated " to the noble and virtuous gen-
tleman, most worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry, Master
Philip Sidney."
* This play was written by Lord Buckhurst and Mr. Thomas Norton.
It was first printed in the year 1565, under the title of " Ferrex and
Porrex," but in 1590 its name was changed to that of the " Tragedy of
Gorboduc." It was represented before Queen Elizabeth by the gentle-
men of the Inner Temple. The first three acts were the composition
of Norton, and the fourth and fifth of Lord Buckhurst.
* That is, the easy sliding of words of three or more syllables.
AREOPAGITICA
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF
UNLICENSED PRINTING
BY
JOHN MILTON
JOHN MILTON was born in London, December 9, 1608. His father, a
scrivener, was author of several successful musical compositions. The
family were Puritans. The son was carefully educated, first by private
tutors and then at Cambridge. The father acquired a fortune and retired
to a home in Horton, Buckinghamshire, where the son, on his return
from college, also settled, and deliberately took up the task of making a
poet of himself. He had produced creditable verses at school, and he
now wrote his " Hymn on the Nativity," *' L' Allegro " and " Penseroso,"
Latin poems, and "Comus." He wrote " Lycidas " in his thirtieth year.
In considering Milton as a poet, the reader must skip from this time to
his last years, when he wrote "Paradise Lost" (completed in 1663),
"Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes" (1671). These, with
occasional sonnets, sum up his poetical work. But meanwhile he had
been active in politics, and had published a great deal of prose, some of
which still survives. He was travelling in Italy when the uprising
against Charles I occurred, and hurried home. He defended the execu-
tion of Charles in pamphlets entitled "The Tenure of Kings and Magis-
trates" and " Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio," and under the Common-
wealth held the office of Secretary of Foreign Tongues. At the Restoration
he necessarily retired from politics. He had become blind at the age of
forty-six. Milton was married three times. His first wife, Mary Powell,
soon left him and retired to her father's house, where she remained two
years, and then returned and lived with him seven years, till her death
in 1652. She left three daughters. During the separation he wrote sev-
eral pamphlets in advocacy of divorce, for which he was attacked by the
Presbyterians and threatened with prosecution by a committee of Parlia-
ment. He had some trouble in getting these tracts published, on account
of the censorship of the press, and this was the occasion of his writing
(1644) the " Areopagitica," now universally acknowledged to be his mas-
terpiece in prose. In all his political writing he had boldly taken the side
of popular liberty, even advocating abolition of royalty and the House of
Lords ; and this plea for freedom of the press was consistent with his
whole record as a publicist. He died November 8, 1674.
AREOPAGITICA
THEY who to states and governors of the common-
wealth direct their speech, High Court of Parlia-
ment, or, wanting such access in a private condition,
write that which they foresee may advance the public good,
I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavour,
not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds:
some with doubt of what will be the success, others with
fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others
with confidence of what they have to speak. And me
perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was
whereon I entered, may have at other times variously
affected; and likely might in these foremost expressions
now also disclose which of them swayed most, but that
the very attempt of this address thus made, and the
thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power
within me to a passion, far more welcome than inci-
dental to a preface. Which though I stay not to con-
fess ere any ask, I shall be blameless, if it be no other than
the joy and gratulation which it brings to all who wish
and promote their country's liberty; whereof this whole
discourse proposed will be a certain testimony, if not a
trophy. For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that
no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth, that
let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are
freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed,
then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise
men look for. To which if I now manifest by the very
sound of this which I shall utter that we are already in
good part arrived, and yet from such a steep disadvantage
of tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles
as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will
be attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance
7 101
102 MILTON
of God our deliverer, next to your faithful guidance and
undaunted wisdom, Lords and Commons of England.
Neither is it in God's esteem the diminution of his glory
when honourable things are spoken of good men and wor-
thy magistrates ; which if I now first should begin to do,
after so fair, a progress of your laudable deeds, and such
,a<Tor^ lobligement upon the whole realm to your inde-
fatigable virtues, I might be justly reckoned among the
tardiest and the unwillingest of them that praise ye.
Nevertheless, there being three principal things, without
which all praising is but courtship and flattery: first, when
that only is praised which is solidly worth praise; next,
when greatest likelihoods are brought that such things are
truly and really in those persons to whom they are ascribed;
the other, when he who praises, by showing that such his
actual persuasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate
that he flatters not. The former two of these I have here-
tofore endeavoured, rescuing the employment from him
who went about to impair your merits with a trivial and
malignant encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to
mine own acquittal, that whom I so extolled I did not flatter,
hath been reserved opportunely to this occasion. For he
who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears
not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives
ye the best covenant of his fidelity, and that his loyalest
affection and his hope waits on your proceedings. His
highest praising is not flattery, and his plainest advice is a
kind of praising; for though I should affirm and hold by
argument that it would fare better with truth, with learn-
ing, and the commonwealth, if one of your published
orders, which I should name, were called in, yet at- the
same time it could not but much redound to the lustre
of your mild and equal Government, when as private per-
sons are hereby animated to think ye better pleased with
public advice than other statists have been delighted here-
tofore with public flattery. And men will then see what
difference there is between the magnanimity of a triennial
Parliament and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and
cabin counsellors that usurped of late, when as they shall
observe ye in the midst of your victories and successes
more gently brooking written exceptions against a voted
AREOPAGITICA IO3
order than other courts, which had produced nothing
worth memory but the weak ostentation of wealth, would
have endured the least signified dislike at any sudden proc-
lamation. If I should thus far presume upon the meek
demeanour of your civil and gentle greatness, Lords and
Commons, as what your published order hath directly said,
that to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if any
should accuse me of being new or insolent, did they but
know how much better I find ye esteem it to imitate the
old and elegant humanity of Greece than the barbaric
pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness. And out of
those ages, to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe
that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, I could name
him who from his private house wrote that discourse to
the Parliament of Athens, that persuades them to change
the form of democracy which was then established. Such
honour was done in those days to men who professed the
study of wisdom and eloquence, not only in their own
country, but in other lands, that cities and seignories heard
them gladly and with great respect, if they had aught in
public to admonish the state. Thus did Dion Prusaeus, a
stranger and a private orator, counsel the Rhodians against
a former edict; and I abound with other like examples,
which to set here would be superfluous. But if from the
industry of a life wholly dedicated to studious labours, and
those natural endowments haply not the worst for two-
and-fifty degrees of northern latitude, so much must be
derogated as to count me not equal to any of those who
had this privilege, I would obtain to be thought not so
inferior as yourselves are superior to the most of them who
recived their counsel; and how far you excel them, be
assured, Lords and Commons, there can no greater testi-
mony appear than when your prudent spirit acknowledges
and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it
be heard speaking, and renders ye as willing to repeal any
act of your own setting forth as any set forth by your
predecessors.
If ye be thus resolved, as it were injury to think ye
were not, I know not what should withhold me from pre-
senting ye with a fit instance wherein to show both that
love of truth which ye eminently profess, and that upright-
104
MILTON
ness of your judgment which is not wont to be partial to
yourselves, by judging over again that order which ye have
ordained " to regulate printing: that no book, pamphlet,
or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be
first approved and licensed by such," or at least one of
such as shall be thereto appointed. For that part which
preserves justly every man's copy to himself, or provides
for the poor, I touch not, only wish they be not made
pretences to abuse and persecute honest and painful men,
who offend not in either of these particulars. But that
other clause of licensing books, which we thought had died
with his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the
prelates expired, I shall now attend with such a homily as
shall lay before ye, first the inventors of it to be those
whom ye will be loath to own; next, what is to be thought
in general of reading, whatever sort the books be; and
that this order avails nothing to the suppressing of scan-
dalous, seditious, and libellous books, which were mainly
intended to be suppressed; last, that it will be primely to
the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth,
not only by the disexercising and blunting our abilities in
what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the
discovery that might be yet further made both in religious
and civil wisdom.
I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the
Church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how
books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter
to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as
malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things, but
do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as
that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do pre-
serve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that
living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively
and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragons'
teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring
up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wari-
ness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good
book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's
image, but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself,
kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a
man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the
AREOPAGITICA IC> 5
precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treas-
ured up on purpose to a life beyond life. Tis true, no
age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great
loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss
of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations
fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what per-
secution we raise against the living labours of public men,
how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored
up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be
thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and, if it ex-
tend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, where-
of the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental
life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the
breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than
a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing
license while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains
to be so much historical as will serve to show what
hath been done by ancient and famous commonwealths
against this disorder, till the very time that this project
of licensing crept out of the Inquisition, was caught
up by our prelates, and hath caught some of our pres-
byters.
In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than
in any other part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of
writings which the magistrate cared to take notice of: those
either blasphemous and atheistical, or libellous. Thus the
books of Protagoras were by the judges of " Areopagus "
commanded to be burned, and himself banished the terri-
tory, for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know
" whether there were gods, or whether not." And against
defaming, it was decreed that none should be traduced
by name, as was the manner of Vetus Comcedia, whereby
we may guess how they censured libelling; and this course
was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the
desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of de-
faming, as the event showed. Of other sects and opinions,,
though tending to voluptuousness and the denying of
Divine Providence, they took no heed. Therefore, we do
not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of
Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever
questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the
106 MILTON
writings of those old comedians were suppressed, though
the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended
the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his
royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may
be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly
studied so much the same author and had the art to cleanse
a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon.
That other leading city of Greece, Lacedsemon, consider-
ing that Lycurgus their lawgiver was so addicted to ele-
gant learning as to have been the first that brought out
of Ionia the scattered works of Homer, and sent the poet
Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the Spartan
surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to
plant among them law and civility, it is to be wondered
how museless and unbookish they were, minding naught
but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books
among them, for they disliked all but their own laconic
apophthegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilo-
chus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher
strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could
reach to; or if it were for his broad verses, they were not
therein so cautious, but they were as dissolute in their pro-
miscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms, in " An-
dromache," that their women were all unchaste. Thus
much may give us light after what sort books were pro-
hibited among the Greeks. The Romans, also, for many
ages trained up only to a military roughness, resembling
most of the Lacedaemonian guise, knew of learning little
but what their twelve tables and the Pontific College with
their augurs and flamens taught them in religion and
law, so unacquainted with other learning that when Car-
neades and Critolaus, with the Stoic Diogenes, coming
ambassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give the
city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected for
seducers by no less a man than Cato the Censor, who
moved it in the Senate to dismiss them speedily, and to
banish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. But Scipio and
others of the noblest senators withstood him and his old
Sabine austerity; honoured and admired the men; and
the censor himself at last in his old age fell to the study
of that whereof before he was so scrupulous. And yet
AREOPAGITICA IO 7
at the same time Naevius and Plautus, the first Latin
comedians, had filled the city with all the borrowed scenes
of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be considered
there also what was to be done to libellous books and
authors, for Naevius was quickly cast into prison for his
unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his
recantation. We read also that libels were burned, and
the makers punished by Augustus. The like severity no
doubt was used if aught were impiously written against
their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how
the world went in books the magistrate kept no reckoning.
And, therefore, Lucretius without impeachment versifies
his epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set
forth the second time by Cicero so great a father of the
commonwealth, although himself di'sputes against that
opinion in his own writings. Nor was the satirical sharp-
ness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flaccus,
by any order prohibited. And for matters of state, the
story of Titius Livius, though it extolled that part which
Pompey held, was not therefore suppressed by Octavius
Caesar of the other faction. But that Naso was by him
banished in his old age for the wanton poems of his youth
was but a mere covert of state over some secret cause;
and besides the books were neither banished nor called
in. From hence we shall meet with little else but
tyranny in the Roman Empire, that we may not mar-
vel if not so often bad as good books were silenced.
I shall therefore deem to have been large enough in
producing what among the ancients was punishable to
write, save only which, all other arguments were free to
treat on.
By this time the emperors were become Christians,
whose discipline in this point I do not find to have been
more severe than what was formerly in practice. The
books of those whom they took to be grand heretics were
examined, refuted, and condemned in the General Coun-
cils; and not till then were prohibited, or burned by au-
thority of the emperor. As for the writings of heathen
authors, unless they were plain invectives against Chris-
tianity, as those of Porphyrius and Proclus, they met with
no interdict that can be cited till about the year 400 in a
108 MILTON
Carthaginian council, wherein bishops themselves were
forbid to read the books of Gentiles, but heresies they
might read; while others long before them, on the con-
trary, scrupled more the books of heretics than of Gentiles.
And that the primitive councils and bishops were wont
only to declare what books were not commendable, pass-
ing no further, but leaving it to each one's conscience to
read or to lay by, till after the year 800, is observed
already by Padre Paolo, the great unmasker of the
Trentine Council. After which time the Popes of Rome,
engrossing what they pleased of political rule into their
own hands, extended their dominion over men's eyes, as
they had before over their judgments, burning and pro-
hibiting to be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in
their censures, and the books not many which they so
dealt with, till Martin V by his bull not only prohibited,
but was the first that excommunicated the reading of
heretical books; for about that time Wyclif and Huss
growing terrible, were they who first drove the Papal
court to a stricter policy of prohibiting; which course
Leo X and his successors followed, until the Council
'of Trent and the Spanish. Inquisition engendering to-
gether brought forth or perfected those catalogues and ex-
purging indexes that rake through the entrails of many
an old good author with a violation worse than any could
be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stay in matters
heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate they
either condemned in a prohibition, or had it straight into
the new purgatory of an Index. To fill up the measure
of encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that
no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if St.
Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also
out of paradise) unless it were approved and licensed
under the hands of two or three glutton friars. For
example :
Let the Chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this
present work be contained aught that may withstand the
printing.
VINCENT RABATTA,
Vicar of Florence.
AREOPAGITICA IO9
I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart
the Catholic faith and good manners. In witness whereof
I have given, etc. NICOLO CINI,
Chancellor of Florence.
Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this
present work of Davanzati may be printed.
VINCENT RABATTA, etc.
It may be printed, July I5th.
Friar SIMON MOMPEI D'AMELIA,
- Chancellor of the Holy Office in Florence.
Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless, pit
had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple ex-
orcism would bar him down. I fear their next design will
be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they
say Claudius intended, but went not through with. Vouch-
safe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp:
Imprimatur. If it seem good to the reverend Master
of the Holy Palace. BELCASTRO,
Vtceregent.
Imprimatur.
Friar NICOLO RODOLFI, Master of the Holy Palace.
Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together dia-
loguewise in the piazza of one title-page, complimenting
and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences,
whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot
of his epistle, shall to the press or to the sponge. These
are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies
that so bewitched of late our prelates and their chaplains
with the goodly echo they made, and besotted us to the
gay imitation of a lordly imprimatur, one from Lambeth
House, another from the west end of Paul's; so apishly
Romanizing that the word of command still was set down
in Latin, as if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it
would cast no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as they
thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express
the pure conceit of an imprimatur; but rather, as I hope,
for that our English, the language of men ever famous
8 .
1 10 MILTON
and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily
find servile letters enough to spell such a dictatory pre-
sumption English. And thus ye have the inventors and
the original of book-licensing ripped up, and drawn as
lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be
heard of, from any ancient state, or polity, or church, nor
by any statute left us by our ancestors, elder or later; nor
from the modern custom of any reformed city or church
abroad; but from the most antichristian council, and the
most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquired. Till then
books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any
other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than
the issue of the womb; no envious Juno sat cross-legged
over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but
if it proved a monster, who denies but that it was justly
burned, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse
condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before
a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in
darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues,
ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never
heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked and
troubled at the first entrance of reformation, sought out
new limboes and new hells wherein they might include our
books also within the number of their damned. And this
was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up and so ill-
favouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops and the
attendant minorites their chaplains. That ye like not now
these most certain authors of this licensing order, and that
all sinister intention was far distant from your thoughts
when ye were importuned the passing it all men who know
the integrity of your actions, and how ye honour truth,
will clear ye readily.
But some will say, What though the inventors were
bad, the thing for all that may be good? It may be so;
yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious
and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest
commonwealths through all ages and occasions have for-
borne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of
men were the first who took it up, and to no other pur-
pose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of refor-
mation, I am of those who believe it will be a harder
AREOPAGITICA m
alchemy than Lullius ever knew to sublimate any good use
out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request
to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous
and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree
that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it
has. But I have first to finish as was propounded, what
is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever
sort they be, and whether be more the benefit or the harm
that thence proceeds?
Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and
Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians,
Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be with-
out reading their books of all sorts, in Paul especially, who
thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the
sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a trage-
dian, the question was notwithstanding sometimes contro-
verted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds
on that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable,
as was then evidently perceived when Julian the Apostate
and subtlest enemy to our faith made a decree forbidding
Christians the study of heathen learning; for, said he, they
wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts
and sciences they overcome us. And, indeed, the Chris-
tians were put so to their shifts by this crafty means, and
so much in clanger to decline into all ignorance, that the
two Apollinarii were fain, as a man may say, to coin all the
seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into
divers forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to the cal-
culating of a new Christian grammar. But saith the his-
torian Socrates: The providence of God provided better
than the industry of Apollinarius and his son by taking
away that illiterate law with the life of him who devised it.
So great an injury they then held it to be deprived of Hel-
lenic learning, and thought it a persecution more under-
mining and secretly decaying the Church than the open
cruelty of Decius or Diocletian. And perhaps it was with
the same politic drift that the devil whipped St Jerome
in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it was a
phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him.
For had an angel been his disciplines unless it were for
dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised
112 MILTON
the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial, first,
to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus
whom he confesses to have been reading not long before;
next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient
fathers wax old in those, pleasant and florid studies with-
out the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that
Basil teaches how some good use may be made of " Mar-
gites," a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer;
and why not then of " Morgante," an Italian romance
much to the same purpose? But if it be agreed we shall
be tried by visions there is a vision recorded by Eusebius
far ancienter than this tale of Jerome to the nun Eusto-
chium, and besides has nothing of a fever in it. Diony-
sius Alexandrinus Was about the year 240 a person of great
name in the Church for piety and learning, who had wont
to avail himself much against heretics by being conversant
in their books; until a certain Presbyter laid it scrupu-
lously to his conscience how he durst venture himself
among those defiling volumes. The worthy man, loath to
give offence, fell into a new debate with himself what was
to be thought, when suddenly a vision sent from God it
is his own epistle that so avers it confirmed him in these
words: " Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for
thou art sufficient both to judge aright and to examine
each matter." To this revelation he assented the sooner,
as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the
Apostle to the Thessalonians: " Prove all things; hold fast
that which is good." And he might have added another
remarkable saying of the same author, " To the pure all
things are pure," not only meats and drinks, but all kind
of knowledge whether of good or evil; the knowledge can
not defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and con-
science be not defiled. For books are as meats and viands
are, some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God in
that unapocryphal vision said, without exception, " Rise,
Peter, kill and eat," leaving the choice to each man's dis-
cretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ
little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a
naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil.
Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the
healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad
AREOPAGITICA II3
books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in
many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and
to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye expect
I should produce than one of your own now sitting in Par-
liament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr.
Selden, whose volume of natural and national laws proves,
not only by great authorities brought together, but by ex-
quisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically de-
monstrative, that all opinions, yea, errors, known, read, and
collated, are of main service and assistance toward the
speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive, therefore,
that when God did enlarge the universal diet of man's body,
saving ever the rules of temperance, he then also, as be-
fore, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds;
as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his
own leading capacity. How great a virtue is temperance,
how much of moment through the whole life of man ! Yet
God commits the managing so great a trust, without par-
ticular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of
every grown man. And therefore, when He himself tabled
the Jews from heaven, that omer which was every man's
daily portion of manna is computed to have been more
than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as
many meals. For those actions, which enter into a man
rather than issue out of him and therefore defile not, God
uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of pre-
scription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his
own chooser; there were but little work left for preach-
ing if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those
things which heretofore were governed only by exhorta-
tion. Solomon informs us that much reading is a weari-
ness to the flesh, but neither he nor other inspired author
tells us that such or such reading is unlawful; yet cer-
tainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had
been much more expedient to have told us what was un-
lawful than what was wearisome. As for the burning of
those Ephesian books by St. Paul's converts, it is replied
the books were magic, the Syriac so renders them. It was
a private act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary
imitation; the men in remorse burned those books which
were their own; the magistrate by this example is not ap-
MILTON
pointed; these men practised the books, another might per-
haps have read them in some sort usefully. Good and evil
we know in the field of this world grow up together almost
inseparably, and the knowledge of good is so involved and
interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many
cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those
confused seeds, which were imposed on Psyche as an in-
cessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more
intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted
that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleav-
ing together leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this
is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and
evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As, therefore,
the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to
choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge
of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with
all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and
yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better,
he is the true warfaring Christian. I can not praise a
fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks
out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be
run for not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring
not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much
rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what
is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a young-
ling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost
that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a
blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excre-
mental whiteness, which was the reason why our sage and
serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a
better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true tem-
perance under the person of Guyon, brings him in with
his palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower
of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet ab-
stain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice
is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human
virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of
truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout
into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all man-
ner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason? And
AREOPAGITICA Hj
this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscu-
ously read. But of the harm that may result hence three
kinds are usually reckoned: First is feared the infection
that may spread; but then all human learning and con-
troversy in religious points must remove out of the world,
yea, the Bible itself, for that ofttimes relates blasphemy
not nicely it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not
unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmur-
ing against Providence through all the arguments of
Epicurus; in other great disputes it answers dubiously and
darkly to the common reader; and ask a Talmudist what
ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all
the prophets can not persuade him to pronounce the
textual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the Bible
itself put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited
books. The ancientest Fathers must be next removed, as
Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evan-
gelic preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard
of heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds
not that Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover
more heresies than they well confute, and that oft for heresy
which is the truer opinion? Nor boots it to say for these,
and all the heathen writers of greatest infection, if it must
be thought so, with whom is bound up, the life of human
learning, that they wrote in an unknown tongue, so long
as we are sure those languages are known as well to the
worst of men, who are both most able and most diligent
to instil the poison they suck, first into the courts of
princes, acquainting them with the choicest delights and
criticisms of sin as perhaps did that Petronius whom
Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his revels; and that
notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded, and yet dear to the
Italian courtiers. I name not him, for posterity's sake,
whom Harry VIII named in merriment his Vicar of
Hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that
foreign books can infuse will find a passage to the people
far easier and shorter than an Indian voyage, though it
could be sailed either by the north of Cathay eastward or
of Canada westward, while our Spanish licensing gags the
English press never so severely. But, on the other side,
that infection which is from books of controversy in re-
Il6 MILTON
ligion is more doubtful and dangerous to the learned than
to the ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted
untouched by the licenser. It will be hard to instance
where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by Papisti-
cal book in English, unless it were commended and ex-
pounded to him by some of that clergy; and, indeed, all
such tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy
of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be " understood without
a guide." But of our priests and doctors how many have
been corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits and
Sorbonnists, and how fast they could transfuse that cor-
ruption into the people our experience is both late and sad.
It is not forgot since the acute and distinct Arminius was
perverted merely by the perusing of a nameless discourse
written at Delft, which at first he took in hand to confute.
Seeing, therefore, that those books, and those in great
abundance, which are likeliest to taint both life and doc-
trine, can not be suppressed without the fall of learning
and of all ability in disputation; and that these books of
either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned,
from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or
dissolute may quickly be conveyed; and that evil manners
are as perfectly learned without books a thousand other
ways which can not be stopped, and evil doctrine not with
books can propagate, except a teacher guide, which he
might also do without writing and so beyond prohibiting,
I am not able to unfold how this cautelous enterprise of
licensing can be exempted from the number of vain and
impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly dis-
posed could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that
gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shut-
ting his park gate. Besides another inconvenience, if
learned men be the first receivers out of books and dis-
preaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers
themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them,
or they assume to themselves, above all others in the land,
the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again,
if it be true that a wise man like a good refiner can gather,
gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be
a fool with the best book, yea, or without book, there is
no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any ad-
AREOPAGITICA II7
vantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool
that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his
folly. For if there should be so much exactness always
used to keep that from him which is unfit for his reading
we should, in the judgment of Aristotle not only, but of
Solomon and of our Saviour, not vouchsafe him good pre-
cepts, and by consequence not willingly admit him to good
books, as being certain that a wise man will make better
use of an idle pamphlet than a fool will do of sacred Scrip-
ture. 'Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to
temptations without necessity, and next to that, not em-
ploy our time in vain things. To both these objections one
answer will serve, out of the grounds already laid, that to
all men such books are not temptations nor vanities, but
useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and com-
pose effective and strong medicines, which man's life can
not want. The rest, as children and childish men, who
have not the art to qualify and prepare these working
minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered
forcibly they can not be by all the licensing that sainted
Inquisition could ever yet contrive, which is what I prom-
ised to deliver next: that this order of licensing conduces
nothing to the end for which it was framed, and hath almost
prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath
been explaining. See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when
she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster than
the pace of method and discourse can overtake her. It was
the task which I began with, to show that no nation or
well-instituted state, if they valued books at all, did ever
use this way of licensing; and it might be answered that
this is a piece of prudence lately discovered; to which I
return that, as it was a thing slight and obvious to think
on, so if it had been difficult to find out there wanted not
among them long since who suggested such a course,
which they not following, leave us a pattern of their judg-
ment, that it was not the not knowing, but the not ap-
proving, which was the cause of their not using it. Plato,
a man of high authority indeed, but least of all for his
commonwealth, in the book of his " Laws," which no city
ever yet received, fed his fancy with making many edicts
to his airy burgomasters which they who otherwise admire
H8 MILTON
him wish had been rather buried and excused in the genial
cups of an academic night-sitting; by which laws he seems
to tolerate no kind of learning but by unalterable decree,
consisting most of practical traditions, to the attainment
whereof a library of smaller bulk than his own " Dialogues "
would be abundant. And there also enacts that no poet
should so much as read to any private man what he had
written until the judges and law-keepers had seen it and
allowed it. But that Plato meant this law peculiarly to that
commonwealth which he had imagined, and to no other, is
evident. Why was he not else a lawgiver to himself, but
a transgressor, and to be expelled by his own magistrates,
both for the wanton epigrams and dialogues which he
made, and his perpetual reading of Sophron Mimus and
Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy, and also for com-
mending the latter of them, though he were the malicious
libeller of his chief friends, to be read by the tyrant Diony-
sius, who had little need of such trash to spend his time
on? But that he knew this licensing of poems had refer-
ence and dependence to many other provisos there set
down in his fancied republic, which in this world could
have no place; and so neither he himself nor any magis-
trate or city ever imitated that course, which, taken apart
from those other collateral injunctions, must needs be vain
and fruitless. For if they fell upon one kind of strictness,
unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of
like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour
they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut and fortify
one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave
others round about wide open. If we think to regulate
printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all
recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No
music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is
grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that
no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but
what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such
Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of
twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and
the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to
prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say.
And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whis-
AREOPAGITICA
per softness in chambers? The windows also, and the
balconies, must be thought on; there are shrewd books
with dangerous frontispieces set to sale; who shall prohibit
them? Shall twenty licensers? The villages also must
have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and
the rebec reads, even to the ballatry and the gamut of every
municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's Arcadias
and his Montemayors. Next, what more national corrup-
tion, for which England hears ill abroad, than household
gluttony? Who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting?
and what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that fre-
quent those houses where drunkenness is sold and har-
boured? Our garments also should be referred to the
licensing of some more sober work-masters to see them
cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the
mixed conversation of our youth, male and female to-
gether, as is the fashion of this country? who shall still
appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no
further? Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle
resort, all evil company? These things will be, and must
be; but how they shall be less hurtful, how less enticing,
herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a state.
To sequester out of the world into Atlantic and Utopian
polities which never can be drawn into use will not mend
our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil,
in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably. Nor
is it Plato's licensing of books will do this, which neces-
sarily pulls along with it so many other kinds of licensing,
as will make us all both ridiculous and weary, and yet
frustrate; but those unwritten, or at least unconstraining
laws of virtuous education, religious and civil nurture,
which Plato there mentions as the bonds and ligaments of
the commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every
written statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in
such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily
eluded. Impunity and remissness, for certain, are the bane
of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies to discern
in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in
what things persuasion only is to work. If every action
which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be
under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were
120 MILTON
virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well-
doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent?
Many there be that complain of Divine Providence for
suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When
God gave him reason he gave him freedom to choose, for
reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial
Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We our-
selves esteem not of that obedience or love or gift which
is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a
provoking object, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted
his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his
abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within us,
pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered
are the very ingredients of virtue? They are not skilful
considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin
by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is a huge
heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though
some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some
persons, it can not from all in such a universal thing as
books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains en-
tire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure,
he has yet one jewel left: ye can not bereave him of his
covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth
into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any
hermitage, ye can not make them chaste that came not
thither so; such great care and wisdom is required to the
right managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin
by this means: look how much we thus expel of sin, so
much we expel of virtue, for the matter of them both is
the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike.
This justifies the high providence of God, who though he
command us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out
before us even to a profuseness all desirable things, and
gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety.
Why should we then affect a rigour contrary to the manner
of God and of Nature, by abridging or scanting those
means which books freely permitted are, both to the trial
of virtue and the exercise of truth. It would be better done
to learn that the law must needs be frivolous which goes
to restrain things uncertainly and yet equally working to
good and to evil. And were I the chooser, a dram of
AREOPAGITICA I2I
well-doing should be preferred before many times as much
the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems
the growth and completing of one virtuous person more
than the restraint of ten vicious. And albeit whatever thing
we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing,
may be fitly called our book, and is of the same effect that
writings are, yet grant the thing to be prohibited were only
books, it appears that this order hitherto is far insufficient
to the end which it intends. Do we not see, not once or
oftener, but weekly, that continued court-libel against the
Parliament and city, printed, as the wet sheets can witness,
and dispersed among us for all that licensing can do? Yet
this is the prime service a man would think, wherein this
order should give proof of itself. If it were executed, you'll
say. But certain, if execution be remiss or blindfold now
and in this particular, what will it be hereafter and in other
books? If, then, the order shall not be vain and frustrate,
behold a new labour, Lords and Commons! Ye must
repeal and proscribe all scandalous and unlicensed books
already printed and divulged, after ye have drawn them
up into a list, that all may know which are condemned
and which not, and ordain that no foreign books be de-
livered out of custody till they have been read over. This
office will require the whole time of not a few overseers,
and those no vulgar men. There be also books which are
partly useful and excellent, partly culpable and pernicious;
this work will ask as many more officials to make expur-
gations and expunctions, that the commonwealth of learn-
ing be not damnified. In fine, when the multitude of books
increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all
those printers who are found frequently offending, and for-
bid the importation of their whole suspected typography.
In a word, that this your order may be exact, and not
deficient, ye must reform it perfectly according to the
model of Trent and Seville, which I know ye abhor to do.
Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God for-
bid, the order still would be but fruitless and defective to
'that end whereto ye meant it. If to prevent sects and
schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechised in story that
hath not heard of many sects refusing books as a hindrance,
and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many ages only
122 MILTON
by unwritten traditions? The Christian faith, for that
was once a schism, is not unknown to have spread all over
Asia ere any Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing.
If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into
Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple
the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all
the inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon
books.
Another reason whereby to make it plain that this
order will miss the end it seeks, consider by the quality
which ought to be in every licenser. It can not be denied
but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or
death of books, whether they may be wafted into this
world or not, had need to be a man above the common
measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may
be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable
or not, which is also no mean injury. If he be of such
worth as behooves him, there can not be a more tedious
and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied
upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of
unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes.
There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain sea-
sons; but to be enjoined the reading of that at all times,
and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three pages would not
down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition
which I can not believe how he that values time and his
own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able
to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present
licensers to be pardoned for so thinking, who doubtless
took this office up looking on it through their obedience
to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all things
seem easy and unlaborious to them; but that this short
trial hath wearied them out already, their own expressions
and excuses to them who make so many journeys to solicit
their license are testimony enough. Seeing, therefore,
those who now possess the employment by all evident
signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man
of worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of his own
hours, is ever likely to succeed them except he mean to
put himself to the salary of a press correcter, we may
easily foresee what kind of licensers we are to expect
AREOPAGITICA ^3
hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely
pecuniary. This is what I had to show wherein this
order can not conduce to that end whereof it bears the
intention.
I lastly proceed from the no good it can do to the
manifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest discour-
agement and affront that can be offered to learning and
to learned men. It was the complaint and lamentation of
prelates upon every least breath of a motion to remove
pluralities and distribute more equally church revenues,
that then all learning would be forever dashed and discour-
aged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause to think
that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy,
nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy
speech of any churchman who had a competency left him.
If, therefore, ye be loath to dishearten utterly and discon-
tent, not the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learn-
ing, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently
were born to study and love learning for itself, not for
lucre or any other end but the service of God and of truth,
and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise
which God and good men have consented shall be the re-
ward of those whose published labours advance the good
of mankind, then know, that so far to distrust the judg-
ment and the honesty of one who hath but a common
repute in learning and never yet offended, as not to count
him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, lest
he should drop a schism or something of corruption, is the
greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing
spirit that can be put upon him. What advantage is it to
be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only
escaped the ferule to come under the fescue of an im-
primatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were
no more than the theme of a grammar lad under his peda-
gogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a
temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He who is not
trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to
be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has
no great argument to think himself reputed in the com-
monwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a
foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons
124 MILTON
up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches,
meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers
with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes
himself to be informed in what he writes as well as any that
wrote before him. If in this the most consummate act of
his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former
proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of maturity
as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry
all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings,
and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an un-
leisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far
his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the
labour of book-writing, and if he be not repulsed or
slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian
and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his
bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer, it can not be
but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book,
to the privilege and dignity of learning. And what if the
author shall be one so copious of fancy as to have many
things well worth the adding come into his mind after
licensing, while the book is yet under the press, which not
seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers; and that
perhaps a dozen times in one book? The printer dares not
go beyond his licensed copy; so often, then, must the au-
thor trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions
may be viewed, and many a jaunt will be made ere that
licenser, for it must be the same man, can either be found,
or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must stand
still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accu-
ratest thoughts and send the book forth worse than he had
made it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melan-
choly and vexation that can befall. And how can a man
teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how
can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else
had better be silent, when as all he teaches, all he delivers,
is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patri-
archal licenser to blot or alter what precisely accords not
with the hidebound humour which he calls his judgment;
when every acute reader upon the first sight of a pedantic
license will be ready with these like words to ding the book
a quoit's distance from him: " I hate a pupil teacher, I
AREOPAGITICA I2 5
endure not an instructor that comes to me under the ward-
ship of an overseeing fist; I know nothing of the licenser,
but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who
shall warrant me his judgment? " " The state, sir," replies
the stationer; but has a quick return: "The state shalfbe
my governors, but not my critics; they may be mistaken in
the choice of a licenser as easily as this licenser may be
mistaken in an author; this is some common stuff "; and
he might add from Sir Francis Bacon that such authorized
books are but the language of the times. For though a
licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordinary,
which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet
his very office and his commission enjoin him to let pass
nothing but what is vulgarly received already. Nay, which
is more lamentable, if the work of any deceased author,
though never so famous in his lifetime and even to this
day, come to their hands for license to be printed or re-
printed, if there be found in his book one sentence of a
venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, and who
knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit,
yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their
own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a king-
dom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash;
the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost for
the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunc-
tory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath
been lately done, and in what book of greatest consequence
to be faithfully published, I could now instance, but shall
forbear till a more convenient season. Yet if these things
be not resented seriously and timely by them who have the
remedy in their power, but that such iron moulds as these
shall have authority to gnaw out the choicest periods of
exquisitest books, and to commit such a treacherous fraud
against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death,
the more sorrow will belong to that hapless race of men
whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth
let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly
wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and
slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the only
pleasant life and only in request.
And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing
126 MILTON
person alive, and most injurious to the written labours and
monuments of the dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing
and vilifying of the whole nation. I can not set so light
by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid
judgment which is in England, as that it can be compre-
hended in any twenty capacities how good soever; much
less that it should not pass except their superintendence
be over it, except it be sifted and strained with their
strainers, that it should be uncurrent without their manual
stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as
to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and
standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity
of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like
our broadcloth and our wool packs. What is it but a
servitude like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be
allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but
we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges.
Had any one written and divulged erroneous things and
scandalous to honest life, misusing and forfeiting the es-
teem had of his reason among men, if after conviction this
only censure were adjudged him, that he should never
henceforth write but what were first examined by an ap-
pointed officer, whose hand should be annexed to pass his
credit for him that now he might be safely read, it could
not be apprehended less than a disgraceful punishment.
Whence to include the whole nation, and those that never
yet thus offended, under such a diffident and suspectful
prohibition, may plainly be understood what a disparage-
ment it is; so much the more, when as debtors and delin-
quents may walk abroad without a keeper, but inoffensive
books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their
title. Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach;
for if we be so jealous over them as that we dare not trust
them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure
them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people, in such
a sick and weak estate of faith and discretion as to be able
to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser?
That this is care or love of them we can not pretend, when
as in those Popish places where the laity are most hated
and despised, the same strictness is used over them. Wis-
dom we can not call it, because it stops but one breach of
AREOPAGITICA I2 y
license, nor that neither, when as those corruptions which
it seeks to prevent break in faster at other doors which can
not be shut.
And, in conclusion, it reflects to the disrepute of our
ministers also, of whose labours we should hope better, and
of the proficiency which their flock reaps by them, than that
after all this light of the gospel which is, and is to be, and
all this continual preaching, they should be still frequented
with such an unprincipled, unedified, and laic rabble, as that
the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out
of their catechism and Christian walking. This may have
much reason to discourage the ministers when such a low
conceit is had of all their exhortations and the benefiting
of their hearers, as that they are not thought fit to be
turned loose to three sheets of paper without a licenser;
that all the sermons, all the lectures preached, printed,
vented in such numbers and such volumes as have now
well-nigh made all other books unsalable, should not be
armour enough against one single enchiridion, without the
Castle St. Angelo of an imprimatur.
And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Com-
mons, that these arguments of learned men's discourage-
ment at this your order are mere flourishes and not real,
I could recount what I have seen and heard in other coun-
tries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have
sat among their learned men, for that honour I had, and
been counted happy to be born in such a place of philo-
sophic freedom as they supposed England was, while them-
selves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into
which learning among them was brought; that this was
it which had damped the glory of Italian wits, that nothing
had been there written now these many years but flattery and
fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous
Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for think-
ing in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and
Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew that
England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical
yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happi-
ness that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty.
Yet was it beyond my hope that those worthies were then
breathing in her air who should be her leaders to such a
128 MILTON
deliverance as shall never be forgotten by any revolution
of time that this world hath to finish. When that was once
begun it was as little in my feaf that what words of complaint
I heard among learned men of other parts uttered against
the Inquisition, the same I should hear by as learned men
at home uttered in time of Parliament against an order of
licensing; and that so generally, that when I disclosed
myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if
without envy, that he whom an honest quaestorship had
endeared to the Sicilians was not more by them importuned
against Verres than the favourable opinion which I had
among many who honour ye and are known and respected
by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions, that I
would not despair to lay together that which just reason
should bring into my mind toward the removal of an un-
deserved thraldom upon learning. That this is not, there-
fore, the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the com-
mon grievance of all those who had prepared their minds
and studies above the vulgar pitch, to advance truth in
others and from others to entertain it, thus much may
satisfy. And in their name I shall for neither friend nor
foe conceal what the general murmur is; that if it come
to inquisitioning again and licensing, and that we are so
timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to
fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we
know what the contents are, if some who but of late were
little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now
to silence us from reading except what they please, it can
not be guessed what is intended by some but a second
tyranny over learning; and will soon put it out of contro-
versy that bishops and presbyters are the same to us, both
name and thing. That those evils of prelacy, which be-
fore from five or six and twenty sees were distributively
charged upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon
learning, is not obscure to us, when as now the pastor of a
small unlearned parish on the sudden shall be exalted
archbishop over a large diocese of books, and yet not
remove, but keep his other cure too, a mystical pluralist.
He who but of late cried down the sole ordination of every
novice bachelor of art, and denied sole jurisdiction over
the simplest parishioner, shall now, at home in his private
AREOPAGITICA
chair, assume both these overworthiest and excellentest
books and ablest authors that write them. This is not the
covenants and protestations that we have made, this is
not to put down Prelacy: this is but to chop an Episcopacy;
this is but to translate the palace metropolitan from one
kind of dominion into another; this is but an old canonical
sleight of commuting our penance. To startle thus betimes
at a mere unlicensed pamphlet will after a while be afraid
of every conventicle, and a while after will make a con-
venticle of every Christian meeting. But I am certain that
a state governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a
church built and founded upon the rock of faith and true
knowledge, can not be so pusillanimous. While things are
yet not constituted in religion, that freedom of writing
should be restrained by a discipline imitated from the prel-
ates and learned by them from the Inquisition, to shut us
up all again into the breast of a licenser, must needs give
cause of doubt and discouragement to all learned and re-
ligious men, who can not but discern the fineness of this
politic drift, and who are the contrivers: that while bishops
were to be baited down, then all presses might be open; it
was the people's birthright and privilege in time of Parlia-
ment, it was the breaking forth of light. But now the
bishops abrogated and voided out of the Church, as if
our reformation sought no more but to make room for
others into their seats under another name, the Episcopal
arts begin to bud again, the cruise of truth must run no
more oil, liberty of printing must be enthralled again under
a prelatical commission of twenty, the privilege of the
people nullified, and, which is worse, the freedom of learn-
ing must groan again and to her old fetters, all this the
Parliament yet sitting. Although their own late argu-
ments and defences against the prelates might remember
them that this obstructing violence meets for the most part
with an event utterly opposite to the end which it drives
at; instead of suppressing sects and schisms, it raises them
and invests them with a reputation. " The punishing of
wits enhances their authority," saith the Viscount St.
Albans, " and a forbidden writing is thought to be a certain
spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seek
to tread it out." This order, therefore, may prove a nurs-
1 30 MILTON
ing mother to sects, but I shall easily show how it will be
a stepdame to truth: and first by disenabling us to the
maintenance of what is known already.
Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and
knowledge thrives by exercise as well as our limbs and
complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a stream-
ing fountain: if her waters flow not in a perpetual pro-
gression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and
tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth, and if he
believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assem-
bly so determines, without knowing other reason, though
his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his
heresy. There is not any burden that some would gladlier
post off to another than the charge and care of their re-
ligion. There be who knows not that there be? of Prot-
estants and professors who live and die in as arrant an im-
plicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man,
addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to
be a traffic so entangled, and of so many peddling accounts,
that of all mysteries he can not skill to keep a stock going
upon that trade. What should he do? Fain he would have
the name to be religious, fain he would bear up with his
neighbours in that. What does he, therefore, but resolve
to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor
to whose care and credit he may commit the whole man-
aging of his religious affairs, some divine of note and esti-
mation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole
warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into
his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that
man his religion, esteems his associating with him a suf-
ficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So
that a man may say his religion is now no more within
himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and
comes near him according as that good man frequents the
house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him,
lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is
liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is
saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced brew-
age, and better breakfasted than he whose morning appe-
tite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany
and Jerusalem; his religion walks abroad at eight, and
AREOPAGITICA ,
leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day with-
out his religion.
Another sort there be who when they hear that all
things shall be ordered, all things regulated and settled,
nothing written but what passes through the custom-house
of certain publicans that have the tunaging and the pound-
aging of all free-spoken truth, will straight give themselves
up into your hands; make them and cut them out what
religion ye please. There be delights, there be recreations
and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from sun
to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream.
What need they torture their heads with that which others
have taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own
purveying? These are the fruits which a dull ease and ces-
sation of our knowledge will bring forth among the people.
How goodly and how to be wished were such an obedient
unanimity as this, what a fine conformity would it starch
us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of frame-
work as any January could freeze together.
Nor much better will be the consequence even among
the clergy themselves. It is no new thing never heard
of before for a parochial minister, who has his reward and
is at his Hercules' Pillars in a warm benefice, to be easily
inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse up his
studies, to finish his circuit in an English concordance
and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a sober
graduateship, a harmony and a catena, treading the con-
stant round of certain common doctrinal heads, attended
with their uses, motives, marks and means, out of which
as out of an alphabet or sol fa, by forming and transforming,
joining and disjoining variously a little book-craft, and two
hours' meditation might furnish him unspeakably to the per-
formance of more than a weekly charge of sermoning, not to
reckon up the infinite helps of interlinearies, breviaries,
synopses, and other loitering gear. But as for the multi-
tude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every text
that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in
his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have
not within their hallowed limits more vendible ware of all
sorts ready made; so that penury he never need fear of
pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh
132
MILTON
his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled,
if his back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but
that a bold book may now and then issue forth, and give
the assault to some of his old collections in their trenches,
it will concern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch,
to set good guards and sentinels about his received opin-
ions, to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow-
inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who
also then would be better instructed, better exercised and
disciplined. And God send that the fear of this diligence
which must then be used, do not make us affect the lazi-
ness of a licensing church!
For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not hold
the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves con-
demn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the
people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout, what
can be more fair than when a man judicious, learned, and
of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that
taught us what we know shall not privily from house to
house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing,
publish to the world what his opinion is, what his reasons,
and wherefore that which is now thought can not be sound?
Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself, that he
preached in public; yet writing is more public than preach-
ing, and more easy to refutation, if need be, there being
so many whose business and profession merely it is to be
the champions of truth, which, if they neglect, what can
be imputed but their sloth or inability?
Thus much we are hindered and disinured by this
course of licensing toward the true knowledge of what we
seem to know. For how much it hurts and hinders the
licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry, more
than any secular employment, if they will discharge that .
office as they ought, so that of necessity they must neglect
either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is
a particular, but leave it to their own conscience, how they
will decide it there.
There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open,
the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing
puts us to. More than if some enemy at sea should stop up
all our havens and ports and creeks, it hinders and retards
AREOPAGITICA I33
the importation of our richest merchandise, truth; nay, it
was first established and put in practice by antichristian
malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish, if it were
possible, the light of reformation, and to settle falsehood,
little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds
his Alcoran by the prohibition of printing. It is not de-
nied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and
vows to Heaven louder than most of nations for that great
measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main
points between us and the Pope with his appurtenances the
prelates; but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here,
and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that
the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till
we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion
declares that he is yet far short of truth.
Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her
Divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to
look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after
him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of
deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon
with his conspirators how they dealt with the good Osiris,
took the virgin truth, hewed her lovely form into a thou-
sand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From
that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as dost
appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the
mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up
limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not
yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall
do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring to-
gether every joint and member, and shall mould them into
an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer
not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of
opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue
seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body
of our martyred saint. We boast our light, but if we look
not wisely on the sun itself it smites us into darkness.
Who can discern those planets that are oft combust, and
those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with
the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them
to such a place in the firmament, where they may be seen
evening or morning? The light which we have gained
9
MILTON
was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to dis-
cover onward things more remote from our knowledge.
It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a
bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian
shoulders that will make us a happy nation; no, if other
things as great in the Church and in the rule of life both
economical a.nd political be not looked into and reformed,
we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and
Calvin hath beaconed up to us, that we are stark blind.
There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects,
and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from
their maxims. It is their own pride and ignorance which
causes the disturbing, who neither will hear with meek-
ness nor can convince; yet all must be suppressed which
is not found in their syntagma. They are the troublers,
they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not
others to unite those dissevered pieces which are yet want-
ing to the body of truth. To be still searching what we
know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth
as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and propor-
tional), this is the golden rule in theology as well as in
arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a church,
not the forced and outward union of cold and neutral and
inwardly divided minds.
Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation
it is whereof ye are and whereof ye are the governors: a
nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and
piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to dis-
course, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that
human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of
learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and
so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and
ablest judgment have been persuaded that even the school
of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning
from the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and
civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for
Caesar, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the
laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that
the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from
as far as the mountainous borders of Russia and beyond
the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid
AREOPAGITICA l $$
men, to learn our language and our theologic arts. Yet
that which is above all this, the favour and the love of
Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar
manner propitious and propending toward us. Why else
was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her
as out of Sion should be proclaimed and sounded forth
the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe?
And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prel-
ates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff,
to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps
neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name
of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known; the glory
of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours.
But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence de-
meaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and
the backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have
made us the teachers. Now once again, by all concurrence
of signs and by the general instinct of holy and devout
men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts,
God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in
his Church, even to the reforming of reformation itself.
What does he then but reveal himself to his servants, and
as his manner is, first to his Englishmen; I say, as his
manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of
his counsels and are unworthy? Behold now this vast city:
a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath
not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion
out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence
of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there,
sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolv-
ing new notions and ideas wherewith to present as with
their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation,
others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the
force of reason and convincement. What could a man re-
quire more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek
after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly
and pregnant soil but wise and faithful labourers, to make
a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of
worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to har-
vest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to
136 MILTON
lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is much
desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing,
much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is
but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic ter-
rors of sect and schism we wrong the earnest and zealous
thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath
stirred up in this city. What some lament of we rather
should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forward-
ness among men to reassume the ill-deputed care of their
religion into their own hands again. A little generous pru-
dence, a little forbearance of one another and some grain
of charity, might win all these diligences to join and unite
in one general and brotherly search after truth, could we
but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free con-
sciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts
of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger
should come among us, wise to discern the mould and
temper of a people and how to govern it, observing the
high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended
thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and free-
dom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring
the Roman docility and courage: " If such were my Epi-
rots, I would not despair the greatest design that could
be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy." Yet
these are the men cried out against for schismatics and
sectaries; as if, while the Temple of the Lord was building,
some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing
the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men who
could not consider there must be many schisms and many
dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the
house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid
artfully together it can not be united into a continuity, it
can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every
piece of the building be of one form; nay, rather the per-
fection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties
and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly dispropor-
tional arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that
commends the whole pile and structure. Let us therefore
be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual archi-
tecture, when great reformation is expected. For now
the time seems come wherein Moses the great prophet
AREOPAGITICA I37
may sit in heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and
glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our seventy
elders but all the Lord's people are become prophets. No
marvel then, though some men, and some good men too,
perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy
them. They fret, and out of their own weakness are in
agony, lest those divisions and subdivisions will undo us.
The adversary again applauds, and waits the hour; when
they have branched themselves out, saith he, small enough
into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool!
he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow though
into branches; nor will beware until he see our small
divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-
united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope
better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we
shall not need tliat solicitude, honest, perhaps, though over-
timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh
in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences,
I have these reasons to persuade me:
First, when a city shall be, as it were, besieged and
blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and
incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be
marching up even to her walls and suburb trenches, that
then the people, or the greater part, more than at other
times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most
important matters to be reformed, should be disputing,
reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity
and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of,
argues first a singular good-will, contentedness and con-
fidence in your prudent foresight and safe government,
Lords and Commons; and from thence derives itself to
a gallant bravery and well-grounded contempt of their
enemies, as if there were no small number of as great
spirits among us as his was, who when Rome was nigh
besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece
of ground at no cheap rate whereon Hannibal himself en-
camped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful
presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a
body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigor-
ous, not only to vital but to rational faculties, and those in
the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety,
I3 8 MILTON
it argues in what good plight and constitution the body
is, so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly
up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its
own freedom and safety but to spare, and to bestow upon
the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new
invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to
a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of
corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again,
entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue,
destined to become great and honourable in these latter
ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an
eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undaz-
zled eyes at the full midday beam, purging and unsealing
her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly
radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking
birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about,
amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble
would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.
What should ye do then, should ye suppress all this
flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and
yet springing daily in this city, should ye set an oligarchy
of twenty ingrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our
minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is
measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and
Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do
as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show
how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all
this free writing and free speaking, there can not be
assigned a truer than your own mild and free and human
government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which
your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased
us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that
which hath rarefied and enlightened our spirits like the
influence of Heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised,
enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above
themselves. Ye can not make us now less capable, less
knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first
make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the
founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again,
AREOPAGITICA ! 39
brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you then
must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive,
arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have
freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our
thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of
greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue
propagated in us; ye can not suppress that unless ye re-en-
force an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may des-
patch at will their own children. And who shall then stick
closest to ye, and excite others? Not he who takes up arms
for cote and conduct and his four nobles of Danegelt. Al-
though I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet
love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty
to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to con-
science, above all liberties.
What would be best advised then, if it be found so
hurtful and so unequal to suppress opinions for the new-
ness or the unsuitableness to a customary acceptance, will
not be my task to say; I only shall repeat what I have
learned from one of your own honourable number, a right
noble and pious lord, who, had he not sacrificed his life
and fortunes to the Church and commonwealth, we had
not now missed and bewailed a worthy and undoubted
patron of this argument. Ye know him, I am sure; yet I,
for honour's sake, and may it be eternal to him, shall name
him the Lord Brook. He, writing of Episcopacy, and by
the way treating of sects and schisms, left ye his vote,
or rather now the last words of his dying charge, which I
know will ever be of dear and honoured regard with ye,
so full of meekness and breathing charity, that next to his
last testament, who bequeathed love and peace to his dis-
ciples, I can not call to mind where I have read or heard
words more mild and peaceful. He there exhorts us to
hear with patience and humility those, however they be
miscalled, that desire to live purely, in such a use of God's
ordinances as the best guidance of their conscience gives
them, and to tolerate them, though in some disconformity
to ourselves. The book itself will tell us more at large, be-
ing published to the world and dedicated to the Parliament
by him who both for his life and for his death deserves that
what advice he left be not laid by without perusal.
I 4 MILTON
And now the time in special is by privilege to write and
speak what may help to the further discussing of matters
in agitation. The Temple of Janus with his two contro-
versal faces might now not insignificantly be set open.
And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play
upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously
by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.
Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put
to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting
is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what
praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent
down among us, would think of other matters to be con-
stituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and
fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light
which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy
and oppose if it come not first in at their casements. What
a collusion is this, when as we are exhorted by the wise
man to use diligence, to seek for wisdom as for hidden
treasures early and late, that another order shall enjoin
us to know nothing but by statute. When a man hath been
labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowl-
edge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage,
drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered,
and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adver-
sary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and
sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint
of argument, for his opponents then to skulk, to lay am-
bushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where
the challenger should pass, though it be valour enough in
soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of
truth. For who knows not that truth is strong next to
the Almighty? She needs no policies, no stratagems, nor
licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and
the defences that error uses against her power. Give her
but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then
she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake
oracles only when he was caught and bound; but then
rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own, and
perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah
did before Ahab, until she be adjured into her own likeness.
Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes
AREOPAGITICA
141
than one. What else is all that rank of things indifferent,
wherein truth may be on this side or on the other without
being unlike herself? What but a vain shadow else is the
abolition of those ordinances, that handwriting nailed to
the cross, what great purchase is this Christian liberty
which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is that he
who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may
do either to the Lord. How many other things might be
tolerated in peace and left to conscience had we but char-
ity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hypocrisy
to be ever judging one another! I fear yet this iron yoke of
outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks;
the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We stumble
and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible con-
gregation from another, though it be not in fundamentals;
and through orr forwardness to suppress and our back-
wardness to recover any enthralled piece of truth out of
the grip of custom, we care not to keep truth separated
from truth, which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all.
We do not see that, while we still affect by all means a
rigid external formality, we may as soon fall again into a
gross conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment
of wood and hay and stubble forced and frozen together,
which is more to the sudden degenerating of a church than
many subdichotomies of petty schisms. Not that I can
think well of every light separation, or that all in a church
is to be expected gold and silver and precious stones; it
is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares,
the good fish from the other fry; that must be the angels'
ministry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all can not
be of one mind as who looks they should be? this doubt-
less is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian:
that many be tolerated rather than all compelled. I mean
not tolerated Popery and open superstition, which as it
extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself
should be extirpated, provided first that all charitable and
compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak
and misled; that also which is impious or evil absolutely
either against faith or manners no law can possibly permit,
that intends not to unlaw itself; but those neighbouring
differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak of,
10
1 4 2
MILTON
whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which
though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity
of spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace.
In the meanwhile if any one would write, and bring his
helpful hand to the slow-moving reformation which we
labour under, if truth have spoken to him before others, or
but seemed at least to speak, who hath so bejesuited us
that we should trouble that man with asking license to do
so worthy a deed? And not consider this, that if it come
to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be pro-
hibited than truth itself whose first appearance to our eyes,
bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom, is more
unsightly and unplausible than many errors, even as the
person is of many a great man slight and contemptible
to see to. And what do they tell us vainly of new opin-
ions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be
heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion
of all others; and is the chief cause why sects and schisms
do so much abound, and true knowledge is kept at dis-
tance from us? Besides yet a greater danger which is in
it: for when God shakes a kingdom with strong and health-
ful commotions to a general reforming, it is not untrue
that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in
seducing; but yet more true it is that God then raises to
his own work men of rare abilities and more than common
industry, not only to look back and revise what hath been
taught heretofore, but to gain further and go on some new
enlightened steps in the discovery of truth. For such is
the order of God's enlightening his Church, to dispense and
deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may
best sustain it. Neither is God appointed and confined,
where and out of what place these his chosen shall be first
heard to speak; for he sees not as man sees, chooses not
as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again to
set places and assemblies and outward callings of men,
planting our faith one while in the old Convocation house,
and another while in the chapel at Westminster; when
all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is
not sufficient, without plain convincement and the charity
of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of con-
science, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk
AREOPAGITICA j^
in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all
the number of voices that can be there made; no, though
Harry VII himself there, with all his liege tombs about
him, should lend them voices from the dead to swell their
number. And if the men be erroneous who appear to be
the leading schismatics, what withholds us but our sloth,
our self-will, and distrust in the right cause, that we do not
give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, that we
debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with liberal
and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our
own, seeing no man who hath tasted learning but will con-
fess the many ways of profiting by those who, not con-
tented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth
new positions to the world? And were they but as the
dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they
may serve to polish and brighten the armoury of truth,
even for that respect they were not utterly to be cast away.
But if they be of those whom God hath fitted for the special
use of these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those,
perhaps, neither among the priests nor among the Phari-
sees, and we, in the haste of a precipitant zeal, shall make
no distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because
we fear they come with new and dangerous opinions, as
we commonly forejudge them ere we understand them, no>
less then woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend the
Gospel, we are found the persecutors.
There have been not a few since the beginning of this
Parliament, both of the presbytery and others, who by
their unlicensed books to the contempt of an imprimatur
first broke that triple ice clung about our hearts, and
taught the people to see day. I hope that none of those
were the persuaders to renew upon us this bondage which
they themselves have wrought so much good by contemn-
ing. But if neither the check that. Moses gave to young
Joshua, nor the countermand which our Saviour gave to
young John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom
he thought unlicensed, be not enough to admonish our
elders how unacceptable to God their testy mood of pro-
hibiting is, if neither their own remembrance what evil
hath abounded in the Church by this let of licensing, and
what good they themselves have begun by transgressing
144 MILTON
it, be not enough, but that they will persuade and execute
the most Dominican part of the Inquisition over us, and
are already with one foot in the stirrup so active in suppress-
ing, it would be no unequal distribution in the first place
to suppress the suppressors themselves, whom the change
of their condition hath puffed up more than their late ex-
perience of harder times hath made wise.
And as for regulating the press, let no man think to
have the honour of advising ye better than yourselves have
done in that order published next before this: that no
book be printed, unless the printer's and the author's
name, or at least the printer's, be registered. Those which
otherwise come forth, if they be found mischievous and
libellous, the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest
and the most effectual remedy that man's prevention can
use. For this authentic Spanish policy of licensing books,
if I have said aught, will prove the most unlicensed book
itself within a short while; and was the immediate image
of a Star Chamber decree to that purpose made in those
very times when that court did the rest of those her pious
works, for which she is now fallen from the stars with
Lucifer. Whereby ye may guess what kind of state pru-
dence, what love of the people, what care of religion or
good manners there was at the contriving, although with
singular hypocrisy it pretended to bind books to their good
behaviour. And how it got the upper hand of your pre-
cedent order so well constituted before, if we may believe
those men whose profession gives them cause to inquire
most, it may be doubted there was in it the fraud of some
old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book-sell-
ing, who, under pretence of the poor in their company not
to be defrauded, and the just retaining of each man his
several copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid, brought
divers glozing colours to the House, which were indeed
but colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise
a superiority over their neighbours, men who do not there-
fore labour in an honest profession to which learning is
indebted, that they should be made other men's vassals.
Another end is thought was aimed at by some of them in
procuring by petition this order, that having power in their
hands, malignant books might the easier escape abroad,
AREOPAGITICA
145
as the event shows. But of these sophisms and elenchs
of merchandise I skill not. This I know, that errors in
a good government and in a bad are equally almost inci-
dent; for what magistrate may not be misinformed, and
much the sooner, if liberty of printing be reduced into the
power of a few? But to redress willingly and speedily what
hath been erred, and in highest authority to esteem a plain
advertisement more than others have done a sumptuous
bribe, is a virtue (honoured Lords and Commons) answer-
able to your highest actions, and whereof none can par-
ticipate but greatest and wisest men.
A DISCOURSE, BY WAY OF VISION,
CONCERNING THE GOVERN-
MENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
BY
ABRAHAM COWLEY
ABRAHAM COWLEY was the posthumous son of a London tradesman,
and was born in that city in 1618. His mother had a copy of Spenser,
and from reading this the boy (as he himself relates) determined to be
a poet. At the age of ten he wrote a tragical poem, and at the age of
twelve another. He was sent to Westminster School, and there pro-
duced a comedy. In 1636 he was entered as a student at Cambridge,
where he continued to write plays and poems, in Latin and in English.
He saw Prince Charles when he passed through Cambridge on his way
to York, and became an ardent Royalist so ardent that he had to leave
Cambridge. He went to Paris, became secretary to Lord Jermin, and
spent nearly all his time in "ciphering and deciphering the letters that
passed between the king and the queen." In 1656 he was sent to Eng-
land, where he was arrested as a spy, and found difficulty in securing a
release on bail. He published his poems that year, and in the preface
declared that " his desire had been for some time past, and did even now
vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American planta-
tions and to forsake this world forever." He obtained the degree of
Doctor of Physic in 1657, studied botany, and practised as a physician.
At the Restoration he expected a reward for his loyalty, but he did not
get it ; and his old comedy, rewritten, was brought out under a new
name, when it was mistaken for a satire on the Royalists and was a fail-
ure. He was reduced to poverty, and obliged to give up any hope of
living either by political preferment or by literary production. Obtain-
ing a lease of farm lands in Surrey, he tried agriculture ; but in this he
was hardly more fortunate. He wrote to a friend, " I can get no money
from my tenants, and my meadows are eaten up every night by cattle
put in by my neighbours." He died at the Porch House, Chertsey, July
28, 1667. The recognition that he failed to get in life was accorded to
him after death. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer
and Spenser, the king pronounced a eulogy upon him, and the Duke of
Buckingham erected a monument. His poetry, once thought to be great,
has long since gone out of fashion ; but his essays hold their place among
the classics of English prose. The poet Campbell wrote, "Cowley's
prose stamps him as a man of genius and an improver of the English
language."
THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
IT was the funeral day of the late man who made him-
self to be called Protector. And though I bore but
little affection either to the memory of him or to the
trouble and folly of all public pageantry, yet I was forced,
by the importunity of my company, to go along with them,
and be a spectator of that solemnity, the expectation of
which had been so great, that it was said to have brought
some very curious persons (and no doubt singular vir-
tuosos) as far as from the Mount in Cornwall, and from
the Orcades. I found there had been much more cost
bestowed than either the dead man, or indeed death itself,
could deserve. There was a mighty train of black assist-
ants, among which, too, divers princes in the persons of
their ambassadors (being infinitely afflicted for the loss of
their brother) were pleased to attend; the hearse was mag-
nificent, the idol crowned, and (not to mention all other
ceremonies which are practised at royal interments, and
therefore by no means could be omitted here) the vast mul-
titude of spectators made up, as it uses to do, no small
part of the spectacle itself. But yet, I know not how, the
whole was so managed that, methought, it somewhat repre-
sented the life of him for whom it was made: much noise,
much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much
vainglory; briefly, a great show; and yet, after all this,
but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and,
like his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene
passed by, and I retired back to my chamber, weary, and
I think more melancholy than any of the mourners, where
I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious
man; and sometimes I was filled with horror and detesta-
149
1 50 COWLEY
tion of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a little to
reverence an admiration of his courage, conduct, and suc-
cess; till, by these different motions and agitations of mind,
rocked, as it were, asleep, I fell at last into this vision; or
if you please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it
ill, because the father of poets tells us even dreams, too,
are from God.
But sure it was no dream, for I was suddenly trans-
ported afar off (whether in the body, or out of the body,
like St. Paul, I know not) and found myself on the top
of that famous hill in the island Mona, which has the pros-
pect of three great, and not-long-since most happy, king-
doms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the not-long-
since struck upon my memory, and called forth the sad
representation of all the sins and all the miseries that
had overwhelmed them these twenty years. And I wept
bitterly for two or three hours; and, when my present stock
of moisture was all wasted, I fell a-sighing for an hour
more; and as soon as I recovered from my passion the
use of speech and reason, I broke forth, as I remember
(looking upon England), into this complaint:
" Ah, happy isle, how art thou changed and curst,
Since I was born, and knew thee first!
When peace, which had forsook the world around,
(Frighted with noise, and the shrill trumpet's sound)
Thee, for a private place of rest,
And a secure retirement, chose
Wherein to build her halcyon nest;
No wind durst stir abroad, the air to discompose.
" When all the riches of the globe beside
Flowed in to thee with every tide:
When all, that Nature did thy soil deny,
The growth was of thy fruitful industry;
When all the proud and dreadful sea
And all his tributary streams,
A constant tribute paid to thee,
When all the liquid world was one extended Thames;
" When plenty in each village did appear,
And bounty was its steward there;
When gold walked free about in open view,
Ere it one conquering party's prisoner grew;
When the religion of our state
Had face and substance with her voice,
Ere she, by her foolish loves of late,
Like echo (once a nymph) turned only into noise.
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 15!
" When men to men respect and friendship bore,
And God with reverence did adore;
When upon earth no kingdom could have shown
A happier monarch to us than our own;
And yet his subjects by him were
(Which is a truth will hardly be
Received by any vulgar ear,
A secret known to few) made happier ev'n than he.
" Thou dost a chaos, and confusion now,
A babel, and a bedlam, grow,
And, like a frantic person, thou dost tear
The ornaments and cloaths, which thou shouldst wear,
And cut thy limbs; and, if we see
(Just as thy barbarous Britons did)
Thy body with hypocrisy
Painted all o'er, thou think'st, thy naked shame is hid.
" The nations, which envied thee erewhile,
Now laugh (too little 'tis to smile):
They laugh, and would have pitied thee (alas!)
But that lay faults all pity do surpass.
Art thou the country, which didst hate
And mock the French inconstancy?
And have we, have we seen of late
Less change of habits there than governments in thee?
" Unhappy isle! no ship of thine at sea
Was ever tossed and torn like thee.
Thy naked hulk loose on the waves does beat,
The rocks and banks around her ruin threat;
What did thy foolish pilots ail,
To lay the compass quite aside?
Without a law or rule to sail,
And rather take the winds, than heavens, to be their guide?
" Yet, mighty God, yet, yet, we humbly crave,
This floating isle from shipwreck save;
And though, to wash that blood which does it stain,
It well deserve to sink into the main;
Yet, for the royal martyr's prayer,
(The royal martyr prays, we know)
This guilty, perishing vessel spare;
Hear but his soul above, and not his blood below."
I think I should have gone on, but that I was inter-
rupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there ap-
peared to me (arising out of the earth, 1 as I conceived) the
figure of a man, taller than a giant, or, indeed, the shadow
of any giant in the evening. His body was naked, but
that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed all over, with
several figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons,
painted upon it; and I perceived that most of them were
152
COWLEY
the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and
(if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby
that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burn-
ing brass, and there were three crowns of the same metal
(as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot, too, upon his
head. 2 He held in his right hand a sword that was yet
bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was, Pax quaeritur
bello; and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of
which was written in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances,
Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Re-
monstrances, etc.
Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object
might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yat so
it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in
a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him reso-
lutely and briefly, "What art thou? " And he said, "I
am called the northwest principality, his highness, the Pro-
tector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto; for I am
that angel to whom the Almighty has committed the gov-
ernment of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from
this place." And I answered and said : " If it be so, sir, it
seems to me that for almost these twenty years past your
highness has been absent from your charge; for not only
if any angel, but if any wise and honest man, had since
that time been our governor, we should not have wandered
thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of
confusion, but either not have entered at all into them,
or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost
our way; but, instead of your highness, we have had since
such a protector as was his predecessor Richard III
to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the com-
monwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up
himself in the place of it; a little less guilty, indeed, in
one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this
man did but murder a murderer. 3 Such a protector we
have had, as we would have been glad to have changed
for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk than
this every month's apostate; such a protector, as man is
to his flocks, which he shears, and sells, or devours him-
self; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he pro-
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
tects him from, could do more? Such a protector-
153
and as I was proceeding, methought, his highness began
to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as
men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be
traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise
of jealousy against him, for I did not believe that Crom-
well, among all his foreign correspondences, had ever held
any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough
to venture a quarrel with him then; and therefore (as if
I had spoken to the Protector himself in Whitehall) I de-
sired him that " his highness would please to pardon me
if I had unwittingly spoken anything to the disparage-
ment of a person whose relations to his highness I had
not the honour to know."
At which he told me that " he had no other concern-
ment for his late highness than as he took him to be the
greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not "
(said he) " of the whole world, which gives me a just title
to the defence of his reputation, since I now account my-
self, as it were, a naturalized English angel, by having
had so long the management of the affairs of that countrey.
And pray,countreyman," said he, very kindly and very flat-
teringly, " for I would not have you fall into the general
error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordi-
nary a virtue what can be more extraordinary than that
a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities
of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have
often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the
courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so
improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most
ancient and most solidly founded monarchies upon the
earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put
his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to
banish that numerous and strongly allied family; to do all
this under the name and wages of a Parliament; to tram-
ple upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of
doors, when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new
and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that
in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things
that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all
his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterward by arti-
COWLEY
fice; to serve all parties patiently for awhile, and to com-
mand them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of
the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both
the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to
be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted
a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together Parlia-
ments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with
the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned
that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two mil-
lions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him
before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of
three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little in-
heritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in
the spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of
all the particulars of his glory) to bequeath all this with
one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and
triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with more
than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him,
not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which,
as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been
too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life
could have been stretched out to the extent of his immor-
tal designs? " 4
By this speech, I began to understand perfectly well
what kind of angel his pretended highness was; and hav-
ing fortified myself privately with a short mental prayer,
and with the sign of the cross (not out of any superstition
to the sign, but as a recognition of my baptism in Christ), 5
I grew a little bolder, and replied in this manner: " I should
not venture to oppose what you are pleased to say in
commendation of the late great, and (I confess) extraordi-
nary person, but that I remember Christ forbids us to
give assent to any other doctrine but what himself has
taught us, even though it should be delivered by an angel;
and if such you be, sir, it may be you have spoken all this
rather to try than to tempt my frailty, for sure I am that
we must renounce or forget all the laws of the New and
Old Testament, and those which are the foundation of
both, even the laws of moral and natural honesty, if we
approve of the actions of that man whom I suppose you
commend by irony.
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
155
' There would be no end to instance particulars of all
his wickedness, but to sum up a part of it briefly: What
can be more extraordinarily wicked than for a person, such
as yourself qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to
exalt himself above, but to trample upon, all his equals
and betters? to pretend freedom for all men, and under
the help of that pretence to make all men his servants? to
take arms against taxes of scarce two hundred thousand
pounds a year, and to raise them himself to above two
millions? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and
strike off three or four hundred heads? to fight against
an imaginary suspicion of I know not what two thousand
guards to be fetched for the king, I know not from whence,
and to keep up for himself no less than forty thousand?
to pretend the defence of Parliaments, and violently to dis-
solve all even of his own calling, and almost choosing?
to undertake the reformation of religion, to rob it even to
the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the rage of
all sects and heresies? to set up counsels of rapine, and
courts of murder? to fight against the king under a com-
mission for him; to take him forcibly out of the hands of
those for whom he had conquered him; to draw him into
his net, with protestations and vows of fidelity; and when
he had caught him in it, to butcher him, with as little
shame as conscience or humanity, in the open face of the
whole world? to receive a commission for the king and
Parliament, to murder (as I said) the one, and destroy no
less impudently the other? to fight against monarchy
when he declared for it, and declare against it when he
contrived for it in his own person? to abuse perfidiously
and supplant ingratefully his own general 6 first, and after-
ward most of those officers who, with the loss of their
honour and hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the
top of his unreasonable ambitions? to break his faith with
all enemies and with all friends equally? and to make no
less frequent use of the most solemn perjuries than the
looser sort of people do of customary oaths? to usurp three
kingdoms without any shadow of the least pretensions,
and to govern them as unjustly as he got them? to set
himself up as an idol (which we know, as St. Paul says,
in itself is nothing), and make the very streets of London
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like the valley of Hinnon, by burning the bowels of men
as a sacrifice to his molochship? 7 to seek to entail this
usurpation upon his posterity, and with it an endless war
upon the nation? and lastly, by the severest judgment of
Almighty God, to die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant,
with the curses of the present age, and the detestation of
all to succeed? "
Though I had much more to say (for the life of man
is so short that it allows not time enough to speak against
a tyrant) ; yet because I had a mind to hear how my strange
adversary would behave himself upon this subject, and to
give even the devil (as they say) his right, and fair play in
a disputation, I stopped here, and expected (not without
the frailty of a little fear) that he should have broken into
a violent passion in behalf of his favourite; but he on the
contrary very calmly, and with the dovelike innocency of
a serpent that was not yet warmed enough to sting, thus
replied to me:
" It is not so much out of my affection to that person
whom we discourse of (whose greatness is too solid to be
shaken by the breath of any oratory), as for your own sake
(honest countreyman), whom I conceive to err rather by
mistake than out of malice, that I shall endeavour to re-
form your uncharitable and unjust opinion. And, in the
first place, I must needs put you in mind of a sentence
of the most ancient of the heathen divines, that you men
are acquainted withal:
' 'Tis wicked with insulting feet to tread
Upon the monuments of the dead.'
And the intention of the reproof there is no less proper
for this subject, for it is spoken to a person who was
proud and insolent against those dead men to whom he
had been humble and obedient while they lived."
" Your highness may please," said I, " to add the verse
that follows, as no less proper for this subject:
" ' Whom God's just doom and their own sins have sent
Already to their punishment/
" But I take this to be the rule in the case, that, when
we fix any infamy upon deceased persons, it should not be
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
157
done out of hatred to the dead, but out of love and charity
to the living; that the curses, which only remain in men's
thoughts, and dare not come forth against tyrants (because
they are tyrants) while they are so, may at least be forever
settled and engraven upon their memories, to deter all
others from the like wickedness; which else, in the time
of their foolish prosperity, the flattery of their own hearts
and of other men's tongues would not suffer them to per-
ceive. Ambition is so subtle a tempter, and the corrup-
tion of human nature so susceptible of the temptation that
a man can hardly resist it, be he never so much forewarned
of the evil consequences; much less if he find not only the
concurrence of the present, but the approbation, too, of
following ages, which have the liberty to judge more freely.
The mischief of tyranny is too great, even in the shortest
time that it can continue; it is endless and insupportable, if
the example be to reign too, and if a Lambert must be
invited to follow the steps of a Cromwell, as well by the
voice of honour as by the sight of power and riches.
Though it may seem to some fantastically, yet was it wisely
done of the Syracusans to implead with the forms of their
ordinary justice to condemn and destroy even the statues
of all their tyrants; if it were possible to cut them out of all
history, and to extinguish their very names, I am of opin-
ion that it ought to be done; but, since they have left be-
hind them too deep wounds to be ever closed up without
a scar, at least let us set such a mark upon their memory
that men of the same wicked inclinations may be no less
affrighted with their lasting ignominy than enticed by their
momentary glories. And that your highness may perceive
that I speak not all this out of any private animosity
against the person of the late protector, I assure you,
upon my faith, that I bear no more hatred to his name
than I do to that of Marius or Sylla, who never did me,
or any friend of mine, the least injury"; and with that, trans-
ported by a holy fury, I fell into this sudden rapture:
" Curst be the man (what do I wish? as though
The wretch already were not so;
But curst on let him be) who thinks it brave
And great, his countrey 8 to enslave,
Who seeks to overpoise alone
The balance of a nation,
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Against the whole but naked state,
Who in his own light scale makes up with arms the weight.
" Who of his nation loves to be the first,
Though at the rate of being worst.
Who would be rather a great monster than
A well-proportioned man.
The son of earth with hundred hands
Upon his three-piled mountain stands,
Till thunder strikes him from the sky;
The son of earth again in his earth's womb does lie.
" What blood, confusion, ruin, to obtain
A short and miserable reign!
In what oblique and humble creeping wise
Does the mischievous serpent rise!
But even his forked tongue strikes dead:
When he's reared up his wicked head,
He murders with his mortal frown;
A basilisk he grows, if once he get a crown.
" But no guards can oppose assaulting fears,
Or undermining tears,
No more than doors or close-drawn curtains keep
The swarming dreams out, when we sleep.
That bloody conscience, too, of his
(For, oh, a rebel red-coat 'tis)
Does here his early hell begin,
He sees his slaves without, his tyrant feels within.
" Let, gracious God, let never more thine hand
Lift up this rod against our land.
A tyrant is a rod and serpent too,
And brings worse plagues than Egypt knew.
What rivers stained with blood have been!
What storm and hail-shot have we seen!
What sores deformed the ulcerous state!
What darkness, to be felt, has buried us of late!
" How has it snatched our flocks and herds away!
And made even of our sons a prey!
What croaking sects and vermin has it sent,
The restless nation to torment!
What greedy troops, what armed power
Of flies and locusts, to devour
The land, which everywhere they fill!
Nor fly they, Lord, away; no, they devour it still.
" Come the eleventh plague, rather than this should be;
Come sink us rather in the sea.
Come, rather, pestilence, and reap us down;
Come God's sword rather than our own,
Let rather Roman come again,
Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane:
In all the bonds we ever bore,
We grieved, we sighed, we wept; we never blushed before.
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 159
" If by our sins the divine justice be
Called to this last extremity,
Let some denouncing Jonas first be sent,
To try, if England can repent.
Methinks, at least, some prodigy,
Some dreadful comet from on high,
Should terribly forewarn the earth,
As of good princes' deaths, so of a tyrant's birth."
Here, the spirit of verse beginning a little to fail, I
stopped, and his highness, smiling, said: "I was glad to
see you engaged in the inclosure of metre; for, if you had
stayed in the open plain of declaiming against the word
Tyrant, I must have had patience for half a dozen hours,
till you had tired yourself as well as me. But pray, coun-
treyman, to avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat
with words, let me know, sir, what you mean by the name
tyrant, for I remember that, among your ancient authors,
not only all kings, but even Jupiter himself (your juvans
pater), is so termed; and perhaps, as it was used formerly
in a good sense, so we shall find it, upon better considera-
tion, to be still a good thing for the benefit and peace of
mankind; at least, it will appear whether your interpreta-
tion of it may be justly applied to the person who is now
the subject of our discourse."
" I call him," said I, " a tyrant, who either intrudes
himself forcibly into the government of his fellow-citizens
without any legal authority over them; or who, having a
just title to the government of a people, abuses it to the
destruction, or tormenting, of them. So that all tyrants
are at the same time usurpers, either of the whole, or at
least of a part, of that power which they assume to them-
selves; and no less are they to be accounted rebels, since
no man can usurp authority over others, but by rebelling
against them who had it before, or at least against those
laws which were his superiors: and in all these senses no
history can afford us a more evident example of tyranny,
or more out of all possibility of excuse or palliation, than
that of the person whom you are pleased to defend;
whether we consider his reiterated rebellions against all his
superiors, or his usurpation of the supreme power to him-
self, or his tyranny in the exercise of it; and, if lawful
princes have been esteemed tyrants, by not containing
themselves within the bounds of those laws which have
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been left them, as the sphere of their authority, by their
forefathers, what shall we say of that man who, having
by right no power at all in this nation, could not content
himself with that which had satisfied the most ambitious
of our princes? nay, not with those vastly extended limits
of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all that had been
prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great
modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from rebellion
and usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those
of the nation? "
" Hold, friend," said his highness, pulling me by my
arm, " for I see your zeal is transporting you again ;
whether the Protector were a tyrant in the exorbitant ex-
ercise of his power we shall see anon; it is requisite to
examine, first, whether he were so in the usurpation of
it. And I say that not only he, but no man else, ever was
or can be so; and that for these reasons: First, because
all power belongs only to God, who is the source and
fountain of it, as kings are of all honours in their do-
minions. Princes are but his viceroys in the little prov-
inces of this world; and to some he gives their places for
a few years, to some for their lives, and to others (upon
ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely for his
undisputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases
upon them, and their posterity, for such a date of time
as is prefixed in that patent of their destiny which is not
legible to you men below. Neither is it more unlawful
for Oliver to succeed Charles in the kingdom of England,
when God so disposes of it, than it had been for him to
have succeeded the Lord Strafford in his lieutenancy of
Ireland, if he had been appointed to it by the king then
reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey
him whom they see actually invested with the authority
by that sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, with-
out disputing or examining the causes, either of the re-
moval of the one or the preferment of the other. Sec-
ondly, because all power is attained, either by the election
and consent of the people (and that takes away your ob-
jection of forcible intrusion); or else, by a conquest of them
(and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to
be wanting in the usurpation of a tyrant); so that either
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 161
this title is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else
it is a wrong one, and then there are none else but
usurpers, if you examine the original pretences of the
princes of the world. Thirdly (which, quitting the dispute
in general, is a particular justification of his highness), the
government of England was totally broken and dissolved,
and extinguished by the confusions of a civil war, so that
his highness could not be accused to have possessed him-
self violently of the ancient building of the commonwealth,
but to have prudently and peacefully built up a new one
out of the ruins and ashes of the former; and he who, after
a deplorable shipwreck, can with extraordinary industry
gather together the dispersed and broken planks and pieces
of it, and with no less wonderful art and felicity so rejoin
them as to make a new vessel more tight and beautiful
than the old one, deserves, no doubt, to have the com-
mand of her (even as his highness had) by the desire of the
seamen and passengers themselves. And do but consider,
lastly (for I omit a multitude of weighty things that might
be spoken upon this noble argument), do but consider
seriously and impartially with yourself what admirable
parts of wit and prudence, what indefatigable diligence
and invincible courage, must, of necessity, have con-
curred in the person of that man, who, from so contempt-
ible beginnings (as I observed before), and through so
many thousand difficulties, was able not only to make him-
self the greatest and most absolute monarch of this nation,
but to add to it the entire conquest of Ireland and Scotland
(which the whole force of the world, joined with the
Roman virtue, could never attain to), and to crown all
this with illustrious and heroical undertakings and suc-
cesses upon all our foreign enemies; do but (I say again)
consider this, and you will confess that his prodigious
merits were a better title to imperial dignity than the blood
of a hundred royal progenitors; and will rather lament
that he had lived not to overcome more nations than envy
him the conquest and dominion of these."
" Whoever you are," said I, my indignation making me
somewhat bolder, " your discourse, methinks, becomes as
little the person of a tutelar angel as Cromwell's actions
did that of a protector. It is upon these principles that
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all the great crimes of the world have been committed,
and most particularly those which I have had the misfor-
tune to see in my own time and in my own countrey. If
these be to be allowed, we must break up human society,
retire into woods, and equally there stand upon our guards
against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild
beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation upon the rights
of a whole nation, there can be none, most certainly, upon
those of a private person; and, if the robbers of countreys
be God's vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves
and banditos and murderers are his under officers. It is
true, which you say, that God is the source and fountain
of all power; and it is no less true that he is the creator of
serpents as well as angels; nor does his goodness fail of
its ends even in the malice of his own creatures. What
power he suffers the devil to exercise in this world is too
apparent by our daily experience; and by nothing more
than the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for,
and patronize in England. But would you infer from
thence that the power of the devil is a just and lawful one,
and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him?
God is the fountain of all powers; but some flow from the
right hand, as it were, of his goodness, and others from
the left hand of his justice; and the world, like an island
between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nour-
ished by the one and sometimes overrun and ruined by the
other; and (to continue a little further the allegory) we
are never overwhelmed with the latter till, either by our
malice or negligence, we have stopped and dammed up
the former.
" But to come a little closer to your argument, or rather
the image of an argument, your similitude. If Cromwell
had come to command in Ireland in the place of the late
Lord Strafford, I should have yielded obedience, not for
the equipage, and the strength, and the guards which he
brought with him, but for the commission which he should
first have showed me from our common sovereign that
sent him; and, if he could have done that from God
Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England;
but that he was so far from being able to do that, on
the contrary, I read nothing but commands, and even
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 163
public proclamations, from God Almighty not to ad-
mit him.
" Your second argument is that he had the same right
for his authority that is the foundation of all others, even
the right of conquest. Are we then so unhappy as to be
conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily rate,
like a labourer, to conquer others for us? did we furnish
him with arms, only to draw and try upon our enemies
(as we, it seems, falsely thought them), and keep them
forever sheathed in the bowels of his friends? did we fight
for liberty against our prince that we might become slaves
to our servant? This is such an impudent pretence as
neither he, nor any of his flatterers for him, had ever the
face to mention. Though it can hardly be spoken or
thought of without passion, yet I shall, if you please, argue
it more calmly than the case deserves.
" The right, certainly, of conquest can only be exercised
upon those against whom the war is declared and the vic-
tory obtained. So that no whole nation can be said to
be conquered but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men
are so far from stating the quarrel against their countrey
that they do it only against a person or party which they
really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it;
neither can there be any just cause for the destruction of
a part of the body but when it is done for the preservation
and safety of the whole. It is our countrey that raises
men in the quarrel, our countrey that arms, our coun-
trey that pays them, our countrey that authorizes the
undertaking, and, by that, distinguishes it from rapine and
murder; lastly, it is our countrey that directs and com-
mands the army, and is their general. So that to say, in
civil wars, that the prevailing party conquers their coun-
trey is to say the countrey conquers itself. And, if the gen-
eral only of that party be conqueror, the army by which he
is made so is no less conquered than the army which is
beaten, and have as little reason to triumph in that vic-
tory, by which they lose both their honour and liberty. So
that if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that
against which he was sent; and what that was must ap-
pear by his commission. It was (says that) against a com-
pany of evil counsellors and disaffected persons, who kept
164 COWLEY
the king from a good intelligence and compunction with
his people. It was not then against the people. It is so
far from being so that even of that party which was beaten
the conquest did not belong to Cromwell, but to the Par-
liament which employed him in their service, or rather,
indeed, to the king and Parliament, for whose service (if
there had been any faith in men's vows and protestations)
the wars were undertaken. Merciful God! did the right
of this miserable conquest remain, then, in his majesty?
and didst thou suffer him to be destroyed, with more bar-
barity than if he had been conquered even by savages and
cannibals? was it for king and Parliament that we fought,
and has it fared with them just as with the army which
we fought against, the one part being slain and the other
fled? It appears therefore plainly that Cromwell was not
a conqueror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the
king and Parliament, and a usurper upon those of the
people. I do not here deny the conquest to be sometimes
(though it be very rarely) a true title, but I deny this to
be a true conquest. Sure I am that the race of our princes
came not in by such a one. One nation may conquer
another, sometimes, justly; and if it be unjustly, yet still
it is a true conquest, and they are to answer for the in-
justice only to God Almighty (having nothing else in au-
thority above them), and not as particular rebels to their
countrey, which is, and ought to be, their superior and their
lord. If, perhaps, we find usurpation instead of conquest
in the original titles of some royal families abroad (as, no
doubt, there have been many usurpers before ours, though
none in so impudent and execrable a manner), all I can
say for them is that their title was very weak, till, by length
of time, and the death of all juster pretenders, it became
to be the true because it was the only one.
" Your third defence of his highness (as your highness
pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pre-
tence of conquest; for then a man may say anything. The
government was broken; who broke it? It was dissolved;
who dissolved it? It was extinguished; who was it, but
Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but cast away
even the very snuff of it? As if a man should murder
a whole family, and then possess himself of the house, be-
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 165
cause it is better that he than only rats should live
there. Jesus God! " said I, and at that word I perceived
my pretended angel to give a start and trembled; but I
took no notice of it, and went on; " this were a wicked pre-
tension, even though the whole family were destroyed; but
the heirs (blessed be God) are yet surviving, and likely
to outlive all heirs of their dispossessors, besides their in-
famy. ' Rode, caper, vitem,' etc. There will be yet wine
enough left for the sacrifice of those wild beasts that have
made so much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell
think, like Nero, to set the city on fire only that he might
have the honour of being founder of a new and more
beautiful one? He could not have such a shadow of virtue
in his wickedness; he meant only to rob more securely
and more richly in the midst of the combustion; he little
thought then tliat he should ever have been able to make
himself master of the palace, as well as plunder the goods
of the commonwealth. He was glad to see the public
vessel (the sovereign of the seas) in as desperate a condi-
tion as his own little canoe, and thought only, with some
scattered planks of that great shipwreck, to make a better
fisher-boat for himself. But when he saw that, by the
drowning of the master (whom he himself treacherously
knocked on the head as he was swimming for his life), by
the flight and dispersion of others, and cowardly patience
of the remaining company, that all was abandoned to his
pleasure; with the old hulk and new misshapen and dis-
agreeing pieces of his own he made up, with much ado,
that piratical vessel which we have seen him command, and
which how tight, indeed, it was may best be judged by its
perpetual leaking.
" First, then (much more wicked than those foolish
daughters in the fable, who cut their old father into pieces,
in hope, by charms and witchcraft, to make him young
and lusty again), this man endeavoured to destroy the
building, before he could imagine in what manner, with
what materials, by what workmen, or what architect it was
to be rebuilt. Secondly, if he had dreamed himself to be
able to revive that body which he had killed, yet it had
been but the insupportable insolence of an ignorant
mountebank; and, thirdly (which concerns us nearest), that
ii
166 COWLEY
very new thing which he made out of the ruins of the old,
is no more like the original, either for beauty, use, or dura-
tion than an artificial plant, raised by the fire of a chemist,
is comparable to the true and natural one which he first
burned, that out of the ashes of it he might produce an
imperfect similitude of his own making.
" Your last argument is such (when reduced to syllo-
gism), that the major proposition of it would make strange
work in the world if it were received for truth; to wit, that
he who has the best parts in a nation has the right of
being king over it. We had enough to do here of old
with the contention between two branches of the same
family. What would become of us when every man in
England should lay his claim to the government? And
truly, if Cromwell should have commenced his plea, when
he seems to have begun his ambition, there were few per-
sons besides that might not at the same time have put
in theirs too. But his deserts, I suppose, you will date
from the same term that I do his great demerits, that is,
from the beginning of our late calamities (for, as for his
private faults before, I can only wish, and that with as
much charity to him as to the public, that he had continued
in them till his death, rather than changed them for those
of his latter days), and therefore, we must begin the con-
sideration of his greatness from the unlucky era of our
own misfortunes, which puts me in mind of what was said
less truly of Pompey the Great, ' Nostra miseria magnus
es.' But, because the general ground of your argumenta-
tion consists in this, that all men who are the effecters of
extraordinary mutations in the world, must needs have
extraordinary forces of Nature by which they are enabled
to turn about, as they please, so great a wheel; I shall
speak, first, a few words upon this universal proposition,
which seems so reasonable, and is so popular, before I
descend to the particular examination of the eminences of
that person which is in question.
" I have often observed (with all submission and resig-
nation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal
Providence), that, when the fulness and maturity of time is
come, that produces the great confusions and changes in
the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 167
the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human
force or policy, but of the divine justice and predestina-
tion; and, though we see a man, like that which we call
Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of
that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be con-
vinced that his hand is moved by some secret, and, to us
who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of
the current is then so violent that the strongest men in
the world can not draw up against it; and none are so
weak but they may sail down with it. These are the spring-
tides of public affairs, which we see often happen, but seek
in vain to discover any certain causes:
" ' Omnia fluminis '
Ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo
Cum pace delabentis Etruscum
In mare, nunc lapides adesos,
Stirpesque raptas, et pecus, et domos
Volventis una, non sine montium
Clamore, vicinaeque sylvae;
Cum fera diluvies quietos
Irritat amnes.' (Hor., 3, Carm., xxix.)
And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices
that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all
this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by
intending and imagining to be so); but it is God that
breaks up the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all
the art then, and industry of mankind, is not sufficient to
raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In such a time it
was, as this, that not all the wisdom and power of the
Roman Senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor
the courage and virtue of Brutus, was able to defend their
countrey or themselves against the unexperienced rash-
ness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous
madman. 10 The valour and prudent counsels, on the one
side, are made fruitless, and the errors and cowardice, on
the other, harmless by unexpected accidents. The one
general saves his life, and gains the whole world, by a very
dream; and the other loses both at once by a little mis-
take of the shortness of his sight. 11 And though this be
not always so, for we see that, in the translation of the
great monarchies from one to another, it pleased God to
make choice of the most eminent men in Nature, as Cyrus,
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Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief
instruments and actors in so admirable a work (the end
of this being not only to destroy or punish one nation,
which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to exalt
and bless another, which is only to be effected by great
and virtuous persons); yet, when God only intends the
temporary chastisement of a people, he does not raise up
his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to call him),
or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good as
vices to do harm); but he makes the Masaniellos and the
Johns of Leyden the instruments of his vengeance, that
the power of the Almighty might be more evident by the
weakness of the means which he chooses to demonstrate
it. He did not assemble the serpents, and the monsters
of Afric, to correct the pride of the Egyptians, but called
for his armies of locusts out of Ethiopia, and formed new
ones of vermin out of the very dust; and, because you see
a whole countrey destroyed by these, will you argue from
thence they must needs have had both the craft of foxes
and the courage of lions?
" It is easy to apply this general observation to the par-
ticular case of our troubles in England, and that they
seem only to be meant for a temporary chastisement of
our sins, and not for a total abolishment of the old and
introduction of a new government, appears probable to
me from these considerations, as far as we may be bold
to make a judgment of the will of God in future events.
First, because he has suffered nothing to settle, or take
root, in the place of that which hath been so unwisely and
unjustly removed, that none % of these untempered mortars
can hold out against the next blast of wind, nor any stone
stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have
refused be made again the head of the corner. For, when
the indisposed and long-tormented commonwealth has
wearied and spent itself almost to nothing with the charge-
able, various, and dangerous experiments of several
mountebanks, it is to be supposed, it will have the wit at
last to send for a true physician, especially when it sees
(which is the second consideration) most evidently (as it
now begins to do, and will do every day more and more,
and might have done perfectly long since) that no usurpa-
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 169
tion (under what name or pretext soever) can be kept up
without open force, nor force without the continuance of
those oppressions upon the people, which will, at last, tire
out their patience, though it be great even to stupidity.
They can not be so dull (when poverty and hunger begin
to whet their understanding) as not to find out this no
extraordinary mystery, that it is madness in a nation to
pay three millions a year for the maintaining of their servi-
tude under tyrants, when they might live free for nothing
under their princes. This, I say, will not always lie hid,
even to the slowest capacities; and the next truth they will
discover afterward is that a whole people can never have
the will, without having, at the same time, the power to
redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not look (methinks)
as if God had forsaken the family of that man, from whom
he has raised up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all
other commendable qualities, as ever lived, perhaps (for
so many together, and so young), in any other family in
the whole world. Especially, if we add hereto this con-
sideration, that, by protecting and preserving some of
them already through as great dangers as ever were passed
with safety, either by prince or private person, he has
given them already (as we may reasonably hope it to be
meant) a promise and earnest of his future favours. And,
lastly (to return closely to the discourse from which I
have a little digressed) because I see nothing of those
excellent parts of nature, and mixture of merit with their
vices, in the late disturbers of our peace and happiness,
that uses to be found in the persons of those who are
born for the erection of new empires.
" And, I confess, I find nothing of that kind, no, not
any shadow (taking away the false light of some prosper-
ity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it.
And, certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral
and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of
the former than by men's actions; or of the latter than
by their writings or speeches. As for these latter (which
are least in merit, or, rather, which are only the instru-
ments of mischief, where the other are wanting), I think
you can hardly pick out the name of a man who ever was
called great, besides him we are now speaking of, who
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never left the memory behind him of one wise or witty
apophthegm even among his domestic servants or greatest
flatterers. That little in print, which remains upon a sad
record for him, is such as a satire against him would not
have made him say, for fear of transgressing too much the
rules of probability. I know not what you can produce
for the justification of his parts in this kind, but his having
been able to deceive so many particular persons, and so
many whole parties; which, if you please to take notice
of for the advantage of his intellectuals, I desire you to
allow me the liberty to do so too when I am to speak of
his morals. The truth of the thing is this, that if craft
be wisdom, and dissimulation wit (assisted both and im-
proved with hypocrisies and perjuries), I must not deny
him to have been singular in both; but so gross was the
manner in which he made use of them, that, as wise men
ought not to have believed him at first, so no man was fool
enough to believe him at last; neither did any man seem
to do it, but those who thought they gained as much by
that dissembling, as he did by his. His very actings of
godliness grew at last as ridiculous, as if a player, by
putting on a gown, should think he represented excellently
a woman, though his beard, at the same time, were seen
by all the spectators. If you ask me why they did not
hiss, and explode him off the stage, I can only answer that
they durst not do so, because the actors and the door-
keepers were too strong for the company. I must confess
that by these arts (how grossly soever managed, as by
hypocritical praying and silly preaching, by unmanly tears
and whinings, by falsehoods and perjuries even diabolical)
he had at first the good fortune (as men call it, that is, the
ill fortune) to attain his ends; but it was because his ends
were so unreasonable that no human reason could foresee
them; which made them who had to do with him be-
lieve that he was rather a well-meaning and deluded bigot
than a crafty and malicious impostor; that these arts were
helped by an indefatigable industry (as you term it), I
am so far from doubting that I intended to object that
diligence as the worst of his crimes. It makes me almost
mad when I hear a man commended for his diligence in
wickedness. If I were his son I should wish to God he
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL iyi
had been a more lazy person, and that we might have
found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordi-
narily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his
when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the
wicked are, the Scripture often tells us: ' Their feet run to
evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood,' Isa.
lix, 7. ' He travels with iniquity/ Ps. vii, 14. ' He xfe-
viseth mischief upon his bed/ Ps. xxxiv, 4. ' They 'search
out iniquity, they accomplish a diligent search/ Ps. Ixiv, 6;
and in a multitude of other places. , And would it not
seem ridiculous to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and
for his indefatigable industry in ranging all night about
the country, while the sheep, ,and perhaps the shepherd,
and perhaps the very 4ag's, too, are all asleep?
' The Chartreux wants the warning of a bell
To call him to the duties of his cell;
There needs no noise at all t' awaken sin,
Th' adulterer and the thief his 'larum has within.'
" And, if the diligence of wicked persons be so much
to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggera-
tion of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can
avoid the same censure. If the undertaking bold and vast
and unreasonable designs can deserve that honourable
name, I am sure Faux and his fellow gunpowder friends
will have cause to pretend, though not an equal, yet at
least the next place of honour; neither can I doubt but,
if they too had succeeded, they would have found their
applauders and admirers. It was bold, unquestionably, for
a man, in defiance of all human and divine laws (and with
so little probability of a long impunity), so publicly and so
outrageously to murder his master; it was bold, with so
much insolence and affront, to expel and disperse all the
chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power; it
was bold to violate, so openly and so scornfully, all acts
and constitutions of a nation, and afterward even of his
own making; it was bold to assume the authority of call-
ing, and bolder yet of breaking, so many Parliaments; it
was bold to trample upon the patience of his own, and
provoke that of all neighbouring countries; it was bold, I
say, above all boldnesses, to usurp this tyranny to himself;
and impudent above all impudences to endeavour to trans-
Ij2 COWLEY
mit it to his posterity. But all this boldness is so far from
being a sign of manly courage (which dares not transgress
the rules of any other virtue) that it is only a demonstra-
tion of brutish madness or diabolical possession. In both
which last cases there use frequent examples to appear, of
such extraordinary force as may justly seem more won-
derful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell;
neither^ 4t stranger to believe that a whole nation should
not be able tp govern him and a mad army than that five
or six men shotijd not be strong enough to bind a dis-
tracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wicked-
ness but it gives him^he boldness to attempt a greater.
It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother and all the
chief nobility of the empire; it was... boldly done to set the
metropolis of the whole world on fire and undauntedly
play upon his harp while he saw it burning; I could reckon
up five hundred boldnesses of that great person (for why
should not he, too, be called so?) who wanted, when he
was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed
any woman in the like necessity.
" It would look (I must confess) like envy, or too much
partiality, if I should say that personal kind of courage had
been deficient in the man we speak of; I am confident it
was not; and yet I may venture, I think, to affirm that
no man ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the
rate of fewer wounds, or dangers of his own body; and
though his valour might perhaps have given him a just
pretension to one of the first charges in an army, it could
not certainly be a sufficient ground for a title to the com-
mand of three nations.
" What then shall we say? that he did all this by witch-
craft? He did so, indeed, in a great measure, by a sin that
is called like it in the Scriptures. But truly and unpas-
sionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person,
which might be thought to have produced those of his for-
tune, I can espy no other but extraordinary diligence and
infinite dissimulation; and believe he was exalted above
his nation partly by his own faults, but chiefly for ours.
" We have brought him thus briefly (not through all
his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped authority; and, be-
cause you say it was great pity he did not live to com-
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 173
mand more kingdoms, be pleased to let me represent to
you, in a few words, how well I conceive he governed
these. And we will divide the consideration into that of
his foreign and domestic actions. The first of his foreign
was a peace with our brethren of Holland (who were the
first of our neighbours that God chastised for having had
so great a hand in the encouraging and abetting our
troubles at home); who would not imagine, at first glance,
that this had been the most virtuous and laudable deed
that his whole life could have made any parade of? But
no man can look upon all the circumstances without per-
ceiving that it was purely the sale and sacrificing of the
greatest advantages that this countrey could ever hope, and
was ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private in-
terests of his covetousness and ambition, and the security
3f his new and unsettled usurpation. No sooner is that
danger past but this Beatus Pacificus is kindling a fire in
the northern world, and carrying a war two thousand miles
off, westward. Two millions a year (besides all the vales of
his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice now either
his avarice or prodigality, as the two hundred pounds were
that he was born to. He must have his prey of the whole
Indies, both by sea and land, this great alligator. To sat-
isfy our Anti-Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare
as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalem)
we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches
from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag
of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus as well
as Sylla of our nation, whom God never forsook in any
of his undertakings), I desire them to consider how, since
the English name was ever heard of, it never received so
great and so infamous a blow as under the imprudent
conduct of this unlucky Faustus; and, herein, let me ad-
mire the justice of God, in this circumstance, that they,
who had enslaved their countrey (though a great army,
which I wish, may be observed by ours with trembling),
should be so shamefully defeated by the hands of forty
slaves. It was very ridiculous to see how prettily they
endeavoured to hide this ignominy under the great name
of the conquest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should
have the impudence to brag afterward of the victory, be-
12
i;4 COWLEY
cause, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet
they quartered that night in a village of the enemies. The
war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly,
and how much we have gotten by it let the custom-house
and exchange inform you; and if he please to boast of
the taking a part of the silver fleet (which, indeed, nobody
else but he who was the sole gainer has cause to do), at
least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which
is the only loser) to complain of the loss of twelve hundred
of her ships.
" But because it may here, perhaps, be answered, that
his successes nearer home have extinguished the disgrace
of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more
to be remembered for his glory than St. Domingo for his
disadvantage, I must confess, as to the honour of the Eng-
lish courage, that they were not wanting upon that occa-
sion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly
against their master) to the upholding of the renown of
their warlike ancestors. But for his particular share of it,
who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly
abroad, I can only say that, for less money than he in the
short time of his reign exacted from his fellow-subjects,
some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their
own persons) have added to the dominion of England
not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself.
And, this being all considerable as concerning his enter-
prises abroad, let us examine, in the next place, how much
we owe him for his justice and good government at home.
" And first he found the commonwealth (as they then
called it) in a ready stock of about eight hundred thou-
sand pounds; he left the commonwealth (as he had the
impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and a
half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed,
indeed, in comparison of the golden times of our late
princes; he left it as much again more decayed than he
found it; and yet, not only no prince in England, but
no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infa-
mous means to raise moneys. I shall only instance in one
that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but
was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy
of it. That which he put in practice was decimation, 12
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL
175
which was the most impudent breach of all public faith
that the whole nation had given, and all private capitula-
tions which himself had made, as the nation's general and
servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history,
from any of the most barbarous generals of the most bar-
barous people. Which, because it has been most excel-
lently, and most largely, laid open by a whole book 13
written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to
remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look
upon that author, when you would recollect all the par-
ticulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The other de-
sign, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently
pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the call-
ing in and establishment of the Jews at London, from
which he was rebutted by the universal outcry of the
divines, and e^ en of the citizens too, who took it ill, that
a considerable number, at least among themselves, were
not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for
this design, they say, he invented (O Antichrist! Howjpbv
and 6 TLovrjpbs !) to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue,
if their purses and devotions could have reached to the
purchase. And this, indeed, if he had done only to reward
that nation which had given the first noble example of
crucifying their king, it might have had some appearance
of gratitude; but he did it only for love of their mammon,
and would have sold afterward, for as much more, St.
Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a
mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God that
he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, ex-
cepting only that heathenish way of the ( Common Prayer-
Book.' But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for
getting money; when every penny, that for almost five
years he took every day from every man living in Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery as if it
had been taken by a thief upon the highways? Was it not
so? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assist-
ance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to
the command of all men's purses than he might have had
to any one's whom he had met, and been too strong for,
on a road? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr.
Coney, 14 to be disputed by a legal trial, he (which was the
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highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not
only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned
the counsel of the plaintiff; that is, he shut up the law
itself close prisoner, that no man might have relief from
or access to it. And it ought to be remembered that this
was done by those men who a few years before had so
bitterly decried and openly opposed the king's regular and
formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money.
" But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of
justice, it can not be denied that he set up new ones; and
such they were! that as no virtuous prince before would,
so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many
hundred years under such a form of justice as has been
able regularly to punish all men that offended against it;
and is it so deficient, just now, that we must seek out new
ways how to proceed against offenders? The reason which
can only be given in nature for a necessity of this is, be-
cause those things are now made crimes which were never
esteemed so in former ages; and there must needs be a
new court set up to punish that which all the old ones
were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from
declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses
(which, if I should undertake to do, I should never get
to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some
few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many
to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross. Let
any man show me (for, though I pretend not to much read-
ing, I will defy him in all history), let any man show me
(I say) an example of any nation in the world (though
much greater than ours) where there have, in the space
of four years, been made so many prisoners, only out of
the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination.
I grant you that Marius and Sylla, and the accursed trium-
virate after them, put more people to death; but the rea-
son, I think, partly was because in those times, that had
a mixture of some honour with their madness, they
thought it a more civil revenge against a Roman to take
away his life than to take away his liberty. But truly, in
the point of murder, too, we have little reason to think
that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples
that have ever been set it in other countries. Our judges
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 177
and our courts of justice have not been idle, and, to omit
the whole reign of our late king (till the beginning of the
war), in which no drop of blood was ever drawn but from
two or three ears, I think the longest time of our worst
princes scarce saw many more executions than the short
one of our blest reformer. And we saw and smelt in our
open streets (as I marked to you at first) the broiling of
human bowels as a burnt-offering of a sweet savour to
our idol; but all murdering, and all torturing (though after
the subtilest invention of his predecessors of Sicily), is
more humane and more supportable than his selling of
Christians, Englishmen, gentlemen; his selling of them
(oh, monstrous! oh, incredible!) to be slaves in America.
If his whole life could be reproached with no other action,
yet this alone would weigh down all the multiplicity of
crimes in any cf our tyrants; and I dare only touch, with-
out stopping or insisting upon so insolent and so exe-
crable a cruelty, for fear of falling into so violent (though
a just) passion, as would make me exceed that temper and
moderation which I resolve to observe in this discourse
with you.
" These are great calamities, but even these are not the
most insupportable that we have endured; for so it is, that
the scorn, and mockery, and the insultings of an enemy
are more painful than the deepest wounds of his serious
fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwittily and un-
gracefully merry) with our sufferings: he loved to say and
do senseless and fantastical things, only to show his power
of doing or saying anything. It would ill befit mine, or
any civil mouth, to repeat those words which he spoke con-
cerning the most sacred of our English laws, the Petition
of Right, and Magna Charta. 15 To-day you should see
him ranting so wildly that nobody durst come near him;
the morrow, flinging of cushions, and playing at snow-
balls with his servants. This month he assembles a Parlia-
ment, and professes himself, with humble tears, to be only
their servant and their minister; the next month he swears
by the living God that he will turn them out of doors,
and he does so, in his princely way of threatening, bid-
ding them ' Turn the buckles of their girdles behind
them/ The representative of whole, nay, of three whole
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nations, was, in his esteem, so contemptible a meeting, that
he thought the affronting and expelling of them to be a
thing of so little consequence as not to deserve that he
should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall
we call this? boldness or brutishness? rashness or frenzy?
There is no name can come up to it; and therefore we
must leave it without one. Now, a Parliament must be
chosen in the new manner, next time in the old form, but
all cashiered still after the newest mode. Now he will gov-
ern by major-generals, now by one House, now by another
House, now by no House; now the freak takes him, and
he makes seventy peers of the land at one clap (extempore,
and stans pede in uno); and, to manifest the absolute
power of the potter, he chooses not only the worst clay
he could find, but picks up even the dirt and mire to
form out of it his vessels of honour. It was said anciently
of Fortune that, when she had a mind to be merry, and
to divert herself, she was wont to raise up such kind of
people to the highest dignities. This son of Fortune,
Cromwell (who was himself one of the primest of her jests),
found out the true haut-gout of this pleasure, and rejoiced
in the extravagance of his ways, as the fullest demonstra-
tion of his uncontrollable sovereignty. Good God ! What
have we seen? and what have we suffered? what do all
these actions signify? what do they say aloud to the whole
nation, but this (even as plainly as if it were proclaimed by
heralds through the streets of London), * You are slaves
and fools, and so I will use you ! '
" These are, briefly, a part of those merits which you
lament to have wanted the reward of more kingdoms, and
suppose that, if he had lived longer, he might have had
them which I am so far from concurring to that I believe
his seasonable dying to have been a greater good fortune
to him than all the victories and prosperities of his life.
For he seemed evidently (methinks) to be near the end
of his deceitful glories ; his own army grew at last as weary
of him as the rest of the people ; and I never passed of late
before his palace (his, do I call it? I ask God and the king
pardon), but I never passed of late before Whitehall with-
out reading upon the gate of it ' Mene Mene, Tekel Uphar-
sin.' But it pleased God to take him from the ordinary
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 179
courts of men, and juries of his peers, to his own high
court of justice, which being more merciful than ours be-
low, there is a little room yet left for the hope of his
friends, if he have any; though the outward unrepentance
of his death afford but small materials for the work of char-
ity, especially if he designed even then to entail his own
injustice upon his children, and, by it, inextricable con-
fusions and civil wars upon the nation. But here's at last
an end of him. And where's now the fruit of all that blood
and calamity, which his ambition has cost the world?
Where is it? Why, his son (you will say) has the whole
crop. I doubt he will find it quickly blasted. I have
nothing to say against the gentleman, or any living of his
family; on the contrary, I wish him better fortune than to
have a long and unquiet possession of his master's inherit-
ance. Whatsoever I have spoken against his father is that
which I should have thought (though decency, perhaps,
might have hindered me from saying it) even against mine
own, if I had been so unhappy, as that mine, by the same
ways, should have left me three kingdoms."
Here I stopped, and my pretended protector, who, I
expected, should have been very angry, fell a-laughing; it
seems at the simplicity of my discourse, for thus he re-
plied: " You seem to pretend extremely to the old obso-
lete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt
very much whether, from this vast prospect of three king-
doms, you can show me any acres of your own. But these
are so far from making you a prince that I am afraid your
friends will never have the contentment to see you so much
as a justice of peace in your own country. For this, I
perceive, which you call virtue is nothing else but either
the frowardness of a cynic or the laziness of an epicurean.
I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimulation, and
unwearied diligence in my hero; and I assure you that
he, whose life is constantly drawn by those two, shall never
be misled out of the way of greatness. But I see you are
a pedant, and Platonical statesman, a theoretical common-
wealth's-man, a Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches got-
ten by your golden mediocrities? or the supreme place
attained to by virtues that must not stir out of the middle?
Do you study Aristotle's politics, and write, if you please,
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comments upon them; and let another but practise Ma-
chiavel, and let us see, then, which of you two will come to
the greatest preferments. If the desire of rule and superior-
ity be a virtue (as sure I am it is more imprinted in human
nature than any of your lethargical morals) and what is
the virtue of any creature but the exercise of those powers
and inclinations which God has infused into it? if that (I
say) be virtue, we ought not to esteem anything vice which
is the most proper, if not the only, means of attaining of it:
" It is a truth so certain, and so clear,
That to the first-born man it did appear;
Did not the mighty heir, the noble Cain,
By the fresh laws of Nature taught, disdain
That (though a brother) any one should be
A greater favourite to God than he?
He strook him down; and, so (said he) so fell
The sheep, which thou didst sacrifice so well.
Since all the fullest sheaves, which I could bring,
Since all were blasted in the offering,
Lest God should my next victim too despise,
The acceptable priest I'll sacrifice.
Hence, coward fears; for the first blood so spilt,
As a reward, he the first city built.
'Twas a beginning generous and high,
Fit for a grandchild of the Deity.
So well advanced, 'twas pity there he stayed;
One step of glory more he should have made,
And to the utmost bounds of greatness gone;
Had Adam too been killed, he might have reigned alone.
One brother's death, what do I mean to name,
A small oblation to revenge and fame?
The mighty-souled Abimelec, to shew
What for a high place a higher spirit can do,
A hecatomb almost of brethren slew,
And seventy times in nearest blood he dyed
(To make it hold) his royal purple pride.
Why do I name the lordly creature man?
The weak, the mild, the coward woman, can,
When to a crown she cuts her sacred way,
All that oppose, with manlike courage, slay.
So Athaliah, when she saw her son,
And with his life her dearer greatness gone,
With a majestic fury slaughtered all
Whom high birth might to high pretences call:
Since he was dead who all her power sustained,
Resolved to reign alone; resolved, and reigned.
In vain her sex, in vain the laws withstood,
In vain the sacred plea of David's blood;
A noble, and a bold contention, she
(One woman) undertook with destiny.
She to pluck down, destiny to uphold
(Obliged by holy oracles of old)
The great Jessaean race on Juda's throne;
GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL 181
Till 'twas at last an equal wager grown,
Scarce fate, with much ado, the better got by one.
Tell me not, she herself at last was slain;
Did she not, first, seven years (a lifetime) reign?
Seven royal years t' a public spirit will seem
More than the private life of a Methusalem.
'Tis godlike to be great; and, as they say,
A thousand years to God are but a day;
So to a man, when once a crown he wears,
The coronation day's more than a thousand years."
He would have gone on, I perceived, in his blas-
phemies but that, by God's grace, I became so bold as
thus to interrupt him: " I understand now perfectly (which
I guessed at long before) what kind of angel and protector
you are, and though your style in verse be very much
mended since you were wont to deliver oracles, yet your
doctrine is much worse than ever you had formerly (that
I heard of) the face to publish; whether your long practice
with mankind has increased and improved your malice,
or whether you think us in this age to be grown so impu-
dently wicked that there needs no more art or disguises to
draw us to your party."
" My dominion," said he hastily, and with a dreadful,
furious look, " is so great in this world, and I am so power-
ful a monarch of it, that I need not be ashamed that you
should know me; and that you may see I know you too,
I know you to be an obstinate and inveterate malignant;
and for that reason I shall take you along with me to the
next garrison of ours; from whence you shall go to the
Tower, and from thence to the court of justice, and from
thence you know whither." I was almost in the very
pounces of the great bird of prey:
" When, lo, ere the last words were fully spoke,
From a fair cloud, which rather op'd than broke,
A flash of light, rather than lightening, came,
So swift, and yet so gentle, was the flame.
Upon it rode (and, in his full career,
Seemed to my eyes no sooner there, than here)
The comeliest youth of all th* angelic race;
Lovely his shape, ineffable his face.
The frowns, with which he strook the trembling fiend,
All smiles of human beauty did transcend;
His beams of locks fell part dishevelled down,
Part upward curled, and formed a nat'ral crown,
Such as the British monarchs used to wear;
If gold might be compared with angel's hair.
1 82 COWLEY
His coat and flowing mantle were so bright,
They seemed both made of woven silver light:
Across his breast an azure ribbon went,
At which a medal hung, that did present
In wondrous living figures to the sight,
The mystic champion's, and old dragon's fight;
And from his mantle's side there shone afar,
A fixed, and, I believe, a real star.
In his fair hand (what need was there of more?)
No arms, but th' English bloody cross, he bore,
Which when he toward th' affrighted tyrant bent,
And some few words pronounced (but what they meant,
Or were, could not, alas! by me be known,
Only, I well perceived, Jesus was one)
He trembled, and he roared, and fled away;
Mad to quit thus his more than hoped-for prey.
Such rage inflames the wolf's wild heart and eyes
(Robbed, as he thinks, unjustly of his prize)
Whom unawares the shepherd spies, and draws
The bleating lamb from out his ravenous jaws:
The shepherd fain himself would he assail,
But fear above his hunger does prevail,
He knows his foe too strong, and must be gone:
He grins, as he looks back, and howls, as he goes on."
NOTES
1 That is, from a low and plebeian original.
I The idea of this figure appears to be taken from the frontispiece
to Hobbes's " Leviathan."
* Meaning the Commonwealth.
4 Hume has inserted this character of Cromwell, but altered, as he
says, in some particulars, from the original in his " History of Great
Britain."
6 In virtue of which he was bound to fight against sin, the world,
and the devil.
6 Sir Thomas Fairfax.
T Cowley only means that under the Protector's government some
persons suffered the customary death of traitors.
* This word, in the sense of patria, or as including in it the idea of
a civil constitution, is always spelled by Cowley with an e before the y
countrry; in the sense of rus, without an e country.
* Cowley inserts " omnia " for the " caetera " of Horace.
10 Octavius and Antony.
" It was owing to a dream of his physician that Octavius saved his
life (by quitting his tent, where he was sick, in a critical moment), and
assisted at the battle of Philippi, which gained him the whole world.
Cassius's death, and the ill success at Philippi, was owing to a mistake
caused by his shortness of sight.
12 Decimation here means not the putting to death of every tenth
man, but the levying of the tenth penny on the estates of the royalists.
II This book is probably that which was written by the king's com-
mand at Cologne, most probably by Sir Edward Hyde. (" History of
the Rebellion," vol. iii, p. 445, fol.)
14 See Clarendon's " History," vol. iii, p. 506, fol.
" In the case of Coney before mentioned.
OF REWARDING GENIUS
IN ENGLAND
BY
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
OLIVER GOLDSMITH was the son of a clergyman, and was born in
Pallas, in the county Longford, Ireland, November 10, 1728. His birth-
Elace is supposed to be the scene of his " Deserted Village," and his
ither the original of Dr. Primrose in " The Vicar of Wakefield." His
earliest schoolmaster was Thomas Byrne, who is described in his most
famous poem. He was entered as a sizar, or poor student, at Trinity
College, Dublin, in 1744, got into all sorts of scrapes, and finally ran
away, but returned and took his degree (at the foot of his class) in 1749.
He tried to take clerical orders, but was rejected ; set out for America,
but got no farther than Cork ; was supplied with money to study law in
London, but immediately lost it in gambling. He studied medicine in
Edinburgh and Leyden, then spent two years wandering about the Con-
tinent, and in 1756 returned to England. He practised as a physician a
little while in a suburb of London, then became a proof reader, then
usher in an academy, and then assistant editor of a magazine. After
that he lived in London, and was author, editor, and compiler by turns,
with all sorts of business and social adventures, till his death, April 4,
1774. Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were among his
intimate friends. His first published book was a series of essays under
the title, "An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Eu-
rope," from which the one here given is chosen. This book was pub-
lished anonymously in 1759; an( ^ one f tne ^ ast things he did was to
prepare a revised edition, which appeared soon after his death. His
Chinese Letters," or "Citizen of the World," form another series of
essays, which appeared first in a newspaper. Besides these, his famous
works are his novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield" ; his poems, "The Trav-
eller" and "The Deserted Village "; and his comedies, "She Stoops to
Conquer" and "The Good-natured Man." He is supposed to have been
in love with Mary Horneck, who was called the Jessamy Bride, but he
never married perhaps because of his improvidence and utter lack of
common sense in business matters, which kept him forever bankrupt.
He was two thousand pounds in debt when he died.
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND
THERE is nothing authors are more apt to lament
than want of encouragement from the age. What-
ever their differences in other respects, they are all
ready to unite in this complaint, and each indirectly offers
himself as an instance of the truth of his assertion.
The beneficed divine, whose wants are only imaginary,
expostulates as bitterly as the poorest author. 1 Should
interest or good fortune advance the divine to a bishopric,
or the poor son of Parnassus into that place which the
other has resigned, both are authors no longer: the one
goes to prayers once a day, kneels upon cushions of velvet,
and thanks gracious Heaven for having made the circum-
stances of all mankind so extremely happy; the other bat-
tens on all the delicacies of life, enjoys his wife and his
easy-chair, and sometimes, for the sake of conversation,
deplores the luxury of these degenerate days.
All encouragements to merit are therefore misapplied,
which make the author too rich to continue his profession.
There can be nothing more just than the old observation,
that authors, like running horses, should be fed, but not
fattened. If we would continue them in our service we
should reward them with a little money and a great deal
of praise, still keeping their avarice subservient to their
ambition. Not that I think a writer incapable of filling
an employment with dignity; I would only insinuate that,
when made a bishop or statesman, he will continue to
please us as a writer no longer; as, to resume a former
allusion, the running horse, Vvhen fattened, will still be fit
for very useful purposes, though unqualified for a courser.
No nation gives greater encouragements to learning
than we do; yet, at the same time, none are so injudicious
in the application. We seem to confer them with the same
view that statesmen have been known to grant employ-
18$
GOLDSMITH
ments at court, rather as bribes to silence than incentives
to emulation.
Upon this principle all our magnificent endowments
of colleges are erroneous; and, at best, more frequently
enrich the prudent than reward the ingenious. A lad
whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead
him from that path of science which his tutors, and not his
inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years per-
severance may probably obtain every advantage and hon-
our his college can bestow. I forget whether the simile
has been used before, but I would compare the man whose
youth has been thus passed in the tranquility of dispas-
sionate prudence to liquors which never ferment, and con-
sequently continue always muddy. Passions may raise a
commotion in the youthful breast, but they disturb only
to refine it. However this be, mean talents are often re-
warded in colleges with an easy subsistence. The candi-
dates for preferments of this kind often regard their ad-
mission as a patent for future indolence; 2 so that a life
begun in studious labour is often continued in luxurious
affluence.
Among the universities abroad, I have ever observed
their riches and their learning in a reciprocal proportion,
their stupidity and pride increasing with their opulence.
Happening once, in conversation with Gaubius of Leyden,
to mention the college of Edinburgh, he began by com-
plaining that all the English students which formerly
came to his university now went entirely there; and the
fact surprised him more, as Leyden was now as well as
ever furnished with masters excellent in their respective
professions. He concluded by asking if the professors of
Edinburgh were rich? I replied that the salary of a pro-
fessor there seldom amounted to more than thirty pounds
a year. " Poor men," says he, " I heartily wish they were
better provided for; until they become rich we can have
no expectation of English students at Leyden."
Premiums, also, proposed for literary excellence, when
given as encouragements to boys, may be useful; but when
designed as rewards to men are certainly misapplied. We
have seldom seen a performance of any great merit in con-
sequence of rewards proposed in this manner. Who has
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND xg;
ever observed a writer of any eminence a candidate in so
precarious a contest? The man who knows the real value
of his own genius will no more venture it upon an un-
certainty than he who knows the true use of a guinea will
stake it with a sharper. 3
Every encouragement given to stupidity, when known
to be such, is also a negative insult upon genius. This
appears in nothing more evident than the undistinguished
success of those who solicit subscriptions. When first
brought into fashion, subscriptions were conferred upon
the ingenious alone, or those who were reputed such. But
at present we see them made a resource of indigence, and
requested, not as rewards of merit, but as a relief of dis-
tress. If tradesmen happen to want skill in conducting
their own business, yet they are able to write a book; if
mechanics vant money, or ladies shame, they write books
and solicit subscriptions. Scarce a morning passes that
proposals of this nature are not thrust into the half-open-
ing doors of the rich, with perhaps a paltry petition, show-
ing the author's wants but not his merits. I would not
willingly prevent that pity which is due to indigence, but
while the streams of liberality are thus diffused, they must,
in the end, become proportionably shallow.
What, then, are the proper encouragements of genius?
I answer, subsistence and respect; for these are rewards
congenial to its nature. Every animal has an aliment
peculiarly suited to its constitution. The heavy ox seeks
nourishment from earth; the light chameleon has been
supposed to exist on air; a sparer diet even than this will
satisfy the man of true genius, for he makes a luxurious
banquet upon empty applause. It is this alone which has
inspired all that ever was truly great and noble among us.
It is, as Cicero finely calls it, the echo of virtue. Avarice
is the passion of inferior natures money the pay of the
common herd. The author who draws his quill merely to
take a purse, no more deserves success than he who pre-
sents a pistol. 4
When the link between patronage and learning was
entire, then all who deserved fame were in a capacity of
attaining it. When the great Somers was at the helm,
patronage was fashionable among our nobility. The mid-
!88 GOLDSMITH
die ranks of mankind, who generally imitate the great, then
followed their example, and applauded from fashion, if not
from feeling. I have heard an old poet 5 of that glorious
age say that a dinner with his lordship has procured him
invitations for the whole week following that an airing
in his patron's chariot has supplied him with a citizen's
coach on every future occasion. For who would not be
proud to entertain a man who kept so much good com-
pany?
But this link now seems entirely broken. Since the
days of a certain prime minister, of inglorious memory, 6
the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance. A
jockey, or a laced player, supplies the place of the scholar,
poet, or the man of virtue. Those conversations, once
the result of wisdom, wit, and innocence, are now turned
to humbler topics, little more being expected from a com-
panion than a laced coat, a pliant bow, and an immoderate
friendship for a well-served table.
Wit, when neglected by the great, is generally despised
by the vulgar. Those who are unacquainted with the
world are apt to fancy the man of .wit as leading a very
agreeable life. They conclude, perhaps, that he is attended
to with silent admiration, and dictates to the rest of man-
kind with all the eloquence of conscious superiority. Very
different is his present situation. He is called an author,
and all know that an author is a thing only to be laughed
at. His person, not his jest, becomes the mirth of the
company. At his approach the most fat, unthinking face
brightens into malicious meaning. Even aldermen laugh,
and revenge on him the ridicule which was lavished on
their forefathers:
" Etiam victis redit in praecordia virtus,
Victoresque cadunt."
It is indeed a reflection somewhat mortifying to the
author who breaks his ranks and singles out for public
favour to think that he must combat contempt before he
can arrive at glory; that he must expect to have all the
fools of society united against him before he can hope
for the applause of the judicious. For this, however, he
must prepare beforehand; as those who have no idea of
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND 189
the difficulty of his employment, will be apt to regard his
inactivity as idleness and, not having a notion of the
pangs of uncomplying thought in themselves, it is not to
be expected they should have any desire of rewarding it
in others.
Voltaire has finely described the hardships a man must
encounter who writes for the public. I need make no
apology for the length of the quotation:
" Your fate, my dear Le Fevre, is too strongly marked
to permit your retiring. The bee must toil in making
honey, the silk-worm must spin, the philosopher must dis-
sect them, and you are born to sing of their labours. You
must be a poet and a scholar, even though your inclina-
tions should resist: Nature is too strong for inclination.
But hope not, my friend, to find tranquility in the employ-
ment you a.e going to pursue. The route of genius is
not less obstructed with disappointment than that of am-
bition.
" If you have the misfortune not to excel in your pro-
fession as a poet, repentance must tincture all your future
enjoyments; if you succeed, you make enemies. You
tread a narrow path: contempt on one side, and hatred
on the other, are ready to seize you upon the slightest
deviation.
" But why must I be hated? you will perhaps reply;
why must I be persecuted for having written a pleasing
poem, for having produced an applauded tragedy, or for
otherwise instructing or amusing mankind or myself?
" My dear friend, these very successes shall render you
miserable for life. Let me suppose your performance has
merit let me suppose you have surmounted the teasing
employments of printing and publishing; how will you
be able to lull the critics who, like Cerberus, are posted at
all the avenues of literature, and who settle the merits of
every new performance? How, I say, will you be able to
make them open in your favour? There are always three
or four literary journals in France, as many in Holland,
each supporting opposite interests. The booksellers who
guide these periodical compilations, find their account in
being severe; the authors employed by them have wretch-
edness to add to their natural malignity. The majority
190
GOLDSMITH
may be in your favour, but you may depend on being torn
by the rest. Loaded with unmerited scurrility, perhaps
you reply; they rejoin; both plead at the bar of the public,
and both are condemned to ridicule.
" But if you write for the stage your case is still more
worthy compassion. You are there to be judged by men
whom the custom of the times has rendered contemptible.
Irritated by their own inferiority, they exert all their little
tyranny upon you, revenging upon the author the insults
they receive from the public. From such men, then, you
are to expect your sentence. Suppose your piece admitted,
acted; one single ill-natured jest from the pit is sufficient
to cancel all your labours. But allowing that it succeeds,
there are a hundred squibs flying all abroad to prove that
it should not have succeeded. You shall find your bright-
est scenes burlesqued by the ignorant; and the learned,
who know a little Greek, and nothing of their native lan-
guage, affect to despise you.
" But, perhaps, with a panting heart you carry your
piece before a woman of quality. She gives the labours
of your brain to her maid to be cut into shreds for curl-
ing her hair; while the laced footman, who carries the
gaudy livery of luxury, insults your appearance, who bear
the livery of indigence.
" But granting your excellence has at last forced envy
to confess that your works have some merit; this, then, is
all the reward you can expect while living. However, for
this tribute of applause you must expect persecution. You
will be reputed the author of scandal which you have never
seen, of verses you despise, and of sentiments directly con-
trary to your own. In short, you must embark in some
one party, or all parties will be against you.
" There are among us a number of learned societies
where a lady presides, whose wit begins to twinkle when
the splendour of her beauty begins to decline. One or
two men of learning compose her ministers of state. These
must be flattered, or made enemies by being neglected.
Thus, though you had the merit of all antiquity united in
your person, you grow old in misery and disgrace. Every
place designed for men of letters is filled up by men of
intrigue. Some nobleman's private tutor, some court flat-
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND 191
terer, shall bear away the prize, and leave you to anguish
and to disappointment." 7
Yet it were well if none but the dunces of society were
combined to render the profession of an author ridiculous
or unhappy. Men of the first eminence are often found
to indulge this illiberal vein of raillery. Two contending
writers often, by the opposition of their wit, render their
profession contemptible in the eyes of ignorants, 8 who
should have been taught to admire. And yet, whatever
the reader may think of himself, it is at least two to one
but he is a greater blockhead than the most scribbling
dunce he affects to despise.
The poet's poverty is a standing topic of contempt.
His writing for bread is an unpardonable offence. Per-
haps of all mankind an author in these times is used most
hardly. We keep him poor, and yet revile his poverty.
Like angry parents who correct their children till they
cry, and then correct them for crying, we reproach him
for living by his wit, and yet allow him no other means
to live.
His taking refuge in garrets and cellars 9 has of late
.been violently objected to him, and that by men who, I
dare hope, are more apt to pity than insult his distress. 10
Is poverty the writer's fault? No doubt he knows how
to prefer a bottle of champagne to the nectar of the neigh-
bouring alehouse, or a venison pasty to a plate of potatoes.
Want of delicacy is not in him, but in us, who deny him
the opportunity of making an elegant choice.
Wit certainly is the property of those who have it, nor
should we be displeased if it is the only property a man
sometimes has. We must not underrate him who uses it
for subsistence, and flies from the ingratitude of the age
even to a bookseller for redress. If the profession of an
author is to be laughed at by stupids, it is better sure to
be contemptibly rich than contemptibly poor. For all the
wit that ever adorned the human mind will, at present, no
more shield the author's poverty from ridicule than his
high-topped gloves conceal the unavoidable omissions of
his laundress.
To be more serious: new fashions, follies, and vices
make new monitors necessary in every age. An author
I 9 2
GOLDSMITH
may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legis-
lature. He acts, not by punishing crimes, but prevent-
ing them. However virtuous the present age, there may
be still growing employment for ridicule or reproof, for
persuasion or satire. If the author be therefore still so
necessary among us, let us treat him with proper con-
sideration, as a child of the public, not a rent-charge on the
community. And, indeed, a child of the public he is in all
respects; for while so well able to direct others, how in-
capable is he frequently found of guiding himself! His
simplicity exposes him to all the insidious approaches of
cunning; his sensibility to the slightest invasions of con-
tempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved
the expected bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so
exquisitely poignant as to agonize under the slightest dis-
appointment. Broken rest, tasteless meals, and causeless
anxiety shorten his life, or render it unfit for active employ-
ment; prolonged vigils and intense application still further
contract his span, and make his time glide insensibly away.
Let us not, then, aggravate those natural inconveniences
by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind
already. Sale and Moore n will suffice for one age at
least. But they are dead, and their sorrows are over. The
neglected author of the " Persian Eclogues/' which, how-
ever inaccurate, excel any in our language, is still alive;
happy, if insensible of our neglect, not raging at our in-
gratitude. 12 It is enough that the age has already pro-
duced instances of men pressing foremost in the lists of
fame, and worthy of better times, schooled by continued
adversity into a hatred of their kind, flying from thought
to drunkenness, yielding to the united pressure of labour,
penury, and sorrow, sinking unheeded, without one friend
to drop a tear on their unattended obsequies, and indebted
to charity for a grave. 13
The author, when unpatronized by the great, has natu-
rally recourse to the bookseller. There can not be, per-
haps, imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste
than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as little
for writing, and of the other to write as much, as possible.
Accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical maga-
zines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these cir-
OF REWARDING GENIUS IN ENGLAND 193
cumstances the author bids adieu to fame, writes for bread,
and for that only imagination is seldom called in. He sits
down to address the venal Muse with the most phlegmatic
apathy, and as we are told of the Russian, courts his mis-
tress by falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never
spreads in a wider circle than that of the trade, who gen-
erally value him, not for the fineness of his compositions,
but the quantity he works off in a given time.
A long habit of writing for bread thus turns the ambi-
tion of every author at last into avarice. He finds that he
has written many years, that the public are scarcely ac-
quainted even with his name; he despairs of applause, and
turns to profit which invites him. He finds that money
procures all those advantages, that respect, and that ease,
which he vainly expected from fame. Thus the man who,
under the protection of the great, might have done honour
to humanity when only patronized by the bookseller, be-
comes a thing little superior to the fellow who works at
the press. 14
NOTES
1 " That ever snuffed his candle with finger and thumb." (First
edition.)
" Laziness." (First edition.)
1 The first edition adds, " by throwing a main." (Editor.)
4 Kenrick, Goldsmith's successor on the " Monthly Review," in
reviewing this work made a gross personal attack upon the author.
Dr. Young. (Percy.)
Sir Robert Walpole, no doubt, as Cunningham and Forster say.
T From Voltaire's letter, " A. M. Le Fevre, sur Les inconvenients
attaches a la Litterature," 1732.
Percy's edition has " ignorant persons." (Editor.)
The first edition has also " and living among vermin ; which re-
calls the picture of our author in Green Arbour Court, when he wrote
on the " Sagacity of Some Insects," and when, indeed, he wrote the
principal part of the present work.
10 Perhaps in allusion more particularly to Pope s continual ridi-
cule of poor poets.
u The first edition had " Sale, Savage, Amhurst, More.
u Our author here alludes to the insanity of Collins. (Percy.)
" " Among the dregs of mankind." (First edition.)
14 " Sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones." (First edition.)
COMMON SENSE
AND
THE CRISIS
BY
THOMAS PAINE
THOMAS PAINE English by birth, American by adoption, French in
many of his ideas and part of his life was a native of Thetford, Nor-
folk, where he was born, January 29, 1737. His father was a Quaker.
Thomas engaged in several business enterprises, apparently with little
success, and in 1774 sailed for Philadelphia, bringing letters of intro-
duction from Franklin. He was made editor of the " Pennsylvania
Magazine," and his writings soon attracted attention. In his "Serious
Thoughts," published in 1775, he expressed his belief that the American
colonies would become independent, and a hope that slavery would be
abolished. The idea of independence was specially urged in a separate
pamphlet entitled "Common Sense," which had a wide circulation. It
was not copyrighted, and he received nothing from the sale ; but the
Legislature gave him five hundred pounds. When independence was
declared he enlisted in the army, and afterward he was on the staff of Gen-
eral Greene. In December, 1776, he published "The Crisis," the essay
that is presented here. By order of the commander it was read at the
head of every regiment, and it did a great deal to strengthen the courage of
the people in their efforts for independence. Seventeen other chapters, on
the same subject, appeared at irregular intervals during six years. Paine
was for a time secretary of a congressional committee, and then Clerk of
the Pennsylvania General Assembly. When, in 1780, Washington wrote
to that body that the distress of the army was likely to result in mutiny,
Paine started a relief subscription with five hundred dollars, his salary,
and the roll was soon increased by patriotic citizens to an amount that
averted the danger. The next year Paine went to Europe and secured
large loans. In 1785 Congress voted him three thousand dollars as a
testimonial, and the Legislature of New York gave him a confiscated
estate in New Rochelle. Two years later he went to France, and then to
England, where he set up a remarkable iron bridge of his own invention.
In i79i-'92 he published his " Rights of Man," as a reply to Burke's essay
on the French Revolution. This was translated into French and had
a wide circulation, and it was followed by his election to a seat in the
French National Convention. The book also caused his indictment in
England for sedition. As he did not appear for trial, he was outlawed.
In the Convention he voted with the Girondists. He favoured the trial of
Louis XVI, but wanted him banished to America instead of executed.
Robespierre imprisoned him as a foreigner, and on the way to prison he
gave Joel Barlow his "Age of Reason." When this was published,
Paine s political opponents seized the opportunity to bring him into dis-
repute by representing it as grossly atheistical. This it is not, as it
expresses belief in God and in the immortality of the soul, but it is deis-
tical. James Monroe, then American Minister in Paris, procured his
liberation after the death of Robespierre. He published several other
pamphlets, returned to the United States in 1802, and died in New York
city, June 8, 1809.
COMMON SENSE
SOME writers have so confounded society with gov-
ernment as to leave little or no distinction between
them; whereas they are not only different, but have
different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and
government by our wickedness; the former promotes our
happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter
negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages
intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a
patron, the last is a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government,
even in its frest state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst
state an intolerable one, for when we suffer or are exposed
to the same miseries by a government which we might ex-
pect in a country without government, our calamity is
heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by
which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge
of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the
ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of
conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man
would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case,
he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property
to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this
he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every
other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.
Wherefore, security being the true design and end of
government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form
thereof appears most likely to insure it to us with the
least expense and greatest benefit is preferable to all others.
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and
end of government, let us suppose a small number of per-
sons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, uncoa-
13 *97
198 PAINE
nected with the rest, they will then represent the first
peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of
natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thou-
sand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one
man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted
for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek
assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires
the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a
tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one
man might labour out the common period of life without
accomplishing anything; when he had felled his timber
he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed;
hunger in the meantime would urge him from his work,
and every different want would call him a different way.
Disease, nay, even misfortune, would be death, for though
neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him
from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might
rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon
form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the recip-
rocal blessings of which would supersede, and render the
obligations of law and government unnecessary while they
remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but
heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen
that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties
of emigration, which bound them together in a common
cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attach-
ment to each other; and this remissness will point out the
necessity of establishing some form of government to sup-
ply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a state-house,
under the branches of which the whole colony may assem-
ble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than prob-
able that their first laws will have the title only of Regu-
lations, and be enforced by no other penalty than public
disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural
right will have a seat.
But as the colony increases, the public concerns will in-
crease likewise, and the distance at which the members
may be separated will render it too inconvenient for all
of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their
COMMON SENSE
number was small, their habitations near, and the public
concerns few and trifling. This will point out the con-
venience of their consenting to leave the legislative part
to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole
body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake
which those have who appointed them, and who will act
in the same manner as the whole body would were they
present. If the colony continue increasing, it will become
necessary to augment the number of representatives, and
that the interest of every part of the colony may be
attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into
convenient parts, each part sending its proper number;
and that the elected might never form to themselves an
interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out
the propriety of having elections often, because as the
elected might by that means return and mix again with
the general body of the electors, in a few months their
fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent re-
flection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this
frequent interchange will establish a common interest with
every part of the community, they will mutually and natu-
rally support each other, and on this (not on the unmean-
ing name of king) depends the strength of government
and the happiness of the governed.
Here, then, is the origin and rise of government
namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of
moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design
and end of government, viz., freedom and security. And
however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears
deceived by sound, however prejudice may warp our wills,
or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of
Nature and reason will say it is right.
I draw my idea of the form of government from a prin-
ciple in Nature, which no art can overturn viz., that the
more simple anything is the less liable it is to be disor-
dered, and the easier repaired when disordered and with
this maxim in view I offer a few remarks on the so-much-
boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for
the dark and slavish times in which it was erected is
granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny, the
least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that
200 PAINE
it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of
producing what it seems to promise, is easily demon-
strated.
Absolute governments (though the disgrace of human
nature) have this advantage with them that they are sim-
ple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which
their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy, and
are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But
the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex that
the nation may suffer for years together without being
able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say
in one and some in another, and every political physician
will advise a different medicine.
I know it is difficult to get over local or long-standing
prejudices, yet if we will suffer ourselves to examine the
component parts of the English constitution we shall find
them to be the base remains of two ancient tyrannies, com-
pounded with some new republican materials:
1. The remains of monarchical tyranny in the person
of the king.
2. The remains of aristocratical tyranny in the persons
of the Peers.
3. The new republican materials, in the persons of
the Commons, on whose virtue depends the freedom of
England.
The first two, by being hereditary, are independent of
the people; wherefore in a constitutional sense they con-
tribute nothing toward the freedom of the state.
To say that the constitution of England is a union of
three powers, reciprocally checking each other, is farcical;
either the words have no meaning or they are flat contra-
dictions.
To say that the Commons is a check upon the king
presupposes two things:
1. That the king is not to be trusted without being
looked after, or, in other words, that a thirst for absolute
power is the natural disease of monarchy.
2. That the Commons, by being appointed for that
purpose, are either wiser or more worthy of confidence
than the crown.
But as the same constitution which gives the Com-
COMMON SENSE 2OI
mons a power to check the king by withholding the sup-
plies, gives afterward the king a power to check the Com-
mons, by empowering him to reject their other bills, it
again supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it
has already supposed to be wiser than him. A mere ab-
surdity!
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the com-
position of monarchy: it first excludes a man from the
means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases
where the highest judgment is required. The state of a
king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king
requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the differ-
ent parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each
other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
Some writers have explained the English constitution
thus: the kLig, say they, is one, the people another; the
Peers are a house in behalf of the king, the Commons in
behalf of the people. But this hath all the distinctions of
a house divided against itself; and though the expressions
be pleasantly arranged, yet when examined they appear
idle and ambiguous; and it will always happen that the
nicest construction that words are capable of, when applied
to the description of something which either can not exist,
or is too incomprehensible to be within the compass of
description, will be words of sound only, and though they
may amuse the ear they can not inform the mind; for this
explanation includes a previous question viz. : How came
the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust,
and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be
the gift of a wise people, neither can any power which
needs checking be from God; yet the provision which the
constitution makes supposes such a power to exist.
But the provision is unequal to the task; the means
either can not or will not accomplish the end, and the
whole affair is a felo de se; for as the greater weight will
always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine
are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which
power in the constitution has the most weight, for that
will govern ; and though the others, or a part of them, may
clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion,
yet so long as they can not stop it their endeavours will
202 PAINE
be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its
way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.
That the crown is this overbearing part in the English
constitution needs not be mentioned, and that it derives its
whole consequence merely from being the giver of places
and pensions is self-evident, wherefore, though we have
been wise enough to shut and lock a door against abso-
lute monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish
enough to put the crown in possession of the key.
The prejudice of Englishmen in favour of their own
government, by kings, lords, and commons, arises as
much or more from national pride than reason. Indi-
viduals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some
other countries, but the will of the king is as much the law
of the land in Britain as in France, with this difference,
that instead of proceeding directly from his mouth, it is
handed to the people under the formidable shape of an
act of Parliament. For the fate of Charles I hath only
made kings more subtle, not more just.
Wherefore, laying aside all national pride and preju-
dice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is that
it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and
not the constitution of the government, that the crown is
not as oppressive in England as in Turkey.
An inquiry into the constitutional errors in the English
form of government is at this time highly necessary; for
as we are never in a proper condition of doing justice to
others while we continue under the influence of some lead-
ing partiality, so neither are we capable of doing it to
ourselves while we remain fettered by any obstinate preju-
dice. And as a man who is attached to a prostitute is
unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession
in favour of a rotten constitution of government will dis-
able us from discerning a good one.
II
Mankind being originally equals in the order of crea-
tion, the equality could only be destroyed by some sub-
sequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich and poor
may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without
COMMON SENSE 203
having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of avarice
and oppression. Oppression is often the consequence, but
seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice
will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it gen-
erally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
But there is another and greater distinction for which
no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and
that is the distinction of men into kings and subjects.
Male and female are the distinctions of Nature; good and
bad, the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men
came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distin-
guished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and
whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to
mankind.
In the early ages of the world, according to the Scrip-
ture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of
which was. there were no wars; it is the pride of kings
which throws mankind into confusion. Holland, without
a king, hath enjoyed more peace for the last century than
any of the monarchical governments of Europe. Antiquity
favours the same remark, for the quiet and rural lives of
the first patriarchs have a happy something in them which
vanishes when we come to the history of Jewish royalty.
Government by kings was first introduced into the
world by heathen, from whom the children of Israel
copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention
that was ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.
The heathen paid divine honours to their deceased kings,
and the Christian world hath improved on the plan by
doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the
title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the
midst of his splendour is crumbling into dust!
As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest can
not be justified on the equal rights of Nature, so neither
can it be defended on the authority of Scripture; for the
will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the
prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by
kings. All antimonarchical parts of Scripture have been
very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments,
but they undoubtedly merit the attention of countries
which have their governments yet to form. " Render unto
204 PAINE
Caesar the things which are Caesar's " is the Scripture doc-
trine of courts, yet it is no support of monarchical gov-
ernment, for the Jews at that time were without a king,
and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.
Near three thousand years passed away from the Mo-
saic account of the creation, until the Jews, under a national
delusion, requested a king. Till then their form of gov-
ernment (except in extraordinary cases, where the Al-
mighty interposed) was a kind of republic, administered
by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had
none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being
under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man
seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid
to the persons of kings, he need not wonder that the Al-
mighty, ever jealous of his honour, should disapprove a
form of government which so impiously invades the pre-
rogative of Heaven.
Monarchy is ranked in Scripture as one of the sins of
the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against
them. The history of that transaction is worth attend-
ing to.
The children of Israel being oppressed by the Midian-
ites, Gideon marched against them with a small army, and
victory, through the divine interposition, decided in his
favour. The Jews, elate with success, and attributing it
to the generalship of Gideon, proposed making him a king,
saying, " Rule thou over us, thou and thy son, and thy
son's son." Here was temptation in its fullest extent; not
a kingdom only, but a hereditary one; but Gideon in the
piety of his soul replied: " I will not rule over you, neither
shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you."
Words need not be more explicit; Gideon doth not decline
the honour, but denieth their right to give it; neither doth
he compliment them with invented declarations of his
thanks, but in the positive style of a prophet charges them
with disaffection to their proper sovereign, the King of
Heaven.
About one hundred years after this they fell again into
the same error. The hankering which the Jews had for
the idolatrous customs of the heathens is something ex-
ceedingly unaccountable; but so it was, that laying hold
COMMON SENSE 205
of the misconduct of Samuel's two sons, who were in-
trusted with some secular concerns, they came in an abrupt
and clamorous manner to Samuel, saying, " Behold, thou
art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways, now make
us a king to judge us like all the other nations." And here
we can not but observe that their motives were bad, viz.,
that they might be like unto other nations i. e., the
heathen whereas their true glory lay in being as much
unlike them as possible. " But the thing displeased Samuel
when they said, Give us a king to judge us; and Samuel
prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel:
Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say
unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have
rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Accord-
ing to all the works which they have done since the day
that I brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day;
wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other Gods;
so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto
their voice, howbeit, protest solemnly unto them and show
them the manner of the king that shall reign over them "
i. e., not of any particular king, but the general manner of
the kings of the earth, whom Israel was so eagerly copying
after. And notwithstanding the great distance of time and
difference of manners, the character is still in fashion.
" And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the
people, that asked of him a king. And he said, This shall
be the manner of the king that shall reign over you; he
will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his
chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run be-
fore his chariots " (this description agrees with the present
mode of impressing men) > " and he will appoint him cap-
tains over thousands, and captains over fifties, and will set
them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to
make his instruments of war, and instruments of his
chariots; and he will take your daughters to be confec-
tionaries, and to be cooks and to be bakers " (this de-
scribes the expense and luxury as well as the oppression
of kings), "and he will take your fields and your olive yards,
even the best of them, and give them to his servants; and
he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards,
and give them to his officers and to his servants" (by
14
206 PAINE
which we see that bribery, corruption, and favouritism are
the standing vices of kings); "and he will take the tenth
of your men servants, and your maid servants, and your
goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his
work; and he will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall
be his servants, and ye shall cry out in that day because of
your king which ye shall have chosen. And the Lord will
not hear you in that day." This accounts for the continua-
tion of monarchy; neither do the characters of the few
good kings which have lived since either sanctify the title
or blot out the sinfulness of the origin: the high encomium
given of David takes no notice of him officially as a king,
but only as a man after God's own heart. " Nevertheless
the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they
said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we may
be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us,
and go out before us and fight our battles." Samuel con-
tinued to reason with them, but to no purpose; he set be-
fore them their ingratitude, but all would not avail; and
seeing them fully bent on their folly, he cried out, " I will
call unto the Lord, and he shall send thunder and rain "
(which was then a punishment, being in the time of wheat
harvest), " that ye may perceive and see that your wicked-
ness is great which ye have done in the sight of the Lord,
in asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord,
and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the
people greatly feared "the Lord and Samuel. And all the
people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the
Lord thy God that we die not, for we have added unto our
sins this evil, to ask a king." These portions of Scripture
are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal con-
struction. That the Almighty hath here entered his pro-
test against monarchical government is true, or the Scrip-
ture is false. And a man hath good reason to believe that
there is as much of kingcraft as priestcraft in withholding
the Scripture from the public in Popish countries. For
monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government.
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of heredi-
tary succession; and as the first is a degradation and less-
ening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of
right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men
COMMON SENSE 2O/
being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right
to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all
others forever, and though himself might deserve some
decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his
descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of heredi-
tary right in kings is that Nature disapproves it, otherwise
she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving
mankind an ass for a lion.
Secondly, as no man at first could possess more public
honours than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of
those honours could have no power to give away the right
of posterity; and though they might say, " We choose you
for our head," they could not, without manifest injustice
to their children, say that " your children and your chil-
dren's children shall reign over ours forever." Because
such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps)
in the next succession put them under the government of
a rogue or a fool. Most wise men, in their private senti-
ments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt;
yet it is one of those evils which when once established is
not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from
superstition, and the more powerful part shares, with the
king, the plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world
to have had an honourable origin; whereas it is more than
probable that, could we take off the dark covering of an-
tiquity, and trace them to their first rise, we should find
the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian
of some restless gang, whose savage manners or pre-emi-
nence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among
plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extend-
ing his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenceless
to purchase their safety by frequent contributions. Yet
his electors could have no idea of giving hereditary right
to his descendants, because such a perpetual exclusion of
themselves was incompatible with the free and unrestrained
principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, heredi-
tary succession in the early ages of monarchy could not
take place as a matter of claim, but as something casual
or complimental; but as few or no records were extant
208 PAINE
in those days, and traditionary history stuffed with fables,
it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to
trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently timed Mo-
hammedlike, to cram hereditary rights down the throats of
the vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or
seemed to threaten, on the decease of a leader and the
choice of a new one (for elections among ruffians could not
be very orderly) induced many at first to favour hereditary
pretensions; by which means it happened, as it hath hap-
pened since, that what at first was submitted to as a con-
venience was afterward claimed as a right.
England, since the conquest, hath known some few
good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger num-
ber of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their
claim under William the Conqueror is a very honourable
one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti,
and establishing himself King of England against the con-
sent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally
original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it
is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of
hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it,
let them promiscuously worship the ass and the lion, and
welcome. I shall neither copy their humility nor disturb
their devotion.
Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings
came at first? The question admits but of three answers
viz., either by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the
first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for
the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was
by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither
does it appear from that transaction that there was any
intention it ever should be. If the first king of any
country was by election, that likewise establishes a pre-
cedent for the next; for to say that the right of all fu-
ture generations is taken away by the act of the first
electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a family
of kings forever, hath no parallel in or out of Scripture
but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free
will of all men lost in Adam; and from such compari-
son, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession
can derive no glory. For as in Adam all sinned, and as
COMMON SENSE 20Q
in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one all man-
kind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to sover-
eignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our
authority in the last; and as both disable us from reassum-
ing some former state and privilege, it unanswerably fol-
lows that original sin and hereditary succession are paral-
lels. Dishonourable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet
the most subtle sophist can not produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend
it, and that William the Conqueror was a usurper is a fact
not to be contradicted. The plain truth is that the an-
tiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.
But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of heredi-
tary succession which concerns mankind. Did it insure
a race of good and wise men, it would have the seal of
divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the
wicked, an$ the improper, it hath in it the nature of op-
pression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign,
and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the
rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by im-
portance; and the world they act in differs so materially
from the world at large that they have but little opportu-
nity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed
to the government are frequently the most ignorant and
unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Another evil which attends hereditary succession is
that the throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any
age; all which time the regency acting under the cover of
a king have every opportunity and inducement to betray
their trust. The same national misfortune happens when
a king, worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last
stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public
becomes the prey to every miscreant who can tamper suc-
cessfully with the follies either of age or infancy.
The most plausible plea which hath ever been offered
in favour of hereditary succession is that it preserves a
nation from civil wars; and were this true it would be
weighty, whereas it is the most barefaced falsity ever im-
posed upon mankind. The whole history of England dis-
owns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned
in that distracted kingdom since the conquest, in which
PAINE
time there have been (including the Revolution) no less
than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. Wherefore,
instead of making for peace, it makes against it, and de-
stroys the very foundation it seems to stand upon.
The contest for monarchy and succession between the
houses of York and Lancaster laid England in a scene of
blood for many years. Twelve pitched battles, besides
skirmishes and sieges, were fought between Henry and
Edward; twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in his
turn was prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate
of war and the temper of a nation, when nothing but per-
sonal matters are the ground of a quarrel, that Henry was
taken in triumph from a prison to a palace, and Edward
obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign land; yet, as sud-
den transitions of temper are seldom lasting, Henry in his
turn was driven from the throne, and Edward recalled to
succeed him, N the Parliament always following the strong-
est side.
This contest began in the reign of Henry VI, and
was not entirely extinguished till Henry VII, in whom
the families were united including a period of sixty-
seven years viz., from 1422 to 1489.
In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this
or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes.
'Tis a form of government which the word of God bears
testimony against, and blood will attend it.
If we inquire into the business of a king we shall find
(and in some countries they have none) that after saunter-
ing away their lives without pleasure to themselves or ad-
vantage to the nation, they withdraw from the scene, and
leave their successors to tread the same useless and idle
round. In absolute monarchies the whole weight of busi-
ness, civil and military, lies on the king; the children of
Israel in their request for a king urged this plea, " that he
may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles."
But in countries where he is neither a judge nor a general,
as in England, a man would be puzzled to know what is
his business.
The nearer any government approaches to a republic
the less business there is for a king. It is somewhat dif-
ficult to find a proper name for the government of Eng-
COMMON SENSE 211
land. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic; but in its
present state it is unworthy of the name, because the cor-
rupt influence of the crown, by having all the places at its
disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and
eaten out the virtue of the House of Commons (the repub-
lican part in the constitution), that the government of Eng-
land is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain.
Men fall out with names without understanding them; for
it is the republican and not the monarchical part of the
constitution of England which Englishmen glory in viz.,
the liberty of choosing a House of Commons from out of
their own body and it is easy to see that when republican
virtue fails, slavery ensues. Why is the constitution of
England sickly but because monarchy hath poisoned the
republic, the crown hath engrossed the Commons?
In England a king hath little more to do than to make
war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to
impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A
pretty business, indeed, for a man to be allowed eight hun-
dred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the
bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society,
and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that
ever lived.
ill
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple
facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no
other preliminaries to settle with the reader than that he
will divest himself of prejudice and prepossesion, and suffer
his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves;
that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the
true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views
beyond the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the strug-
gle between England and America. Men of all ranks have
embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and
with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and
the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource,
must decide the contest; the appeal was the choice of the
king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
It has been reported of the late Mr. Pelham (who,
212 PAINE
though an able minister, was not without his faults) that on
his being attacked in the House of Commons, on the score
that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied,
' They will last my time." Should a thought so fatal or
unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the
name of ancestors will be remembered by future genera-
tions with detestation.
The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis
not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom,
but of a continent of at least one eighth part of the habit-
able globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an
age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and
will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by
the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of continental
union, faith, and honour. The least fracture now will be
like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender
rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree,
and posterity read it in full-grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new
area for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath
arisen. All plans, proposals, etc., prior to the igth of
April i. e., to the commencement of hostilities are like
the almanacs of last year; which, though proper then, are
superseded and useless now. Whatever was advanced by
the advocates on either side of the question then, termi-
nated in one and the same point, viz., a union with Great
Britain; the only difference between the parties was the
method of effecting it: the one proposing force, the other
friendship; but it hath so far happened that the first has
failed, and the second has withdrawn her influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages of reconcilia-
tion, which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and
left us as we were, it is but right that we should examine
the contrary side of the argument, and inquire into some of
the many material injuries which these colonies sustain,
and always will sustain, by being connected with and de-
pendent on Great Britain to examine that connection and
dependence, on the principles of Nature and common
sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated, and
what we are to expect, if dependent.
I have heard it asserted by some that as America has
COMMON SENSE 213
flourished under her former connection with Great Britain,
the same connection is necessary toward her future hap-
piness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing
can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We
may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon
milk, it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years
of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.
But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer
roundly that America would have flourished as much, and
probably much more, had no European power had any-
thing to do with her. The articles of commerce by which
she has enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will
always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That she hath en-
grossed us is true, and defended the continent at our ex-
pense as well as her own, is admitted, and she would have
defended Turkey from the same motives viz., for the sake
of trade and dominion.
Alas! we have been long led away by ancient preju-
dices, and made large sacrifices to superstition. We have
boasted the protection of Great Britain without consider-
ing that her motive was interest, not attachment; and that
she did not protect us from our enemies on our account,
but from her enemies on her own account, from those who
had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will
always be our enemies on the same account. Let Britain
waive her pretensions to the continent, or the continent
throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with
France and Spain were they at war with Britain. The
miseries of Hanover's last war ought to warn us against
connections.
It hath lately been asserted in Parliament that the colo-
nies have no relation to each other but through the parent
country i. e., that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so
on for the rest, are sister colonies by way of England ; that
is certainly a very roundabout way of proving relation-
ship, but it is the nearest and only true way of proving
enemyship, if I may so call it. France and Spain never
were, nor perhaps ever will be, our enemies as Americans,
but as our being the subjects of Great Britain.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the
214
PAINE
more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not de-
vour their young, nor savages make war upon their fami-
lies; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach;
but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the
phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically
adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical
design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness
of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent
country of America. This New World hath been the
asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious lib-
erty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled,
not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the
cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England
that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from
home pursues their descendants still.
In this extensive quarter of the globe we forget the
narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles (the ex-
tent of England), and carry our friendship on a larger
scale; we claim brotherhood with every European Chris-
tian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
It is pleasant to observe with what regular gradations
we surmount local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaint-
ance with the world. A man born in any town in Eng-
land divided into parishes will naturally associate with most
of his fellow-parishioners (because their interest in many
cases will be common) and distinguish him by the name of
neighbour; if he meet him but a few miles from home he
drops the narrow idea of a street, and salutes him by the
name of townsman; if he travel out of the county, and
meets him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of
street and town, and calls him countryman i. e., county-
man; but if in their foreign excursions they should associ-
ate in France or any other part of Europe, their local re-
membrance would be enlarged into that of Englishman.
And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting
in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are country-
men; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when
compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the
larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and
county do on the smaller one; distinctions too limited for
continental minds. Not one third of the inhabitants, even
COMMON SENSE
215
of this province, are of English descent. Wherefore, I
reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied
to England only, as being false, selfish, narrow, and un-
generous.
But, admitting that we were all of English descent,
what does it amount to? Nothing. Britain being now an
open enemy, extinguishes every other name and title, and
to say that reconciliation is our duty is truly farcical. The
first King of England, of the present line (William the Con-
queror), was a Frenchman, and half the peers of England
are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the
same method of reasoning, England ought to be governed
by France.
Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain
and the colonies, that in conjunction they might bid defi-
ance to the .vorld. But this is mere presumption; the
fate of war is uncertain, neither do the expressions mean
anything; for this continent would never suffer itself to
be drained of inhabitants to support the British arms in
either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at
defiance? Our plan is commerce, and that, well attended
to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe;
because it is the interest of all Europe to have America a
free port. Her trade will always be a protection, and her
barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to
show a single advantage that this continent can reap by
being connected with Great Britain. I repeat the chal-
lenge; not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will
fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported
goods must be paid for, buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages which we sustain
by that connection are without number, and our duty to
mankind at large as well as to ourselves instructs us to
renounce the alliance; because any submission to or de-
pendence on Great Britain tends directly to involve this
continent in European wars and quarrels, and sets us at
variance with nations who would otherwise seek our friend-
ship, and against whom we have neither anger nor com-
plaint. As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to
PAINE
form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the
true interest of America to steer clear of European conten-
tions, which she never can do while, by her dependence on
Britain, she is made the make-weight in the scale of Brit-
ish politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be
long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between
England and any foreign power the trade of America goes
to ruin because of her connection with Britain. The next
war may not turn out like the last; and should it not, the
advocates for reconciliation now will be wishing for separa-
tion then, because neutrality in that case would be a safer
convoy than a man-of-war. Everything that is right or
natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the
weeping voice of Nature, cries, " Tis time to part." Even
the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England
and America, is a strong and natural proof that the author-
ity of the one over the other was never the design of
Heaven. The time likewise at which the continent was dis-
covered adds weight to the argument, and the manner in
which it was peopled increases the force of it. The Refor-
mation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if
the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the
persecuted in future years, when home should afford nei-
ther friendship nor safety.
The authority of Great Britain over this continent is a
form of government which sooner or later must have an
end; and a serious mind can draw no true pleasure by look-
ing forward under the painful and positive conviction that
what he calls " the present constitution " is merely tempo-
rary. As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this
government is not sufficiently lasting to insure anything
which we may bequeath to posterity; and by a plain
method of argument, as we are running the next genera-
tion into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise
we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the
line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in
our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life;
that eminence will present a prospect which a few present
fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary
COMMON SENSE
2I 7
offence, yet I am inclined to believe that all those who
espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included
within the following descriptions: Interested men, who are
not to be trusted; weak men, who can not see; prejudiced
men, who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men,
who think better of the European world than it deserves;
and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the
cause of more calamities to this continent than all the other
three.
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the
scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to
their doors to make them feel the precariousness with
which all American property is possessed. But let our
imaginations transport us a few moments to Boston; that
seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct
us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no
trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but
a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no
other alternative than to stay and starve or turn out to
beg endangered by the fire of their friends if they con-
tinue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they
leave it. In their present situation they are prisoners with-
out the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for
their relief, they would be exposed to the fury of both
armies.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the
offences of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt
to call out, " Come, come, we shall be friends again, for all
this." But examine the passions and feelings of mankind,
bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of
Nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love,
honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried
fire and sword into your land? If you can not do all
these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your
delay bringing ruin upon your posterity. Your future con-
nection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor hon-
our, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only
on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall
into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you
say you can still pass the violations over, then I ask: Hath
your house been burned? Hath your property been de-
218 PAINE
stroyed before your face? Are your wife and children
destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you
lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the
ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are
you not a judge of those who have? But if you have, and
can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you un-
worthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and
whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the
heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant.
This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but try-
ing them by those feelings and affections which Nature
justifies, and without which we should be incapable of dis-
charging the social duties of life or enjoying the felicities
of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of
provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and un-
manly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some
fixed object. It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe
to conquer America, if she does not conquer herself by
delay and timidity. The present winter is worth an age
if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected the whole
continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no
punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who,
or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacri-
ficing a season so precious and useful.
It is repugnant to reason, and the universal order of
things, to all examples from former ages, to suppose that
this continent can longer remain subject to any external
power. The most sanguine in Britain do not think so.
The utmost stretch of human wisdom can not, at this time,
compass a plan, short of separation, which can promise
the continent even a year's security. Reconciliation is now
a fallacious dream. Nature hath deserted the connection,
and art can not supply her place. For, as Milton wisely
expresses, " Never can true reconcilement grow where
wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep."
Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual.
Our prayers have been rejected with disdain, and only
tended to convince us that nothing flatters vanity, or con-
firms obstinacy in kings, more than repeated petitioning
nothing hath contributed more than this very measure to
make the kings of Europe absolute: witness Denmark and
COMMON SENSE 219
Sweden. Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for
God's sake let us come to a final separation, and not leave
the next generation to be cutting throats, under the vio-
lated unmeaning names of parent and child!
To say they will never attempt it again is idle and
visionary; we thought so at the repeal of the Stamp Act,
yet a year or two undeceived us; as well may we suppose
that nations which have been once defeated will never re-
new the quarrel.
As to government matters, it is not in the power of
Britain to do this continent justice; the business of it will
soon be too weighty and intricate to be managed, with any
tolerable degree of convenience, by a power so distant from
us, and so very ignorant of us; for if they can not conquer
us they can not govern us. To be always running three
or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting
four or five months for an answer, which, when obtained,
requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years
be looked upon as folly and childishness. There was a
time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it
to cease.
Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are
the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care;
but there is something absurd in supposing a continent
to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance
hath Nature made the satellite larger than its primary
planet; and as England and America, with respect to each
other, reverse the common order of Nature, it is evident
that they belong to different systems: England to Europe,
America to itself.
I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resent-
ment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independ-
ence; I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously per-
suaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so;
that everything short of that is mere patchwork; that it
can afford no lasting felicity; that it is leaving the sword
to our children, and shrinking back at a time when going
a little further would have rendered this continent the glory
of the earth.
As Britain hath not manifested the least inclination to-
ward a compromise, we may be assured that no terms can
220 PAINE
be obtained worthy the acceptance of the continent, or any
ways equal to the expense of blood and treasure we have
been already put to.
The object contended for ought always to bear some
just proportion to the expense. The removal of North, or
the whole detestable junto, is a matter unworthy the mil-
lions we have expended. A temporary stoppage of trade
was an inconvenience which would have sufficiently bal-
anced the repeal of all the acts complained of, had such
repeals been obtained; but if the whole continent must
take up arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is scarcely
worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry
only. Dearly, dearly do we pay for the repeal of the acts,
if that is all we fight for; for, in a just estimation, it is as
great a folly to pay a Bunker-Hill price for law as for land.
I have always considered the independency of this conti-
nent as an event which sooner or later must take place,
and, from the late rapid progress of the continent to ma-
turity, the event can not be far off. Wherefore, on the
breaking out of hostilities, it was not worth the while to
have disputed a matter which time would have finally re-
dressed, unless we meant to be in earnest; otherwise, it is
like wasting an estate on a suit at law to regulate the tres-
passes of a tenant whose lease is just expiring. No man
was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself be-
fore the fatal iQth of April, I775, 1 but the moment the
event of that day was made known I rejected the hard-
ened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever, and dis-
dain the wretch that, with the pretended title of Father of
his People, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter and com-
posedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.
But admitting that matters were now made up, what
would be the event? I answer, the ruin of the continent.
And that for several reasons:
i. The powers of governing still remaining in the
hands of the king, he will have a negative over the whole
legislation of this continent. And as he hath shown him-
self such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered
such a thirst for arbitrary power, is he, or is he not, a
proper person to say to these colonies, " You shall make
no laws but what I please "? And is there any inhabitant
COMMON SENSE 221
of America so ignorant as not to know that, according to
what is called the present constitution, this continent can
make no laws but what the king gives leave to? And is
there any man so unwise as 'not to see that, considering
what has happened, he will suffer no law to be made here
but such as suits his purpose? We may be as effectually
enslaved by the want of laws in America, as by submitting
to laws made for us in England. After matters are made
up (as it is called) can there be any doubt but the whole
power of the crown will be exerted to keep this continent
as low and humble as possible? Instead of going forward
we shall go backward, or be perpetually quarrelling, or
ridiculously petitioning. We are already greater than the
king wishes us to be, and will he not hereafter endeavour
to make us less? To bring the matter to one point, is the
power who is jealous of our prosperity a proper power to
govern us? Whoever says " No! " to this question is an
independent, for independency means no more than this,
whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the king,
the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have,
shall tell us, " There shall be no laws but such as I like."
But the king, you will say, has a negative in England;
the people there can make no laws without his consent. In
point of right and good order, it is something very ridicu-
lous that a youth of twenty-one (which hath often hap-
pened) shall say to several millions of people, older and
wiser than himself, " I forbid this or that act of yours to be
law." But in this place I decline this sort of reply, though
I will never cease to expose the absurdity of it; and only
answer that, England being the king's residence, and
America not, makes quite another case. The king's nega-
tive here is ten times more dangerous and fatal than it can
be in England; for there he will scarcely refuse his consent
to a bill for putting England into as strong a state of de-
fence as possible, and in America he would never suffer
such a bill to be passed.
America is only a secondary object in the system of
British politics England consults the good of this coun-
try no further than it answers her own purpose. Where-
fore, her own interest leads her to suppress the growth of
ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage,
222 PAINE
or in the least interferes with it. A pretty state we should
soon be in under a second-hand government, considering
what has happened! Men do not change from enemies to
friends by the alteration of a name; and in order to show
that reconciliation now is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm
that it would be policy in the king at this time to repeal
the acts, for the sake of reinstating himself in the govern-
ment of the provinces; in order that he may accomplish
by craft and subtlety, in the long run, what he can not do
by force in the short one. Reconciliation and ruin are
nearly related.
2. That as even the best terms which we can expect to
obtain can amount to no more than a temporary expedient,
or a kind of government by guardianship, which can last
no longer than till the colonies come of age, so the gen-
eral face and state of things in the interim will be unsettled
and unpromising. Emigrants of property will not choose
to come to a country whose form of government hangs but
by a thread, and which is every day tottering on the brink
of commotion and disturbance; and numbers of the present
inhabitants would lay hold of the interval to dispose of their
effects and quit the continent.
But the most powerful of all arguments is that nothing
but independence i. e., a continental form of government
can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it in-
violate from civil wars. I dread the event of a reconcilia-
tion with Britain now, as it is more than probable that it
will be followed by a revolt somewhere or other, the con-
sequences of which may be far more fatal than all the
malice of Britain.
Thousands are already ruined by British barbarity.
Thousands more will probably suffer the same fate. Those
men have other feelings than us who have nothing suf-
fered. All they now possess is liberty; what they before
enjoyed is sacrificed to its service; and having nothing
more to lose, they disdain submission. Besides, the gen-
eral temper of the colonies toward a British government
will be like that of a youth who is nearly out of his time:
they will care very little about her. And a government
which can not preserve the peace is no government at all,
and in that case we pay our money for nothing. And
COMMON SENSE
pray what is it that Britain can do, whose power will be
wholly on paper, should a civil tumult break out the very
day after reconciliation? I have heard some men say,
many of whom I believe spoke without thinking, that they
dreaded an independence, fearing that it would produce
civil wars. It is but seldom that our first thoughts are
truly correct, and that is the case here; for there is ten
times more to dread from a patched-up connection than
from independence. I make the sufferer's case my own,
and I protest, that were I driven from house and home,
my property destroyed, and my circumstances ruined, as
a man sensible of injuries I could never relish the doctrine
of reconciliation or consider myself bound thereby.
The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good
order and obedience to continental government as is suf-
ficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on
that head. No man can assign the least pretence for his
fears, on any other grounds than such as are truly childish
and ridiculous viz., that one colony will be striving for
superiority over another.
Where there are no distinctions there can be no su-
periority; perfect equality affords no temptation. The
republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in
peace. Holland and Switzerland are without wars, foreign
or domestic. Monarchical governments, it is true, are
never long at rest; the crown itself is a temptation to en-
terprising ruffians at home, and that degree of pride and
insolence ever attendant on regal authority swells into a
rupture with foreign powers in instances where a repub-
lican government, by being formed on more natural prin-
ciples, would negotiate the mistake.
If there is any true cause of fear respecting independ-
ence, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not
see their way out; wherefore, as an opening into that busi-
ness, I offer the following hints, at the same time mod-
estly affirming that I have no other opinion of them myself
than that they may be the means of giving rise to some-
thing better. Could the straggling thoughts of individuals
be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise
and able men to improve into useful matter.
Let the assemblies be annual, with a president only.
224 PAINE
The representation more equal. Their business wholly do-
mestic, and subject to the authority of a continental con-
gress.
Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten con-
venient districts, each district to send a proper number of
delegates to Congress, so that each colony send at least
thirty. The whole number in Congress will be at least
three hundred and ninety. Each Congress to sit ... and
to choose a president by the following method: When the
delegates are met, let a colony be taken from the whole
thirteen colonies by lot, after which let the Congress
choose (by ballot) a president from out of the delegates of
that province. In the next Congress, let a colony be taken
by lot from twelve only, omitting that colony from which
the president was taken in the former Congress, and so
proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their
proper rotation. And in order that nothing may pass into
a law but what is satisfactorily just, not less than three fifths
of the Congress to be called a majority. He that will
promote discord under a government so equally formed as
this would have joined Lucifer in his revolt.
But as there is a peculiar delicacy, from whom, or in
what manner, this business must first arise, and as it seems
most agreeable and consistent that it should come from
some intermediate body between the governed and the gov-
ernors that is, between the Congress and the people
let a Continental Conference be held, in the following man-
ner, and for the following purpose:
A committee of twenty-six members of Congress viz.,
two for each colony. Two members from each House of
Assembly, or provincial convention; and five representa-
tives of the people at large, to be chosen in the capital city
or town of each province, for and in behalf of the whole
province, by as many qualified voters as shall think proper
to attend from all parts of the province for that purpose;
or, if more convenient, the representatives may be chosen
in two or three of the most populous parts thereof. In
this conference, thus assembled, will be united the two
grand principles of business, knowledge and power. The
members of Congress, assemblies, or conventions, by hav-
ing had experience in national concerns, will be able and
COMMON SENSE
225
useful counsellors, and the whole, being empowered by
the people, will have a truly legal authority.
The conferring members being met, let their business
be to frame a Continental Charter, or Charter of the United
Colonies (answering to what is called the Magna Charta
of England), fixing the number and manner of choosing
members of Congress, and members of Assembly, with
their date of sitting, and drawing the line of business and
jurisdiction between them (always remembering that our
strength is continental, not provincial); securing freedom
and property to all men, and above all things, the free
exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience,
with such other matter as it is necessary for a charter to
contain. Immediately after which, the said conference to
dissolve, and the bodies which shall be chosen conformable
to the said charter to be the legislators and governors of
this continent for the time being: whose peace and happi-
ness may God preserve, Amen.
Should any body of men be hereafter delegated for this
or some similar purpose, I offer them the following ex-
tracts from that wise observer on governments, Dragonetti.
" The science," says he, " of the politician consists in fix-
ing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men
would deserve the gratitude of ages who should discover
a mode of government that contained the greatest sum
of individual happiness with the least national expense."
But where, say some, is the king of America? I'll tell
you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of
mankind like the royal brute of Britain. Yet that we may
not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a
day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter;
let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word
of God ; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world
may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, in Amer-
ica the law is king. For as in absolute governments the
king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king;
and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should
afterward arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the cere-
mony be abolished, and scattered among the people whose
right it is.
A government of our own is our natural right, and
22 6 PAINE
when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of
human affairs he will become convinced that it is infinitely
wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool,
deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to
trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we
omit it now, some Masaniello 2 may hereafter arise, who,
laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together
the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to
themselves the powers of government, finally sweep away
the liberties of the continent like a deluge. Should the
government of America return again into the hands of
Britain, the tottering situation of things will be a tempta-
tion for some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and
in such a case, what relief can Britain give? Ere she could
hear the news the fatal business might be done, and our-
selves suffering like the wretched Britons under the oppres-
sion of the Conqueror. Ye that oppose independence
now, ye know not what ye do; ye are opening a door to
eternal tyranny by keeping vacant the seat of government.
There are thousands and tens of thousands who would
think it glorious to expel from the continent that barbarous
and hellish power which hath stirred up the Indians and
negroes to destroy us. The cruelty hath a double guilt:
it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously by them.
To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason
forbids us to have faith, and our affections, wounded
through a thousand pores, instruct us to detest, is mad-
ness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of
kindred between us and them; and can there be any reason
to hope that, as the relationship expires, the affection will
increase, or that we shall agree better when we have ten
times more and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye
restore to us the time that is past? Can ye give to pros-
titution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile
Britain and America. The last cord now is broken, the
people of England are presenting addresses against us.
There are injuries which Nature can not forgive; she would
cease to be Nature if she did. As well can the lover for-
give the ravisher of his mistress as the continent forgive
the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted
COMMON SENSE
227
within us these unextinguishable feelings for good and
wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in
our hearts, and distinguish us from the herd of common
animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice
be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual exist-
ence, were we callous to the touches of affection. The
robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished
did not the injuries which our tempers sustain provoke us
into justice.
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not
only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot
of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom
hath been hunted around the globe. Asia and Africa have
long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger,
and England hath given her warning to depart. Oh, re-
ceive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for man-
kind.
NOTES
1 The date of the massacre at Lexington.
1 Tommaso Aniello, otherwise Masaniello, a fisherman of Naples,
who after spiriting up his countrymen in the public market-place,
against the oppression of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then
subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day became
king.
THE CRISIS
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The
summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in
this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;
but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of
man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily con-
quered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the
harder the conflict the more gorious the triumph. What
we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly: 'tis dearness
only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how
to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be
strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should
not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce
her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only
to tax but) " to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if
being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there
not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the ex-
pression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong
only to God.
Whether the independence of the continent was de-
clared too soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter
into as an argument; my own simple opinion is, that had
it been eight months earlier it would have been much
better. We did not make a proper use of last winter,
neither could we, while we were in a dependent state.
However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own; we
have none to blame but ourselves. But no great deal is
lost yet; all that Howe has been doing for this month
past is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the spirit
of the Jerseys a year ago would have quickly repulsed,
and which time and a little resolution will soon recover.
I have as little superstition in me as any man living,
but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that
228
THE CRISIS
22 9
God Almighty will not give up a people to military de-
struction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who
have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the
calamities of war by every decent method which wisdom
could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in
me as to suppose that he has relinquished the government
of the world and given us up to the care of devils; and
as I do not, I can not see on what grounds the King of
Britain can look up to Heaven for help against us: a
common murderer, a highwayman, or a housebreaker has
as good a pretence as he.
Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will some-
times run through a country. All nations and ages have
been subject to them: Britain has trembled like an ague
at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats;
and in the fourteenth century the whole English army,
after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back
like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was
performed by a few broken forces collected and headed
by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that Heaven might
inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen,
and save her fair fellow-sufferers from ravage and ravish-
ment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they
produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always
short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires
a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage
is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypoc-
risy, and bring things and men to light which might
otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they
have the same effect on secret traitors which an imagi-
nary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They
sift out the hidden thoughts of. man, and hold them up in
public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately
shown his head that shall penitentially solemnize with
curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Dela-
ware.
As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched
with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well ac-
quainted with many circumstances which those who live
at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our situation
there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow
2 3 PAINE
neck of land between the North River and the Hacken-
sack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not one fourth
so great as Howe could bring against us. We had no
army at hand to have relieved the garrison had we shut
ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition,
light artillery, and the best part of our stores had been
removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeav-
our to penetrate the Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could
be of no use to us; for it must occur to every thinking
man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field
forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no
longer than the enemy directs his force against the par-
ticular object which such forts are raised to defend. Such
was our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the morn-
ing of the 2Oth of November, when an officer arrived
with information that the enemy with two hundred boats
had landed about seven miles above: Major-General
Greene, who commanded the garrison, immediately or-
dered them under arms, and sent express to General
Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the
way of the ferry six miles. Our first object was to secure
the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river
between the enemy and us, about six miles from us and
three from them. General Washington arrived in about
three quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the
troops toward the bridge, which place I expected we
should have a brush for; however, they did not choose to
dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our troops
went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some
which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge
and the ferry, and made their way through some marshy
grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there passed
the river. We brought off as much baggage as the
wagons could contain; the rest was lost. The simple ob-
ject was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till
they could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania
militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand. We stayed
four days at Newark, collected our outposts with some
of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the
enemy on being informed that they were advancing,
though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe,
THE CRISIS 231
in my little opinion, committed a great error in general-
ship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten
Island through Amboy, by which means he might have
seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our
march into Pennsylvania: but if we believe the power of
hell to be limited, we must likewise believe that their
agents are under some providential control.
I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of
our retreat to the Delaware; suffice for the present to say
that both officers and men, though greatly harassed and
fatigued, without rest, covering, or provision,- the inevi-
table consequences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly
and martial spirit. All their wishes centred in one, which
was, that the country would turn out and help them to
drive the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King
William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties
and in action; the same remark may be made on General
Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natu-
ral firmness in some minds which can not be unlocked
by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet
of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public
blessings which we do not immediately see that God hath
blessed him with uninterrupted health and given him a
mind that can even flourish upon care.
I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous
remarks on the state of our affairs; and shall begin with
asking the following question: Why is it that the enemy
have left the New England provinces and made these
middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New
England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have
been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used
numberless arguments to show them their danger, but
it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or
their baseness. The period is now arrived in which either
they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both
must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he?
I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against
a thousand Tories were they to attempt to get into arms.
Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested
fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such
influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.
232
PAINE
But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be
drawn between us, let us reason the matter together: your
conduct is an invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a
thousand of you has heart enough to join him. Howe is
as much deceived by you as the American cause is in-
jured by you. He expects you will all take up arms and
flock to his standard, with muskets on your shoulders.
Your opinions are of no use to him unless you support
him personally, for 'tis soldiers, and not Tories, that he
wants.
I once felt all that kind of anger which a man ought
to feel against the mean principles that are held by the
Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was
standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand,
about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and, after
speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent,
finished with this unfatherly expression, " Well, give me
peace in my day! " Not a man lives on the continent but
fully believes that a separation must some time or other
finally take place, and a generous parent should have said,
" If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my
child may have peace"; and this single reflection, well
applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not
a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her
situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she
has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can
distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I
am as confident as I am that God governs the world that
America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign
dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that
period arrives, and the continent must in the end be con-
queror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes
cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
America did not nor does not want force, but she
wanted a proper application of that force. Wisdom is not
the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should
err at the first setting off. From an excess of tenderness
we were unwilling to raise an army, and trusted our cause
to the temporary defence of a well-meaning militia. A
summer's experience has now taught us better; yet with
those troops, while they were collected, we were able to
THE CRISIS 233
set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank God!
they are again assembling. I always consider militia as
the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but
they will not do for a long campaign. Howe, it is prob-
able, will make an attempt on this city; should he fail on
this side the Delaware, he is ruined: if he succeeds, our
cause is not ruined. He stakes all on his side against a
part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the consequence will
be that armies from both ends of the continent will march
to assist their suffering friends in the Middle States; for
he can not go everywhere, it is impossible. I consider
Howe the greatest enemy the Tories have; he is bringing
a war into their country, which, had it not been for him
and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should
he now be expelled, I wish, with all the devotion of a
Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never
more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him en-
couragement to come, or assistance if he come, I as sin-
cerely wish that our next year's arms may expel them from
the continent, and the Congress appropriate their posses-
sions to the relief of those who have suffered in well-
doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the
whole. America could carry on a two years' war by the
confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and
be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is
revenge; call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering
people, who, having no object in view but the good of
all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful
event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hard-
ness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of
sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing
can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.
Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm
ardour of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are
yet determined to stand the matter out: I call not upon
a few, but upon all: not on this State or that State, but
on every State; up and help us; lay your shoulders to
the wheel; better have too much force than too little
when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to
the future world that in the depth of winter, when noth-
ing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the
234 PAINE
country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to
meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone,
turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden
of the day upon Providence, but " show your faith by
your works," that God may bless you. It matters not
where you live or what rank of life you hold, the evil or
the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near,
the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor,
will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now
is dead: the blood of his children will curse his cowardice
who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved
the whole and made them happy. I love the man that can
smile at trouble, that can gather strength from distress,
and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little
minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose
conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his prin-
ciples unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself
as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treas-
ures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me
to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a
thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my prop-
erty, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are
in it, and to " bind me in all cases whatsoever " to his
absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me
whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my
countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done
by an individual villain or an army of them? If we reason
to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither
can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in
the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me
rebel and welcome: I feel no concern from it; but I should
suffer the misery of devils were I to make a whore of my
soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is
that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.
I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from
a being who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks
and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from
the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.
There are cases which can not be overdone by lan-
guage, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see
not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they
THE CRISIS 235
solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he suc-
ceed, will be merciful. This is the madness of folly, to
expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice;
and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a
trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as
the violence of the wolf; and we ought to guard equally
against both. Howe's first object is, partly by threats
and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to
deliver up their arms and to receive mercy. The ministry
recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what
the Tories call making their peace " a peace which pass-
eth all understanding," indeed! A peace which would be
the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we
have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason
upon these things! Were the back counties to give up
their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians,
wno are all armed; this, perhaps, is what some Tories
would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to de-
liver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resent-
ment of the back counties, who would then have it in their
power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were
any one State to give up its arms, that State must be
garrisoned by Howe's army of Britons and Hessians to
preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the
principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to
that State that breaks the compact! Howe is mercifully
inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be
either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not
upon the powers of imagination; I bring reason to your
ears; and in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth
to your eyes.
I thank God that I fear not. I see no real cause for
fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out
of it. While our army was collected Howe dared not
risk a battle, and it is no credit to him that he decamped
from the White Plains and waited a mean opportunity
to ravage the defenceless Jerseys; but it is great credit
to us that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly
retreat for near a hundred miles, brought off our ammu-
nition, all our field-pieces, the greatest part of our stores,
and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our re-
2 3 6
PAINE
treat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in per-
forming it, that the country might have time to come in.
Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained
out till dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp,
and had not some of the cowardly and disaffected inhabit-
ants spread false alarms through the country the Jerseys
had never been ravaged. Once more we are again col-
lected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the
continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open
the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed
and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may
know it. By perseverance and fortitude we have the pros-
pect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the
sad choice of a variety of evils a ravaged country a de-
populated city habitations without safety, and slavery
without hope our homes turned into barracks and bawdy
houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for,
whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture
and weep over it; and if there yet remains one thought-
less wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unla-
mented.
THE
PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
BY
ISAAC DISRAELI
16
ISAAC DISRAELI was the son of a Jewish merchant, and was born in
Enfield, England, in 1766. He was educated in a school near his native
place, and then at Amsterdam, and deliberately devoted his life to author-
ship. He married in 1802, and had a daughter and four sons, the eldest
of whom was Benjamin, the eminent statesman, who became Lord Bea-
consfield. In the fifteenth century his Jewish ancestors fled to Venice to
escape the Inquisition in Spain, and there took the name of D'Israeli,
" that their race might be forever recognised." But in 1817 Isaac re-
nounced the ancient faith and had all his children baptized. He pub-
lished seven novels and two volumes of poetry, none of which survive.
He was an omnivorous reader at the British Museum, and found his true
vocation in producing a mingled compilation and essay in which he never
has been approached. His "Curiosities of Literature," " Calamities of
Authors," " Quarrels of Authors," and "Amenities of Literature," were
published at various dates between 1791 and 1840; all have been through
many editions and found recognition as standard works, into which every
reader likes to dip occasionally. He also published "Commentaries on
the Life and Reign of Charles I," for which Oxford gave him the degree
of D. C. L. He was blind nine years, and died January 19, 1848.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
IN antique furniture we sometimes discover a conven-
ience which long disuse had made us unacquainted
with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did
not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have
found the labour of the workmen to have been as ad-
mirable as the material itself, which is still resisting the
mouldering touch of time among those modern inven-
tions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put to-
gether with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly
into pieces when brought into use. We have found how
strength consists in the selection of materials, and that,
whenever the substitute is not better than the original,
we are losing something in that test of experience which
all things derive from duration.
Be this as it may! I shall not unreasonably await for
the artists of our novelties to retrograde into massive
greatness, although I can not avoid reminding them how
often they revive the forgotten things of past times! It
is well known that many of our novelties were in use by
our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there
is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect not
merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition
in which I still find them, and the compactness which they
still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity!
and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford
make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our
patent inventions.
By the title of the present article the reader has antici-
pated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude.
I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be
called the " Philosophy of Proverbs " a topic which
seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, in-
239
240 DISRAELI
deed, always been acquired even by some of their ad-
mirers; but my observations, like their subject, must be
versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indul-
gence for an attempt to illustrate a very curious branch
of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten.
Proverbs have long been in disuse. " A man of fash-
ion," observes Lord Chesterfield, " never has recourse to
proverbs and vulgar aphorisms"; and, since the time his
lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they appear to
have withered away under the ban of his anathema. His
lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs,
and would unquestionably have smiled on those " men
of fashion " of another stamp, who, in the days of Eliza-
beth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them;
would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce
them in their learned or their statesmanlike correspond-
ence. Few, perhaps, even now suspect that these neg-
lected fragments of wisdom, which exist among all na-
tions, still offer many interesting objects for the studies
of the philosopher and the historian; and for men of the
world still open an extensive school of human life and
manners.
The home-spun adages and the rusty " sayed-saws "
which remain in the mouths of the people are adapted to
their capacities and their humours.' Easily remembered,
and readily applied, these are the philosophy of the vul-
gar, and often more sound than that of their masters!
whoever would learn what the people think, and how they
feel, must not reject even these as insignificant. The
proverbs of the street and of the market, true to Nature,
and lasting only because they are true, are records that
the populace at Athens and at Rome were the same peo-
ple as at Paris and at London, and as they had before
been in the city of Jerusalem!
Proverbs existed before books. The Spaniards date
the origin of their refranes que dicen las viejas tras el
fuego, " sayings of old wives by their firesides," before
the existence of any writings in their language, from the
circumstance that these are in the old romance or rudest
vulgar idiom. The most ancient poem in the " Edda,"
" the sublime speech of Odin," abounds with ancient
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 241
proverbs, strikingly descriptive of the ancient Scandina-
vians. Undoubtedly proverbs in the earliest ages long
served as the unwritten language of morality, and even
of the useful arts; like the oral traditions of the Jews,
they floated down from age to age on the lips of succes-
sive generations. The name of the first sage who sanc-
tioned the saying would in time be forgotten, while the
opinion, the metaphor, or the expression remained, con-
secrated into a proverb! Such was the origin of those
memorable sentences by which men learned to think and
to speak appositely; they were precepts which no man
could contradict, at a time when authority was valued
more than opinion, and experience preferred to novelty.
The proverbs of a father became the inheritance of a son;
the mistress of a family perpetuated hers through her
household ; the workman condensed some traditional
secret of his craft into a proverbial expression. When
countries are not yet populous, and property has not
yet produced great inequalities in its ranks, every day
will show them how " the drunkard and the glutton
come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes a man with
rags." At such a period he who gave counsel gave
wealth.
It might, therefore, have been decided, a priori, that
the most homely proverbs would abound in the most
ancient writers and such we find in Hesiod; a poet
whose learning was not drawn from books. It could only
have been in the agricultural state that this venerable
bard could have indicated a state of repose by this rustic
proverb :
Ur)$<i\iov p\v v-rrtp KOWVOV Kara8c?o,
" Hang your plough-beam o'er the hearth! "
The envy of rival workmen is as justly described by a
reference to the humble manufacturers of earthenware as
by the elevated jealousies of the literati and the artists of
a more polished age. The famous proverbial verse in
Hesiod's " Works and Days/'
Kol Ktpafifbs KepafJiti Koreti,
is literally, " The potter is hostile to the potter! "
The admonition of the poet to his brother, to prefer
24 2 DISRAELI
a friendly accommodation to a litigious lawsuit, has fixed
a paradoxical proverb often applied:
n\toy J}/u<rv ravrts,
" The half is better than the whole! "
In the progress of time the stock of popular proverbs
received accessions from the highest sources of human
intelligence; as the philosophers of antiquity formed their
collections, they increased in " weight and number."
Erasmus has pointed out some of these sources, in the
responses of oracles; the allegorical symbols of Pythag-
oras; the verses of the poets; allusions to historical inci-
dents; mythology and apologue; and other recondite ori-
gins. Such dissimilar matters, coming from all quarters,
were melted down into this vast body of aphoristic knowl-
edge. Those " words of the wise and their dark sayings,"
as they are distinguished in that large collection which
bears the name of the great Hebrew monarch, at length
seem to have required commentaries; for what else can
we infer of the enigmatic wisdom of the sages when the
royal parcemiographer classes among their studies that
of "understanding a proverb and the interpretation"?
This elevated notion of " the dark sayings of the wise "
accords with the bold conjecture of their origin which
the Stagyrite has thrown out, who considered them as
the wrecks of an ancient philosophy which had been lost
to mankind by the fatal revolutions of all human things,
and that those had been saved from the general ruin by
their pithy elegance and their diminutive form; like those
marine shells found on the tops of mountains, the relics of
the Deluge! Even at a later period the sage of Cheronea
prized them among the most solemn mysteries; and Plu-
tarch has described them in a manner which proverbs may
even still merit: " Under the veil of these curious sentences
are hid those germs of morals which the masters of philoso-
phy have afterward developed into so many volumes."
At the highest period of Grecian genius the tragic
and the comic poets introduced into their dramas the
proverbial style. St. Paul quotes a line which still re-
mains among the first exercises of our school pens:
" Evil communications corrupt good manners."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
243
It is a verse found in a fragment of Menander, the comic
- fyititu Kcucai.
As this verse is a proverb, and the apostle, and indeed
the highest authority, Jesus himself, consecrates the use
of proverbs by their occasional application, it is uncertain
whether St. Paul quotes the Grecian poet or only repeats
some popular adage. Proverbs were bright shafts in the
Greek and Latin quivers; and when Bentley, by a league
of superficial wits, was accused of pedantry ,for his use of
some ancient proverbs, the sturdy critic vindicated his
taste by showing that Cicero constantly introduced Greek
proverbs into his writings that Scaliger and Erasmus
loved them, and had formed collections drawn from the
stores of antiquity.
Some difficulty has occurred in the definition. Prov-
erbs must be distinguished from proverbial phrases, and
from sententious maxims; but as proverbs have many
faces, from their miscellaneous nature, the class itself
scarcely admits of any definition. When Johnson defined
a proverb to be " a short sentence frequently repeated by
the people," this definition would not include the most
curious ones, which have not always circulated among the
populace, nor even belong to them; nor does it designate
the vital qualities of a proverb. " The pithy quaintness
of old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of
an exquisite proverb to be sense, shortness, and salt. A
proverb is distinguished from a maxim or an apophthegm
by that brevity which condenses a thought or a metaphor,
where one thing is said and another is to be applied. This
often produces wit, and that quick pungency which ex-
cites surprise, but strikes with conviction; this gives it
an epigrammatic turn. George Herbert entitled the small
collection which he formed " Jacula Prudentium," Darts
or Javelins! something hurled and striking deeply; a char-
acteristic of a proverb which possibly Herbert may have
borrowed from a remarkable passage in Plato's dialogue
of " Protagoras or the Sophists."
The influence of proverbs over the minds and conver-
sations of a whole people is strikingly illustrated by this
philosopher's explanation of the term " to laconize " the
244 DISRAELI
mode of speech peculiar to the Lacedaemonians. This
people affected to appear unlearned, and seemed only
emulous to excel the rest of the Greeks in fortitude and
in military skill. According to Plato's notion, this was
really a political artifice, with a view to conceal their pre-
eminent wisdom. With the jealousy of a petty state, they
attempted to confine their renowned sagacity within them-
selves, and under their military to hide their contem-
plative character! The philosopher assures those who
in other cities imagined they laconized, merely by imi-
tating the severe exercises and the other warlike manners
of the Lacedaemonians, that they were grossly deceived;
and thus curiously describes the sort of wisdom which
this singular people practised:
" If any one wish to converse with the meanest of the
Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him, for the most
part, apparently despicable in conversation; but after-
ward, when a proper opportunity presents itself, this same
mean person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence,
worthy of attention, short and contorted; so that he who
converses with him will appear to be in no respect supe-
rior to a boy! That to laconize, therefore, consists much
more in philosophizing than in the love of exercise, is
understood by some of the present age, and was known
to the ancients, they being persuaded that the ability
of uttering such sentences as these is the province of a
man perfectly learned. The seven sages were emulators,
lovers, and disciples of the Lacedaemonian erudition.
Their wisdom was a thing of this kind viz., short sen-
tences uttered by each, and worthy to be remembered.
These men, assembling together, consecrated to Apollo
the first fruits of their wisdom; writing in the Temple of
Apollo, at Delphi, those sentences which are celebrated
by all men viz., ' Know thyself! ' and ' Nothing too
much! ' But on what account do I mention these things?
To show that the mode of philosophy among the ancients
was a certain laconic diction." 1
The " laconisms " of the Lacedaemonians evidently par-
took of the proverbial style: they were, no doubt, often
proverbs themselves. The very instances which Plato sup-
plies of this " laconizing " are two most venerable proverbs.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 245
All this elevates the science of proverbs, and indicates
that these abridgments of knowledge convey great results,
with a parsimony of words prodigal of sense. They have,
therefore, preserved many " a short sentence, not repeated
by the people."
It is evident, however, that the earliest writings of
every people are marked by their most homely or domes-
tic proverbs, for these were more directly addressed to
their wants. Franklin, who may be considered as the
founder of a people who were suddenly placed in a stage
of civil society which as yet could afford no literature,
discovered the philosophical cast of his genius when he
filled his almanacs with proverbs, by the ingenious con-
trivance of framing them into a connected discourse, de-
livered by an old man attending an auction. " These
proverbs," he tells us, " which contained the wisdom of
many ages and nations, when their scattered counsels
were brought together, made a great impression. They
were reprinted in Britain, in a large sheet of paper, and
stuck up in houses: and were twice translated in France,
and distributed among their poor parishioners." The same
occurrence had happened with us ere we became a reading
people. Sir Thomas Elyot, in the reign of Henry VIII,
describing the ornaments of a nobleman's house, among
his hangings, and plate, and pictures, notices the engrav-
ing of proverbs " on his plate and vessels, which served
the guests with a most opportune counsel and com-
ments." Later even than the reign of Elizabeth our an-
cestors had proverbs always before them, on everything
that had room for a piece of advice on it; they had them
painted in their tapestries, stamped on the most ordinary
utensils, on the blades of their knives, 2 the borders of their
plates, 3 and " conned them out of goldsmiths' rings."
The usurer, in Robert Greene's " Groat's Worth of
Wit," compressed all his philosophy into the circle of
his ring, having learned sufficient Latin to understand
the proverbial motto of " Tu tibi cura! " The husband
was reminded of his lordly authority when he only looked
into his trencher, one of its learned aphorisms having
descended to us:
" The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives."
DISRAELI
The English proverbs of the populace, most of which
are still in circulation, were collected by old John Hey-
wood. 8 They are arranged by Tusser for " the parlour
the guest's chamber the hall table lessons," etc. Not
a small portion of our ancient proverbs were adapted to
rural life when our ancestors lived more than ourselves
amid the works of God and less among those of men. 6
At this time one of our old statesmen, in commending the
art of compressing a tedious discourse into a few signifi-
cant phrases, suggested the use of proverbs in diplomatic
intercourse, convinced of the great benefit which would
result to the negotiators themselves, as well as to others!
I give a literary curiosity of this kind. A member of the
House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, made a
speech entirely composed of the most homely proverbs.
The subject was a bill against double payments of book
debts. Knavish tradesmen were then in the habit of
swelling out their book debts with those who took
credit, particularly to their younger customers. One
of the members who began to speak " for very fear
shook," and stood silent. The nervous orator was fol-
lowed by a blunt and true representative of the famed
Governor of Barataria, delivering himself thus: " It is
now my chance to speak something, and that without
humming or hawing. I think this law is a good law.
Even reckoning makes long friends. As far goes the
penny as the penny's master. Vigilantibus non dormi-
entibus jura subveniunt ' Pay the reckoning overnight
and ye shall not be troubled in the morning.' If ready
money be mensura publica, let every one cut his coat
according to his cloth. When his old suit is in the
wane, let him stay till that his money bring a new suit
in the increase." 7
Another instance of the use of proverbs among our
statesmen occurs in a manuscript letter of Sir Dudley
Carlton, written in 1632, on the impeachment of Lord
Middlesex, who, he says, is " this day to plead his own
cause in the exchequer chamber, about an account of four-
score thousand pounds laid to his charge. How his lord-
ship sped I know not, but do remember well the French
proverb, Qui mange de Toy du Roy chiera une plume
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 247
quarante ans apres ' Who eats of the king's goose will
void a feather forty years after! ' "
This was the era of proverbs with us; for then they
were spoken by all ranks of society. The free use of trivial
proverbs got them into disrepute; and as the abuse of a
thing raises a just opposition to its practice, a slender
wit affecting " a cross humour," published a little volume
of " Crossing Proverbs, Cross-answers, and Cross-hu-
mours." He pretends to contradict the most popular
ones, but he has not always the genius to strike at amus-
ing paradoxes. 8
Proverbs were long the favourites of our neighbours;
in the splendid and refined court of Louis XIV they gave
rise to an odd invention. They plotted comedies and even
fantastical ballets from their subjects. In these curiosi-
ties of literature I can not pass by such eccentric inven-
tions unnoticed.
A comedy of proverbs is described by the Duke de la
Valliere, which was performed in 1634 with prodigious
success. He considers that this comedy ought to be
ranked among farces; but it is gay, well written, and curi-
ous for containing the best proverbs, which are happily
introduced in the dialogue.
A more extraordinary attempt was a ballet of proverbs.
Before the opera was established in France the ancient bal-
lets formed the chief amusement of the court, and Louis
XIV himself joined with the performers. The singular
attempt of forming a pantomimical dance out of proverbs
is quite French; we have a " ballet des proverbes, danse par
le Roi, in 1654." At every proverb the scene changed, and
adapted itself to the subject. I shall give two or three of the
entrees that we may form some notion of these capriccios.
The proverb was:
Tel menace qui a grand peur.
" He threatens who is afraid."
The scene was composed of swaggering scaramouches and
some honest cits, who at length beat them off.
At another entree the proverb was:
L'occasion fait le larron.
" Opportunity makes the thief."
2 4 8
DISRAELI
Opportunity was acted by le Sieur Beaubrun, but it is
difficult to conceive how the real could personify the ab-
stract personage. The thieves were the Duke d'Amville
and Monsieur de la Chesnaye.
Another entree was the proverb of:
Ce qui vient de la flute s'en va au tambour.
" What comes by the pipe goes by the tabor."
A loose, dissipated officer was performed by le Sieur 1'An-
glois, the Pipe by St. Aignan, and the Tabor by le Sieur
le Comte! In this manner every proverb was spoken in
action, the whole connected by dialogue. More must
have depended on the actors than the poet. 9
The French long retained this fondness for proverbs;
for they still have dramatic compositions entitled " pro-
verbes," on a more refined plan. Their invention is so
recent that the term is not in their great dictionary of
Trevoux. These " proverbes " are dramas of a single act,
invented by Carmontel, who possessed a peculiar vein of
humour, but who designed them only for private the-
atricals. Each proverb furnished a subject for a few
scenes, and created a situation powerfully comic: it is a
dramatic amusement which does not appear to have
reached us, but one which the celebrated Catharine of
Russia delighted to compose for her own society.
Among the middle classes of society to this day we
may observe that certain family proverbs are traditionally
preserved: the favourite saying of a father is repeated by
the sons; and frequently the conduct of a whole genera-
tion has been influenced by such domestic proverbs. This
may be perceived in many of the mottoes of our old
nobility, which seem to have originated in some habitual
proverb of the founder of the family. In ages when
'proverbs were most prevalent, such pithy sentences would
admirably serve in the ordinary business of life, and lead
on to decision, even in its greater exigencies. Orators,
by some lucky proverb, without wearying their auditors,
would bring conviction home to their bosoms: and great
characters would appeal to a proverb, or deliver that
which in time by its aptitude became one. When Nero
was reproached for the ardour with which he gave him-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 249
self up to the study of music, he replied to his censurers
by the Greek proverb, " An artist lives everywhere." The
emperor answered in the spirit of Rousseau's system, that
every child should be taught some trade. When Caesar,
after anxious deliberation, decided on the passage of the
Rubicon (which very event has given rise to a proverb),
rousing himself with a start of courage, he committed
himself to Fortune with that proverbial expression on his
lips used by gamesters in desperate play: having passed
the Rubicon, he exclaimed, "The die is cast!" The an-
swer of Paulus ^milius to the relations of his wife, who
had remonstrated with him on his determination to sepa-
rate himself from her against whom no fault could be
alleged, has become one of our most familiar proverbs.
This hero acknowledged the excellences of his lady;
but, requesting them to look on his shoe, which appeared
to be well made, he observed, " None of you know
where the shoe pinches! " He either used a proverbial
phrase or by its aptness it has become one of the most
popular.
There are, indeed, proverbs connected with the char-
acters of eminent men. They were either their favourite
ones or have originated with themselves. Such a collec-
tion would form a historical curiosity. To the celebrated
Bayard are the French indebted for a military proverb,
which some of them still repeat, " Ce que le gantelet
gagne le gorgerin le mange " " What the gauntlet gets,
the gorget consumes." That reflecting soldier well cal-
culated the profits of a military life which consumes, in
the pomp and waste which are necessary for its mainte-
nance, the slender pay it receives, and even what its rapaci-
ty sometimes acquires. The favourite proverb of Eras-
mus was Festina lente! " Hasten slowly! " 10 He wished
it be inscribed wherever it could meet our eyes, on public
buildings, and on our rings and seals. One of our own
statesmen used a favourite sentence, which has enlarged
our stock of national proverbs. Sir Amias Pawlet, when
he perceived too much hurry in any business, was accus-
tomed to say, " Stay awhile, to make an end the sooner."
Oliver Cromwell's coarse but descriptive proverb conveys
the contempt he felt for some of his mean and troublesome
DISRAELI
coadjutors, "Nits will be lice!" The Italians have a
proverb, which has been occasionally applied to certain
political personages: t
Egli e quello che Dio vuole;
E sara quello che Dio vorra!
" He is what God pleases;
He shall be what God wills! "
Ere this was a proverb it had served as an embroidered
motto on the mystical mantle of Castruccio Castracani.
That military genius, who sought to revolutionize Italy,
and aspired to its sovereignty, lived long enough to repent
the wild romantic ambition which provoked all Italy to
confederate against him; the mysterious motto he as-
sumed entered into the proverbs of his country! The
border proverb of the Douglases, " It were better to hear
the lark sing than the mouse cheep," was adopted by
every border chief to express, as Sir Walter Scott ob-
serves, what the great Bruce had pointed out, that the
woods and hills of their country were their safest bul-
warks, instead of the fortified places which the English
surpassed their neighbours in the arts of assaulting or de-
fending. These illustrations indicate one of the sources
of proverbs; they have often resulted from the spontane-
ous emotions or the profound reflections of some extraor-
dinary individual, whose energetic expression was caught
by a faithful ear, never to perish!
The poets have been very busy with proverbs in all
the languages of Europe: some appear to have been the
favourite lines of some ancient poem : even in more refined
times many of the pointed verses of Boileau and Pope
have become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic prov-
erbs bear the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which as-
sisted their circulation, and were probably struck off ex-
tempore; a manner which Swift practised, who was a
ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs: de-
lighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic
humour, in the shape of an " old saying and true." Some
of these rhyming proverbs are, however, terse and elegant :
we have
" Little strokes
Fell great oaks."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 251
The Italian
Chi duo lepri caccia
Uno perde, e 1'altro lascia.
" Who hunts two hares, loses one and leaves the other."
The haughty Spaniard
El dar es honor,
Y 1 pedir dolor.
" To give is honour, to ask is grief."
And the French
Ami de table
Est variable.
" The friend of the table
Is very variable."
The composers of these short proverbs were a numer-
ous race of poets, who probably among the dreams of
their immortality never suspected that they were to de-
scend to posterity, themselves and their works unknown,
while their extempore thoughts would be repeated by
their own nation.
Proverbs were at length consigned to the people when
books were addressed to scholars; but the people did not
find themselves so destitute of practical wisdom by pre-
serving their national proverbs, as some of those closet
students who had ceased to repeat them. The various
humours of mankind, in the mutability of human affairs,
had given birth to every species; and men were wise, or
merry, or satirical, and mourned or rejoiced in proverbs.
Nations held a universal intercourse of proverbs, from the
eastern to the western world; for we discover among
those which appear strictly national, many which are com-
mon to them all. Of our own familiar ones several may
be tracked among the snows of the Latins and the
Greeks, and have sometimes been drawn from " The Mines
of the East": like decayed families which remain in ob-
scurity, they may boast of a high lineal descent whenever
they recover their lost title deeds. The vulgar proverb,
" To carry coals to Newcastle," local and idiomatic as it
appears, however, has been borrowed and applied by our-
selves; it may be found among the Persians: in the " Bus-
tan " of Sadi we have Infers piper in Hindostan " To
carry pepper to Hindostan"; among the Hebrews, "To
252
DISRAELI
carry oil to the City of Olives " ; a similar proverb occurs
in Greek; and in Galland's " Maxims of the East " we
may discover how many of the most common proverbs
among us, as well as some of Joe Miller's jests, are of
Oriental origin.
The resemblance of certain proverbs in different na-
tions must, however, be often ascribed to the identity of
human nature; similar situations and similar objects have
unquestionably made men think and act and express them-
selves alike. All nations are parallels of each other!
Hence all paroemiographers, or collectors of proverbs,
complain of the difficulty of separating their own national
proverbs from those which have crept into the language
from others, particularly when nations have held much
intercourse together. We have a copious collection of
Scottish proverbs by Kelly; but this learned man was
mortified at discovering that many which he had long
believed to have been genuine Scottish were not only
English, but French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek
ones; many of his Scottish proverbs are almost literally
expressed among the fragments of remote antiquity. It
would have surprised him further had he been aware that
his Greek originals were themselves but copies, and might
have been found in D'Herbelot, Erpenius, and Golius, and
in many Asiatic works, which have been more recently
introduced to the enlarged knowledge of the European
student, who formerly found his most extended researches
limited by Hellenistic lore.
Perhaps it was owing to an accidental circumstance
that the proverbs of the European nations have been pre-
served in the permanent form of volumes. Erasmus is
usually considered as the first modern collector, but he
appears to have been preceded by Polydore Vergil, who
bitterly reproaches Erasmus with envy and plagiarism for
passing by his collection without even a poor compliment
for the inventor! Polydore was a vain, superficial writer,
who prided himself in leading the way on more topics
than the present. Erasmus, with his usual pleasantry,
provokingly excuses himself by acknowledging that he
had forgotten his friend's book! Few sympathize with the
quarrels of authors; and since Erasmus has written a far
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 253
better book than Polydore Vergil's, the original " Ada-
gia " is left only to be commemorated in literary history
as one of its curiosities. 11
The "Adagia" of Erasmus contains a collection of
about five thousand proverbs, gradually gathered from a
constant study of the ancients. Erasmus, blessed with the
genius which could enliven a folio, delighted himself and
all Europe by the continued accessions he made to a vol-
ume which even now may be the companion of literary
men for a winter day's fireside. The successful example
of Erasmus commanded the imitation of the learned in
Europe, and drew their attention to their own national
proverbs. Some of the most learned men, and some not
sufficiently so, were now occupied in this new study.
In Spain, Fernandez Nunez, a Greek professor, and the
Marquis of Santellana, a grandee, published collections of
their " Refranes," or " Proverbs," a term derived a refe-
rendo, because it is often repeated. The " Refranes o Pro-
verbios Castellanos," par Caesar Oudin, 1624, translated
into French, is a valuable compilation. In Cervantes and
Quevedo, the best practical illustrators, they are sown
with no sparing hand. There is an ample collection of
Italian proverbs, by Florio, who was an Englishman, of
Italian origin, and who published " II Giardino di Ricre-
atione " at London, so early as in 1591, exceeding six
thousand proverbs; but they are unexplained, and are
often obscure. Another Italian in England, Torriano, in
1649, published an interesting collection in the diminu-
tive form of a twenty-fours. It was subsequent to these
publications in England that in Italy, Angelus Monozini,
in 1604, published his collection; and Julius Varini, in
1642, produced his " Scuola del Vulgo." In France,
Oudin, after others had preceded him, published a collec-
tion of French proverbs, under the title of " Curiosites
Franchises." Fleury de Bellingen's " Explication de Pro-
verbes Frangois," on comparing it with " Les Illustres
Proverbes Historiques," a subsequent publication, I dis-
covered to be the same work. It is the first attempt to
render the study of proverbs somewhat amusing. The
plan consists of a dialogue between a philosopher and a
Sancho Panqa, who blurts out his proverbs with more de-
254
DISRAELI
light than understanding. The philosopher takes that op-
portunity of explaining them by the events in which they
originated, which, however, are not always to be depended
on. A work of high merit on French proverbs is the un-
finished one of the Abbe Tuet, sensible and learned. A
collection of Danish proverbs, accompanied by a French
translation, was printed at Copenhagen, in a quarto vol-
ume, 1761. England may boast of no inferior paroemi-
ographers. The grave and judicious Camden, the reli-
gious Herbert, the entertaining Howell, the facetious
Fuller, and the laborious Ray, with others, have pre-
served our national sayings. The Scottish have been
largely collected and explained by the learned Kelly. An
excellent anonymous collection, not uncommon, in vari-
ous languages, 1707; the collector and translator was Dr.
J. Mapletoft. It must be acknowledged that, although no
nation exceeds our own in sterling sense, we rarely rival
the delicacy, the wit, and the felicity of expression of the
Spanish and the Italian, and the poignancy of some of the
French proverbs.
The interest we may derive from the study of proverbs
is not confined to their universal truths, nor to their
poignant pleasantry; a philosophical mind will discover
in proverbs a great variety of the most curious knowl-
edge. The manners of a people are painted after life in
their domestic proverbs; and it would not be advancing
too much to assert that the genius of the age might be
often detected in its prevalent ones. The learned Selden
tells us that the proverbs of several nations were much
studied by Bishop Andrews: the reason assigned was, be-
cause " by them he knew the minds of several nations,
which," said he, " is a brave thing, as we count him wise
who knows the minds and the insides of men, which is
done by knowing what is habitual to them." Lord Bacon
condensed a wide circuit of philosophical thought when
he observed that " the genius, wit, and spirit of a nation
are discovered by their proverbs."
Proverbs peculiarly national, while they convey to us
the modes of thinking, will consequently indicate the
modes of acting among a people. The Romans had a
proverbial expression for their last stake in play, Rem
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 255
ad triarios venisse "The reserve are engaged!" a pro-
verbial expression, from which the military habits of the
people might be inferred; the triarii being their reserve.
A proverb has preserved a curious custom of ancient cox-
combry, which originally came from the Greeks. To men
of effeminate manners in their dress they applied the
proverb of Unico digitulo scalpit caput. Scratching the
head with a single finger was, it seems, done by the crit-
ically nice youths in Rome, that they might not discom-
pose the economy of their hair. The Arab, whose un-
settled existence makes him miserable and interested, says,
" Vinegar given is better than honey bought." Every-
thing of high esteem with him who is so often parched in
the desert is described as milk " How large his flow of
milk!" is a proverbial expression with the Arab to dis-
tinguish the most copious eloquence. To express a state
of perfect repose, the Arabian proverb is, " I throw the
rein over my back "; an allusion to the loosening of the
cords of the camels, which are thrown over their backs
when they are sent to pasture. We discover the rustic
manners of our ancient Britons in the Cambrian proverbs;
many relate to the hedge. " The cleanly Briton is seen
in the hedge: the horse looks not on the hedge but the
corn: the bad husband's hedge is full of gaps." The state
of an agricultural people appears in such proverbs as
' You must not count your yearlings till May-day": and
their proverbial sentence for old age is, " An old man's
end is to keep sheep! " Turn from the vagrant Arab and
the agricultural Briton to a nation existing in a high
state of artificial civilization: the Chinese proverbs fre-
quently allude to magnificent buildings. Affecting a more
solemn exterior than all other nations, a favourite proverb
with them is, " A grave and majestic outside is, as it were,
the palace of the soul." Their notion of a government
is quite architectural. They say, " A sovereign may be
compared to a hall; his officers to the steps that lead to
it; the people to the ground on which they stand." What
should we think of a people who had a proverb that " He
who gives blows is a master, he who gives none is a
dog "? We should instantly decide on the mean and ser-
vile spirit of those who could repeat it; and such we find
356 DISRAELI
to have been that of the Bengalese, to whom the degrad-
ing proverb belongs, derived from the treatment they were
used to receive from their Mogul rulers, who answered
the claims of their creditors by a vigorous application of
the whip! In some of the Hebrew proverbs we are struck
by the frequent allusions of that fugitive people to their
own history. The cruel oppression exercised by the rul-
ing power, and the confidence in their hope of change
in the day of retribution, was delivered in this Hebrew
proverb, " When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses
comes! " The fond idolatry of their devotion to their
ceremonial law, and to everything connected with their
sublime theocracy, in their magnificent temple, is finely
expressed by this proverb, " None ever took a stone out
of the temple but the dust did fly into his eyes." The
Hebrew proverb that " A fast for a dream is as fire for
stubble," which it kindles, could only have been invented
by a people whose superstitions attached a holy mystery
to fasts and dreams. They imagined that a religious fast
was propitious to a religious dream; or to obtain the in-
terpretation of one which had troubled their imagination.
Peyssonel, who long resided among the Turks, observes
that their proverbs are full of sense, ingenuity, and ele-
gance, the surest test of the intellectual abilities of any
nation. He said this to correct the volatile opinion of De
Tott, who, to convey an idea of their stupid pride, quotes
one of their favourite adages, of which the truth and can-
dour are admirable, " Riches in the Indies, wit in Europe,
and pomp among the Ottomans."
The Spaniards may appeal to their proverbs to show
that they were a high-minded and independent race. A
Whiggish jealousy of the monarchical power stamped
itself on this ancient one, Va el rey hasta do peude, y no
hasta do quiere " The king goes as far as he is able, not
as far as he desires." It must have been at a later period,
when the national genius became more subdued, and every
Spaniard dreaded to find under his own roof a spy or an
informer, that another proverb arose, Con el rey y la in-
quisition, chiton! "With the king and the Inquisition,
hush!" The gravity and taciturnity of the nation have
been ascribed to the effects of this proverb. Their popu-
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
257
lar but suppressed feelings on taxation, and on a variety
of dues exacted by their clergy, were murmured in prov-
erbs. Lo que no lleva Christo lleva el fisco! "What
Christ takes not, the exchequer carries away!" They
have a number of sarcastic proverbs on the tenacious gripe
of the " abad avariento," the avaricious priest, who, " hav-
ing eaten the olio offered, claims the dish!" A striking
mixture of chivalric habits, domestic decency, and epi-
curean comfort, appears in the Spanish proverb, La muger
y la salsa a la mano de la lanc^a " The wife and the sauce
by the hand of the lance"; to honour the dame, and to
have the sauce near.
The Italian proverbs have taken a tinge from their
deep and politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly
concentrated in their personal interests. I think every
tenth proverb in an Italian collection is some cynical or
some selfish maxim: a book of the world for worldlings!
The Venetian proverb, Pria Veneziana, poi Christiane
"First Venetian, and then Christian!" condenses the
whole spirit of their ancient republic into the smallest
space possible. Their political proverbs no doubt arose
from the extraordinary state of a people sometimes dis-
tracted among republics, and sometimes servile in petty
courts. The Italian says, I popoli s'ammazzano, ed i prin-
cipi s'abbracciano " The people murder one another, and
princes embrace one another." Chi prattica co' grandi,
1'ultimo a tavola, e'l primo a strapazzi " Who dangles
after the great is the last at table and the first at blows."
Chi non sa adulare, non sa regnare " Who knows not to
flatter, knows not to reign." Chi serve in corte muore
sul' pagliato " Who serves at court dies on straw."
Wary cunning in domestic life is perpetually impressed.
An Italian proverb, which is immortalized in our lan-
guage, for it enters into the history of Milton, was that
by which the elegant Wotton counselled the young poetic
traveller to have, II viso sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti " An
open countenance, but close thoughts." In the same
spirit, Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie " The talker
sows, the silent reaps"; as well as, Fatti di miele, e ti
mangieran le mosche " Make yourself all honey, and the
flies will devour you." There are some which display a
DISRAELI
deep knowledge of human nature: A Lucca ti vidi, a Pisa
ti connobbi! " I saw you at Lucca, I knew you at Pisa! "
Guardati d'aceto di vin dolce " Beware of vinegar made
of sweet wine "; provoke not the rage of a patient man!
Among a people who had often witnessed their fine
country devastated by petty warfare, their notion of the
military character was not usually heroic. II soldato per
far male e ben pagato " The soldier is well paid for doing
mischief." Soldato, acqua, e fuoco, presto si fan luoco
" A soldier, fire, and water soon make room for them-
selves." But in a poetical people, endowed with great
sensibility, their proverbs would sometimes be tender and
fanciful. They paint the activity of friendship, Chi ha
Tamor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi " Who feels love
in the breast feels a spur in his limbs": or its generous
passion, Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo
" Friends tie their purse with a cobweb's thread." They
characterized the universal lover by an elegant proverb,
Appicare il Maio ad ogn' uscio " To hang every door
with May"; alluding to the bough which in the nights
of May the country people are accustomed to plant before
the door of their mistress. If we turn to the French, we
discover that the military genius of France dictated the
proverb Maille a maille se fait le haubergeon " Link by
link is made the coat of mail "; and, Tel coup de langue
est pire qu'un coup de lance " The tongue strikes deeper
than the lance"; and Ce qui vient du tambour s'en re-
tourne a la flute " What comes by the tabor goes back
with the pipe." Point d'argent point de Suisse has be-
come proverbial, observes an Edinburgh reviewer; a strik-
ing expression, which, while French or Austrian gold
predominated, was justly used to characterize the illiberal
and selfish policy of the cantonal and federal governments
of Switzerland when it began to degenerate from its moral
patriotism. The ancient, perhaps the extinct, spirit of
Englishmen was once expressed by our proverb, " Better
be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion " i. e., the
first of the yeomanry rather than the last of the gentry.
A foreign philosopher might have discovered our own
ancient skill in archery among our proverbs; for none but
true toxophilites could have had such a proverb as " I
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
will either make a shaft or a bolt of it! " signifying, says
the author of " Ivanhoe," a determination to make one
use or other of the thing spoken of: the bolt was the
arrow peculiarly fitted to the cross-bow, as that of the
long-bow was called a shaft. These instances sufficiently
demonstrate that the characteristic circumstances and feel-
ings of a people are discovered in their popular notions,
and stamped on their familiar proverbs.
It is also evident that the peculiar and often idiomatic
humour of a people is best preserved in their proverbs.
There is a shrewdness, although deficient in delicacy, in
the Scottish proverbs; they are idiomatic, facetious, and
strike home. Kelly, who has collected three thousand, in-
forms us that, in 1725, the Scotch were a great proverbial
nation; for that few among the better sort will converse
any considerable time, but will confirm every assertion
and observation with a Scottish proverb. The speculative
Scotch of our own times have probably degenerated in
prudential lore, and deem themselves much wiser than
their proverbs. They may reply by a Scotch proverb
on proverbs, made by a great man in Scotland, who, hav-
ing given a splendid entertainment, was harshly told that
" Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them"; but he
readily answered, " Wise men make proverbs, and fools
repeat them! "
National humour, frequently local and idomatical, de-
pends on the artificial habits of mankind, so opposite to
each other; but there is a natural vein, which the popu-
lace, always true to nature, preserve, even among the
gravest people. The Arabian proverb, " The barber learns
his art on the orphan's face "; the Chinese, " In a field of
melons do not pull up your shoe; under a plum tree do
not adjust your cap " to impress caution in our conduct
under circumstances of suspicion and the Hebrew one,
" He that hath had one of his family hanged may not say
to his neighbour, Hang up this fish! " are all instances of
this sort of humour. The Spaniards are a grave people,
but no nation has equalled them in their peculiar humour.
The genius of Cervantes partook largely of that of his
country; that mantle of gravity, which almost conceals its
latent facetiousness, and with which he has imbued his
DISRAELI
style and manner with such untranslatable idiomatic raci-
ness, may be traced to the proverbial erudition of his na-
tion. " To steal a sheep, and give away the trotters for
God's sake! " is Cervantic nature. To one who is seeking
an opportunity to quarrel with another, their proverb
runs, Si quieres dar palos a sur muger pidele al sol a bever
" Hast thou a mind to quarrel with thy wife, bid her
bring water to thee in the sunshine! " a very fair quarrel
may be picked up about the motes in the clearest water!
On the judges in Galicia, who, like our former justices of
peace, " for half a dozen chickens would dispense with a
dozen of penal statutes," A juezes Galicianos, con los pies
en las manos " To the judges of Galicia go with feet in
hand"; a droll allusion to a present of poultry, usually
held by the legs. To describe persons who live high with-
out visible means, Los que cabritos venden, y cabras no
tienen, de donde los vienen? " They that sell kids, and
have no goats, how came they by them? " El vino no trae
bragas " Wine wears no breeches "; for men in wine ex-
pose their most secret thoughts. Vino di un oreja
"Wine of one ear!" is good wine; for at bad, shaking
our heads, both our ears are visible; but at good the
Spaniard, by a natural gesticulation lowering on one side,
shows a single ear.
Proverbs abounding in sarcastic humour, and found
among every people, are those which are pointed at rival
countries. Among ourselves, hardly a county escaped
from some popular quip; even neighbouring towns have
their sarcasms, usually pickled in some unlucky rhyme.
The egotism of man eagerly seizes on whatever serves to
depreciate or to ridicule his neighbour: nations proverb
each other ; counties flout counties ; obscure towns
sharpen their wits on towns as obscure as themselves
the same evil principle lurking in poor human nature, if
it can not always assume predominance, will meanly gratify
itself by insult or contempt. They expose some preva-
lent folly, or allude to some disgrace which the natives
have incurred. In France the Burgundians have a prov-
erb, Mieux vaut bon repas que bel habit " Better a good
dinner than a fine coat." These good people are great
gormandizers, but shabby dressers; they are commonly
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 2 6l
said to have " bowels of silk and velvet " this is, all their
silk and velvet goes for their bowels! Thus Picardy is
famous for " hot heads "; and the Norman for son dit et
son dedit, " his saying and his unsaying! " In Italy the
numerous rival cities pelt one another with proverbs:
Chi ha a fare con Tosco non convien esser losco " He
who deals with a Tuscan must not have his eyes shut."
A Venetia chi vi nasce mal vi si pasce " Whom Venice
breeds, she poorly feeds."
There is another source of national characteristics, fre-
quently producing strange or whimsical combinations; a
people, from a very natural circumstance, have drawn
their proverbs from local objects, or from allusions to pe-
culiar customs. The influence of manners and customs
over the ideas and language of a people would form a sub-
ject of extensive and curious research. There is a Japan-
ese proverb that " A fog can not be dispelled with a fan! "
Had we not known the origin of this proverb, it would be
evident that it could only have occurred to a people who
had constantly before them fogs and fans; and the fact
appears that fogs are frequent on the coast of Japan, and
that from the age of five years both sexes of the Japanese
carry fans. The Spaniards have an odd proverb to de-
scribe those who tease and vex a person before they do
him the very benefit which they are about to confer
acting kindly, but speaking roughly, Mostrar primero la
horca que le lugar " To show the gallows before they
show the town "; a circumstance alluding to their small
towns, which have a gallows placed on an eminence, so
that the gallows breaks on the eye of the traveller before
he gets a view of the town itself.
The Cheshire proverb on marriage, " Better wed over
the mixon than over the moor " that is, at home or in
its vicinity; mixon alludes to the dung, etc., in the farm-
yard, while the road from Chester to London is % over the
moorland in Staffordshire: this local proverb is a curious
instance of provincial pride, perhaps of wisdom, to induce
the gentry of that county to form intermarriages; to pro-
long their own ancient families, and perpetuate ancient
friendships between them.
In the Isle of Man a proverbial expression forcibly
17
DISRAELI
indicates the object constantly occupying the minds of the
inhabitants. The two deemsters or judges, when ap-
pointed to the chair of judgment, declare they will render
justice between man and man " as equally as the herring-
bone lies between the two sides ": an image which could
not have occurred to any people unaccustomed to the
herring fishery. There is a Cornish proverb, " Those who
will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the
roc k " the strands of Cornwall, so often covered with
wrecks, could not fail to impress on the imaginations of
its inhabitants the two objects from whence they drew
this salutary proverb against obstinate wrongheads.
When Scotland, in the last century, felt its allegiance
to England doubtful, and when the French sent an expe-
dition to the Land of Cakes, a local proverb was revived,
to show the identity of interests which affected both
nations:
" If Skiddaw hath a cap,
Scruffel wots full well of that."
These are two high hills, one in Scotland and one in Eng-
land; so near that what happens to the one will not be
long ere it reach the other. If a fog lodges on the one,
it is sure to rain on the other; the mutual sympathies of
the two countries were hence deduced in a copious dis-
sertation, by Oswald Dyke, on what was called " The
Union-proverb," which local proverbs of our country
Fuller has interspersed in his " Worthies," and Ray and
Grose have collected separately.
I was amused lately by a curious financial revelation
which I found in an opposition paper, where it appears
that " ministers pretend to make their load of taxes more
portable by shifting the burden or altering the pressure,
without, however, diminishing the weight; according to
the Italian proverb, Accommodare le bisaccie nella strada
* To fit, the load on the journey ' "; it is taken from a
custom of the mule-drivers, who, placing their packages
at first but awkwardly on the backs of their poor beasts,
and seeing them ready to sink, cry out: " Never mind!
we must fit them better on the road!" I was gratified
to discover, by the present and some other modern in-
stances, that the taste for proverbs was reviving, and that
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 263
we were returning to those sober times when the aptitude
of a simple proverb would be preferred to the verbosity of
politicians, Tories, Whigs, or Radicals!
There are domestic proverbs which originate in inci-
dents known only to the natives of their province. Ital-
ian literature is particularly rich in these stores. The
lively proverbial taste of that vivacious people was trans-
ferred to their own authors; and when these allusions were
obscured by time, learned Italians, in their zeal for their
national literature, and in their national love of story-tell-
ing, have written grave commentaries even on ludicrous
but popular tales, in which the proverbs are said to have
originated. They resemble the old facetious contes, whose
simplicity and humour still live in the pages of Boccaccio,
and are not forgotten in those of the Queen of Navarre.
The Italians apply a proverb to a person who, while
he is beaten, takes the blows quietly:
Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!
" Luckily they were not peaches! "
And to threaten to give a man
Una pesca in un occhio,
" A peach in the eye,"
means to give him a thrashing. This proverb, it is said,
originated in the close of a certain droll adventure. The
community of the Castle Poggibonsi, probably from some
jocular tenure observed on St. Bernard's day, pay a tribute
of peaches to the court of Tuscany, which are usually shared
among the ladies in waiting and the pages of the court.
It happened one season, in a great scarcity of peaches, that
the good people of Poggibonsi, finding them rather dear,
sent, instead of the customary tribute, a quantity of fine
juicy figs, which was so much disapproved of by the pages
that as soon as they got hold of them they began in rage to
empty the baskets on the heads of the ambassadors of the
Poggibonsi, who, in attempting to fly as well as they could
from the pulpy shower, half blinded, and recollecting that
peaches would have had stones in them, cried out:
Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!
" Luckily they were not peaches ! "
264
DISRAELI
Fare le scalee di Sant' Ambrogio " To mount the
stairs of Saint Ambrose," a proverb allusive to the busi-
ness of the school of scandal. Varchi explains it by a cir-
cumstance so common in provincial cities. On summer
evenings, for fresh air and gossip, the loungers met on the
steps and landing places of the Church of St. Ambrose:
whoever left the party, " they read in his book," as our
commentator expresses it; and not a leaf was passed over!
All liked to join a party so well informed of one another's
concerns, and every one tried to be the very last to quit it
not " to leave his character behind! " It became a pro-
verbial phrase with those who left a company, and were
too tender of their backs, to request they would not
" mount the stairs of St. Ambrose." Jonson has well de-
scribed such a company:
" You are so truly feared, but not beloved
One of another, as no one dares break
Company from the rest, lest they should fall
Upon him absent."
There are legends and histories which belong to prov-
erbs; and some of the most ancient refer to incidents
which have not always been commemorated. Two Greek
proverbs have accidentally been explained by Pausanias:
" He is a man of Tenedos! " to describe a person of un-
questionable veracity; and " To cut with the Tenedian
axe "; to express an absolute and irrevocable refusal. The
first originated in a King of Tenedos, who decreed that
there should always stand behind the judge a man holding
an axe, ready to execute justice on any one convicted of
falsehood. The other arose from the same king, whose
father having reached his island, to supplicate the son's
forgiveness for the injury inflicted on him by the arts of
a stepmother, was preparing to land; already the ship was
fastened by its cable to a rock, when the son came down
and, sternly cutting the cable with an axe, sent the ship
adrift to the mercy of the waves: hence, " to cut with the
Tenedian axe " became proverbial to express an absolute
refusal. " Business to-morrow!" is another Greek proverb,
applied to a person ruined by his own neglect. The fate
of an eminent person perpetuated the expression which he
casually employed on the occasion. One of the Theban
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 265
polemarchs, in the midst of a convivial party, received
despatches relating to a conspiracy: flushed with wine,
although pressed by the courier to open them immedi-
ately, he smiled, and in gaiety laying the letter under the
pillow of his couch, observed, "Business to-morrow!"
Plutarch records that he fell a victim to the twenty-four
hours he had lost, and became the author of a proverb
which was still circulated among the Greeks.
The philosophical antiquary may often discover how
many a proverb commemorates an event which has es-
caped from the more solemn monuments of history, and
is often the solitary authority of its existence. A national
event in Spanish history is preserved by a proverb. Y
vengar quiniento sueldos " And revenge five hundred
pounds! " An odd expression to denote a person being
a gentleman ! but the proverb is historical. The Spaniards
of Old Castile were compelled to pay an annual tribute of
five hundred maidens to their masters, the Moors; after
several battles, the Spaniards succeeded in compromising
the shameful tribute by as many pieces of coin: at length
the day arrived when they entirely emancipated them-
selves from this odious imposition. The heroic action was
performed by men of distinction, and the event perpetu-
ated in the recollections of the Spaniards by this singular
expression, which alludes to the dishonourable tribute,
was applied to characterize all men of high honour, and
devoted lovers of their country.
Pasquier, in his " Recherches sur la France/' reviewing
the periodical changes of ancient families in feudal times,
observes that a proverb among the common people con-
veys the result of all his inquiries; for those noble houses,
which in a single age declined from nobility and wealth
to poverty and meanness, gave rise to the proverb, Cent
ans bannieres et cent ans civieres! " One hundred years
a banner and one hundred years a barrow! " The Italian
proverb, Con 1'Evangilio si diventa heretico " With the
gospel we become heretics " reflects the policy of the
court of Rome; and must be dated at the time of the
Reformation, when a translation of the Scriptures into the
vulgar tongue encountered such an invincible opposition.
The Scotch proverb, " He that invented the maiden first
2 66 DISRAELI
hanselled it " that is, got the first of it! The maiden is
that well-known beheading engine revived by the French
surgeon Guillotine. This proverb may be applied to one
who falls a victim to his own ingenuity; the artificer of
his own destruction! The inventor was James, Earl of
Morton, who for some years governed Scotland, and after-
ward, it is said, very unjustly suffered by his own inven-
tion. It is a striking coincidence that the same fate was
shared by the French reviver; both alike sad examples of
disturbed times! Among our own proverbs a remarkable
incident has been commemorated, " Hand over head, as
the men took the Covenant! " This preserves the manner
in which the Scotch covenant, so famous in our history,
was violently taken by above sixty thousand persons about
Edinburgh, in 1638; a circumstance at that time novel in
our own revolutionary history, and afterward paralleled
by the French in voting by " acclamation." An ancient
English proverb preserves a curious fact concerning our
coinage, " Testers are gone to Oxford to study at Brazen-
nose." When Henry VIII debased the silver coin, called
testers, from their having a head stamped on one side,
the brass, breaking out in red pimples on their silver faces,
provoked the ill-humour of the people to vent itself in
this punning proverb, which has preserved for the histor-
ical antiquary the popular feeling which lasted about fifty
years, till Elizabeth reformed the state of the coinage.
A northern proverb among us has preserved the remark-
able idea which seems to have once been prevalent, that
the metropolis of England was to be the city of York
" Lincoln was, London is, York shall be! " Whether
at the time of the union of the crowns, under James I,
when England and Scotland became Great Britain, this
city, from its centrical situation, was considered as the
best adapted for the seat of government, or for some other
cause which I have not discovered, this notion must have
been prevalent to have entered into a proverb. The chief
magistrate of York is the only provincial one who is al-
lowed the title of lord mayor; a circumstance which seems
connected with this proverb.
The Italian history of its own small principalities,
whose well-being o much depended on their prudence and
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 267
sagacity, affords many instances of the timely use of a
proverb. Many an intricate negotiation has been con-
tracted through a good-humoured proverb many a sar-
castic one has silenced an adversary; and sometimes they
have been applied on more solemn and even tragical occa-
sions. When Rinaldo degli Albizzi was banished by the
vigorous conduct of Cosmo de' Medici, Machiavel tells us
the expelled man sent Cosmo a menace in a proverb, La
gallina covava! "The hen is brooding!" said of one
meditating vengeance. The undaunted Cosmo replied by
another, that " There was no brooding out of the nest! "
I give an example of peculiar interest, for it is per-
petuated by Dante and is connected with the character of
Milton.
When the families of the Amadei and the Uberti felt
their honour wounded in the affront the younger Buon-
delmonte had put upon them, in breaking off his match
with a young lady of their family, by marrying another,
a council was held, and the death of the young cavalier
was proposed as the sole atonement for their injured hon-
our. But the consequences which they anticipated, and
which afterward proved so fatal to the Florentines, long
suspended their decision. At length Moscha Lamberti,
suddenly rising, exclaimed, in two proverbs, " That those
who considered everything would never conclude on any-
thing! " closing with an ancient proverbial saying, Cosa
fatta capo ha! " A deed done has an end! " The proverb
sealed the fatal determination, and was long held in
mournful remembrance by the Tuscans; for, according to
Villani, it was the cause and beginning of the accursed
factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Dante has
thus immortalized the energetic expression in a scene of
the "Inferno":
Ed un, ch' avea 1' una e 1' altra man mozza,
Levando i moncherin per 1' aura fosca,
Si che '1 sangue facea la faccia sozza,
Grido: " Ricorderati anche del Mosca,
Che dissi, lasso: Capo ha cosa fatta,
Che fu '1 mal seme della gente Tosca."
" Then one
Maimed of each hand, uplifted in the gloom
The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots
Sullied his face, and cried: ' Remember thee
DISRAELI
Of Mosca too I who, alas! exclaimed,
41 The deed once done, there is an end "that proved
A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race.' "
(Gary's " Dante.")
This Italian proverb was adopted by Milton; for when
deeply engaged in writing " The Defence of the People,"
and warned that it might terminate in his blindness, he
resolvedly concluded his work, exclaiming with great
magnanimity, although the fatal prognostication had been
accomplished, Cosa fatta capo ha! Did this proverb also
influence his awful decision on that great national event,
when the most honest-minded fluctuated between doubts
and fears?
Of a person treacherously used, the Italian proverb
says that he has eaten of
Le frutte di fratre Alberigo.
" The fruit of brother Alberigo."
Landino, on the following passage of Dante, preserves the
tragic story:
Io son fratre Alberigo,
lo son quel dalle frutta del mal orto
Che qui reprendo, etc. (Canto xxxiii.)
" ' The friar Alberigo/ answered he,
' Am I, who from the evil garden plucked
Its fruitage, and am here repaid the date
More luscious for my fig.' "
(Gary's " Dante.")
This was Manfred, the Lord of Fuenza, who, after many
cruelties, turned friar. Reconciling himself to those whom
he had so often opposed, to celebrate the renewal of their
friendship he invited them to a magnificent entertainment.
At the end of the dinner the horn blew to announce the
dessert but it was the signal of this dissimulating con-
spirator! and the fruits which that day were served to
his guests were armed men, who, rushing in, immolated
their victims.
Among these historical proverbs none are more enter-
taining than those which perpetuate national events, con-
nected with those of another people. When a French-
man would let us understand that he has settled with his
creditors, the proverb is, J'ai paye tous mes Anglois " I
have paid all my English." This proverb originated when
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS 269
John, the French king, was taken prisoner by our Black
Prince. Levies of money were made for the king's ran-
som, and for many French lords; and the French people
have thus perpetuated the military glory of our nation,
and their own idea of it, by making the English and their
creditors synonymous terms. Another relates to the same
event, Le Pape est devenu Francois, et Jesus Christ An-
glais ' Now the Pope is become French and Jesus Christ
English"; a proverb which arose when the Pope, exiled
from Rome, held his court at Avignon in France, and the
English prospered so well that they possessed more than
half the kingdom. The Spanish proverb concerning Eng-
land is well known:
Con todo el mondo guerra,
Y paz con Inglaterra!
" War with the world,
And peace with England! "
Whether this proverb was one of the results of their
memorable armada, and was only coined after their convic-
tion of the splendid folly which they had committed, I can
not ascertain. England must always have been a desirable
ally to Spain against her potent rival and neighbour. The
Italians have a proverb, which formerly, at least, was
strongly indicative of the travelled Englishmen in their
country, Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato " The
Italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate." Formerly
there existed a closer intercourse between our country and
Italy than with France. Before and during the reigns
of Elizabeth and James I that land of the elegant arts
modelled our taste and manners: and more Italians trav-
elled into England, and were more constant residents,
from commercial concerns, than afterward when France
assumed a higher rank in Europe by her political superi-
ority. This cause will sufficiently account for the number
of Italian proverbs relating to England, which show an
intimacy with our manners that could not else have oc-
curred. It was probably some sarcastic Italian, and, per-
haps, horologer, who, to describe the disagreement of
persons, proverbed our nation, " They agree like the
clocks of London!" We were once better famed for
merry Christmases and their pies; and it must have been
18
DISRAELI
the Italians who had been domiciliated with us who gave
currency to the proverb, Ha piu da fare che i forni di
natale in Inghilterra " He has more business than Eng-
lish ovens at Christmas." Our pie-loving gentry were
notorious, and Shakespeare's folio was usually laid open
in the great halls of our nobility to entertain their attend-
ants, who devoured at once Shakespeare and their pasty.
Some of those volumes have come down to us not only
with the stains, but inclosing even the identical pie-crusts
of the Elizabethan age.
I have thus attempted to develop the art of reading
proverbs, but have done little more than indicate the
theory, and must leave the skilful student to the delicacy
of the practice. I am anxious to rescue from prevailing
prejudices these neglected stores of curious amusement
and of deep insight into the ways of man, and to point out
the bold and concealed truths which are scattered in these
collections. There seems to be no occurrence in human
affairs to which some proverb may not be applied. All
knowledge was long aphoristical and traditional, pithily
contracting the discoveries which were to be instantly
comprehended and easily retained. Whatever be the revo-
lutionary state of man, similar principles and like occur-
rences are returning on us; and antiquity, whenever it is
justly applicable to our times, loses its denomination, and
becomes the truth of our own age. A proverb will often
cut the knot which others in vain are attempting to untie.
Johnson, palled with the redundant elegancies of modern
composition, once said, " I fancy mankind may come in
time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow
weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and
all those arts by which a big book is made." Many a vol-
ume, indeed, has often been written to demonstrate what
a lover of proverbs could show had long been ascertained
by a single one in his favourite collections.
An insurmountable difficulty, which every parremiog-
rapher has encountered, is that of forming an apt, a ready,
and a systematic classification: the moral Linnaeus of such
a " systema naturae " has not yet appeared. Each discov-
ered his predecessor's mode imperfect, but each was
doomed to meet the same fate. 12 The arrangement of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
271
proverbs has baffled the ingenuity of every one of their
collectors. Our Ray, after long premeditation, has chosen
a system with the appearance of an alphabetical order;
but, as it turns out, his system is no system, and his alpha-
bet is no alphabet. After ten years' labour, the good
man could only arrange his proverbs by commonplaces
by complete sentences by phrases or forms of speech
by proverbial similes and so on. All these are pursued
in alphabetical order, " by the first letter of the most
' material word,' or, if there be more words ' equally mate-
rial/ by that which usually stands foremost." The most
patient examiner will usually find that he wants the sagaci-
ty of the collector to discover that word which is " the
most material," or " the words equally material." We
have to search through all that multiplicity of divisions,
or conjuring boxes, in which this juggler of proverbs pre-
tends to hide the ball.
A still more formidable objection against a collection
of proverbs for the impatient reader is their unreadable-
ness. Taking in succession a multitude of insulated prov-
erbs, their slippery nature resists all hope of retaining one
in a hundred; the study of proverbs must be a frequent
recurrence to a gradual collection of favourite ones, which
we ourselves must form. The experience of life will throw
a perpetual freshness over these short and simple texts;
every day may furnish a new commentary; and we may
grow old and find novelty in proverbs by their perpetual
application.
There are, perhaps, about twenty thousand proverbs
among the nations of Europe: many of these have spread
in their common intercourse; many are borrowed from the
ancients, chiefly the Greeks, who themselves largely took
them from the Eastern nations. Our own proverbs are
too often deficient in that elegance and ingenuity which
are often found in the Spanish and the Italian. Proverbs
frequently enliven conversation, or enter into the business
of life in those countries without any feeling of vulgarity
being associated with them: they are too numerous, too
witty, and too wise to cease to please by their poignancy
and their aptitude. I have heard them fall from the lips
of men of letters and of statesmen,. When recently the
2/2
DISRAELI
disorderly state of the manufacturers of Manchester men-
aced an insurrection, a profound Italian politician observed
to me that it was not of a nature to alarm a great nation;
for that the remedy was at hand, in the proverb of the
Lazzaroni of Naples, Meta consiglio, meta esempio, meta
denaro! " Half advice, half example, half money! " The
result confirmed the truth of the proverb, which, had it
been known at the time, might have quieted the honest
fears of a great part of the nation.
Proverbs have ceased to be studied or employed in
conversation since the time we have derived our knowl-
edge from books; but in a philosophical age they appear
to offer infinite subjects for speculative curiosity. Origi-
nating in various eras, these memorials of manners, of
events, and of modes of thinking, for historical as well as
for moral purposes, still retain a strong hold on our atten-
tion. The collected knowledge of successive ages and of
different people must always enter into some part of our
own! Truth and nature can never be obsolete.
Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of human existence,
they take all the colours of life, they are often exquisite
strokes of genius, they delight by their airy sarcasm or
their caustic satire, the luxuriance of their humour, the
playfulness of their turn, and even by the elegance of their
imagery, and the tenderness of their sentiment. They
give a deep insight into domestic life, and open for us
the heart of man, in all the various states which he may
occupy a frequent review of proverbs should enter into
our readings; and although they are no longer the orna-
ments of conversation, they have not ceased to be the
treasuries of thought!
NOTES
1 Taylor's " Translation of Plato's Works," vol. v, p. 36.
* Shakespeare satirically alludes to the quality of such rhymes in his
" Merchant of Venice," act v, scene i. Speaking of one
" Whose poesy was
For all the world like cutler's poetry
Upon a knife, Love me, and leave me not."
* One of the fruit trenchers, for such these roundels are called in
the " Gentleman's Magazine " for 1793, p. 398, is engraved there, and
the inscriptions of an entire set given. (See also the Supplement to
that volume, p. 1187.) The author of the "Art of English Poesie,"
1589, tells us they never contained above one verse, or two at the most,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS
273
but the shorter the better. Two specimens may suffice the reader. One,
under the symbol of a skull, thus morally discourses:
" Content thyself with thine estate,
And send no poor wight from thy gate;
For why, this counsel I you give,
To learne to die, and die to live."
On another, decorated with pictures of fruit, are these satirical lines:
Feed and be fat: hear's pears and plums,
Will never hurt your teeth or spoil your gums.
And I wish those girls that painted are,
No other food than such fine painted fare."
4 This constant custom of engraving " posies," as they were termed,
on rings is noted by many authors of the Elizabethan era. Lilly, in his
" Euphues," addresses the ladies for a favourable judgment on his
work, hoping it will be recorded " as you do the posies in your rings,
which are always next to the finger not to be scene of him that holdeth
you by the hand, and yet knowne by you that weare them on your
hands." They were always engraved withinside of the ring. A manu-
script of the time of Charles I furnishes us with a single posy, of one
line, to this effect: "This hath alloy; my love is pure." From the
same source we have the two following rhyming, or " double posies":
" Constancy and heaven are round,
And in this the emblem's found."
" Weare me out, love shall not waste;
Love beyond tyme still is placed."
8 Heywood's " Dialogue, conteyninge the Number in Effecte of all
the Proverbes in the English Tunge, 1561."
9 The whole of Tusser's " Five Hundred Pointes of Good Hus-
bandrie," 1580, was composed in quaint couplets, long remembered by
the peasantry for their homely worldly wisdom. One, constructed for
the bakehouse, runs thus:
" New bread is a drivell (waste);
Much crust is as evil."
Another for the dairymaid assures her:
" Good dairie doth pleasure;
111 dairie spends treasure."
Another might rival any lesson of thrift:
" Where nothing will last,
Spare such as thou hast."
T Townshend's " Historical Collections," p. 283.
* It was published in 1616; the writer only catches at some verbal
expressions, as, for instance:
The vulgar proverb runs, " The more the merrier."
The cross, " Not so! one hand is enough in a purse."
The proverb, " It is a great way to the bottom of the sea."
The cross, " Not so! it is but a stone's cast."
The proverb, " The pride of the rich makes the labours of the poor."
The cross, " Not so! the labours of the poor make the pride of the
rich."
The proverb, " He runs far who never turns."
The cross, " Not so! he may break his neck in a short course."
* It has been suggested that this whimsical amusement has been
lately revived, to a certain degree, in the acting of charades among
juvenile parties.
10 Now the punning motto of a noble family.
11 At the Royal Institution there is a fine copy of Polydore Vergil's
274 DISRAELI
" Adagia," with his other work, curious in its day, " De Inventoribus
Rerum," printed by Frobenius, in 1521. The wood-cuts of this edition
seem to me to be executed with inimitable delicacy, resembling a pen-
cilling which Raphael might have envied.
"Since the appearance of the present article several collections of
proverbs have been attempted. A little unpretending volume, entitled
" Select Proverbs of All Nations, with Notes and Comments," by
Thomas Fielding, 1824, is not ill arranged; an excellent book for
popular reading. The editor of a recent miscellaneous compilation,
" The Treasury of Knowledge," has whimsically bordered the four
sides of the pages of a dictionary with as many proverbs. The plan
was ingenious, but the proverbs are not. Triteness and triviality are
fatal to a proverb.
A COMPLAINT
OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
AND
THE CONVALESCENT
BY
CHARLES LAMB
CHARLES LAMB was born in London, February 18, 1775. He was
educated at Christ's Hospital, and had Coleridge for a school-fellow. An
impediment in his speech prevented him from taking holy orders, and he
became a book-keeper, first in the South Sea House and afterward in the
India House. His description of the former stands first in his collected
essays, and when the latter retired him with a pension at the age of fifty
he wrote that which bears the title "The Superannuated Man." There
was a hereditary taint of insanity, and at the age of twenty he spent six
weeks in an asylum. The next year his elder sister, Mary, in a fit of
derangement, killed her mother. Charles thereupon gave up a marriage
engagement and devoted himself to the care of his sister. They lived
quietly in London, hating the country, and found their pastime in the
theatre and perusal of old folios. Lamb had published a few poems, a
tale, and a tragedy, when at the age of thirty-five he began to write the
essays that have given him a permanent place in English literature.
These appeared first in periodicals, and bore the signature " Elia." The
Lambs used to have little Wednesday evening receptions at their lodg-
ings in the Inner Temple, which were attended by nearly all the English
authors of that day who have become famous, and are described as being
very odd and interesting. Charles is- said to have been a brilliant talker.
They lived afterward in Islington, Enfield, and Edmonton, and Charles
died December 27, 1834.
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS
IN THE METROPOLIS
THE all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation
your only modern Alcides's club to rid the time of
its abuses is uplift with many-handed sway to ex-
tirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity
'rorn the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags staves, dogs,
and crutches the whole mendicant fraternity, with all
their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this
eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from
the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting
Genius of Beggary is " with sighing sent."
I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this
impertinent crusado, or bellum ad exterminationem, pro-
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked
from these beggars.
They were the oldest and the honourablest form of
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature;
less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant
to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature,
or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs
were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in
the assessment.
There was a dignity springing from the very depth of
their desolation; as to be naked is to be so much nearer
to being a man than to go in livery.
The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses; and
when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel
anything toward him but contempt? Could Vandyke
have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a scep-
tre, which would have affected our minds with the same
heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, with
which we regard his Belisarius begging for an obolus?
277
273
LAMB
Would the moral have been more graceful, more pa-
thetic?
The Blind Beggar in the legend the father of pretty
Bessy whose story doggerel rhymes and ale-house signs
can not so degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of a
lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements this
noble Earl of Cornwall (as, indeed, he was) and memorable
sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his
liege lord, stripped of all, and seated on the flowering green
of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by
his side, illumining his rags and his beggary would the
child and parent have cut a better figure doing the hon-
ours of a counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon
the three-foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board?
In tale or history your beggar is ever the just antipode
to your king. The poets and romancical writers (as dear
Margaret Newcastle would call them), when they would
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never
stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest
to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illus-
trates the height he falls from. There is no medium which
can be presented to the imagination without offence.
There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his pal-
ace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer " mere
Nature"; and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must
extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of
beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell and clap-dish.
The Lucian wits knew this very well; and, with a con-
verse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness
without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen.
How would it sound in song that a great monarch had
declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker! yet
do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read
the " true ballad," where King Cophetua wooes the beggar
maid?
Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity,
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly con-
temns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and each
degree of it is mocked by its " neighbour grice." Its poor
rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told. Its
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 279
pretences to property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful
attempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful compan-
ion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man
reproaches poor man in the street with impolitic mention
of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the
rich pass by and sneer at both. No rascally comparative
insults a beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him.
He is not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the
measure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more
than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostenta-
tion above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or
upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him
for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy
neighbour seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No
man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were
not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I
would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor
relation,^! would choose, out of the delicacy and true great-
ness of my mind, to be a beggar.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beg-
gar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his
tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to
show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or
limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put
on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none.
His costume hath undergone less change than the
Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not
obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the
world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one
stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The
fluctuations of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch
him not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He
is the only free man in the universe.
The mendicants of this great city were so many of her
sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could
the cries of London. No corner of a street is complete
without them. They are as indispensable as the ballad
singer, and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as the
signs of old London. They were the standing morals,
2$0 LAMB
emblems, mementoes, dial-mottoes, the spital sermons, the
books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the
high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry:
-Look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there."
Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall
of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had
expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray
of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dog
guide at their feet whither are they fled? or into what
corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of
the wholesome air and sun- warmth? immersed between
four walls, in what withering poor-house do they endure
the penalty of double darkness, where the chink of the
dropped halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereave-
ment, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring
tread of the passenger? Where hang their useless staves?
and who will farm their dogs? Have the overseers of St.
L caused them to be shot? or were they tied up in
sacks and dropped into the Thames, at the suggestion of
B , the mild rector of ?
Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne
most classical, and, at the same time, most English of the
Latinists! who has treated of this human and quadru-
pedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest
of his poems, the " Epitaphium in Canem," or, " Dog's
Epitaph." Reader, peruse it; and say, if customary sights,
which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a
nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the
passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and
busy metropolis:
Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis,
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectae,
Dux caeco fidus: nee, me ducente, solebat,
Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum
Incertam explorare viam; sed fila secutus,
Quas dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta
Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prastereuntium
Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam.
Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter,
Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam.
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 281
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile,
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa
Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei
Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant,
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta
8uae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum
rbavit dominum; prisci sed gratia facti
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos,
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit,
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextrae;
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque,
Quod memoret, fidumque Canem dominumque Benignum.
" Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie,
That wont to tend my old blind master's steps,
His guide and guard; nor, while my service lasted,
Had he occasion for that staff, with which
He now goes picking out his path in fear
Over the highways and crossings; but would plant,
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string,
A nrrp foot forward still, till he had reached
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flowed:
To whom with loud and passionate laments
From morn to eve his dark estate he wailed.
Nor wailed to all in vain: some here and there,
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave.
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept;
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear
Pricked up at his least motion; to receive
At his kind hand my customary crumbs,
And common portion in his feast of scraps;
Or when night warned us homeward, tired and spent
With our long day and tedious beggary.
These were my manners, this my way of life
Till age and slow disease me overtook,
And severed from my sightless master's side.
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die,
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost,
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared,
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand,
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest,
In long and lasting union to attest,
The virtues of the beggar and his dog."
These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months
past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man,
who used to glide his comely upper, half over the pave-
ments of London, wheeling along with most ingenious
celerity upon a machine of wood, a spectacle to natives,
to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make,
with a florid sailorlike complexion, and his head was bare
282 LAMB
to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a
speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The
infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his
own level. The common cripple would despise his own
pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty heart
of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him,
for the accident which brought him low took place during
the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long.
He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh
vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a
grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature,
which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was
not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was
half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering
and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down
my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had
started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want
but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped
in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from
which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan
controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift
with yet half of the body portion which was left him. The
os sublime was not wanting, and he threw out yet a jolly
countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had
he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is
grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired,
because he is not content to exchange his free air and ex-
ercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his
contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened)
of correction.
Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance,
which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather
a salutary and a touching object to the passers-by in a
great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies
for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumula-
tion of sights endless sights is a great city? or for what
else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not
Naturae, indeed, but) Accidentium? What if in forty-and-
two-years' going about the man had scraped together
enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran)
of a few hundreds whom had he injured? whom had he
CHARLES LAMB
From an etching after a painting by Henry Meyer
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 283
imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight
for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to
the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven shuffling his
ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion
he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club
of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables,
as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergy-
man deposing before a House of Commons' committee
was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if
a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and
is inconsistent, at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal
orgies which he has been slandered with a reason that
he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edify-
ing way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy
vagabond?
There was a Yorick once whom it would not have
shamed to have sat down at the cripples' feast, and to
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for
a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy breed."
Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made
by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One
was much talked of in the public papers some time since,
and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in
the bank was surprised with the announcement of a five-
hundred-pound legacy left him by a person whose name he
was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks
from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he
lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last
twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of
some blind Bartimeus that sat begging alms by the way-
side in the borough. The good old beggar recognised his
daily benefactor by the voice only, and when he died left
all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century,
perhaps, in the accumulating) to his old bank friend. Was
this a story to purse up people's hearts and pennies against
giving an alms to the blind? or not rather a beautiful moral
of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble grati-
tude upon the other?
I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk.
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of crea-
ture, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun.
28 4
LAMB
Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him?
Perhaps I had no small change.
Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words impo-
sition, imposture give, and ask no questions. Cast thy
bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this
bank clerk) entertained angels.
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted dis-
tress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature
(outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not
stay to inquire whether the " seven small children," in
whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable ex-
istence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth to
save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not
all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father
of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved
an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counter-
feit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You
pay your money to see a comedian feign these things,
which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not cer-
tainly tell whether they are feigned or not.
[" Pray God, your honour, relieve me," said a poor
beadswoman to my friend L one day; " I have seen
better days." " So have I, my good woman," retorted he,
looking up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a
storm and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the
beggar as a tester. It was, at all events, kinder than con-
signing her to the stocks, or the parish beadle.
But L has a way of viewing things in rather a para-
doxical light on some occasions.]
THE CONVALESCENT
A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of
me for some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving
me, has reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon
any topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions
from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick
men's dreams.
And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for what
else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed
and draw daylight curtains about him; and, shutting out
the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the works which
are going on under it? To become insensible to all the
operations of life, except the beatings of one feeble
pulse?
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the
patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without con-
trol! how kinglike he sways his pillow tumbling, and
tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flat-
ting, and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisitions of
his throbbing temples!
He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he
lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely,
head and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him
of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute.
They are his Mare Clausum.
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to
himself! he is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfish-
ness is inculcated upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the "Two
Tables of the Law " to him. He has nothing to think of
but how to get well. What passes out of doors, or within
them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.
A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the event
285
286 LAMB
of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the marring
of his dearest friend. He was to be seen trudging about
upon this man's errand to fifty quarters of the town at
once, jogging this witness, refreshing that solicitor. The
cause was to come on yesterday. He is absolutely as in-
different to the decision as if it were a question to be tried
at Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going on
about the house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up
enough to make him understand that things went cross-
grained in the court yesterday, and his friend is ruined.
But the word " friend," and the word " ruin," disturb him
no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of
anything but how to get better.
What a world of foreign cares are merged in that ab-
sorbing consideration!
He has put on the strong armour of sickness, he is
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering; he keeps his
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock and
key, for his own use only.
He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him-
self; he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even melted
within him, to think what he suffers; he is not ashamed to
weep over himself.
He is forever plotting how to do some good to himself;
studying little stratagems and artificial alleviations.
He makes the most of himself; dividing himself, by an
allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals as he
hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes he medi-
tates as of a thing apart from him upon his poor aching
head, and that dull pain which, dozing or waking, lay in
it all the past night like a log, or palpable substance of pain,
not to be removed without opening the very skull, as it
seemed, to take it thence. Or he pities his long, clammy,
attenuated fingers. He compassionates himself all over,
and his bed is a very discipline of humanity and tender
heart.
He is his own sympathizer, and instinctively feels that
none can so well perform that office for him. He cares
for few spectators to his tragedy. Only that punctual face
of the old nurse pleases him, that announces his broths and
his cordials. He likes it because it is so unmoved, and
THE CONVALESCENT 287
because he can pour forth his feverish ejaculations before
it as unreservedly as to his bed-post.
To the world's business he is dead. He understands
not what the callings and occupations of mortals are; only
he has a glimmering conceit of some such thing when the
doctor makes his daily call; and even in the lines on that
busy face he reads no multiplicity of patients, but solely
conceives of himself as the sick man. To what other un-
easy couch the good man is hastening when he slips out of
his chamber, folding up his thin douceur so carefully, for
fear of rustling is no speculation which he can at present
entertain. He thinks only of the regular return of the same
phenomenon at the same hour to-morrow.
Household rumours touch him not. Some faint mur-
mur, indicative of life going on within the house, soothes
him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. He is not
to know anything, not to think of anything. Servants
gliding up or down the distant staircase, treading as upon
velvet, gently keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles
not himself further than with some feeble guess at their
errands. Exacter knowledge would be a burden to him;
he can just endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens
his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and
closes it again without asking " Who was it? " He is flat-
tered by a general notion that inquiries are making after
him, but he cares not to know the name of the inquirer. In
the general stillness and awful hush of the house he lies
in state, and feels his sovereignty.
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Com-
pare the silent tread and quiet ministry, almost by the
eye only, with which he is served with the careless de-
meanour, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping
of doors, or leaving them open) of the very same attend-
ants, when he is getting a little better and you will con-
fess that from the bed of sickness (throne let me rather
call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence is a fall from
dignity, amounting to a deposition.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine
stature! Where is now the space which he occupied so
lately in his own, in the family's eye?
The scene of his regalities, his sick-room, which was his
288 LAMB
presence-chamber, where he lay and acted his despotic
fancies how is it reduced to a common bedroom! The
trimness of the very bed has something petty and unmean-
ing about it. It is made every day. How unlike to that
wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic surface, which it presented
so short a time since, when to make it was a service not
to be thought of at oftener than three or four day revolu-
tions, when the patient was with pain and grief to be lifted
for a little while out of it, to submit to the encroachments
of unwelcome neatness, and decencies which his shaken
frame deprecated; then to be lifted into it again, for an-
other three or four days' respite, to flounder it out of shape
again, while every fresh furrow was a historical record of
some shifting posture, some uneasy turning, some seeking
for a little ease; and the shrunken skin scarce told a truer
story than the crumpled coverlid.
Hushed are those mysterious sighs those groans so
much more awful while we knew not from what caverns of
vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The Lernean pangs
are quenched. The riddle of sickness is solved, and Phi-
loctetes is become an ordinary personage.
Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of greatness
survives in the still lingering visitations of the medical
attendant. But how is he, too, changed with everything
else! Can this be he this man of news, of chat, of anec-
dote, of everything but physic can this be he who so
lately came between the patient and his cruel enemy, as on
some solemn embassy from Nature, erecting herself into
a high mediating party? Pshaw! 'tis some old woman.
Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous; the
spell that hushed the household; the desertlike stillness, felt
throughout its inmost chambers; the mute attendance;
the inquiry by looks; the still softer delicacies of self-atten-
tion; the sole and single eye of distemper alonely fixed
upon itself; world-thoughts excluded; the man a world
unto himself, his own theatre
" What a speck is he dwindled into! "
In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of
sickness, yet far enough from the terra-firma of established
health, your note, dear editor, reached me, requesting an
THE CONVALESCENT
289
article. In Articulo Mortis, thought I; but it is something
hard, and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me.
The summons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to link
me on again to the petty businesses of life, which I had
lost sight of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial; a
wholesome weaning from that preposterous dream of self-
absorption the puffy state of sickness in which I confess
to have lain so long, insensible to the magazines and mon-
archies of the world alike; to its laws, and to its literature.
The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in
imagination I had spread over for the sick man swells in
the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he be-
comes a Tityus to himself are wasting to a span; and for
the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you
have me once again in my natural pretensions the lean
and meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist.
RURAL FUNERALS
BY
WASHINGTON IRVING
OF purely literary writers, WASHINGTON IRVING was the earliest Ameri-
can whose works are permanent and classic. He was born in New York
city, April 3, 1783. Leaving school at the age of sixteen, he studied law ;
but his natural bent for literature was so strong that he could hardly
think seriously of any other profession. He began writing at the age of
nineteen, using the pen-name Jonathan Oldstyle. A few years later he
travelled in Europe for his health, became intimate with Washington
Allston in Rome, and made a feeble attempt to learn painting. On his
return home, with his brother William and James K. Paulding he began
a serial entitled " Salmagundi," the humour and local allusions of which
insured its success. In 1809 he published his humorous " History of
New York," four years later edited a magazine in Philadelphia, and in
1815 became a silent partner in his brother's mercantile house and sailed
for Europe. The house soon became bankrupt, and Irving then turned
seriously to literature for a livelihood. He now wrote 'the essays that
form the " Sketch Book " one of which is here presented and sent them
home to New York, where they were published in pamphlet numbers in
1818. He had difficulty in getting the book published in London, till
Scott persuaded Murray to take it. This was so successful that when he
produced his next book, " Bracebridge Hall," Murray paid one thousand
guineas for the copyright without seeing the manuscript ; and for the
next book, " Tales of a Traveller," he paid fifteen hundred pounds.
These were large prices for those days. Irving was employed to translate
documents relating to Columbus which had been collected by Navar-
rete, and then wrote his "Life of Columbus," for which he received three
thousand guineas from the publisher, and the gold medal offered by
George IV for historical composition. He was appointed Secretary of
the American legation in London in 1829, and from 1842 to 1846 he was
Minister at Madrid. His Spanish studies had resulted in "The Alham-
bra " and other books, and after his return home he wrote several relating
to the far West. His last and most elaborate work was the " Life of
Washington," the final volume of which appeared only three months
before his death, which occurred at his home on the Hudson, November
28, 1859.
RURAL FUNERALS
" Here's a few flowers; but about midnight, more:
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves
You were as flowers, now withered: even so
These herb'lets shall, which we upon you strow."
(Cymbeline.)
A^tONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of
rural life which still linger in some parts of Eng-
land are those of strewing flowers before the funer-
als and planting them at the graves of departed friends.
These, it is said, are the remains of some of the rites of
the primitive church; but they are of still higher an-
tiquity, having been observed among the Greeks and
Romans, and frequently mentioned by their writers, and
were, no doubt, the spontaneous tributes of unlettered
affection, originating long before art had tasked itself to
modulate sorrow into song or story it on the monument.
They are now only to be met with in the most distant and
retired places of the kingdom, where fashion and innova-
tion have not been able to throng in and trample out all
the curious and interesting traces of the olden time.
In Glamorganshire, we are told, the bed whereon the
corpse lies is covered with flowers, a custom alluded to in
one of the wild and plaintive ditties of Ophelia:
" White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which be-wept to the grave did go,
With true love showers."
There is also a most delicate and beautiful rite ob-
served in some of the remote villages of the south at the
funeral of a female who has died young and unmarried.
A chaplet of white flowers is borne before the corpse by
a young girl, nearest in age, size, and resemblance, and
19 293
294 IRVING
is afterward hung up in the church over the accustomed
seat of the deceased. These chaplets are sometimes made
of white paper, in imitation of flowers, and inside of them
is generally a pair of white gloves. They are intended
as emblems of the purity of the deceased, and the crown
of glory which she has received in heaven.
In some parts of the country, also, the dead are car-
ried to the grave with the singing of psalms and hymns;
a kind of triumph, " to show," says Bourne, " that they
have finished their course with joy, and are become con-
querors." This, I am informed, is observed in some of
the northern counties, particularly in Northumberland,
and it has a pleasing though melancholy effect to hear,
of a still evening, in some lonely country scene, the
mournful melody of a funeral dirge swelling from a dis-
tance and to see the train slowly moving along the land-
scape :
" Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
Thy harmless and unhaunted ground,
And as we sing thy dirge, we will
The daffodil
And other flowers lay upon
The altar of our love, thy stone." (Herrick.)
There is also a solemn respect paid by the traveller to
the passing funeral in these sequestered places; for such
spectacles, occurring among the quiet abodes of Nature,
sink deep into the soul. As the mourning train ap-
proaches he pauses, uncovered, to let it go by; he then
follows silently in the rear; sometimes quite to the grave,
at other times for a few hundred yards, and, having paid
this tribute of respect to the deceased, turns and resumes
his journey.
The rich vein of melancholy which runs through the
English character, and gives it some of its most touching
and ennobling graces, is finely evidenced in these pathetic
customs, and in the solicitude shown by the common peo-
ple for an honoured and a peaceful grave. The humblest
peasant, whatever may be his lowly lot while living, is
anxious that some little respect may be paid to his re-
mains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the " faire and
happy milkmaid," observes, " Thus lives she, and all her
care is that she may die in the springtime, to have store
RURAL FUNERALS 295
of flowers stucke upon her winding-sheet." The poets,
too, who always breathe the feeling of a nation, contin-
ually advert to this fond solicitude about the grave. In
' The Maid's Tragedy," by Beaumont and Fletcher, there
is a beautiful instance of the kind describing the capricious
melancholy of a broken-hearted girl:
" When she sees a bank
Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
Her servants, what a pretty place it were
To bury lovers in; and made her maids
Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse."
The custom of decorating graves was once universally
prevalent: osiers were carefully bent over them to keep
the turf uninjured, and about them were planted ever-
greens and flowers. " We adorn their graves," says Eve-
lyn in his " Sylva," " with flowers and redolent plants,
just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared
in holy Scriptures to those fading beauties whose roots,
being buried in dishonour, rise again in glory." This
usage has now become extremely rare in England; but
it may still be met with in the churchyards of retired vil-
lages among the Welsh mountains; and I recollect an in-
stance of it at the small town of Ruthven, which lies at
the head of the beautiful vale of Clewyd. I have been told
also by a friend, who was present at the funeral of a young
girl in Glamorganshire, that the female attendants had
their aprons full of flowers, which, as soon as the body
was interred, they stuck about the grave.
He noticed several graves which had been decorated
in the same manner. As the flowers had been merely
stuck in the ground, and not planted, they had soon with-
ered, and might be seen in various states of decay: some
drooping, other quite perished. They were afterward to
be supplanted by holly, rosemary, and other evergreens;
which on some graves had grown to great luxuriance, and
overshadowed the tombstones.
There was formerly a melancholy fancifulness in the
arrangement of these rustic offerings that had something
in it truly poetical. The rose was sometimes blended with
the lily, to form a general emblem of frail mortality.
" This sweet flower," said Evelyn, " borne on a branch set
296
IRVING
with thorns, and accompanied with the lily, are natural
hieroglyphics of our fugitive, umbratile, anxious, and
transitory life, which, making so fair a show for a time,
is not yet without its thorns and crosses." The nature
and colour of the flowers, and of the ribbons with which
they were tied, had often a particular reference to the
qualities or story of the deceased, or were expressive of
the feelings of the mourner. In an old poem, entitled
" Corydon's Doleful Knell," a lover specifies the decora-
tions he intends to use:
" A garland shall be framed
By Art and Nature's skill,
Of sundry coloured flowers,
In token of good-will.
" And sundry coloured ribbons
On it I will bestow;
But chiefly blacke and yellowe
With her to grave shall go.
" I'll deck her tomb with flowers
The rarest ever seen ;
And with my tears as showers
I'll keep them fresh and green."
The white rose, we are told, was planted at the grave
of a virgin; her chaplet was tied with white ribbons, in
token of her spotless innocence, though sometimes black
ribbons were intermingled, to bespeak the grief of the sur-
vivors. The red rose was occasionally used, in remem-
brance of such as had been remarkable for benevolence;
but roses in general were appropriated to the graves of
lovers. Evelyn tells us that the custom was not alto-
gether extinct in his time, near his dwelling in the county
of Surrey, " where the maidens yearly planted and decked
the graves of their defunct sweethearts with rose bushes."
And Camden likewise remarks, in his " Britannia ": " Here
is also a certain custom, observed time out of mind, of
planting rose trees upon the graves, especially by the
young men and maids who have lost their loves; so that
this churchyard is now full of them."
When the deceased had been unhappy in their loves,
emblems of a more gloomy character were used, such as
the yew and cypress; and if flowers were strewed, they
RURAL FUNERALS 297
were of the most melancholy colours. Thus, in poems
by Thomas Stanley, Esq. (published in 1651), is the fol-
lowing stanza:
" Yet strew
Upon my dismall grave
Such offerings as you have,
Forsaken cypresse and yewe;
For kinder flowers can take no birth
Or growth from such unhappy earth."
In " The Maid's Tragedy," a pathetic little air is in-
troduced, illustrative of this mode of decorating the fu-
nerals of females who have been disappointed in love:
" Lay a garland on my hearse
Of the dismal yew,
Maidens willow branches wear,
Say I died true.
" My love was false, but I was firm,
From my hour of birth,
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth."
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine
and elevate the mind; and we have a proof of it in the
purity of sentiment and the unaffected elegance of
thought which pervaded the whole of these funeral ob-
servances. Thus it was an especial precaution that none
but sweet-scented evergreens and flowers should be em-
ployed. The intention seems to have been to soften the
horrors of the tomb, to beguile the mind from brooding
over the disgraces of perishing mortality, and to associate
the memory of the deceased with the most delicate and
beautiful objects in Nature. There is a dismal process
going on in the grave ere dust can return to its kindred
dust, which the imagination shrinks from contemplating;
and we seek still to think of the form we have loved with
those refined associations which it awakened when bloom-
ing before us in youth and beauty. " Lay her i' the
earth," says Laertes of his virgin sister,
" And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."
Herrick also, in his " Dirge of Jephtha," pours forth a
fragrant flow of poetical thought and image, which in a
2 9 8
IRVING
manner embalms the dead in the recollections of the
living:
" Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,
And make this place all paradise:
May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence
Fat frankincense.
Let balme and cassia send their scent
From out thy maiden monument.
May all shie maids at wonted hours
Come forth to strew thy tombe with flowers!
May virgins, when they come to mourn,
Male incense burn
Upon thine altar! then return
And leave thee sleeping in thy urn."
I might crowd my pages with extracts from the older
British poets, who wrote when these rites were more prev-
alent, and delighted frequently to allude to them; but I
have already quoted more than is necessary. I can not,
however, refrain from giving a passage from Shakespeare,
even though it should appear trite, which illustrates the
emblematical meaning often conveyed in these floral trib-
utes, and at the same time possesses that magic of lan-
guage and appositeness of imagery for which he stands
pre-eminent :
" With fairest flowers,
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,
Outsweetened not thy breath."
There is certainly something more affecting in these
prompt and spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the
most costly monuments of art; the hand strews the flower
while the heart is warm, and the tear falls on the grave
as affection is binding the osier round the sod; but pathos
expires under the slow labour of the chisel, and is chilled
among the cold conceits of sculptured marble.
It is greatly to be regretted that a custom so truly
elegant and touching has disappeared from general use,
and exists only in the most remote and insignificant vil-
lages. But it seems as if poetical custom always shuns
the walks of cultivated society. In proportion as people
grow polite they cease to be poetical. They talk of
RURAL FUNERALS 299
poetry, but they have learned to check its free impulses,
to distrust its sallying emotions, and to supply its most
affecting and picturesque usages, by studied form and
pompous ceremonial. Few pageants can be more stately
and frigid than an English funeral in town. It is made
up of show and gloomy parade: mourning carriages,
mourning horses, mourning plumes, and hireling mourn-
ers, who make a mockery of grief. " There is a grave
digged," says Jeremy Taylor, " and a solemn mourning,
and a great talk in the neighbourhood, and when the daies
are finished, they shall be, and they shall be remembered
no more." The associate in the gay and crowded city
is soon forgotten: the hurrying succession of new inti-
mates and new pleasures effaces him from our minds, and
the very scenes and circles in which he moved are inces-
santly fluctuating. But funerals in the country are sol-
emnly impressive. The stroke of death makes a wider
space in the village circle, and is an awful event in the
tranquil uniformity of rural life. The passing bell tolls its
knell in every ear; it steals with its pervading melancholy
over hill and vale, and saddens all the landscape.
The fixed and unchanging features of the country also
perpetuate the memory of the friend with whom we once
enjoyed them; who was the companion of our most re-
tired walks, and gave animation to every lonely scene.
His idea is associated with every charm of Nature: we
hear his voice in the echo which he once delighted to
awaken; his spirit haunts the grove which he once fre-
quented; we think of him in the wild upland solitude
or amid the pensive beauty of the valley. In the fresh-
ness of joyous morning we remember his beaming smiles
and bounding gaiety; and when sober evening returns,
with its gathering shadows and subduing quiet, we call
to mind many a twilight hour of gentle talk and sweet-
souled melancholy:
" Each lonely place shall him restore,
For him the tear be duly shed,
Beloved, till life can charm no more,
And mourned till pity's self be dead."
Another cause that perpetuates the memory of the
deceased in the country is that the grave is more imme-
3 00 IRVING
diately in sight of the survivors. They pass it on their
way to prayer; it meets their eyes when their hearts are
softened by the exercise of devotion; they linger about it
on the Sabbath, when the mind is disengaged from worldly
cares, and most disposed to turn aside from present pleas-
ures and loves, and to sit down among the solemn me-
mentoes of the past. In North Wales the peasantry kneel
and pray over the graves of their deceased friends for sev-
eral Sundays after the interment; and where the tender
rite of strewing and planting flowers is still practised, it
is always renewed on Easter, Whitsuntide, and other fes-
tivals, when the season brings the companion of former
festivity more vividly to mind. It is also invariably per-
formed by the nearest relatives and friends; no menials
nor hirelings are employed, and if a neighbour yields as-
sistance it would be deemed an insult to offer compen-
sation.
I have dwelt upon this beautiful rural custom be-
cause, as it is one of the last, so is it one of the holiest
offices of love. The grave is the ordeal of true affection.
It is there that the divine passion of the soul manifests
its superiority to the instinctive impulse of mere animal
attachment. The latter must be continually refreshed and
kept alive by the presence of its object; but the love that
is seated in the soul can live on long remembrance. The
mere inclinations of sense languish and decline with the
charms which excited them, and turn with shuddering
and disgust from the dismal precincts of the tomb; but
it is thence that truly spiritual affection rises purified from
every sensual desire, and returns, like a holy flame, to
illumine and sanctify the heart of the survivor.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which
we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek
to heal every other affliction to forget; but this wound
we consider it a duty to keep open this affliction we
cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother
who would willingly forget the infant that perished like
a blossom from her arms though every recollection is a
pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget
the most tender of parents, though to remember be but
to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would for-
RURAL FUNERALS
301
get the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when
the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved,
when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing
of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be
bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives
the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If
it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the
overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle
tear of recollection when the sudden anguish and the
convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we
most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on
all that it was in the days of its loveliness who would
root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may
sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of
gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom,
yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure
or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the
tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the
dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the liv-
ing. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error
covers every defect extinguishes every resentment!
From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets
and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the
grave even of an enemy and not feel a compunctious
throb that he should ever have warred with the poor
handful of earth that lies mouldering before him?
But the grave of those we loved what a place for
meditation! There it is that we call up in long review
the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thou-
sand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in
the daily intercourse of intimacy there it is that we
dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness
of the parting scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled
griefs its noiseless attendance its mute, watchful assi-
duities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble,
fluttering, thrilling oh! how thrilling! pressure of the
hand. The last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon
us even from the threshold of existence. The faint, falter-
ing accents, struggling in death to give one more assur-
ance of affection!
Ay, go to the grave of buried love and meditate!
20
302 IRVING
There settle the account with thy conscience for every
past benefit unrequited, every past endearment unre-
garded, of that departed being, who can never never
never return to be soothed by thy contrition!
If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to
the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affection-
ate parent if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused
the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy
arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth
if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought,
word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee
if thou art a lover and hast ever given one unmerited
pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still
beneath thy feet then be sure that every unkind look,
every ungracious word, every ungentle action will come
thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dole-
fully at thy soul then be sure that thou wilt lie down
sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the un-
heard groan, and pour the unavailing tear more deep,
more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.
Then weave thy chaplet of flowers and strew the beau-
ties of Nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit,
if thou canst, with these tender yet futile tributes of re-
gret; but take warning by the bitterness of this thy con-
trite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faith-
ful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the
living.
THOMAS ELLWOOD
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, the Quaker poet, was born on a farm in
Haverhill, Mass., December 7, 1807. He was educated at the academy
of his native town, and at the age of twenty-two became a journalist in
Boston. Then he took charge of a review in Hartford, but in a little
while returned to the farm. He was elected to the Massachusetts Legis-
lature in 1835, and a year later was made Secretary of the American Anti-
slavery Society, and went to Philadelphia to edit the " Pennsylvania
Freeman." In 1840 he settled in Amesbury, Mass., which was thence-
forth his home. He was identified with the antislavery cause from his
young manhood till American slavery was abolished, a period of more
than thirty years, and he had the honour of being mobbed for his prin-
ciples, just escaping with his life. He wrote many poems, the most
striking of which relate to slavery and the civil war, but the domestic
ones, especially " Snow-Bound," are perhaps the most pleasing. His
popularity as a poet has somewhat obscured the fact that he was a grace-
ful and vigorous writer of prose, the best of which is in his volume of
"Old Portraits and Modern Sketches," from which the essay here pre-
sented is taken by the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the
publishers of his works. Whittier died in Hampton Falls, N. H., Sep-
tember 7, 1892. Holmes says of him: "All through Whittier's writings
the spirit of trust in a beneficent order of things and a loving superin-
tendence of the universe shows itself, ever hopeful, ever cheerful, always
looking forward to a happier, brighter era, when the kingdom of heave*
shall be established." Whittier's prose works, besides the volume alre
mentioned, are, " Legends of New England," "Justice and Expediency, '
" Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal," and " Literary Recreations."
THOMAS ELLWOOD
COMMEND us to autobiographies! Give us the veri-
table notchings of Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the
indubitable records of a life long since swallowed up
in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the very
dust of which has become undistinguishable. The foolish-
est egotist who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his
hopes and fears, poor plans and vain Teachings after hap-
piness, speaking to us out of the past, and thereby giving
us to understand that it was quite as real as our present,
is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our at-
tention in spite of his folly. We are thankful for the very
vanity which prompted him to bottle up his poor records
and cast them into the great sea of Time, for future voy-
agers to pick up. We note, with the deepest interest, that
in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious exist-
ence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and
perplexes us. He, too, had a mother; he hated and loved;
ftjje light from old-quenched hearths shone over him; he
tced in the sunshine over the dust of those who had
o e before him, just as we are now walking over his.
These records of him remain, the footmarks of a long-
extinct life, not of mere animal organism, but of a being
ike ourselves, enabling us, by studying their hieroglyphic
significance, to decipher and see clearly into the mystery of
existence centuries ago. The dead generations live again
in these old self-biographies. Incidentally, unintentionally,
yet in the simplest and most natural manner, they make us
familiar with all the phenomena of life in the bygone ages.
We are brought in contact with actual flesh-and-blood men
and women, not the ghostly outline figures which pass for
such in what is called History. The horn lantern of the
biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness,
305
306
WHITTIER
he chronicled, from day to day, his own outgoings and in-
comings, making visible to us his pitiful wants, labours,
trials, and tribulations, of the stomach and of the con-
science, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon contem-
poraneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous,
rises up in distinct and full proportions; we look at states-
men, philosophers, and poets, with the eyes of those who
lived perchance their next-door neighbours, and sold them
beer and mutton and household stuffs, had access to their
kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and the
colour of their breeches. Without some such light, all his-
tory would be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a
dimly remembered dream.
The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in this
respect invaluable. Little, it is true, can be said, as a gen-
eral thing, of their literary merits. Their authors were
plain, earnest men and women, chiefly intent upon the sub-
stance of things, and having withal a strong testimony to
bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament.
Yet, even the scholar may well admire the power of certain
portions of George Fox's " Journal," where a strong spirit
clothes its utterance in simple, downright Saxon words;
the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington; the tor-
rent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of
Penn; the logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truth-
fulness of Sewell; the wit and humour of John Roberts (for
even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers and drab-coated
Robert Halls); and last, not least, the simple beauty of
Woolman's " Journal," the modest record of a life of good
works and love.
Let us look at the " Life of Thomas Ellwood." The
book before us is a hardly used Philadelphia reprint, bear-
ing the date of 1775. The original was published some
sixty years before. It is not a book to be found in fashion-
able libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews, but it is
none the less deserving of attention.
Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of Crowell,
in Oxfordshire. Old Walter, his father, was of " gentle-
manly lineage," and held a commission of the peace under
Charles I. One of his most intimate friends was Isaac Pen-
nington, a gentleman of estate and good reputation, whose
THOMAS ELLWOOD 307
wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a lady of
superior endowments. Her only daughter, Gulielma, was
the playmate and companion of Thomas. On making this
family a visit, in 1658, in company with his father, he was
surprised to find that they had united with the Quakers, a
sect then little known, and everywhere spoken against.
Passing through the vista of nearly two centuries, let us
cross the threshold, and look with the eyes of young Ell-
wood upon this Quaker family. It will doubtless give us a
good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that age of
religious awakening.
" So great a change from a free, debonair, and courtly
sort of behaviour, which we had formerly found there, into
so strict a gravity as they now received us with, did not
a little amuse us, and disappointed our expectations of such
a pleasant visit as we had promised ourselves.
" For my part, I sought, and at length found, means to
cast myself into the company of the daughter, whom I
found gathering flowers in the garden, attended by her
maid, also a Quaker. But when I addressed her after my
accustomed manner, with intention to engage her in dis-
course, on the foot of our former acquaintance, though she
treated me with a courteous mien, yet, young as she was,
the gravity of her looks and behaviour struck such an awe
upon me that I found myself not so much master of myself
as to pursue any further converse with her.
" We stayed dinner, which was very handsome, and
lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the want of
mirth and pleasant discourse, which we could neither have
with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another; the
weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances
keeping down the lightness that would have been up in
ours."
Not long after they made a second visit to their sober
friends, spending several days, during which they attended
a meeting in a neighbouring farmhouse, where we are in-
troduced by Ellwood to two remarkable personages, Ed-
ward Rurrough, the friend and fearless reprover of Crom-
well, and by far the most eloquent preacher of his sect;
and ' James Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of
fanaticism, cruel sufferings, and beautiful repentance, is so
308
WHITTIER
well known to the readers of English history under the
Protectorate. Under the preaching of these men, and the
influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was
brought into fellowship with the Quakers. Of the old
justice's sorrow and indignation at this sudden blasting of
his hopes and wishes in respect to his son, and of the trials
and difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it is now
scarcely worth while to speak. Let us step forward a few
years, to 1662, considering meantime how matters, political
and spiritual, are changed in that brief period. Cromwell,
the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is no longer among men;
Charles II sits in his place; profane and licentious
cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek-haired, painful-faced
Independents, who used to groan approval to the scrip-
tural illustrations of Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy
of virtue, without sincerity, either in religion or politics,
occupying the places made honourable by the Miltons,
Whitlocks, and Vanes of the commonwealth. Having
this change in view, the light which the farthing candle of
Ellwood sheds upon one of these illustrious names will
not be unwelcome. In his intercourse with Penn, and
other learned Quakers, he had reason to lament his
own deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Penning-
ton undertook to put him in a way of remedying the
defect.
" He had," says Ellwood, " an intimate acquaintance
with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with
John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning
throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he
had written on various subjects and occasions.
" This person, having filled a public station in the
former times, lived a private and retired life in London,
and, having lost his sight, kept always a man to read for
him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his
acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in
his learning.
" Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Penning-
ton with Dr. Paget, and through him with John Milton,
was I admitted to come to him; not as a servant to him,
nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the
liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I
THOMAS ELLWOOD 309
would, and read to him what books he should appoint,
which was all the favour I desired.
" He received me courteously, as well for the sake of
Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington,
who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a good
respect. And, having inquired divers things of me, with
respect to my former progression in learning, hre dismissed
me, to provide myself with such accommodations as might
be most suitable to my studies.
" I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his
house (which was then in Jewen Street) as I conveniently
could, and from thenceforward went every day in the after-
noon, except on the first day of the week, and, sitting by
him in his dining-room, read to him such books in the
Latin tongue as he pleased to have me read.
" He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued
learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all
the help he could. For, having a curious ear, he under-
stood by my tone when I understood what I read and when
I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me,
and open the most difficult passages to me."
Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John
Milton's dining-room!
He had been with " Master Milton," as he calls him,
only a few weeks when, being one " first day morning,"
at the Bull and Mouth meeting, Aldersgate, the train-bands
of the city, " with great noise and clamour," headed by
Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his friends. The im-
mediate cause of this onslaught upon quiet worshippers was
the famous plot of the Fifth Monarchy men, grim old
fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the present day) had
been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ and the
saints upon earth, and in their zeal to hasten such a con-
summation, had sallied into London streets with drawn
swords and loaded matchlocks. The government took
strong measures for suppressing dissenters' meetings or
" conventicles"; and the poor Quakers, although not at
all implicated in the disturbance, suffered more severely
than any others. Let us look at the " freedom of con-
science and worship " in England under that irreverent De-
fender of the Faith, Charles II. Ellwood says: " He that
3 , WHITTIER
commanded the party gave us first a general charge to
come out of the room. But we, who came thither at
God's requiring to worship him (like that good man of old,
who said we ought to obey God rather than man), stirred
not, but kept our places. Whereupon he sent some of his
soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out,
which they did roughly enough." Think of it: grave men
and women, and modest maidens, sitting there with calm,
impassive countenances, motionless as death, the pikes of
the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel!
Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's
silence to the devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm
persistence in the exercise of your rights as Englishmen and
men to the hot fury of impatient tyranny ! From your day
down to this, the world has been the better for your faith-
fulness.
Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched
off to prison in Old Bridewell, which, as well as nearly all
the other prisons, was already crowded with Quaker pris-
oners. One of the rooms of the prison was used as a tor-
ture chamber. " I was almost affrighted," says Ellwood,
" by the dismalness of the place; for, besides that the walls
were all laid over with black, from top to bottom, there
stood in the middle a great whipping-post.
" The manner of whipping there is to strip the party
to the skin, from the waist upward, and, having fastened
him to the whipping-post (so that he can neither resist nor
shun the strokes), to lash his naked body with long, slen-
der twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs
around the body; and these, having little knots upon them,
tear the skin and flesh, and give extreme pain."
To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately
nurtured young females were often subjected, during this
season of hot persecution.
From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed
to Newgate, and thrust in, with other " Friends," amid
the common felons. He speaks of this prison, with its
thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its overcrowded apart-
ments, and loathsome cells, as " a hell upon earth." In a
closet, adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for
several days the quartered bodies of Phillips, Tongue, and
THOMAS ELLWOOD 31I
Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth Monarchy rising, frightful
and loathsome, as they came from the bloody hand of the
executioners! These ghastly remains were at length ob-
tained by the friends of the dead, and buried. The heads
were ordered to be prepared for setting up in different
parts of the city. Read this grim passage of description:
" I saw the heads when they were brought to be boiled.
The hangman fetched them in a dirty basket, out of some
by-place, and setting them down among the felons, he and
they made sport of them. They took them by the hair,
flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving
them some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks;
which done, the hangman put them into his kettle, and par-
boiled them with bay salt and cumin seed; that to keep
them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from
seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the
bloody quarters first, as this of the heads afterward, was
both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in
my nature."
At the next session of the municipal court at the Old
Bailey, Ellwood obtained his discharge. After paying a
visit to " my Master Milton," he made his way to Chal-
font, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where he
was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher. Here he seems
to have had his trials and temptations. Gulielma Sprin-
gette, the daughter of Pennington's wife, his old playmate,
had now grown to be " a fair woman of marriageable age,"
and, as he informs us, " very desirable, whether regard was
had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make
her completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind,
which were every way extraordinary, or to her outward
fortune, which was fair." From all which we are not sur-
prised to learn that " she was secretly and openly sought
for by many of almost every rank and condition." " To
whom," continues Thomas, " in their respective turns (till
he at length came for whom she was reserved), she car-
ried herself with so much evenness of temper, such cour-
teous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as
it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so
neither did it administer any matter of offence or just cause
of complaint to any."
WHITTIER
Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination
fills up this outline limning by her friend, and, if truth
must be told, admirer! Serene, courteous, healthful; a ray
of tenderest and blandest light, shining steadily in the sober
gloom of that old household! Confirmed Quaker as she
is, shrinking from none of the responsibilities and dangers
of her profession, and therefore liable at any time to the
penalties of prison and whipping-post, under that plain
garb and in spite of that " certain gravity of look and be-
haviour," which, as we have seen, on one occasion awed
young Ellwood into silence, youth, beauty, and refine-
ment assert their prerogatives; love knows no creed;
the gay, and titled, and wealthy crowd around her, su-
ing in vain for her favour.
" Followed, like the tided moon,
She moves as calmly on,"
" until he at length comes for whom she was reserved,"
and her name is united with that of one worthy even of
her, the world-renowned William Penn.
Meantime, one can not but feel a good degree of sym-
pathy with young Ellwood, her old schoolmate and play-
mate, placed, as he was, in the same family with her, en-
joying her familiar conversation and unreserved confidence;
and, as he says, the " advantageous opportunities of riding
and walking abroad with her, by night as well as by day,
without any other company than her maid; for so great,
indeed, was the confidence that her mother had in me, that
she thought her daughter safe, if I was with her, even from
the plots and designs of others upon her." So near, and yet,
alas! in truth, so distant! The serene and gentle light
which shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont,
was that of a star, itself unapproachable. As he himself
meekly intimates, she was reserved for another. He seems
to have fully understood his own position in respect to her;
although, to use his own words, " others measuring him
by the propensity of their own inclinations, concluded he
would steal her, run away with her and marry her." Little
did these jealous surmisers know of the true and really
heroic spirit of the young Latin master. His own apology
and defence of his conduct, under circumstances of tempta-
THOMAS ELLWOOD 313
tion which St. Anthony himself could have scarcely better
resisted, will not be amiss:
" I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled the
jealous heads of some concerning me, neither was I so
stupid nor so divested of all humanity as not to be sensible
of the real and innate worth and virtue which adorned that
excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of so
many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and solicit
her; nor was I so devoid of natural heat as not to feel
some sparklings of desire, as well as others; but the force
of truth and sense of honour suppressed whatever would
have risen beyond the bounds of fair and virtuous friend-
ship. For I easily foresaw that, if I should have attempted
anything in a dishonourable way, by fraud or force, upon
her, I should have thereby brought a wound upon mine
own soul, a foul scandal upon my religious profession,
and an infamous stain upon mine honour, which was far
more dear unto me than my life. Wherefore, having ob-
served how some others had befooled themselves, by
misconstruing her common kindness (expressed in an
innocent, open, free, and familiar conversation, spring-
ing from the abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness
of her natural temper) to be the effect of a singular re-
gard and peculiar affection to them, I resolved to shun
the rock whereon they split; and, remembering the say-
ing of the poet,
" ' Felix quern faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'
I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage toward
her, thereby preserving a fair reputation with my friends,
and enjoying as much of her favour and kindness, in a
virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit for her to show
or for me to seek."
Well and worthily said, poor Thomas! Whatever
might be said of others, thou, at least, wast no coxcomb..
Thy distant and involuntary admiration of " the fair Guli "'
needs, however, no excuse. Poor human nature, guard it
as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramp-
ing environment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy
case, not even George Fox himself, knowing thy beautiful!
young friend (and doubtless admiring her too, for he. was,
WHITTIER
one of the first to appreciate and honour the worth and
dignity of woman), could have found it in his heart to
censure thee!
At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young
teacher solaced himself with ocasional appeals to what he
calls the " Muses." There is reason to believe, however,
that the pagan sisterhood whom he ventured to invoke sel-
dom graced his study with their personal attendance. In
these rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his " Jour-
nal," there are occasional sparkles of genuine wit, and
passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly expressed.
Others breathe a warm, devotional feeling; in the following
brief prayer, for instance, the wants of the humble Chris-
tian are condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or
Herbert:
" Oh! that mine eye might closed be
To what concerns me not to see;
That deafness might possess mine ear
To what concerns me not to hear;
That Truth my tongue might always tie
From ever speaking foolishly;
That no vain thought might ever rest
Or be conceived in my breast;
That by each word and deed and thought,
Glory may to my God be brought!
But what are wishes? Lord, mine eye
On thee is fixed, to thee I cry:
Wash, Lord, and purify my heart,
And make it clean in every part;
And when 'tis clean, Lord, keep it too,
For that is more than I can do."
The thought in the following extracts from a poem,
written on the death of his friend Pennington's son, is
trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly expressed:
" What ground, alas ! has any man
To set his heart on things below,
Which, when they seem most like to stand,
Fly like the arrow from the bow!
Who's now atop ere long shall feel
The circling motion of the wheel!
" The world can not afford a thing
Which to a well-composed mind
Can any lasting pleasure bring,
But in itself its grave will find.
All things unto their centre tend
What had beginning must have end!
THOMAS ELLWOOD
" No disappointment can befall
Us, having him who's all in all!
What can of pleasure him prevent
Who hath the Fountain of Content? "
In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the
" sect called Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with
the penalty of banishment for the third offence! The bur-
den of the prosecution which followed fell upon the Quak-
ers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily
fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from their
native land. Yet in time our worthy friend Ellwood
came in for his own share of trouble, in consequence of
attending the funeral of one of his friends. An evil-dis-
posed justice of the county obtained information of the
Quaker gathering; and, while the body of the dead was
" borne on Friends' shoulders through the street, in order
to be carried to the burying ground, which was at the
town's end," says Ellwood, " he rushed out upon us with
the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had
gathered together, and, having his drawn sword in his
hand, struck one of the foremost of the bearers with it,
commanding them to set down the coffin. But the
Friend who was so stricken, being more concerned for
the safety of the dead body than .for his own, lest it
should fall, and any indecency thereupon follow, held the
coffin fast; which the justice observing, and being en-
raged that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his
hand to the coffin and with a forcible thrust threw it off
from the bearers' shoulders, so that it fell to the ground
in the middle of the street, and there we were forced
to leave it, for the constables and rabble fell upon us and
drew some and drove others into the inn. Of those thus
taken," continues Ellwood, " I was one. They picked out
ten of us and sent us to Aylesbury jail.
" They caused the body to lie in the open street and
cartway, so that all travellers that passed, whether horse-
men, coaches, carts, or wagons, were fain to break out
of the way to go by it, until it was almost night. And
then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconse-
crated part of what is called the churchyard, they forcibly
took the body from the widow and buried it there."
WHITTIER
He remained a prisoner only about two months, dur-
ing which period he comforted himself by such verse-
making as follows, reminding us of similar enigmas in
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress":
" Lo! a Riddle for the wise,
In the which a Mystery lies.
" RIDDLE
" Some men are free while they in prison lie;
Others who ne'er saw prison, captives die.
" CAUTION
" He that can receive it may,
He that can not, let him stay,
Not be hasty, but suspend
Judgment till he sees the end.
" SOLUTION
" He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin,
And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."
In the meantime where is our " Master Milton "? We
left him deprived of his young companion and reader, sit-
ting lonely in his small dining-room in Jewen Street. It
is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in London?
A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops, fawn-
ing around the Nell Gwynns of a licentious and profane
Defender of the Faith; its swaggering and drunken cava-
liers; its ribald jesters; its obscene ballad-singers; its
loathsome prisons, crowded with God-fearing men and
women. Is not the measure of its iniquity already filled
up? Three years only have passed since the terrible
prayer of Vane went upward from the scaffold on Tower
Hill, " When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O
God! have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, oh,
bosom friend of the martyr! has that blood cried from
earth; and now how fearfully is it answered! Like the
ashes which the seer of the Hebrews cast toward heaven,
it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and op-
pressive city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street,
has heard the toll of the death bells, and the night-long
rumble of the burial carts, and the terrible summons,
"Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in
yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets. Why
THOMAS ELLWOOD
should he tarry in a doomed city, forsaken of God? Is
not the command, even to him, "Arise! and flee for thy
life "? In some green nook of the quiet country he may
finish the great work which his hands have found to do.
He bethinks him of his old friends, the Penningtons, and
his young Quaker companion, the patient and gentle
Ellwood. " Wherefore," says the latter, " some little time
before I went to Aylesbury jail I was desired by my
quondam Master Milton to take a house for him in the
neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might go out of
the city for the safety of himself and his family, the pesti-
lence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box
for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave
him notice, and intended to have waited on him and seen
him well settled, but was prevented by that imprisonment.
But now being released and returned home, I soon made
a visit to him to welcome him into the country. After
some common discourse had passed between us, he called
for a manuscript of his, which, having brought, he deliv-
ered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it
at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him
with my judgment thereupon."
Now what does the reader think young Ellwood car-
ried in his gray coat pocket across the dikes and hedges
and through the green lanes of Giles Chalfont that autumn
day? Let us look further: " When I came home, and had
set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem
which he entitled ' Paradise Lost.' After I had, with the
best attention, read it through, I made him another visit;
and, returning his book with due acknowledgment of the
favour he had done me in communicating it to me, he
asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which
I modestly but freely told him; and, after some further
discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him: ' Thou hast
said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say
of Paradise Found? ' He made me no answer, but sat some
time in a muse, then brake off that discourse, and fell
upon another subject."
" I modestly but freely told him what I thought " of
" Paradise Lost "! -What he told him remains a mystery.
One would like to know more precisely what the first
WHITTIER
critical reader of that song " of man's first disobedience "
thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton
sitting some pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that
old year, in " the pretty box " at Chalfont, the soft wind
through the open window lifting the thin hair of the
glorious old poet! Backslidden England, plague-smitten,
and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine king,
knows little of poor " Master Milton," and takes small
note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his hum-
ble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which,
he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark
and strange to the author, " would not willingly let die."
The suggestion in respect to " Paradise Found," to which,
as we have seen, " he made no answer, but sat some time
in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the
sickness was over," continues Ellwood, " and the city well
cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned
thither; and when afterward I waited on him there, which
I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me
to London, he showed me his second poem, called ' Para-
dise Gained'; and in a pleasant tone said to me, ' This
is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the ques-
tion you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not
thought of.' '
Golden days were these for the young Latin reader,
even if it be true, as we suspect, that he was himself very
far from appreciating the glorious privilege which he en-
joyed of the familiar friendship and confidence of Milton.
But they could not last. His amiable host, Isaac Pen-
nington, a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was
dragged from his house by a military force and lodged
in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family forcibly ejected from
their pleasant home, which was seized upon by the gov-
ernment as security for the fines imposed upon its owner.
The plague was in the village of Aylesbury, and in the
very prison itself; but the noble-hearted Mary Penning-
ton followed her husband, sharing with him the dark peril.
Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly meeting at
Hedgerly, with six others (among them one Morgan Wat-
kins, a poor old Welshman, who, painfully endeavouring
to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was suspected
THOMAS ELLWOOD
by the Dogberry of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling
over his Latin), was arrested and committed to Wiccomb
House of Correction.
This was a time of severe trial for the sect with which
Ellwood had connected himself. In the very midst of the
pestilence, when thousands perished weekly in London,
fifty-four Quakers were marched through the almost de-
serted streets and placed on board a ship, for the purpose
of being conveyed, according to their sentence of banish-
ment, to the West Indies. The ship lay for a long time,
with many others similarly situated, a helpless prey to the
pestilence. Through that terrible autumn the prisoners
sat waiting for the summons of the ghastly destroyer;
and from their floating dungeon
" Heard the groan
Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave
The frequent corse."
When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four who
went on board, twenty-seven only were living. A Dutch
privateer captured her when two days out and carried' the
prisoners to North Holland, where they were set at lib-
erty. The condition of the jails in the city, where were
large numbers of Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme.
Ill ventilated, crowded, and loathsome with the accumu-
lated filth of centuries, they invited the disease which daily
decimated their cells. " Go on!" says Pennington, writ-
ing to the king and bishops from his plague-infected cell
in the Aylesbury prison, " try it out with the spirit of
the Lord, come forth with your laws, and prisons, and
spoiling of goods, and banishment and death, if the Lord
please, and see if ye can carry it! Whom the Lord loveth
he can save at his pleasure. Hath he begun to break our
bonds and deliver us, and shall we now distrust him? Are
we in a worse condition than Israel was when the sea was
before them, the mountains on either side, and the Egyp-
tians behind pursuing them? "
Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the
present generation, now quietly reaping the fruit of your
heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you in re-
spect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to recog-
320 WHITTIER
nise your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an
age of hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking,
when, with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Crom-
well's reign of the saints were taking profane lessons from
their old enemies, and putting on an outside show of con-
formity for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the
austere dignity of virtue, and, with king and Church and
Parliament arrayed against you, vindicated the rights of
conscience at the cost of home, fortune, and life. Eng-
lish liberty owes more to your unyielding firmness than
to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.
In 1667 we find the Latin teacher in attendance at
a great meeting of Friends in London, convened at the
suggestion of George Fox, for the purpose of settling a
little difficulty which had arisen among the Friends, even
under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative
to the very important matter of " wearing the hat."
George Fox, in his love of truth and sincerity, in word
and action, had discountenanced the fashionable doffing of
the hat and other flattering obeisances toward men hold-
ing stations in Church or state as savouring of man-
worship, giving to the creature the reverence only due to
the Creator, as undignified and wanting in due self-respect,
and tending to support unnatural and oppressive distinc-
tions among those equal in the sight of God. But some
of his disciples evidently made much more of this " hat
testimony " than their teacher. One John Perrott, who
had just returned from an unsuccessful attempt to con-
vert the Pope at Rome (where that dignitary, after listen-
ing to his exhortations, and finding him in no condition
to be benefited by the spiritual physicians of the Inquisi-
tion, had quietly turned him over to the temporal ones
of the Insane Hospital), had broached the doctrine that,
in public or private worship, the hat was not to be taken
off without an immediate revelation or call to do so! Ell-
wood himself seems to have been on the point of yielding
to this notion, which appears to have been the occasion
of a good deal of dissension and scandal. Under these
circumstances, to save truth from reproach, and an im-
portant testimony to the essential equality of mankind
from running into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his
THOMAS ELLWOOD 321
tried and faithful friends together from all parts of the
United Kingdom, and, as it appears, with the happiest
result. Hat revelations were discountenanced, good order
and harmony re-established, and John Perrott's beaver,
and the crazy head under it, were from thenceforth power-
less for evil. Let those who are disposed to laugh at this
notable Ecumenical Council of the Hat, consider that
ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records
of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein
grave bishops and learned fathers took each other by the
beard upon matters of far less practical importance.
In 1669 we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his
fair friend Gulielma to her uncle's residence in Sussex.
Passing through London, and, taking the Tunbridge
Road, they stopped at Seven Oaks to dine. The Duke of
York was on the road, with his guards and hangers-on,
and the inn was filled with a rude company. " Hasten-
ing," says Ellwood, " from a place where we found noth-
ing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, be-
sides the damning oaths they belched out against each
other, looked very sourly upon us, as if they grudged us
the horses which we rode and the clothes we wore."
They had proceeded but a little distance, when they were
overtaken by some half dozen drunken rough-riding cava-
liers, of the Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beau-
tiful Quakeress. One of them impudently attempted to
pull her upon his horse before him, but was held at bay
by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to have relied
somewhat upon his " stick," in defending his fair charge.
Calling up Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one
side of his mistress, while he guarded her on the other.
" But he," says Ellwood, " not thinking it perhaps decent
to ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another
to ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, and
Gulielma was once more in peril. It was clearly no time
for exhortations and expostulations, " so," says Ellwood,
" I chopped in upon him, by a nimble turn, and kept him
at bay. I told him I had hitherto spared him, but wished
him not to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a
tone as bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon
us, and withal pressed him so hard with my horse that I
3 22
WHITTIER
suffered him not to come up again to Guli." By this time
it became evident to the companions of the ruffianly as-
sailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they
hastened to interfere. " For they," says Ellwood, " see-
ing the contest rise so high, and probably fearing it would
rise higher, not knowing where it might stop, came in to
part us, which they did by taking him away."
Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his
fair companion rode on through Tunbridge Wells, " the
street thronged with men, who looked very earnestly at
them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late at
night, in a driving rain, at the mansion house of Herbert
Springette. The fiery old gentleman was so indignant
at the insult offered to his niece that he was with diffi-
culty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction at the hands
of the Duke of York.
This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma.
She was soon after married to William Penn, and took
up her abode at Worminghurst, in Sussex. How blessed
and beautiful was that union may be understood from
the following paragraph of a letter, written by her hus-
band on the eve of his departure for America to lay the
foundations of a Christian colony:
" My dear wife! remember thou wast the love of my
youth, and much the joy of my life, the most beloved,
as well as the most worthy of all my earthly comforts;
and the reason of that love was more thy inward than thy
outward excellences, which yet were many. God knows,
and thou knowest it, I can say it was a match of Provi-
dence's making; and God's image in us both was the
first thing and the most amiable and engaging ornament
in our eyes."
About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old
playmate at Chalfont was destined for another, turned
his attention toward a " young Friend named Mary
Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted with
her, but now he " found his heart secretly drawn and in-
clining toward her." " At length," he tells us, " as I was
sitting all alone, waiting upon the Lord for counsel and
guidance in this, in itself and to me, important affair, I
felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a voice
THOMAS ELLWOOD
323
which said, ' Go, and prevail! ' and faith springing in my
heart at the word, I immediately rose and went, nothing
doubting." On arriving at her residence, he states that
he " solemnly opened his mind to her, which was a great
surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension,
as others had also done," that his eye had been fixed else-
where and nearer home. " I used not many words to
her," he continues, " but I felt a divine power went along
with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them
so fast in her breast that, as she afterward acknowledged
to me, she could not shut it out.
" I continued," he says, " my visits to my best-beloved
Friend until we married, which was on the twenty-eighth
day of the eighth month, 1669. We took each other in
a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that
country. A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty
frame of spirit we were." His wife seems to have had
some estate; and Ellwood, with that nice sense of justice
which marked all his actions, immediately made his will,
securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods
and moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired
before marriage. " Which," he tells, " was indeed but
little, yet, by all that little, more than I had ever given
her ground to expect with me." His father, who was yet
unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with
his marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and un-
sanctioned by priest or liturgy, and consequently refused
to render him any pecuniary assistance. Yet, in spite of
this and other trials, he seems to have preserved his seren-
ity of spirit. After an unpleasant interview with his father,
on one occasion he wrote at his lodgings in an inn in Lon-
don what he calls " A Song of Praise." An extract from it
will serve to show the spirit of the good man in affliction:
" Unto the glory of thy holy name,
Eternal God! whom I both love and fear,
I hereby do declare, I never came
Before thy throne, and found thee loath to hear,
But always ready with an open ear,
And, though sometimes thou seem'st thy face to hide,
As one that had withdrawn his love from me,
Tis that my faith may to the full be tried,
And that I thereby may the better see
How weak I am when not upheld by thee! "
WHITTIER
The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation
to " Conventicles," provided that any person who should
be present at any meeting, under colour or pretence of
any exercise of religion, in other manner than according
to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England,
"should be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings;
and any person preaching at or giving his house for the
meeting, to a fine of twenty pounds, one third of the fines
being received by the informer or informers." As a natu-
ral consequence of such a law, the vilest scoundrels in the
land set up the trade of informers and heresy hunters.
Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there
was sure to be a mercenary spy, ready to bring a com-
plaint against all in attendance. The Independents and
Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public meet-
ings, yet even they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan,
for instance, in these days was dreaming, like another
Jacob, of angels ascending and descending, in Bedford
prison. But upon the poor Quakers fell as usual the great
force of the unjust enactment. Some of these spies or
informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant
tempers, and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of
Quakers, Independents, or Baptists, as occasion required,
thrusting themselves into the meetings of the proscribed
sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank
and condition, and then informing against them. Ell-
wood, in his journal for 1670, describes several of these
emissaries of evil. One of them came to a Friend's house
in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the faith, but,
overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and
dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the inn, he
appeared in his true character, drank and swore roundly,
and confessed over his cups that he had been sent forth
on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice-Chancellor of
Oxford. Finding little success in counterfeiting Quaker-
ism, he turned to the Baptists, where for a time he met
with better success. Ellwood at this time rendered good
service to his friends by exposing the true character of
these wretches, and bringing them to justice for theft,
perjury, and other misdemeanors.
While this storm of persecution lasted (a period of
THOMAS ELLWOOD 325
two or three years), the different dissenting sects felt, in
some measure, a common sympathy, and, while guarding
themselves against their common foe, had little leisure for
controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the
abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the
signal for renewing their suspended quarrels. The Bap-
tists fell upon the Quakers with pamphlet and sermon;
the latter replied in the same way. One of the most con-
spicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy
Ives, with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had
a good deal of trouble. " His name," says Ellwood, " was
up for a topping disputant. He was well read in the fal-
lacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His
chief art lay in tickling the humour of rude, unlearned,
and injudicious hearers."
The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled " An Epi-
taph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and
drollery were sometimes found even among the prover-
bially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:
" Beneath this stone, depressed doth lie
The Mirror of Hypocrisy
Ives, whose mercenary tongue
Like a Weathercock was hung,
And did this or that way play,
As Advantage led the way.
If well hired, he would dispute,
Otherwise he would be mute.
But he'd bawl for half a day
If he knew and liked his pay.
" For his person, let it pass;
Only note his face was brass.
His heart was like a pumice-stone,
And for Conscience he had none.
Of Earth and Air he was composed,
With Water round about inclosed.
Earth in him had greatest share,
Questionless, his life lay there;
Thence his cankered Envy sprung,
Poisoning both his heart and tongue.
" Air made him frothy, light, and vain,
And puffed him with a proud disdain.
Into the Water oft he went,
And through the Water many sent.
That was, ye know his element!
The greatest odds that did appear
Was this, for aught that I can hear,
31
WHITTIER
That he in cold did others dip,
But did himself hot water sip.
" And his cause he'd never doubt,
If well soaked o'er night in Stout;
But, meanwhile, he must not lack,
Brandy, and a draught of Sack.
One dispute would shrink a bottle
Of three pints, if not a pottle.
One would think he fetched from thence
All his dreamy eloquence.
" Let us now bring back the Sot
To his Aqua Vita pot,
And observe, with some content,
How he framed his argument.
That his whistle he might wet,
The bottle to his mouth he set,
And, being master of that art,
Thence he drew the Major part,
But left the Minor still behind;
Good reason why, he wanted wind;
If his breath would have held out,
He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."
The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided on
in serenity and peace. He wrote at intervals many pam-
phlets in defence of his society, and in favour of liberty
of conscience. At his hospitable residence the leading
spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed. George Fox
and William Penn seem to have been frequent guests.
We find that in 1683 he was arrested for seditious publica-
tions when on the eve of hastening to his early friend
Gulielma, who, in the absence of her husband, Governor
Penn, had fallen dangerously ill. On coming before the
judge, " I told him/' says Ellwood, " that I had that
morning received an express out of Sussex, that William
Penn's wife (with whom I had an intimate acquaintance
and strict friendship, ab ipsis fere incunabilis, at least, a
teneris unguiculis) lay now ill, not without great danger,
and that she had expressed her desire that I would come
to her as soon as I could." The judge said, " He was very
sorry for Madam Penn's illness," of whose virtues he
spoke very highly, but not more than was her due. Then
he told me " that, for her sake, he would do what he could
to further my visit to her." Escaping from the hands of
the law, he visited his friend, who was by this time in a
THOMAS ELLWOOD 327
way of recovery, and on his return learned that the prose-
cution had been abandoned.
At about this date his narrative ceases. We learn
from other sources that he continued to write and print
in defence of his religious views up to the year of his
death, which took place in 1713. One of his productions,
a poetical version of the " Life of David," may be still
met with in the old Quaker libraries. On the score of
poetical merit it is about on a level with Michael Dray-
ton's verses on the same subject. As the history of one
of the firm confessors of the old struggle for religious
freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant scholar, the
friend of Penn and Milton, and the suggester of " Paradise
Regained," we trust our hurried sketch has not been alto-
gether without interest; and that, whatever may be the
religious views of our readers, they have not failed to
recognise a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION
IN FOREIGNERS
BY
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, who was not only the greatest of American
poets, but a charming and often profound writer of prose as well, was the
son of a clergyman, and was born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22,
1819. He was graduated at Harvard in 1838, studied in the Law School,
and was admitted to the bar in 1840, but did not practise. In 1843, with
Robert Carter, he edited "The Pioneer," a magazine that numbered
among its contributors Hawthorne, Poe, John Neal, Whittier, William
W. Story, and Elizabeth Barrett ; but after the third number it failed,
through the bankruptcy of the publisher. In 1844 Lowell married Maria
White, who was the author of a few fine poems, and whose strong anti-
slavery sentiments are believed to have shown their influence in some of
his most famous work. His earliest volumes of poetry were scholarly
but not remarkable. His first literary triumph was the " Biglow Pa-
pers," published serially in i846-'48, a satire on slavery and the Mexican
War. He wrote a great deal for magazines, and in 1855 succeeded Long-
fellow as Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, and in 1857 was
the first editor of the "Atlantic Monthly." During the civil war he pub-
lished a second series of the " Biglow Papers," and at its close wrote his
finest poem, the "Commemoration Ode." In 1877 he was appointed
United States Minister at Madrid, and in 1880 was transferred to London,
where he remained till 1885. While he was Minister to England he was
elected Rector of the University of St. Andrews. He delivered several
courses of lectures and single addresses, all of which are entertaining
reading, but he was no orator. His critical studies of Shakespeare,
Dante, and other great poets are masterpieces. He died in Cambridge,
August 12, 1891, leaving one child, a daughter, who has since passed
away. In the last year of his life he prepared a revised edition of his
entire works, which was published in eleven volumes (four of poetry and
seven of prose) by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., through whose cour-
tesy one of his most famous essays is presented here. It is protected by
their copyright.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN
FOREIGNERS
WALKING one day toward the village, as we used
to call it in the good old days, when almost every
dweller in the town had been born in it, I was
enjoying that delicious sense of disenthralment from the
actual which the deepening twilight brings with it, giving
as it does a sort of obscure novelty to things familiar. The
coolness, the hush, broken only by the distant bleat of
some belated goat, querulous to be disburdened of her
milky load, the few faint stars, more guessed as yet than
seen, the sense that the coming dark would so soon fold
me in the secure privacy of its disguise all things com-
bined in a result as near absolute peace as can be hoped
for by a man who knows that there is a writ out against
him in the hands of the printer's devil. For the moment I
was enjoying the blessed privilege of thinking without
being called on to stand and deliver what I thought to the
small public who are good enough to take any interest
therein. I love old ways, and the path I was walking felt
kindly to the feet it had known for almost fifty years.
How many fleeting impressions it had shared with me!
How many times I had lingered to study the shadows
of the leaves mezzotinted upon the turf that edged
it by the moon, of the bare boughs etched with a touch
beyond Rembrandt by the same unconscious artist on the
smooth page of snow! If I turned round, through dusky
tree-gaps came the first twinkle of evening lamps in the
dear old homestead. On Corey's Hill I could see these
tiny pharoses of love and home and sweet domestic
thoughts flash out one by one across the blackening salt-
meadow between. How much has not kerosene added to
the cheerfulness of our evening landscape! A pair of
331
LOWELL
night-herons flapped heavily over me toward the hidden
river. The war was ended. I might walk townward with-
out that aching dread of bulletins that had darkened the
July sunshine and twice made the scarlet leaves of Octo-
ber seem stained with blood. I remembered with a pang,
half-proud, half-painful, how, so many years ago, I had
walked over the same path and felt round my finger the
soft pressure of a little hand that was one day to harden
with faithful grip of sabre. On how many paths, leading
to how many homes where proud Memory does all she can
to fill up the fireside gaps with shining shapes, must not
men be walking in such pensive mood as I? Ah, young
heroes, safe in immortal youth as those of Homer, you
at least carried your ideal hence untarnished! It is locked
for you beyond moth or rust in the treasure-chamber of
death.
Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as
they in it, that could give such as they a brave joy
in dying for it, worth something, then? And as I felt
more and more the soothing magic of evening's cool
palm upon my temples, as my fancy came home from its
revery, arfd my senses, with reawakened curiosity, ran to
the front windows again from the viewless closet of ab-
straction, and felt a strange charm in finding the old tree
and shabby fence still there under the travesty of falling
night, nay, were conscious of an unsuspected newness in
familiar stars and the fading outlines of hills my earliest
horizon, I was conscious of an immortal soul, and could
not but rejoice in the unwaning goodliness of the world
into which I had been born without any merit of my own.
I thought of dear Henry Vaughan's rainbow, " Still young
and fine! " I remembered people who had to go over to
the Alps to learn what the divine silence of snow was, who
must run to Italy before they were conscious of the mir-
acle wrought every day under their very noses by the
sunset, who must call upon the Berkshire Hills to teach
them what a painter autumn was, while close at hand the
Fresh Pond meadows made all oriels cheap with hues that
showed as if a sunset cloud had been wrecked among their
maples. One might be worse off than even in America,
I thought. There are some things so elastic that even
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 333
the heavy roller of democracy can not flatten them alto-
gether down. The mind can weave itself warmly in the
cocoon of its own thoughts and dwell a hermit anywhere. A
country without traditions, without ennobling associations,
a scramble of parvenus, with a horrible consciousness of
shoddy running through politics, manners, art, literature,
nay, religion itself? I confess it did not seem so to me
there in that illimitable quiet, that serene self-possession
of Nature, where Collins might have brooded his " Ode
to Evening," or where those verses on Solitude in Dods-
ley's " Collection," that Hawthorne liked so much, might
have been composed. Traditions? Granting that we had
none, all that is worth having in them is the common
property of the soul an estate in gavelkind for all the
sons of Adam and, moreover, if a man can not stand
on his two feet (the prime quality of whoever has left any
tradition behind him), were it not better for him to be
honest about it at once, and go down on all fours? And
for associations, if one have not the wit to make them for
himself out of native earth, no ready-made ones of other
men will avail much. Lexington is none the worse to me
for not being in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is
not Marathon. " Blessed old fields," I was just exclaim-
ing to myself, like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, " dear
acres, innocently secure from history, which these eyes
first beheld, may you be also those to which they shall
at last slowly darken! " when I was interrupted by a voice
which asked me in German whether I was the Herr Pro-
fessor, Doctor So-and-so? The " Doctor " was by brevet
or vaticination, to make the grade easier to my pocket.
One feels so intimately assured that one is made up,
in parts, of shreds and leavings of the past, in part of
the interpolations of other people, that an honest man
would be slow in saying yes to such a question. But
" my name is So-and-so " is a safe answer, and I gave it.
While I had been romancing with myself, the street-lamps
had been lighted, and it was under one of these detectives
that have robbed the Old Road of its privilege of sanctuary
after nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe. The inex-
orable villain had taken my description, it appears, that I
might have the less chance to escape him. Dr. Holmes
22
334 LOWELL
tells us that we change our substance not every seven
years, as was once believed, but with every breath we
draw. Why had I not the wit to avail myself of the subter-
fuge, and, like Peter, to renounce my identity, especially,
as in certain moods of mind, I have often more than
doubted of it myself? When a man is, as it were, his own
front door, and is thus knocked at, why may he not assume
the right of that sacred wood to make every house a
castle, by denying himself to all visitations? I was truly
not at home when the question was put to me, but had
to recall myself from all out-of-doors, and to piece my
self-consciousness hastily together as well as I could be-
fore I answered it.
I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom
that debtors or good Samaritans waylay people under gas-
lamps in order to force money upon them, so far as I
have seen or heard. I was also aware, from considerable
experience, that every foreigner is persuaded that, by
doing this country the favour of coming to it, he has laid
every native thereof under an obligation, pecuniary or
other, as the case may be, whose discharge he is entitled
to on demand duly made in person or by letter. Too
much learning (of this kind) had made me mad in the pro-
vincial sense of the word. I had begun life with the
theory of giving something to every beggar that came
along, though sure of never finding a native-born coun-
tryman among them. In a small way, I was resolved to
emulate Hatem Tai's tent, with its three hundred and
sixty-five entrances, one for every day in the year I know
not whether he was astronomer enough to add another for
leap-years. The beggars were a kind of German-silver
aristocracy; not real plate, to be sure, but better than
nothing. Where everybody was overworked, they sup-
plied the comfortable equipoise of absolute leisure, so
aesthetically needful. Besides, I was but too conscious of
a vagrant fibre in myself, which too often thrilled me in my
solitary walks with the temptation to wander on into in-
finite space, and by a single spasm of resolution to eman-
cipate myself from the drudgery of prosaic serfdom to re-
spectability and the regular course of things. This
prompting has been at times my familiar demon, and I
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 335
could not but feel a kind of respectful sympathy for men
who had dared what I had only sketched out to myself as
a splendid possibility. For seven years I helped maintain
one heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland
as fine an example as I have ever known of hopeless
loyalty to an ideal. I assisted another so long in a fruit-
less attempt to reach Mecklenburg-Schwerin, that at last
we grinned in each other's faces when we met, like a
couple of augurs. He was possessed by this harmless
mania as some are by the north pole, and I shall never
forget his look of regretful compassion (as for one who
was sacrificing his higher life to the fleshpots of Egypt)
when I at last advised him somewhat strenuously to go
to the D , whither the road was so much travelled that
he could not miss it. General Banks, in his noble zeal
for the honour of his country, would confer on the Secre-
tary of State the power of imprisoning, in case of war,
all these seekers of the unattainable, thus by a stroke of
the pen annihilating the single poetic element in our hum-
drum life. Alas! not everybody has the genius to be a
Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless all these also would have chosen
that more prosperous line of life! But moralists, soci-
ologists, political economists, and taxes have slowly con-
vinced me that my beggarly sympathies were a sin against
society. Especially was the Buckle doctrine of averages
(so flattering to our free-will) persuasive with me; for as
there must be in every year a certain number who would
bestow an alms on these abridged editions of the Wan-
dering Jew, the withdrawal of my quota could make no
possible difference, since some destined proxy must always
step forward to fill my gap. Just so many misdirected
letters every year and no more ! Would it were as easy to
reckon up the number of men on whose backs fate has
written the wrong address, so that they arrive by mistake
in Congress and other places where they do not belong?
May not these wanderers of whom I speak have been sent
into the world without any proper address at all? Where
is our Dead-Letter Office for such? And if wiser social
arrangements should furnish us with something of the
sort, fancy (horrible thought!) how many a workingman's
friend (a kind of industry in which the labour is light and,
336 LOWELL
the wages heavy) would be sent thither because not called
for in the office where he at present lies!
But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under
the lamp-post. The same Gano which had betrayed me
to him revealed to me a well-set young man of about half
my own age, as well dressed, so far as I could see, as I
was, and with every natural qualification for getting his
own livelihood as good, if not better, than my own. He
had been reduced to the painful necessity of calling upon
me by a series of crosses beginning with the Baden Revo-
lution (for which, I own, he seemed rather young but
perhaps he referred to a kind of revolution practised every
season at Baden-Baden), continued by repeated failures in
business, for amounts which must convince me of his en-
tire respectability, and ending with our Civil War. Dur-
ing the latter he had served with distinction as a soldier,
taking a main part in every important battle, with a rapid
list of which he favoured me, and no doubt would have
admitted that, impartial as Jonathan Wild's great ancestor,
he had been on both sides, had I baited him with a few
hints of conservative opinions on a subject so distressing
to a gentleman wishing to profit by one's sympathy and
unhappily doubtful as to which way it might lean. For
all these reasons, and, as he seemed to imply, for his merit
in consenting to be born in Germany, he considered him-
self my natural creditor to the extent of five dollars, which
he would handsomely consent to accept in greenbacks,
though he preferred specie. The offer was certainly a
generous one, and the claim presented with an assurance
that carried conviction. But, unhappily, I had been led
to remark a curious natural phenomenon. If I was ever
weak enough to give anything to a petitioner of whatever
nationality, it always rained decayed compatriots of his for
a month after. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, may not always
be safe logic, but here I seemed to perceive a natural con-
nection of cause and effect. Now, a few days before I had
been so tickled with a paper (professedly written by a
benevolent American clergyman) certifying that the bearer,
a hard-working German, had long " sofered with rheumatic
paints in his limps/' that, after copying the passage into my
notebook, I thought it but fair to pay a trifling honora-
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 337
rium to the author. I had pulled the string of the shower-
bath! It had been running shipwrecked sailors for some
time, but forthwith it began to pour Teutons, redolent of
lager-bier. I could not help associating the apparition of
my new friend with this series of otherwise unaccountable
phenomena. I accordingly made up my mind to deny the
debt, and modestly did so, pleading a native bias toward
impecuniosity to the full as strong as his own. He took
a high tone with me at once, such as an honest man would
naturally take with a confessed repudiator. He even
brought down his proud stomach so far as to join himself
to me for the rest of my townward walk, that he might
give me his views of the American people, and thus inclu-
sively of myself.
I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered
and lack gall, or whether it is from an overmastering sense
of drollery, but I am apt to submit to such bastings with
a patience which afterward surprises me, being not with-
out my share of warmth in the blood. Perhaps it is be-
cause I so often meet with young persons who know
vastly more than I do, and especially with so many for-
eigners whose knowledge of this country is superior to
my own. However it may be, I listened for some time
with tolerable composure as my self-appointed lecturer
gave me in detail his opinions of my country and its
people. America, he informed me, was without arts, sci-
ence, literature, culture, or any native hope of supplying
them. We were a people wholly given to money-getting,
and who, having got it, knew no other use for it than to
hold it fast. I am fain to confess that I felt a sensible
itching of the biceps, and that my fingers closed with such
a grip as he had just informed me was one of the effects
of our unhappy climate. But happening just then to be
where I could avoid temptation by dodging down a by-
street, I hastily left him to finish his diatribe to the lamp-
post, which could stand it better than I. That young
man will never know how near he came to being assaulted
by a respectable gentleman of middle age, at the corner
of Church Street. I have never felt quite satisfied that
did all my duty by him in not knocking him down. But
perhaps he might have knocked me down, and then?
338
LOWELL
The capacity of indignation makes an essential part
of the outfit of every honest man, but I am inclined to
doubt whether he is a wise one who allows himself to
act upon its first hints. It should be rather, I suspect, a
latent heat in the blood, which makes itself felt in char-
acter, a steady reserve for the brain, warming the ovum of
thought to life, rather than cooking it by a too hasty en-
thusiasm in reaching the boiling point. As my pulse
gradually fell back to its normal beat, I reflected that I
had been uncomfortably near making a fool of myself
a handy salve of euphuism for our vanity, though it does
not always make a just allowance to Nature for her share
in the business. What possible claim had my Teutonic
friend to rob me of my composure? I am not, I think,
specially thin-skinned as to other people's opinions of
myself, having, as I conceive, later and fuller intelligence
on that point than anybody else can give me. Life is con-
tinually weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling
every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the
last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty does not rate himself
quite as low as most of his acquaintance would be likely
to put him, must be either a fool or a great man, and I
humbly disclaim being either. But if I was not smarting
in person from any scattering shot of my late companion's
commination, why should I grow hot at any implication
of my country therein? Surely her shoulders are broad
enough, if yours or mine are not, to bear up under a con-
siderable avalanche of this kind. It is the bit of truth in
every slander, the hint of likeness in every caricature, that
makes us smart. "Art thou there, old Truepenny?"
How did your blade know its way so well to that one loose
rivet in our armour? I wondered whether Americans were
over-sensitive in this respect, whether they were more
touchy than other folks. On the whole, I thought we
were not. Plutarch, who at least had studied philosophy,
if he had not mastered it, could not stomach something
Herodotus had said of Bceotia, and devoted an essay to
showing up the delightful old traveller's malice and ill-
breeding. French editors leave out of Montaigne's
' Travels " some remarks of his about France, for reasons
best known to themselves. Pachydermatous Deutschland,
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
From an engraving by Alfred B. Hall
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 339
covered with trophies from every field of letters, still
winces under that question which Pere Bouhours put two
centuries ago, Si un Allemand peut etre bel-esprit? John
Bull grew apoplectic with angry amazement at the au-
dacious persiflage of Piickler-Muskau. To be sure, he
was a prince, but that was not all of it, for a chance phrase
of gentle Hawthorne sent a spasm through all the journals
of England. Then this tenderness is not peculiar to us?
Console yourself, dear man and brother, whatever else
you may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you
are dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a
much greater genius for sameness than for originality, or
the world would be at a sad pass shortly. The surprising
thing is that men have such a taste for this somewhat
musty flavour, that an Englishman, for example, should
feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged, when he comes
over here and finds a people speaking what he admits to
be something like English, and yet so very different from
(or, as he would say, to) those he left at home. Nothing,
I am sure, equals my thankfulness when I meet an Eng-
lishman who is not like every other, or, I may add, an
American of the same odd turn.
Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as
nice about his country as about his sweetheart, and who
ever heard even the friendliest appreciation of that un-
expressive she that did not seem to fall infinitely short?
Yet it would hardly be wise to hold every one an enemy
who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes. It
seems to be the common opinion of foreigners that Ameri-
cans are too tender upon this point. Perhaps we are; and
if so, there must be a reason for it. Have we had fair
play? Could the eyes of what is called Good Society
(though it is so seldom true either to the adjective or
noun) look upon a nation of democrats with any chance
of receiving an undistorted image? Were not those,
moreover, who found in the old order of things an earthly
paradise, paying them quarterly dividends for the wisdom
of their ancestors, with the punctuality of the seasons,
unconsciously bribed to misunderstand if not to misrepre-
sent us? Whether at war or at peace, there we were, a
standing menace to all earthly paradises of that kind, fatal
340
LOWELL
underminers of the ver^ credit on which the dividends
were based, all the more hateful and terrible that our de-
structive agency was so insidious, working invisible in the
elements, as it seemed, active while they slept, and coming
upon them in the darkness like an armed man. Could
Laius have the proper feelings of a father toward CEdipus,
announced as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles,
and felt to be such by every conscious fibre of his soul?
For more than a century the Dutch were the laughing-
stock of polite Europe. They were butter-firkins, swillers
of beer and schnapps, and their vrouws from whom Hol-
bein painted the ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rem-
brandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee in
Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the
synonymes of clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving
the ships of the greatest navigators in the world were
represented as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That
the aristocratic Venetians should have
" Riveted with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,"
was heroic. But the far more marvellous achievement of
the Dutch in the same kind was ludicrous even to repub-
lican Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century of
scorn, they were the best artists, sailors, merchants, bank-
ers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in Eu-
rope, and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us,
earning a right to themselves by the most heroic struggle
in human annals. But, alas! they were not merely simple
burghers who had fairly made themselves high mighti-
nesses, and could treat on equal terms with anointed kings,
but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs
of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark,
that dreadful mastiff, the press, whose scent is, or ought
to be, so keen for wolves in sheep's clothing and for cer-
tain other animals in lions' skins. They made fun of
sacred majesty, and, what was worse, managed uncom-
monly well without it. In an age when periwigs made
so large a part of the natural dignity of man, people with
such a turn of mind were dangerous. How could they
seem other than vulgar and hateful?
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
341
In the natural course of things we succeeded to this
unenviable position of general butt. The Dutch had
thriven under it pretty well, and there was hope that we
could at least contrive to worry along. And we certainly
did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved
some of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors
in office. We had nothing to boast of in arts or letters,
and were given to bragging overmuch of our merely ma-
terial prosperity, due quite as much to the virtue of our
continent as to our own. There was some truth in Car-
lyle's sneer, after all. Till we had succeeded in some
higher way than this we had only the success of physical
growth. Our greatness, like that of enormous Russia,
was greatness on the map barbarian mass only; but had
we gone down, like that other Atlantis, in some vast
cataclysm, we should have covered but a pin's point on
the chart of memory, compared with those ideal spaces
occupied by tiny Attica and cramped England. At the
same time our critics somewhat too easily forgot that
material must make ready the foundation for ideal tri-
umphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries.
But it must be allowed that democracy stood for a great
deal in our shortcoming. The " Edinburgh Review "
never would have thought of asking, " Who reads a Rus-
sian book? " and England was satisfied with iron from
Sweden without being impertinently inquisitive after her
painters and statuaries. Was it that they expected too
much from the mere miracle of freedom? Is it not the
highest art of a republic to make men of flesh and blood,
and not the marble ideals of such? It may be fairly
doubted whether we have produced this higher type of
man yet. Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual,
humanity that is to have a chance of nobler develop-
ment among us. We shall see. We have a vast amount
of imported ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-
made knowledge, to digest before even the preliminaries
of such a consummation can be arranged. We have got
to learn that statesmanship is the most complicated of
all arts, and to come back to the apprenticeship system
too hastily abandoned. At present we trust a man with
making constitutions on less proof of competence than
342 LOWELL
we should demand before we gave him our shoe to patch.
We have nearly reached the limit of the reaction from
the old notion, which paid too much regard to birth and
station as qualifications for office, and have touched the
extreme point in the opposite direction, putting the high-
est of human functions up at auction to be bid for by
any creature capable of going upright on two legs. In
some places we have arrived at a point at which civil
society is no longer possible, and already another reaction
has begun, not backward to the old system, but toward
fitness either from natural aptitude or special training.
But will it always be safe to let evils work their own cure
by becoming unendurable? Every one of them leaves
its taint in the constitution of the body politic, each in
itself perhaps trifling, yet all together powerful for evil.
But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were
not genteel, and it was uncomfortable to be continually
reminded that, though we should boast that we were the
Great West till we were black in the face, it did not bring
us an inch nearer to the world's West End. That sacred
inclosure of respectabilty was tabooed to us. The Holy
Alliance did not inscribe us on its visiting list. The Old
World of wigs and orders and liveries would shop with
us, but w r e must ring at the area bell, and not venture
to awaken the more august clamours of the knocker. Our
manners, it must be granted, had none of those graces
that stamp the caste of Vere de Vere, in whatever museum
of British antiquities they may be hidden. In short, we
were vulgar.
This was one of those horribly vague accusations the
victim of which has no defence. An umbrella is of no
avail against a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it pene-
trates at every pore, it wets you through without seem-
ing to wet you at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin,
added to the list in these latter days, and worse than all
the others put together, since it perils your salvation in
this world far the more important of the two in the
minds of most men. It profits nothing to draw nice dis-
tinctions between essential and conventional, for the con-
vention in this case is the essence, and you may break
every command of the Decalogue with perfect good breed-
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 343
ing nay, if you are adroit, without losing caste. We,
indeed, had it not to lose, for we had never gained it.
" How am I vulgar? " asks the culprit shudderingly.
" Because thou art not like unto us," answers Lucifer, son
of the morning, and there is no more to be said. The god
of this world may be a fallen angel, but he has us there!
We were as clean so far as my observation goes, I think
we were cleaner, morally and physically, than the Eng-
lish, and therefore, of course, than everybody else. But
we did not pronounce the diphthong ou as they did, and
we said eether and not eyther, following therein the fashion
of our ancestors, who unhappily could bring over no Eng-
lish better than Shakespeare's; and we did not stammer as
they had learned to do from the courtiers, who in this
way flattered the Hanoverian king, a foreigner among the
people he had come to reign over. Worse than all, we
might have the noblest ideas and the finest sentiments
in the world, but we vented them through that organ by
which men are led rather than leaders, though some physi-
ologists would persuade us that Nature furnishes her cap-
tains with a fine handle to their faces that opportunity
may get a good purchase on them for dragging them to
the front.
This state of things was so painful that excellent peo-
ple were not wanting who gave their whole genius to
reproducing here the original Bull, whether by gaiters,
the cut of their whiskers, by a factitious brutality in their
tone, or by an accent that was forever tripping and fall-
ing flat over the tangled roots of our common tongue.
Martyrs to a false ideal, it never occurred to them that
nothing is more hateful to gods and men than a second-
rate Englishman, and for the very reason that this planet
never produced a more splendid creature than the first-
rate one, witness Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny.
Witness that truly sublime self-abnegation of those pris-
oners lately among the bandits of Greece, where average
men gave an example of quiet fortitude for which all the
stoicism of antiquity can show no match. Witness the
wreck of the Birkenhead, an example of disciplined hero-
ism, perhaps the most precious, as the rarest, of all. If
we could contrive to be not too unobtrusively our simple
LOWELL
selves, we should be the most delightful of human beings,
and the most original; whereas, when the plating of An-
glicism rubs off, as it always will in points that come to
much wear, we are liable to very unpleasing conjectures
about the quality of the metal underneath. Perhaps one
reason why the average Briton spreads himself here with
such an easy air of superiority may be owing to the fact
that he meets with so many bad imitations as to con-
clude himself the only real thing in a wilderness of shams.
He fancies himself moving through an endless Blooms-
bury, where his mere apparition confers honour as an
avatar of the court end of the universe. Not a Bull of
them all but is persuaded he bears Europa upon his back.
This is the sort of fellow whose patronage is so divertingly
insufferable. Thank Heaven he is not the only specimen
of cater-cousinship from the dear old Mother Island that
is shown to us! Among genuine things, I know nothing
more genuine than the better men whose limbs were made
in England. So manly tender, so brave, so true, so war-
ranted to wear, they make us proud to feel that blood is
thicker than water.
But it is not merely the Englishman; every European
candidly admits in himself some right of primogeniture
in respect of us, and pats this shaggy continent on the
back with a lively sense of generous unbending. The
German who plays the bass-viol has a well-founded con-
tempt, which he is not always nice in concealing, for a
country so few of whose children ever take that noble
instrument between their knees. His cousin, the Ph. D.
from Gottingen, can not help despising a people who do
not grow loud and red over Aryans and Turanians, and
are indifferent about their descent from either. The
Frenchman feels an easy mastery in speaking his mother
tongue, and attributes it to some native superiority of
parts that lifts him high above us barbarians of the West.
The Italian prima donna sweeps a curtsy of careless pity
to the overfacile pit which unsexes her with the bravo!
innocently meant to show a familiarity with foreign usage.
But all without exception make no secret of regarding
us as the goose bound to deliver them a golden egg in
return for their cackle. Such men as Agassiz, Guyot, and
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
345
Goldwin Smith come with gifts in their hands; but since
it is commonly European failures who bring hither their
remarkable gifts and acquirements, this view of the case
is sometimes just the least bit in the world provoking.
To think what a delicious seclusion of contempt we en-
joyed till California and our own ostentatious parvenus,
flinging gold away in Europe that might have endowed
libraries at home, gave us the ill repute of riches! What
a shabby downfall from the Arcadia which the French
officers of our Revolutionary War fancied they saw here
through Rousseau-tinted spectacles! Something of Ar-
cadia there really was, something of the old age; and that
divine provincialism were cheaply repurchased could we
have it back again in exchange for the tawdry uphol-
stery that has taken its place.
For some reason or other the European has rarely
been able to see America except in caricature. Would
the first " Review " of the world have printed the niaise-
ries of M. Maurice Sand as a picture of society in any
civilized country? M. Sand, to be sure, has inherited
nothing of his famous mother's literary outfit, except
the pseudonym. But since the conductors of the " Re-
vue " could not have published his story because it was
clever, they must have thought it valuable for its truth.
As true as the last-century Englishman's picture of Jean
Crapaud! We do not ask to be sprinkled with rose-water,
but may perhaps fairly protest against being drenched
with the rinsings of an unclean imagination. The next
time the " Revue " allows such ill-bred persons to throw
their slops out of its first-floor windows, let it honestly
preface the discharge with a gare 1'eau! that we may run
from under in season. And M. Duvergier de Hauranne,
who knows how to be entertaining! I know that le Fran-
gais est plutot indiscret que confiant, and the pen slides
too easily when indiscretions will fetch so much a page;
but should we not have been tant-soit-peu more cautious
had we been writing about people on the other side of
the Channel? But then it is a fact in the natural history
of the American long familiar to Europeans that he ab-
hors privacy, knows not the meaning of reserve, lives in
hotels because of their greater publicity, and is never so
346 LOWELL
pleased as when his domestic affairs (if he may be said to
have any) are paraded in the newspapers. Barnum, it is
well known, represents perfectly the average national sen-
timent in this respect. However it be, we are not treated
like other people, or perhaps I should say like people who
are ever likely to be met with in society.
Is it in the climate? Either I have a false notion of
European manners, or else the atmosphere affects them
strangely when exported hither. Perhaps they suffer from
the sea voyage like some of the more delicate wines.
During our Civil War an English gentleman of the high-
est description was kind enough to call upon me, mainly,
as it seemed, to inform me how entirely he sympathized
with the Confederates, and how sure he felt that we could
never subdue them " they were the gentlemen of the
country, you know." Another, the first greetings hardly
over, asked me how I accounted for the universal meagre-
ness of my countrymen. To a thinner man than I, or
from a stouter man than he, the question might have
been offensive. The Marquis of Hartington l wore a
secession badge at a public ball in New York. In a civi-
lized country he might have been roughly handled; but
here, where the bienseances are not so well understood,
of course nobody minded it. A French traveller told me
he had been a good deal in the British colonies, and had
been astonished to see how soon the people became Amer-
icanized. He added, with delightful bonhomie, and as
if he were sure it would charm me, that " they even began
to talk through their noses, just like you! " I was natu-
rally ravished with this testimony to the assimilating
power of democracy, and could only reply that I hoped
they would never adopt our democratic patent method
of seeming to settle one's honest debts, for they would
find it paying through the nose in the long run. I am
a man of the New World, and do not know precisely the
present fashion of May Fair, but I have a kind of feeling
that if an American (mutato nomine, de te is always fright-
fully possible) were to do this kind of thing under a
European roof, it would induce some disagreeable reflec-
tions as to the ethical results of democracy. I read the
other day in print the remark of a British tourist who
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 347
had eaten large quantities of our salt, such as it is (I grant
it has not the European savour), that the Americans were
hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly because they
longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of their
dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What
shall we do? Shall we close our doors? Not I, for one,
if I should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S., most
lovable of men. He somehow seems to find us human,
at least, and so did Clough, whose poetry will one of these
days perhaps be found to have been the best utterance in
verse of this generation. And T. H., the mere grasp of
whose manly hand carries with it the pledge of frankness
and friendship, of an abiding simplicity of Nature as af-
fecting as it is rare!
The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not
hard to bear. There was something even refreshing in
it, as in a northeaster to a hardy temperament. When a
British parson, travelling in Newfoundland while the slash
of our separation was still raw, after prophesying a glori-
ous future for an island that continued to dry its fish under
the aegis of Saint George, glances disdainfully over his
spectacles in parting at the U. S. A., and forebodes for
them a " speedy relapse into barbarism," now that they
have madly cut themselves off from the humanizing in-
fluences of Britain, I smile with barbarian self-conceit.
But this kind of thing became by degrees an unpleasant
anachronism. For meanwhile the young giant was grow-
ing, was beginning indeed to feel tight in his clothes, was
obliged to let in a gore here and there in Texas, in Cali-
fornia, in New Mexico, in Alaska, and had the scissors
and needle and thread ready for Canada when the time
came. His shadow loomed like a Brocken spectre over
against Europe the shadow of what they were coming
to, that was the unpleasant part of it. Even in such
misty image as they had of him it was painfully evident
that his clothes were not of any cut hitherto fashionable,
nor conceivable by a Bond Street tailor and this in an
age, too, when everything depends upon clothes, when,
if we do not keep up appearances, the seeming solid frame
of this universe nay, your very God would slump into
himself, like a mockery king of snow, being nothing, after
LOWELL
all, but a prevailing mode, a make-believe of believing.
From this moment the young giant assumed the respect-
able aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of if possible,
but at any rate as legitimate a subject of human study
as the Glacial period or the Silurian what-d'ye-call-'ems.
If the man of the primeval drift heaps be so absorbingly
interesting, why not the man of the drift that is just
beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible current we
are just being sucked whether we will or no? If I were
in their place, I confess I should not be frightened. Man
has survived so much, and contrived to be comfortable
on this planet after surviving so much! I am something
of a Protestant in matters of government also, and am
willing to get rid of vestments and ceremonies and to
come down to bare benches, if only faith in God take
the place of a general agreement to profess confidence in
ritual and sham. Every mortal man of us holds stock
in the only public debt that is absolutely sure of payment,
and that is the debt of the Maker of this universe to the
universe he has made. I have no notion of selling out
my shares in a panic.
It was something to have advanced even to the dig-
nity of a phenomenon, and yet I do not know that the
relation of the individual American to the individual Eu-
ropean was bettered by it; and that, after all, must adjust
itself comfortably before there can be a right understand-
ing between the two. We had been a desert, we became
a museum. People came hither for scientific and not
social ends. The very cockney could not complete his
education without taking a vacant stare at us in passing.
But the sociologists (I think they call themselves so)
were the hardest to bear. There was no escape. I have
even known a professor of this fearful science to come
disguised in petticoats. We were cross-examined as a
chemist cross-examines a new substance. Human? Yes,
all the elements are present, though abnormally combined.
Civilized? Hm! that needs a stricter assay. No ento-
mologist could take a more friendly interest in a strange
bug. After a few such experiences I, for one, have felt
as if I were merely one of those horrid things preserved
in spirits (and very bad spirits, too) in a cabinet. I was
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS
349
not the fellow-being of these explorers: I was a curiosity;
I was a specimen. Hath not an American organs, dimen-
sions, senses, affections, passions even as a European hath?
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do
we not laugh? I will not keep on with Shylock to his
next question but one.
Till after our Civil War it never seemed to enter the
head of any foreigner, especially of any Englishman, that
an American had what could be called a country, except
as a place to eat, sleep, and trade in. Then it seemed
to strike them suddenly. " By Jove, you know, fellahs
don't fight like that for a shop-till! " No, I rather think
not. To Americans America is something more than a
promise and an expectation. It has a past and traditions
of its own. A descent from men who sacrificed everything
and came hither not to better their fortunes, but to plant
their idea in virgin soil, should be a good pedigree. There
was never colony save this that went forth not to seek
gold, but God. Is it not as well to have sprung from
such as these as from some burly beggar who came over
with Wilhelmus Conquestor, unless, indeed, a line grow
better as it runs farther away from stalwart ancestors?
And for our history, it is dry enough, no doubt, in the
books, but, for all that, is of a kind that tells in the blood.
I have admitted that Carlyle's sneer had a show of truth
in it. But what does he himself, like a true Scot, admire
in the Hohenzollerns? First of all, that they were canny,
a thrifty, forehanded race. Next, that they make a good
fight from generation to generation with the chaos
around them. That is precisely the battle which the Eng-
lish race on this continent has been pushing doughtily
forward for two centuries and a half. Doughtily and
silently, for you can not hear in Europe " that crash, the
death song of the perfect tree," that has been going on
here from sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this
continent habitable for the weaker Old-World breed that
has swarmed to it during the last half century. If ever
men did a good stroke of work on this planet, it was the
forefathers of those whom you are wondering whether it
would not. be prudent to acknowledge as far-off cousins.
Alas! man of genius, to whom we owe so much, could
LOWELL
you see nothing more than the burning of a foul chimney
in that clash of Michael and Satan which flamed up under
your very eyes?
Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob
of adventurers and shopkeepers. Leigh Hunt expressed
it well enough when he said that he could never think
of America without seeing a gigantic counter stretched all
along the seaboard. And Leigh Hunt, without knowing
it. had been more than half Americanized, too! Feudal-
ism had by degrees made commerce, the great civilizer,
contemptible. But a tradesman with sword on thigh and
very prompt of stroke was not only redoubtable, he had
become respectable also. Few people, I suspect, alluded
twice to a needle in Sir John Hawkwood's presence, after
that doughty fighter had exchanged it for a more dan-
gerous tool of the same metal. Democracy had been
hitherto only a ludicrous effort to reverse the laws of
Nature by thrusting Cleon into the place of Pericles.
But a democracy that could fight for an abstraction,
whose members held life and goods cheap compared with
that larger life which we call country, was not merely
.unheard-of, but portentous. It was the nightmare of the
Old World taking upon itself flesh and blood, turning
out to be substance and not dream. Since the Norman
crusader clanged down upon the throne of the porphyro-
geniti, carefully draped appearances had never received
such a shock, had never been so rudely called on to pro-
duce their titles to the empire of the world. Authority
has had its periods not unlike those of geology, and at
last comes man claiming kingship in right of his mere
manhood. The world of the Saurians might be in some
respects more picturesque, but the march of events is
inexorable, and that world is bygone.
The young giant had certainly got out of long clothes.
He had become the enfant terrible of the human house-
hold. It was not and will not be easy for the world (espe-
cially for our British cousins) to look upon us as grown
up. The youngest of nations, its people must also be
young and to be treated accordingly, was the syllogism
as if libraries did not make all nations equally old in all
those respects, at least, where age is an advantage and
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 351
not a defect. Youth, no doubt, has its good qualities,
as people feel who are losing it, but boyishness is another
thing. We had been somewhat boyish as a nation, a little
loud, a little pushing, a little braggart. But might it not
partly have been because we felt that we had certain
claims to respect that were not admitted? The war which
established our position as a vigorous nationality has also
sobered us. A nation, like a man, can not look death in
the eye for four years without some strange reflections,
without arriving at some clearer consciousness of the stuff
it is made of, without some great moral change. Such a
change, or the beginning of it, no observant person can
fail to see here. Our thought and our politics, our bear-
ing as a people, are assuming a manlier tone. We have
been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as
well as what was strong. We have begun obscurely to
recognise that things do not go of themselves, and that
popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no better
than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of
the people make it so, and that when men undertake to
do their own kingship they enter upon the dangers and
responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function.
Above all, it looks as if we were on the way to be per-
suaded that no government can be carried on by declama-
tion. It is noticeable also that facility of communication
has made the best English and French thought far more
directly operative here than ever before. Without being
Europeanized, our discussion of important questions in
statesmanship, in political economy, in aesthetics, is tak-
ing a broader scope and a higher tone. It had certainly
been provincial, one might almost say local, to a very
unpleasant extent. Perhaps our experience in soldiership
has taught us to value training more than we have been
popularly wont. We may possibly come to the conclusion
one of these days that self-made men may not be always
equally skilful in the manufacture of wisdom, may not be
divinely commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities
of opinion on all possible topics of human interest.
So long as we continue to be the most common-
schooled and the least cultivated people in the world I
suppose we must consent to endure this condescending
LOWELL
manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly they
mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes.
They can never appreciate the immense amount of silent
work that has been done here, making this continent
slowly fit for the abode of man, and which will demon-
strate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people.
Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by the
amount it has contributed to the civilization of the world;
the amount, that is, that can be seen and handled. A
great place in history can only be achieved by competi-
tive examinations nay, by a long course of them. How
much new thought have we contributed to the common
stock? Till that question can be triumphantly answered,
or needs no answer, we must continue to be simply inter-
esting as an experiment, to be studied as a problem, and
not respected as an attained result or an accomplished
solution. Perhaps, as I have hinted, their patronizing
manner toward us is the fair result of their failing to see
here anything more than a poor imitation, a plaster cast
of Europe. And are they not partly right? If the tone
of the uncultivated American has too often the arrogance
of the barbarian, is not that of the cultivated as often
vulgarly apologetic? In the America they meet with is
there the simplicity, the manliness, the absence of sham,
the sincere human nature, the sensitiveness to duty and
implied obligation, that in any way distinguishes us from
what our orators call " the effete civilization of the Old
World "? Is there a politician among us daring enough
(except a Dana here and there) to risk his future on the
chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of
superstitious communities like England? Is it certain
that we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy of honour if we
can only keep the letter of our bond? I hope we shall be
able to answer all these questions with a frank Yes. At
any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are not
merely curious creatures, but belong to the family of man,
and that as individuals we are not to be always subjected
to the competitive examination above mentioned, even
if we acknowledged their competence as an examining
board. Above all, we beg them to remember that Amer-
ica is not to us, as to them, a mere object of external in-
CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS 353
terest to be discussed and analyzed, but in us, part of our
very marrow. Let them not suppose that we conceive of
ourselves as exiles from the graces and amenities of an
older date than we, though very much at home in a state
of things not yet all it might be or should be, but which
we mean to make so, and which we find both wholesome
and pleasant for men (though perhaps not for dilettanti)
to live in. " The full tide of human existence " may be
felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross, and
in a larger sense. I know one person who is singular
enough to think Cambridge the very best spot on the
habitable globe. " Doubtless God could have made a
better, but doubtless he never did."
It will take England a great while to get over her airs
of patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal them.
She can not help confounding the people with the coun-
try, and regarding us as lusty juveniles. She has a con-
viction that whatever good there is in us is wholly Eng-
lish, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except
so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She
is especially condescending just now, and lavishes sugar
plums on us as if we had not outgrown them. I am no
believer in sudden conversions, especially in sudden con-
versions to a favourable opinion of people who have just
proved you to be mistaken in judgment, and therefore
unwise in policy. I never blamed her for not wishing
well to democracy how should she? but Alabamas are
not wishes. Let her not be too hasty in believing Mr.
Reverdy Johnson's pleasant words. Though there is no
thoughtful man in America who would not consider a war
with England the greatest of calamities, yet the feeling
toward her here is very far from cordial, whatever our
minister may say in the effusion that comes after ample
dining. Mr. Adams, with his famous " My lord, this
means war," perfectly represented his country. Justly
or not, we have a feeling that we have been wronged, not
merely insulted. The only sure way of bringing about
a healthy relation between the two countries is for Eng-
lishmen to clear their minds of the notion that we are
always to be treated as a kind of inferior and deported
Englishman whose nature they perfectly understand, and
LOWELL
whose back they accordingly stroke the wrong way of the
fur with amazing perseverance. Let them learn to treat
us naturally on our merits as human beings, as they would
a German or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind
of counterfeit Briton whose crime appeared in every shade
of difference, and before long there would come that right
feeling which we naturally call a good understanding. The
common blood, and still more the common language, are
fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give up
trying to understand us, still more thinking that they do,
and acting in various absurd ways as the necessary conse-
quence, for they will never arrive at that devoutly-to-be-
wished consummation till they learn to look at us as we
are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old long-
estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we
parted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have
been a stepmother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear
madam. Yes, we have grown, and changed likewise. You
would not let us darken your doors if you could help
it. We know that perfectly well. But pray, when we
look to be treated as men, don't shake that rattle in our
faces, nor talk baby to us any longer.
" Dp, child, go to it grandam, child;
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig! "
NOTE
1 One of Mr. Lincoln's neatest strokes of humour was his treatment
of this gentleman when a laudable curiosity induced him to be presented
to the President of the Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln persisted in call-
ing him Mr. Partington. Surely the refinement of good breeding
could go no further. Giving the young man his real name (already
notorious in the newspapers) would have made his visit an insult. Had
Henry IV done this, it would have been famous.
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH
AND DISEASE
BY
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE, critic and essayist, was born in Gloucester,
Mass., March 8, 1819. He began to write for newspapers at the age of
fourteen, became a bank clerk, and a few years later was on the lecture
platform. His lectures had a wide range of subjects, and he is said to
have addressed more than a thousand audiences. He was one of the
most pleasing of essayists and one of the sanest of critics, constantly at
work, and very fastidious even in the preparation of an ephemeral article.
Though he was self-educated, he could hardly have been more learned
had he gone through academies and universities. He died in Boston,
Tune 16, 1886. His collected works are published in a uniform edition,
in nine volumes. The essay that follows was originally written for de-
livery before the literary societies of Dartmouth College, and it is repro-
duced here by the courtesy of his publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin
& Co., whose copyright protects it.
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE
A PROMINENT characteristic of the present day,
and in many respects an admirable one, is the
universal attention given to the subject of bodily
health; but, like many other movements founded on half
truths, it has been pushed by fanaticism into ludicrous
perversions. Physiology has been systematized into a
kind of popular gospel, in whose doctrines the soul seems
of little importance in comparison with the gastric juice.
Physic having become a fashion, a valetudinary air is now
the sign of your true coxcomb; and every idle person has
his pet complaint, which he nurses in some genteel in-
firmary. There is a universal cant about health; every
city and hamlet is beleaguered by the hosts of Hippocra-
tes, the floods of hydropathy, and the animalculae of homoe-
opathy; and no person can venture into the street with-
out being assaulted by some hygeian highwayman, who
presents a vial to his head, and demands his patience or
his purse. Now the practical consequence of this deifica-
tion of the body and worship of dietetics is to bring men
under the dominion of a sickly selfishness and a craven
cowardice, while pretending to teach them the physical
laws of their being. Man obeys the highest law of his
being when he takes his life in his hand and boldly ven-
tures it for something he values more than self. Life cast
away for truth or duty, even for fame or knowledge, is
better than life saved for the sake of living. But your
true disciple of physiological religion, with his morbid
consciousness of that collection of veins, bones, muscles,
and appetites, which he calls himself, would consider it a
monstrous violation of the physical laws of his being to
obey a benevolent impulse which endangered a blood-
vessel, or to purchase the discovery of a new truth at the
3 357
WHIPPLE
expense of deranged digestion: and he would survey with
lazy wonder the strange ignorance of Howard penetrating
into pestilential prisons; of Washington exposing his per-
son to a storm of bullets; of Ridley serenely yielding his
frame to that baptism of fire which enrolled him forever
in the glorious army of martyrs. Such acts as these were
doubtless violations of physical laws, and prove that heroes
are not framed on accurate physiological principles.
Indeed, health and disease, in their highest meaning,
refer more to the mind than to the body. A code of ethics
built on physical laws can but inculcate a selfish super-
ficial prudence; and prudence, except in weaklings, will
not restrain self-indulgence, and ought not to restrain self-
sacrifice. There are no duties, therefore, which are not
resolvable into moral duties; no vices which have not
their scorpion nest in the heart. 'Do you suppose that any
knowing prattle about the breathing or digesting appara-
tus will still the hoarse clamour of gluttony and sensual-
ity? Will it relax the grasp of Satanic pride? In truth,
you will find that prudence without conscience holds but
a rein of flax on the wild war horses of passion. But it is
a characteristic weakness of the day to superficialize evil;
to spread a little cold cream over Pandemonium, erect a
nice little earthly paradise upon it, and then to rush into
misanthropy because the thin structure instantly melts.
Indeed, it is at the very core of the mind that we must
search for the principles of health and disease in the mys-
teries of will, intelligence, sentiment, and passion, rather
than in the organs which are their instruments or victims.
Besides, bodily maladies may be badges of disgrace or
titles of honour; your drunkard and your philosopher may
both take their " leap into the dark " from apoplexy; and
there is a great difference between Milton, sacrificing his
eyesight from the love of liberty, and Byron, sacrificing
his digestion from the love of gin.
The subject, therefore, to which I would call your
attention is intellectual health and disease as it exists in
individuals and in nations. To one who reflects on the
nature and capacity of the human mind, there is some-
thing inconceivably awful in its perversions. Look at it
as it comes, fresh and plastic, from its Maker; look at it
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 359
as it returns, stained and hardened, to its Maker. Con-
ceive of a mind, a living soul, with the germs of faculties
which infinity can not exhaust, as it first beams upon you
in its glad morning of existence; quivering with life and
joy; exulting in the bounding sense of its developing en-
ergies; beautiful, and brave, and generous, and joyous,
and free the clear, pure spirit bathed in the auroral light
of its unconscious immortality: and then follow it, in its
dark passage through life, as it stifles and kills, one by
one, every inspiration and aspiration of its being, until it
becomes but a dead soul entombed in a living frame. It
may be that a selfish frivolity has sunk it into contented
worldliness, or given it the vapid air of complacent imbe-
cility. It may be that it is marred and disfigured by the
hoof-prints of appetite, its humanity extinguished in the
mad tyranny of animal ferocities. It may be that pride
has stamped the scowl of hatred upon its front; that
avarice and revenge, set on fire of hell, have blasted and
blackened its unselfish affections. The warm sensibility
gushing spontaneously out in world-wide sympathies
the bright and strong intellect, eager for action and thirst-
ing for truth the rapturous devotion, mounting upward
in a pillar of flame to God all gone, and only remembered
as childish enthusiasm, to point the sneer of the shrewd
and the scoff of the brutal! Where, in this hard mass of
animated clay, wrinkled by cunning or brutalized by self-
ishness, are the power and joy prophesied in the aspira-
tions of youth?
"Whither hath fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream? "
To give the philosophy of this mental disease, to sub-
ject the mind to that scrutiny which shall account for its
perversions, we must pass behind its ordinary operations
of understanding, sensibility, and imagination, and attempt
to clutch its inmost spirit and essence. Now an analysis
of our consciousness, or rather a contemplation of the
mysterious processes of our inward life, reveals no facul-
ties and no impulses which can be disconnected from our
personality. The mind is no collection of self-acting pow-
ers and passions, but a vital, indissoluble unit and person,
WHIPPLE
capable, it is true, of great variety of manifestation, but
still in its nature a unit, not an aggregate. For the pur-
poses of science, or verbal convenience, we may call its
various operations by different names, according as it per-
ceives, feels, understands, or imagines; but the moment
science breaks it up into a series of disconnected parts,
and considers each part by itself as a separate power, that
moment the living principle of mind is lost, and the result
is an anarchy of faculties. Fortunately, however, we can
not free ourselves, by any craft of analysis, from personal
pronouns. A man who speaks or acts instinctively men-
tions it as I said, I did. We do not say that Milton's
imagination wrote " Paradise Lost," but that Milton wrote
it. There is no mental operation in which the whole mind
is not present; nothing produced but by the joint action
of all its faculties, under the direction of its central per-
sonality. This central principle of mind is spiritual force
capacity to cause, to create, to assimilate, to be. This
underlies all faculties; interpenetrates, fuses, directs all
faculties. This thinks, this feels, this imagines, this wor-
ships; this is what glows with health, this is what is en-
feebled and corrupted by disease. Call it what you please
will, personality, individuality, character, force of being
but recognise it as the true spiritual power which con-
stitutes a living soul. This is the only peculiarity which
separates the impersonal existence of a vegetable from the
personal life of a man. The material universe is instinct
with spiritual existence, but only in man is it individual-
ized into spiritual life.
Now there is no such thing as faculty which has not
its root in this personal force. Without this, thought is
but insanity, and action, fate. Men do not stumble, and
blunder, and happen into " Iliads," and " yEneids," and
" Divina Commedias," and " Othellos/' in a drunken dream
of poetic inspiration, but work and grow up to them. It
is common, I know, to point to some lazy gentleman and
say that there is a protuberance on his forehead or temple
sufficiently large to produce a " Hamlet " or a " Principia "
if he only had an active temperament. But the thing which
produces " Hamlets" and " Principias" is not physical tem-
perament, but spiritual power. What a man does is the real
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 361
test of what a man is; and to declare that he has great
capacity but nothing great to set his capacity in motion
is an absurdity in terms.
This mind, this free spiritual force, can not grow, can
not even exist, by itself. It can only grow by assimilating
something external to itself, the very condition of mental
life being the exercise of power within on objects without.
The form and superficial qualities of objects it perceives;
their life and spirit it conceives. Only what the mind con-
ceives it assimilates and draws into its own life intellec-
tual conception indicating a penetrating vision into the
heart of things through a fierce, firm exertion of vital
creative force. In this distinction between perception and
conception we have a principle which accounts for the lim-
ited degree in which so many persons grow in intelligence
and character, in grace and gracelessness. Here, also, is
the distinction between assent and faith, theory and prac-
tice. In the one case, opinions lie on the surface of the
mind, mere objects, the truth of which it perceives, but
which do not influence its will; in the other, ideas pene-
trate into the very substance of the mind, become one
with it, and are springs of living thought and action. For
instance, you may cram whole folios of morality and divin-
ity into the heads of Dick Turpin and Captain Kidd, and
both will cordially assent to their truth; but the captives
of Dick's blunderbuss will still have to give up their
purses, and the prisoners of Kidd's piracy will still have
to walk the plank. On the other hand, you may pour
all varieties of immoral opinions and images into the un-
derstanding of a pure and high nature, and there they will
remain, unassimilated, uncorrupting; his mind, like that
of Ion,
" Though shapes of ill
May hover round its surface, glides in light,
'And takes no shadow from them."
In accordance with the same principle all knowledge,
however imposing in its appearance, is but superficial
knowledge if it be merely the mind's furniture, not the
mind's nutriment. It must be transmitted into mind, as
food is into blood, to become wisdom and power. There
is many a human parrot and memory monger who has
WHIPPLE
read and who recollects more history than Webster; but
in Webster history has become judgment, foresight, ex-
ecutive force, mind. That seemingly instinctive sagacity
by which an able man does exactly the right thing at the
right moment is nothing but a collection of facts thus
assimilated into thought. This power of instantaneous
action without reflection is the only thing which saves
men in great emergencies; but far from being independ-
ent of knowledge and experience, it is their noblest result.
Many of the generals opposed to Napoleon understood
military science as well as he did; but he beat them on
every occasion where victory depended on a wise move-
ment made at a moment's thought, because science had
been transfused into his mind, while it was only attached
to theirs. Every truly practical man, whether he be mer-
chant, mechanic, or agriculturist, thus transmutes his
experience into intelligence until his will operates with
the celerity of instinct. In the order of intellectual de-
velopment intuition does not precede observation and
reflection, but is their last perfection. First, slow steps,
cautious examination, comparison, reasoning ; then
thought and action, swift, sharp, and sure as the light-
ning.
If the mind thus grows by assimilating external ob-
jects, it is plain that the character of the objects it assimi-
lates will determine the form of its development, and its
health or disease. Mental health consists in the self-direc-
tion of mental power, in the capacity to perceive its own
relations to objects and the relations of objects to each
other, and to choose those which will conduce to its en-
largement and elevation. Disease occurs both when it
loses its self-direction and its self-distrust. When it loses
its self-direction it surrenders itself to every outward im-
pression; when it loses its self-distrust, it surrenders itself
to every inward whim. In the one case it loses all moral
and intellectual character, becomes unstrung, sentimenta^
dissolute, with feebleness at the very heart of its being;
in the other, it perversely misconceives and discolours
external things, views every object as a mirror of self,
and, having no reverence for aught above itself, subsides
into a poisonous mass of egotism, conceit, and falsehood.
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 363
Thus disease occurs both when the mind loses itself in
objects and when objects are lost in it when it parts with
will and when it becomes wilful. The last consequence of
will submerged is sensuality, brutality, slavishness; the
last consequence of will perverted is Satanic pride. Now
it is an almost universal law that the diseased weak, the
men of unrestrained appetites, shall become the victims
and slaves of the diseased strong, the men of unrestrained
wills, and that the result of this relation shall be misery,
decay, and death to both. Here is the principle of all
slavery, political, intellectual, and religious, in individuals
and in communities.
Thus if the primitive principle of mind be simply the
capacity to assimilate external objects, and if objects in
this process become mind and character, it is obvious that
self-direction the power to choose, to resist, to act in
reference to law, and not from the impulse of desire is
the condition of health and enduring strength. Let us
now consider how these objects which may be included
under the general terms of nature and other minds influ-
ence for evil or good the individual soul, according as
their impulse is blindly followed, wilfully perverted, or
genially assimilated.
The objects which have the most power over the mind
are probably those in visible nature which refer to appetite
and passion. These are continually striving to draw the
mind into themselves, to weaken the force at its centre
and soul, to reduce it into mere perception and sensation,
and to destroy its individual life. The emotion which
accompanies this yielding of the mind to death has, with
a bitterness of irony never excelled by man or demon,
been called pleasure. Now it is a mistake which is apt to
vitiate theology, to confound will with wilfulness, and to
make destruction of will the condition of rising to God.
But will weakened or will destroyed ever goes downward.
It delivers itself to sensuality or to fanaticism, which is
the sensuality of the religious sentiment not to spiritual-
ity, not to Deity. A being placed like man among strong
and captivating visible objects becomes, the moment he
loses self-direction, a slave, in the most terribly compre-
hensive meaning of that all-annihilating word; and I be-
364 WHIPPLE
lieve the doctrine runs not that we are slaves, but children
of God.
Will is also often confounded with wilfulness in the
metaphysics of that aesthetic criticism which deals with
the grandest creations of genius. The highest mood of
the mind is declared to be that where it loses its individ-
uality in the objects it contemplates; where it becomes
objective and healthy, in distinction from subjective or
morbid. This objectiveness is confounded with self-aban-
donment, and thus causative force is absurdly denied while
treating of the soul's creative acts. But it is not by self-
abandonment that the far-darting, all-assimilating intellect
of genius identifies itself for the moment with its concep-
tions; it is rather by the sublimest exercise of will and
central force. Let us take, in illustration, three poets in
an ascending scale of intellectual precedence Keats, the
representative of sensitiveness ; Byron, of wilfulness;
Shakespeare, of self-direction. Now in Keats a mind of
immense spontaneous fruitfulness a certain class of ob-
jects take his intellect captive, melt and merge his indi-
vidual being in themselves, are stronger than he, and hold
him in a state of soft diffusion in their own nature. The
impression left on the imagination is of sensuous beauty,
but spiritual weakness. Then Byron, arrogant, domineer-
ing, egotistic, diseased viewing Nature and man alto-
gether in relation to himself, and spurning the objective
laws of things forces objects, with autocratic insolence,
into the shape of his own morbid nature, stamps them
with his mark, and leaves the impression of intense, nar-
row, wilful energy. But Shakespeare, the strongest of
creative intellects, and comprehensive because he was
strong, passes, by the gigantic force of his will, into the
heart of other natures; is sensuous, impassioned, witty,
beautiful, sublime, and terrible at pleasure; rises by the
same force with which he stoops; in his most prodigious
exertions of energy ever observes laws instead of obeying
caprice; comprehends all his creations without being com-
prehended by them; and comes out at the end, not Fal-
staff, or Faulconbridge, or Hamlet, or Timon, or Lear, or
Perdita, but Shakespeare, the beneficent and august intel-
lect which includes them all. The difference between him
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 365
and other poets is that, in virtue of passing into another
life by force of will, not by being drawn in by force of the
object, he could escape from it with ease, and proceed to
animate other existences, thus keeping his mind con-
stantly assimilating and working with Nature. Keats was
drawn into his particular class of objects, and could not
get out. Byron drew objects into himself, and then poi-
soned them by capriciously distorting and discolouring
their essential character. Keats would have stayed with
Perdita; Byron, with Timon.
Let us next consider, in further illustration of our
theme, those potent forces which come, through history,
through literature, and through social communion, from
other minds, and from whose action a continual stream
of influences is pouring in upon the individual soul.
Those which proceed from society, to benefit or corrupt,
are so obvious that it is needless to emphasize their power.
Look around any community, and you find it dotted over
with men, marked and ticketed as not belonging to them-
selves, but to some other man, from whom they take their
literature, their politics, their religion. They are willing
captives of a stronger nature; feed on his life as though
it were miraculous manna rained from heaven; compla-
cently parade his name as an adjective to point out their
own; and give wonderful pertinence to that nursery
rhyme, whose esoteric depth irradiates even its exoteric
expression:
" Whose dog are you?
I am Billy Patton's dog;
Whose dog are you? "
This social servility, as seen in its annual harvest of
dwindled souls, abject in everything, from the tie of a
neckcloth to the points of a creed, is a sufficiently strong
indication of the tyranny which a few forcible persons can
establish in any of our " free and enlightened " communi-
ties; but perhaps a more subtle influence than that which
proceeds from social relations comes from that abstract
and epitome of the whole mind of the whole world which
we find in history and literature. Here the thought and
action of the race are brought home to the individual
intelligence; and the danger is, that we make what should
24
3 66
WHIPPLE
be our emancipation an instrument of servitude, fall a
victim to one author or one age, and lose the power of
learning from many minds, by sinking into the contented
vassal of one; and end, at last, in an intellectual resem-
blance to that gentleman who only knew two tunes, " one
of which," he said, " was ' Old Hundred/ and the other
wasn't." The danger to individuality in reading is not
that we repeat an author's opinions or expressions, but
that we be magnetized by his spirit to the extent of being
drawn into his stronger life, and losing our particular
being. Now no man is benefited by being conquered;
and the most modest might say to the mightiest to
Homer, to Dante, to Milton, to Goethe " Keep off, gen-
tlemen not so near, if you please; you can do me vast
service provided you do not swallow me up; my personal
being is small, but allow me to say of it, as Touchstone
said of Audrey, his wife, ' A poor thing, sir, but mine
own. 1 '
Indeed, we can never fully realize and reverence a great
nature, never grow through a reception of his spirit, un-
less we keep our individuality distinct from his. In the
case of a large and diseased mind, the caution becomes
more important. The most popular poet of the present
century is so in consequence of the weakness of his read-
ers, who are not so much his pupils as his slaves. Byron,
in virtue of his superior force, breaks into their natures,
so to speak passes into the very core of their moral and
intellectual being makes them live, in thought, his life
Byronizes them; and the result of the conquest is a horde
of minor Byrons, with their thin dilutions of misanthropy
and licentiousness, not half so good as the original Peter
and John they have delivered up. " It was nae great
head in itsel'," said the old Scotchwoman as that of Duke
Hamilton rolled from the block, " but it was a sair loss to
him." In view of the enfeebling and corrupting influence
exercised by a morbid nature, one is reminded of the anec-
dote told of Whitefield, the preacher. A drunkard once
reeled up to him with the remark, " Mr. Whitefield, I am
one of your converts." " I think it very likely," was the
reply, " for I am sure you are none of God's."
The truth probably is that the fallacies on this subject
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 367
of will and personality, in matters pertaining both to intel-
lect and morals, have their source in man's hatred to
work, to the independent exercise of power; accordingly,
he tries, cunningly enough, to ignore the fact that work
is the law by which the mind grows, and affects reverie,
the opium eating of the intellect, and calls it thinking.
Theology and philosophy are both apt to be pervaded by
a kind of pantheism, in which the perfection of our nature
is represented to consist in merging the soul in universal
being, and its heaven a state where it loses itself in a sea
of delicious sensations. It is needless to add that many
realize a tolerable heaven of their kind on earth.
Passing from the individual to the community, let us
now survey the two forms of mental disease, self-worship
and self-abandonment, as expressed in the history of states.
A nation is no more a mere collection of individuals than
an individual is a mere collection of faculties. It has a
national life, more or less peculiar in its features, and sub-
ject to disease and decay; and of this national life its form
of civilization is the embodiment. Now in the earlier ages
of the world, in the childhood of humanity, the charac-
teristic form of mental disease is feebleness of personal
being, and the consequent absorption of the individual in
surrounding objects. He deifies and worships every form
and expression of external power, perceiving a god, au-
dible or visible, in every outward force. He is, of course,
the natural prey of craft, ferocity, and tyranny, and his
weakness is perverted into a besotted superstition, and a
worship even of beasts and inanimate idols. Such were
the myriads of that dark Egypt which looms so gloomily
up above the clouds of oblivion, the very image of disease
and death. The civilization of India had the same inher-
ent weakness the popular mythology, a medley of pic-
turesque brutalities; the learned philosophy, a dreamy
pantheism, wasting and withering the primitive springs
of action, its first principle the immersion of the individ-
ual soul in the infinite. India fell by a law as certain as
gravitation before the ferocity of Mohammedan conquest,
and the Mohammedan conquerors as certainly before the
energy of England.
The civilization of the Asiatics, indeed, was a sys-
-58 WHIPPLE
tematized anarchy of wretchedness and rapine a mon-
strous agglomeration, representing a despot, a priesthood,
and a huddled mass of human creatures with slave written
upon and burned into their inmost being. The vices of
the tyrant are caprice, self-exaggeration, defiance of re-
iint; the vices of the slave are falsehood, poltroonery,
and sensuality; and a national life composed of such ele-
ments, demoniacal vices on the one hand, and abject vices
on the other, must sink into imbecility, and totter to the
tomb.
In passing from the simple forms of Asiatic life to the
complex civilization of Greece, a more difficult problem
presents itself. The Greek mind, with its combination of
energy and objectiveness, its open sense to all the influ-
ences of Nature, its wonderful adaptation to philosophy,
and art, and arms where, it may be asked, can you de-
tect disease in that? The answer to this question is for-
tunately partly contained in the statement of a fact.
Greek civilization is dead; the Greek mind died out more
than two thousand years ago; a race of heroes declined
into a race of sycophants, sophists, and slaves; and no
galvanic action of modern sympathy has ever yet con-
vulsed it into even a resemblance of its old life. Now if
it died, it must have died of disease; for nothing else has
power to kill a nation. In considering the causes of the
decay of a national mind so orderly, comprehensive, and
creative as the Greek, we must keep steadily prominent
the fact that it began in Satanic energy, and that it is a
universal law that this energy in the end consumes itself.
Perhaps the history of the Greek mind is best read in the
characteristics of its three great dramatists sublime and
wilful in ;schylus, beautiful in Sophocles, sentimental in
Euripides. The Greek deified man, first as an object of
religion, then as an object of art. Now as it is a conse-
quence of high culture that a superstition, having its
source in human passions, shall subside from a religion
into an art, the Greek became atheistical as he grew intel-
ligent. He had, so to speak, a taste for divinities, but no
belief in them. He acknowledged nothing higher than
his own mind; waxed measurelessly proud and conceited;
worshipped, in fact, himself. He had opinions on morals,
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 369
but he assimilated no moral ideas. Now the moment he
became an atheist, the moment he ceased to rise above
himself, he began to decay. The strength at the heart
of a nation, which keeps it alive, must either grow or
dwindle; and, after a certain stage in its progress, it can
only grow by assimilating moral and religious truth.
Moral corruption, which is the result of wilful energy, eats
into the very substance and core of intellectual life. En-
ergy, it is true, is requisite to all greatness of soul; but
the energy of health, while it has the strength and fear-
lessness of Prometheus chained to the rock, or Satan buffet-
ing the billows of fire, is also meek, aspiring, and rever-
ential. Its spirit is that of the stout old martyr, who told
the trembling brethren of the faith who clustered around
his funeral pyre, that if his soul was serene in its last strug-
gle with death, he would lift up his hands to them as a
sign. They watched, with tremulous eagerness, the fierce
element as it swept along and over his withered frame,
and, in the awful agonies of that moment when he was
encircled with fire, and wholly hidden from their view,
two thin hands quivered up above fagot and flame and
closed in the form of prayer.
In the Greek mind the wilful element took the form
of conceit rather than pride, and it is therefore in the civili-
zation of Rome that we must seek for the best expression
of the power and the weakness of Satanic passion. The
myth which declares its founders to have been suckled by
a wolf aptly symbolizes that base of ferocity and iron will
on which its colossal dominion was raised. The Roman
mind, if we look at it in relation to its all-conquering cour-
age and intelligence, had many sublime qualities; but
pride hard, fierce, remorseless, invulnerable pride and
contempt of right, was its ruling characteristic. It existed
just as long as it had power to crush opposition. But
avarice, licentiousness, effeminacy, the whole brood of
the abject vices, are sure at last to fasten on the con-
queror, humbling his proud will, and turning his strength
into weakness. The heart of that vast empire was ulcer-
ated long before it fell. The sensuality of a Mark Antony
is a more frightful thing than the sensuality of a savage;
and when self-abandonment thus succeeds to self-worship,
-- WHIPPLE
and men are literally given over to their lusts, a state of
society exists which, in its demoniacal contempt of re-
straint, sets all description at defiance. The irruption of
barbarian energy into that worn-out empire the fierce
horde of savages that swept in a devouring flame over its
plains and cities we view with something of the grim
satisfaction with which an old Hebrew might have sur-
veyed the ingulfing of Pharaoh and his host in the waters
of the Red Sea.
In the dark ages which succeeded the overthrow of the
Roman Empire modern civilization had its birth; and
with those ages it is still connected by an organic bond.
This civilization is the most complex that ever existed.
If we pass back to its youth, we find in it two grand lead-
ing principles of order and disorder, of health and disease,
whose contact, collision, and union almost constitute its
history. These are the feudal system and the Christian
Church. Now feudalism is the embodiment of Satanic
pride. Its will is its law. It does everything it has power
to do, without regard to the judgment of Heaven or earth.
It plants its iron heel firm upon the weak, and lifts its iron
front firm upon the strong, and says, in its pitiless valour,
" What I obtained by force take by force if you can." I
speak not of the feudalism of romance, but of history; not
as we find it in Miss Porter's novels, but as we find it in
the pages of Froissart and Monstrelet, of Michelet and
Thierry. Feudalism as a fact was a cruel and remorseless
oligarchy, in which a horde of independent barons, ac-
knowledging allegiance to a central power in the state,
but nullifying the decisions of that power at their own
pleasure, wielded a merciless dominion over a nation of
serfs. Now this relation of master and slave, this division
of tyranny into many parts, and making each man a tyrant
in his own domain, is the devil's own contrivance for ruin-
ing both the oppressor and the oppressed. It corrupts,
corrodes, and consumes the inmost principle of national
life. Accordingly, the chronicles of the middle ages teem
with crimes which almost realize a good-natured man's
idea of the bottomless pit. Hatred, rapine, revenge, lust,
blasphemy all those ferocious and suicidal vices which
slowly consume the vigour whence they spring rage and
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 371
revel there, with that peculiar demoniacal scorn of re-
straint which characterizes the brutalities of a spiritual
being. The popular insurrections of the period reveal, as
by a flash of lightning, the condition of that vaunted soci-
ety where capital owns labour. For a moment you see
the serf burst his bonds, pass from the brute into the
maniac, and rush into the insanest excesses of licentious-
ness; and then comes the mailed baron, cool, collected,
ruthless in his ferocity, trampling him down again with
the diabolical malignity of inhuman strength. But hatred
indulged to inferiors eventually generates hatred to equals,
and poisons at last the domestic relation itself. The un-
natural crimes which blacken the annals of so many fami-
lies, ironically styled noble father arrayed against son,
brother against brother, and murder staining the very
hearth-stones of the baronial castle are but the final re-
sults of pampered self-will, conducting us into the black
depths of minds, in whom hatred and moody pride have
extinguished the last instinct to which reverence can
cling.
Still, you may contend, in these old barons there dwelt
a tremendous force. True: but was it durable? Who are
their descendants? Mere weaklings in comparison with
the descendants of their former serfs. Where is their
system? Why, its fossil remains blew up not eighteen
months ago, and a wondering people, who had long been
scared by its frowning looks, found it to be a mere miser-
able shell and sham, its life and substance all eaten away
" self-fed and self-consumed."
But side by side with this feudalism was established
the Christian Church. Thus pandemonium and heaven
were both, so to speak, organized on earth; acted and
reacted on each other, and passed into each other's life.
The consequence of this mixture of principles was that
the Church was corrupted, and feudalism improved, even-
tually to be destroyed. There was at least the recogni-
tion of something higher than man, something which the
soul might reverence. This was the salvation of modern
society, as it continually poured into veins, shrunken and
withered by moral evil, some rills of moral life. The
leading characteristic, however, of religion, at the period
WHIPPLE
of which we are speaking, consisted in its being an opin-
ion or a fanaticism. The feudal baron would have been
shocked had you called him an atheist, even while per-
forming acts and pampering passions which are the
essence of atheism, for he held to Christianity as an opin-
ion; and when some overpowering calamity broke down
his stubborn will, and remorse fixed its fangs upon his
heart, he was as liable as the most slavish of his serfs to
be swept away in a torrent of fanaticism. But this fanati-
cism, though itself a disease, and representing a will in
ruins rather than a character built up, is still a reaction
against pride, and limits the ravages of moral evil, as
physical suffering limits unbridled appetites.
Now, if we examine modern history with a view to
observe the working of the religious element in its events
watching this element as it mingles with the harsher
qualities of that mass of humanity of whose life it forms
a part we can not fail to notice its agency in every great
social convulsion which has saved modern civilization from
the death of the ancient, and saved it by toppling down
the institutions in which its social disease had come to a
head. But we shall also see that each reform and revolu-
tion has partaken of the corruption of the community in
which it originated; has been but an inadequate expres-
sion of moral force; and has exhibited unmistakable signs
of the Satanic element blended with its beneficent pur-
pose. In short, modern civilization, in regard to its life,
is a corrupted Christianity. It has opinions more or less
true, but it has imperfectly assimilated truth. It assents
to perfect doctrines, but it lives a kind of Christian diabo-
lism. Consequently, all the great movements of the Euro-
pean mind have been but fits of splendid fanaticism, fol-
lowed by reactions toward apathy; and have indicated
little more than the desperate moral disease they partially
eradicated. The Crusades, the Reformation, the English
Revolutions of 1640 and 1688, the French Revolutions of
1789 and 1848, all prove that a community can not lift
itself by a convulsive throe above the high-water mark of
its practical life. Its contortions are signs of vitality, but
of vitality struggling with death. There has been progress
in European society, if we reckon it not by years but cen-
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 373
turies; but it has been a progress marked by jerks rather
than by steps. It has not yet arrived at that degree of
spiritual force, that momentum of moral energy, which is
the condition of healthy motion of steady, temperate, de-
termined, onward, ever onward movement. At the pres-
ent time it presents no spectacle of order, but rather of
disorder after stagnation. Peace it does not deserve, and
peace it will not obtain. Repose is harmonious activity,
the top and crown of the highest force, leaning for sup-
port on eternal laws; not that sultry and sluggish apathy
which lazily welters in fleeting expedients. The legitimist,
who would establish apathy under the forms of monarchy;
the agrarian, who would establish apathy under the forms
of communism, are both mistaking immobility for order,
and seeking material happiness through intellectual death.
Comfort is the god of this world, but, comfort it will never
obtain by making it an object.
In considering the national life of our own country, I
would wish to treat it neither in the style of a Jeremiad,
nor in the style of a Fourth-of-July oration. Our national
life is peculiar, not only as a composite formed from an
imperfect fusion of different races, but it is open to influ-
ences from all ages and all times. Though a civilization
may die, it leaves imperishable records of itself in history
and in literature, and these, after the nation itself is dead,
become living and active agents in moulding the natures
of all with whom they come in contact. Accordingly, as
everybody here reads or listens, India, Greece, and Rome,
as well as Germany, France, and England, rush into our
national life through a thousand conductors their dis-
eased as well as healthy elements becoming objects which
we assimilate, and which palpably affect our conduct. The
conceit of Greece, the pride of Rome, the arrogance of
feudal Europe, speak and act in America to-day from the
lips and in the lives of democrat and moneycrat, of philan-
thropist and misanthrope. The national life, in short, is
to a certain extent diseased, and our people more or less
believe in the capital error that they can thrive by selfish-
ness, injustice, and energy unregulated by law.
This wilful element is so modified by institutions, that
in the Northerner it appears as conceit, in the Southerner
WHIPPLE
as pride. Both doubtless possess great virtues, but as
both are sufficiently well acquainted with that fact, let us
here dwell ungraciously on the vices of each. The leading
defect of the Yankee consists in the gulf which separates
his moral opinions from his moral principles. His talk
about virtue in the abstract would pass as sound in a
nation of saints, but he still contrives that his interests
shall not suffer by the rigidity of his maxims. He goes,
so to speak, for the linen decencies of sin; and the Evil
One, being an accommodating personage, will as readily
appear in satin slippers as in cloven hoofs. Your true
Yankee, indeed, has a spruce, clean, Pecksniffian way of
doing a wrong, which is inimitable. He passes resolutions
declaring himself the most moral and religious man in the
land, and then, with the solemn strut of an Alsatian hero,
proceeds to the practical business of life. Believing, after
a certain fashion, in justice and retribution, he still thinks
that a sly, shrewd, keen, supple gentleman like himself,
can dodge, in a quiet way, the moral laws of the universe,
without any particular pother being made about it. He
is a self-admiration society in one. He will never be first
in a scheme of rapine; but, once drawn in, to him, as to
Macbeth, returning is as tedious as to go on. If you
ask his opinion about a recent war, he will put on a moral
face, declare bloodshed to be an exceedingly naughty
business, and roll off a series of resounding schoolboy
commonplaces, as though he expected a choir of descend-
ing angels had paused in mid air to hear and be edified;
but then, he adds with a compromising chuckle, that it
was an amazingly bright thing though, that whipping of
the Mexicans! Here it is he really believes in whipping
the weak. He loves energy in itself, apart from the pur-
poses which make energy beneficent; and as he is apt to
deem his intelligence appropriately employed in preying
on those who have less, his practical philosophy has some-
times found vent in that profound and elegant maxim
" Every one for himself, and Satan catch the hindmost."
True, Satan does catch the hindmost, but all history
teaches that in the end he catches the foremost also.
But, I think I hear you ask, what say you of our phi-
lanthropy? Certainly nothing here as to its beneficent
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 375
action, but a word as to its diseased aspect. It is to be
feared that our benevolence is more opinion than life, and,
accordingly, it is apt to degenerate into sentimentality or
malice; to be mere inoffensively ineffective primer moral-
ity and elegant recreation of conscience, or morose, snap-
pish, and snarling invective; in other words, to lack will,
or to be wilful. In*' a community whose life is in any
way diseased, it is difficult for the best men to escape the
ruling contagion; to oppose an evil without catching it;
to war with the devil without using the devil's own
weapons.
But perhaps the chief Satanic element in our national
life comes from the South. There, in the " full tide " of
unsuccessful " experiment," is a feudal system, modified
by modern humanity, but modified also by modern thrift.
The feudal baron did not sell his serfs. Now, this peculiar
institution has one vital evil which alone would ruin any
country outside of Adam's paradise it makes labour dis-
reputable. But it is bad in every respect, corrupting the
life both of master and slave; and it will inevitably end, if
allowed to work out its own damnation, in a storm of fire
and blood, or in mental and moral sterility and death.
Looking at it, not sentimentally or shrewishly, much less
with any mean feeling of local exultation, but simply with
the eye of reason what is it but a rude and shallow sys-
tem of government, which has been tried over and over
again, and exploded over and over again, the mere cast-
off nonsense of extinct civilizations, bearing on its front
the sign of being a more stupid blunder than it is a crime?
Now, we can sympathize with a person who has had the
gout transmitted to him, the only legacy of a loving
father; but that a man should go deliberately to work,
bottle in hand, to establish the gout in his own system,
is an absurdity which touches the Quixotic in diabolism.
Yet this, or something like to this, has been gravely pro-
posed, and some of our Southern brethren have requested
us to aid in the ludicrously iniquitous work. No; we
should say to these gentlemen, If you have a taste for the
ingenuities of mischief, plant, if you will, on your new
territory, small-pox and typhus fever, plant plague, cholera,
and pestilence, but refrain, if not from common honesty,
WHIPPLE
at least from common intelligence, from planting a moral
disease infinitely more destructive, and which will make
the world shake with laughter or execrations, according
as men consider the madness of its folly, or the brazen
impudence of its guilt.
In these remarks on Intellectual Disease I have re-
ferred all along, negatively at least, to intellectual health.
We have seen that this health consists neither in the self-
abandonment of the sensitively weak, nor the self-worship
of the wilfully strong. A few words more, to guard
against some possible misconceptions. Self-direction of
mental power, which has been assumed as the condition of
healthy mind, is the only possible means of self-devotion,
of self-sacrifice, of rising above self. It indicates a mind
serene, cheerful, hopeful, courageous, ever active, ever
aspiring, with reverence for all above itself, and genial
love, not bitter contempt, for all below. But I might well
be accused of shallow philosophy did I leave the subject
here. Mind, it is true, is free spiritual force, but it is in-
scrutably dependent on the force which created it. It is
a cause, but a limited cause; a power, constituted such by
an Infinite Power; and it grows mightier as it ascends to
its source. In this connection, let me not presume to
speak, but call witnesses from the mountain peaks and
pinnacles of intellect beings who rose thither in virtue
of an amazing force directed upward that they may testify
to their deep sense of this mysterious dependence. Thus
Newton closes the greatest work of pure science which
ever came from the mind of man, with an affecting thanks-
giving to that Infinite Intelligence who bestowed the
power which produced it. Thus Spenser, with his exhaust-
less opulence of fanciful creation, and burning sense of
the loveliness of things, can still find in the world of Na-
ture and the world of imagination no fit symbols of the
vision which haunts his soul, until it is lifted up in a
" Hymn to Heavenly Beauty." Thus Milton, in whom
glowed a spirit that braved every storm of fortune and
spurned every touch of fear, from whose brow glanced
harmless the thunders of dominant hierarchies, and who,
opposed to unnatural persecution adamantine will, still
never " soared in the high reason of his fancies, with his
INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND DISEASE 377
garland and singing robes about him," without first, in
his own divine words, " pouring out his soul in devout
prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utter-
ance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of
whom he pleases." And from one of England's most
curious and not least skeptical of intellects, a deep and
prying inquirer into the mysteries of his consciousness,
comes that burst of mournful rapture, which has awed and
thrilled every soul in which it has entered, that " there is
a common spirit which plays within us yet makes no part
of us, the spirit of God, the fire and scintillation of that
noble and mighty essence which is the life and radical
heat of all minds; and," he adds, " whosoever feels not the
warm breath and gentle ventilation of this spirit (though
I feel his pulse), I can not say he lives; for, truly, without
this, to me there is no heat under the tropic, and no light,
though I dwelt in the very body of the sun."
HINDRANCES
TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH
BY
JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP
JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP was born in Scotland, July 30, 1819. He was
graduated in 1844 at Oxford, where he took high honours, and from 1846
to 1857 was Master at Rugby. He then became Professor of Latin at St.
Andrews, and in 1868 succeeded to the principalship. He was Professor
of Poetry *t Oxford from 1877 till he died, September 18, 1885. His love
of his native land was so intense that he considered any summer wasted
if it was not spent in Scotland. He enjoyed the friendship and confidence
of many eminent men, and is described as a most genial and lovable char-
acter. He wrote many fugitive poems, which had their admirers, and
several volumes of essays, including " Studies in Poetry and Philosophy,"
"Culture and Religion in some of their Relations," "The Poetic Inter-
pretation of Nature," and " Sketches in History and Poetry." His
studies of Wordsworth and Coleridge are especially valuable.
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH
IT has often happened that when the sons of a family,
after having been for some sessions at college, have
returned to their own homes, bursars, or scholars, or
M. A.'s with honours, the family have felt that somehow
they were changed, had lost their old simple natures, and
for this loss college learning and distinctions seemed but a
poor substitute. This, however, may be only a temporary
result of severe mental tension and seclusion. When the
bow has been for a time unstrung, the unnaturalness
passes, and the native, simple self reappears.
But I have known other stories than these. I have
heard of devout and self-denying parents, working late and
early, and stinting themselves to send their sons to college,
and in sending them their fond hope was that these young
men would return stored with knowledge and wisdom,
and be able to help their parents in those religious sub-
jects on which their hearts were most set. Such hopes,
we may trust, have many times been realized. But one
has heard of cases which had another issue. A young man
has come home, after a college course, acute, logical,
speculative, full of the newest views, prating of high mat-
ters, scientific and philosophical, a very prodigy of en-
lightenment. But that on which early piety had fed was
forsaken, the old reverence was gone, and the parents saw,
with helpless sorrow, that their son had chosen for him-
self a far other road than that on which they were trav-
elling, and in which they had hoped he would travel
with them.
It is a common tale, one which has often been re-
peated, but none the less pathetic for that. It brings be-
fore us the collision that often occurs when newly
awakened intellect first meets with early faith. No one
381
382 SHAIRP
who has observed men ever so little but must know
something, either through his own experience or from
watching others, of these travail-pangs that often accom-
pany the birth of thought.
The special trial of each spirit lies in that very field in
which his strength and activity are put forth. The tempta-
tion of the busy trader does not consist in mental question-
ings, but in the tendency to inordinate love of gain. The
aesthetic spirit finds its trial, not in coarse pleasures, but in
the temptation to follow beauty exclusively, and to turn
effeminately from duty and self-denial. And in like man-
ner the student or man of letters will most likely find his
trial in dealing rightly with the intellectual side of things,
giving to it its due place, and not more. What are some
of the difficulties and temptations which the student is
apt to meet with, and which may be the best way to deal
with them? this is the subject which will engage us to-
day. Before entering on it, however, let me say distinctly
that I do not believe that painful questionings and violent
mental convulsions are an ordeal which all thoughtful per-
sons must needs pass through. So far from this, some of
the finest spirits, those whose vision is most intuitive and
penetrating, are the most exempt from such anxious soul-
travail. Indeed, I believe that there is no such safeguard
against the worst consequences of such perplexities as a
heart that is pure, humble, and " at leisure from itself."
In the words of a modern divine, one well known at the
present time, both as an upholder of freedom of inquiry,
and also as a religious and devoted man:
' There are some who are never troubled with doubts
at all. They live so heavenly a life that doubts and per-
plexities fall off their minds without fastening. They find
enough in their faith to feed their spiritual life. They do
not need to inquire into the foundations of their belief,
they are inspired by a power within their hearts. The
heavenly side of all truths is so clear to them that any
doubts about the human form of it are either unintelligible
or else at once rejected. They grow in knowledge by
quiet, steady increase of light, without any intervals of
darkness and difficulty. This is the most blessed state
that of those who can believe without the evidence either
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 383
of sense or of laboured argument. There are such minds.
There are those to whom the inward proof is everything.
They believe not on the evidence of their senses, or of their
mere reason, but on that of their consciences and hearts.
Their spirits within them are so attuned to the truth that
the moment it is presented to them they accept it at once.
And this is certainly the higher state, the more blessed,
the more heavenly."
These are they who have always rejoiced in a serene,
unclouded vision till they are taken home. And we have
known such.
Let none, therefore, pique themselves on having
doubts and questionings on religious subjects, as if it were
a fine thing to have them, proving them to be intellectual
athletes, and entitling thepi to look down on those who
are free from them as inferior persons, less mentally gifted.
For there is a higher state than their own there is a
purer atmosphere, which has been breathed by persons of
as strong intellect as themselves, but of a finer spirit. But
such is not the state of all thoughtful men. There are many
who when they reach the reasoning age find themselves
in the midst of many difficulties, hedged in with " per-
plexities which they can not explain to themselves, much
less to others, and no one to help them." They are afraid
to tell their sad heart-secrets to others, and especially to
their elders, lest they find no sympathy. And so they are
tempted to shut them up within their own breasts, and
brood over them till they get morbid and magnify their
difficulties out of all proportion to their reality. In the
case of such persons it becomes a serious question how
they should be advised to treat the difficulties that occur
to them. On the one hand, while they are not to make
little questions of great consequence, neither must they
make grave questions and perplexities of little conse-
quence. They are to be told that while all doubts are pain-
ful, all are not necessarily wrong. For some are natural,
born of honesty, and, when rightly dealt with, have often
ere now become the birth-pangs of larger knowledge
the straits through which men passed to clearer light.
There are, on the other hand, doubts which are sinful,
born of levity, irreverence, and self-conceit, or of a hard
SHAIRP
and perverted conscience. To determine to which class
any particular mental perplexities belong is not easy for
a man even in his own case; much more is it difficult, nay,
impossible, for us to read the mental state of another, and
pronounce judgment on it. The fact that some doubts
are not sinless, that they may arise out of the state of a
man's spirit, suggests to every one cautiousness and self-
scrutiny. This is a work which no man can do for his
brother. Each man must take his own difficulties into the
light of conscience and of God, and there deal with them
honestly yet humbly, seeking to be guided aright. For
the spirit of a man is a very delicate instrument, which, if
it be distorted out of its natural course, this way or that,
by prejudice or interest or double-dealing on the one hand,
or foolhardiness and self-confidence on the other, may
never perhaps in this life recover its equilibrium.
I should be loath to seem to trespass either on the
speculative field of the theological professor, or on the
practical one of the Christian minister. But, without do-
ing either, there is room enough for offering such sugges-
tions as have been gathered from a number of years not
unobservant of what has been going on in that border
land where faith and knowledge meet. To young and
ardent spirits the wrestling with hard questions on the
very verge of human knowledge has a wonderful fascina-
tion. They throw themselves fearlessly into the abyss,
and think that they shall be able to dive down to depths
hitherto unsounded. Problems that have baffled the
world's best thinkers will, they fancy, yield up to them
their secret. Yet these things " do take a sober colour-
ing " from eyes which have seen too many young men,
some of them the finest spirits of our time', setting forth in
over-confidence in their own powers, imagining that they
were sufficient to meet all difficulties, and coming before
long to mournful shipwreck. When experience has im-
pressed us with the full importance of the mental tend-
encies for good and for evil which often begin at college,
who would not be earnestly disposed to turn his experi-
ence, if he might, to the help of those younger than him-
self, at that interesting time of life when they most need
help, and often least find it? But then there comes upon
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 385
the mind the conviction that this is an issue wherein, in the
last resort, no one can bear his brother's burden. All that
we can do is to suggest certain dangers to which the
student is from the nature of his occupations peculiarly
exposed, and to leave it to each for himself to apply what
is said conscientiously, according as he feels that it bears
on his need.
The first hindrance I will notice is one which arises
out of the very nature of mental cultivation. If there is
one thing which more than another distinguishes a well-
trained mind, it is the power of thinking clearly, of divid-
ing with a sharp line between its knowledge and its igno-
rance. One of the best results of a logical and also of a
scientific discipline is that it leads us to form definite,
clearly cut conceptions of things. Indeed, this power of
limiting, defining, making a 0/309 or bound round each
object you think of, and thus making them thinkable, is
of the very essence of thought. For what is all thought
but a rescuing, a cutting off by the mind's inherent power
of bounding, objects from out the vague and undefined?
But this quality of all thought, which in trained thought
is raised to a higher power, while it constitutes mental
strength, contains also its own weakness, or rather limita-
tion. Clearly defined knowledge is mainly of things we
see. All find it much easier to form definite conceptions
of objects of the outer sense than of objects of the inner
sense to conceive clearly things we see, hear, and touch,
than those thoughts which have not any outward object
corresponding to them. If thoughts are difficult ade-
quately to grasp, much more are emotions with their in-
finite complexity, their evanescent shades. But each man
gains a power of realizing and firmly conceiving those
things he habitually deals with, and not other things. The
man whose training has lain exclusively in physics, accu-
rately conceives physical forces, however subtle, and can
lay down their relations to each other; but then he will
probably be comparatively weak in apprehending sub-
tleties of thought and mental relations. Again, the mere
logician, while strong to grasp logical distinctions, will
generally be found comparatively at sea when he has to
386
SHAIRP
catch the imaginative aspects of things, and fix evanescent
hues of feeling. This takes something of the poetic fac-
ulty. Each man is strong in that he is trained in, weak
in other regions so much so that often the objects there
seem to him non-existent.
Now the scientific mind and the logical mind, when
turned toward the supersensible world, are apt to find the
same difficulty, only in a much greater degree, as they find
in dealing with objects of imagination, or with pure emo-
tions. Whoever has tried to think steadily at all on re-
ligious subjects must be aware of this difficulty. When
we look upward, and try to think of God and of the soul's
relation to him, we are apt to feel as if we had stepped
out into a world in which the understanding finds little
or no firm footing. We can not present to ourselves these
truths adequately, and as they really are. Therefore we
are under the necessity of " substituting anthropomorphic
conceptions, determined by accidents of place and time,
to speak of God as dwelling above, to attribute a before
and an after to the Divine thought." With these feeble
adumbrations, which are the nearest approaches to the
reality we can make, the devout mind is content, feeling
them to be full of meaning. But the scientific and the
logical mind often feels great difficulty in being content
with these. It craves more exactness of outline, and is
tempted to reject as non-existent things which it can not
subject to the laws of thought to which it is accustomed
in fact, to limit the orb of belief to the orb of exact
knowledge. Mere adumbrations of spiritual realities are
an offence to the mind that will accept only scientific ex-
actness. The falsity of this way of reasoning has been well
exposed by Coleridge, where he protests against " the ap-
plication of deductive and conclusive logic to subjects
concerning which the premises are expressed in not
merely inadequate but accommodated terms. But to con-
clude terms proper and adequate from quasific and mendi-
cant premises is illogical logic with a vengeance. Water
can not rise higher than its source, neither can human
reasoning."
The fact is, those root-truths, on which the founda-
tions of our being rest, are apprehended not logically at
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 387
all, but mystically. This faculty of spiritual apprehen-
sion, which is a very different one from those which are
trained in schools and colleges, must be educated and
fed, not less but more carefully than our lower facul-
ties, else it will be starved and die, however learned or
able in other respects we may become. And the means
which train it are reverent thought, meditation, prayer,
and all those other means by which the divine life
is fed.
But because the primary truths of religion refuse to be
caught in the grip of the logical vice because they are,
as I said, transcendent, and only mystically apprehended
are thinking men therefore either to give up these objects
as impossible to think about, or to content themselves
with a vague religiosity, and unreal sentimentalism? Not
so. There are certain veritable facts of consciousness to
which religion makes its appeal. These the thinking man
must endeavour to apprehend with as much definiteness
as their nature admits of must verify them by his own
inward experience, and by the recorded experience of the
most religious men. And there are other facts outside of
our consciousness and above it, which are revealed that
they may fit into and be taken up by those needs of which
we are conscious. Rightly to apprehend them, so that
we shall make them our own inwardly, so that they shall
supplement, deepen, and expand our moral perceptions,
not contradict and traverse them, this is no easy work. It
is the work of the reflective side of the religious life. But
when all is done, it will still remain, that in the whole
process intellect or the mere understanding is but a sub-
ordinate agent, and must be kept so. The primary agent,
on our side, is that power of spiritual apprehension which
we know under many names, none perhaps better than
those old ones, " the hearing ear, the understanding
heart." The main condition is that the spiritual ear should
be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will
ready to obey, that testimony which, I believe, God bears
in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths
which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way
to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths
of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.
388
SHAIRP
Akin to the desire for exact conceptions is the desire
for system. The longing to systematize, to form a com-
pletely rounded theory of the universe, which shall em-
brace all known facts, and assign to each its proper place,
this craving lies deep in the intellectual man. It is at the
root of science and of philosophy in its widest sense; out
of it has arisen the whole fabric of exact and scientific
knowledge. But this, like other good tendencies, may be
overdone, and become rash and one-sided. From this im-
pulse, too hastily carried out, arise such theories of life as
that of Professor Huxley, which was discussed in a former
lecture. It is this that gives to positivism the charm it has
for many energetic minds. It seems such gain to reach
a comprehensive, all-embracing point of view from which
all knowledge shall be seen mapped out, every object and
science falling into its proper place, and all uncertainty,
all cloudy horizons, rigorously shut out. To many minds,
nothing seems too great a price to pay for this. And to
secure it they have to pay a great price. They have to
cut off unsparingly all the ragged rims of knowledge, to
exclude from view the whole borderland between the
definitely conceived and the dimly apprehended, the very
region in which the main difficulties of thought peculiarly
lie. They have to shut their eyes to all those phenomena,
often the most interesting, which they can not locate. But
though such systematizers exclude them from their sys-
tem, they can not exclude them from reality. There they
remain rooted all the same, whether we recognise them
or not. Shut them out as you may, they will, in spite of
all theories, reappear, cropping out in human history and
in human consciousness. Now it so happens that of these
facts which refuse to be systematized, a large part, but by
no means all, arise out of man's religious nature. The
existence of evil, manifesting itself in man's consciousness
as the sense of sin, or estrangement from God, recovery
from this, not by any power evolved from man's own re-
sources, but by a power which descended from above,
when^ " heaven opened itself anew to man's long-alienated
race " these, and all the facts they imply, are, and always
have been, a stumbling-block to those who are bent on
a rounded system. Hence every age, and this age pre-
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 389
eminently, has seen attempts to resolve Christianity into a
natural product. Because it enters into all things human,
and moulds them to itself, the attempt is made to account
for it by the joint action of those spiritual elements which
pre-existed in human nature. Such attempts Christianity
has for eighteen centuries withstood, and will withstand
till the end. The idea of a power coming down from a
higher sphere to work in and renew the natural forces of
humanity must always be repugnant to any mode of
thought which makes a complete system the first neces-
fcsity. No doubt the craving for a system is a deep instinct
of the purely intellectual man, but it is a very different
(thing from the craving for Tightness with God, which is
Tithe prime instinct of the spiritual man. When once
awakened, the spiritual faculty for outgoes all systems, sci-
entific, philosophic, or theological, and apprehends and
Ives by truths which these can not reduce to system.
Again, there is another way in which thought seems
often to get caught in its own meshes, and so fall short
of the highest truth. There is a tendency, not peculiar to
the present day, though very prevalent now, to rest in
law, whether in the natural or moral world, and to shrink
from going beyond it up to God. There are those who
think that when science has ascended to the most gen-
eral uniformities of sequence and coexistence, then knowl-
edge has reached its limit, and all beyond is mere conjec-
ture. To this I will not reply, in the old phrase, about a
law and a lawgiver, for this to some seems a play on
words. But one thing, often said before, must be re-
peated. This supposed necessity to rest in the perception
of ordered phenomena is no necessity at all, but an arti-
ficial and arbitrarily imposed limitation, against which
thought left to its natural action rebels. It is impossible
for any reflective mind, not dominated by a system, to
regard the ordered array of physical forces, and to rest
| satisfied with this order, without going on to ask whence
it came, what placed it there. Thought can not be kept
back, when it sees arrangement, from asking what is the
arranging power; when it sees existence, from inquiry how
it came to exist. And the question is a natural and legiti-
25
SHAIRP
mate one, in spite of all that phenomenalism may say
against it, and it will not cease to be asked while there are
reasoning men to ask it.
The same habit of mind is fain, in moral subjects, to
rest in moral law. But, if we look closely at reality, what
are moral law, moral order, but abstractions generalized
from facts felt and observed by all men? They are not
self-subsisting entities, such as our own personality is.
And a living will would be justified in refusing allegiance
to a mere abstraction, however high or seemingly im-
perative, if there was nothing behind it. It is because
moral law is but a condensed expression for the energy
of, shall I say, a higher personality, or something greater,
more living, more all-encompassing, than personality, that
it comes home to us with the power it does.
These are but a few of the more obvious ways in which
our intellectual habits may, and often do, become a hin-
drance instead of a help toward spiritual progress. There
are many other ways, more subtle and hard to deal with,
some of which I had intended to notice. But for to-day
you have probably had enough of abstractions. And
what remains of our time must be given to more prac-
tical considerations.
Religious men are always trying to set forth in defence
of their faith demonstrations which shall be irrefragable.
This is natural, nor do I say that it is altogether unwise.
For as facts and doctrines form the intellectual outworks of
faith, historical criticism must make good the one, sound
philosophy must so far warrant the other. But when all
that argument can do has been done, it still remains true
that the best and most convincing grounds of faith will
still remain behind unshaped into argument. There is a
great reserve fund of conviction arising from the increased
experience which Christian men have of the truth of what
they believe. And this can not be beat out into syllo-
gisms. It is something too inward, too personal, too mys-
tical, to be set forth so. It is not on that account the
less real and powerful. Indeed, it may be said that once
felt it is the most self-evidencing of all proofs. This is
what Coleridge said: " If you wish to be assured of the
truth of Christianity, try it." " Believe, and if thy belief
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 391
be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into
knowledge will be the reward of thy belief." To be
vitally convinced of the truth of " the process of renewal
described by Scripture, a man must put himself within that
process." His own experience of its truth, and the con-
fident assurances of others, whom, if candid, he will feel
to be better than himself, will be the most sufficing evi-
dence. But this is an evidence which, while it satisfies a
man's self, can not be brought to bear on those who stand
without the pale, and deny those things of which they have
not themselves experience.
Many are apt to imagine that a hard head and a blame-
less deportment make a man free of the inner shrine of
Christian truth. When a scholar goes forth from college
well equipped with the newest methods, he sometimes
fancies that he holds the key to which all the secrets of faith
must open. And if they do not at once yield to his men-
tal efforts, he is tempted to regard them as untrue. But
clear and trained intellect is one thing, spiritual discern-
ment quite another. The former does not exclude, but
neither does it necessarily include, the latter. They are
energies of two different sides of our being. Unless the
spiritual nature in a man is alive and active, it is in vain
that he works at religious truth merely from the intellect-
ual side. If he is not awake in a deeper region than his
intellectual, though he may be an able critic or dialectician,
a vital theologian or a religious man he can not be. Not
long ago I read this remark of the German theologian
Rothe: " It is only the pious subject that can speculate
theologically. And why? Because it is he alone who has
the original datum, in virtue of communion with God on
which the dialectic lays hold. So soon as the original
datum is there, everything else becomes simply a matter
of logic." Or as a thoughtful English scholar and divine
lately expressed it: " Of all qualities which a theologian
must possess, a devotional spirit is the chief. For the soul
is larger than the mind, and the religious emotions lay
hold on the truths to which they are related on many
sides at once. A powerful understanding, on the other
hand, seizes on single points, and however enlarged in its
own sphere, is of itself never safe from narrowness of view.
SHAIRP
For its very office is to analyze, which implies that thought
is fixed down to particular relations of the subject. No
mental conception, still more no expression in words, can
give the full significance of any fact, least of all of a divine
fact. Hence it is that mere reasoning is found such an
ineffectual measure against simple piety, and devotion is
such a safeguard against intellectual errors." Yes, " the
original datum," that is the main thing. And what is this
but that which our old Puritan forefathers meant when
they spoke of a man " having the root of the matter in
him "? The devout spirit is not fed by purely intellectual
processes; sometimes it is even frustrated by them. The
hard brain-work and the seclusion of the student tend, if
uncounteracted, to dry up the springs alike of the human
sympathies and of the heavenward emotions. It was a
saying of Dr. Arnold, certainly no disparager of intellect,
that no student could continue long in a healthy religious
state unless his heart was kept tender by mingling with
children, or by frequent intercourse with the poor and the
suffering.
And this suggests a subject which might occupy a
whole lecture or course of lectures, to which, however,
now only a few words can be given. It is one main
object of all our education here to train the critical faculty.
This faculty, educated by scholarship, has an important
function to fill in matters bearing on religion. With re-
gard to these it has a work to do which ought not to be
disregarded, and that work it is at present doing actively
enough. To weigh evidence, and form a sound judgment
whether alleged facts are really true, whether documents
really belong to the age and the authors they profess to be
of; by trained historical imagination to enter into the
whole circumstances and meaning of any past age; to
examine the meaning of the sacred Scriptures, and see
" how far its modes and figures of representation are
merely vehicles of inner truth, or are of the essence of the
truth itself; to understand the human conditions of the
writers, and appreciate how far these may have influenced
their statements; to give to past theological language its
proper weight and not more than its proper weight; to
trace the history of its terms so as not to confound
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 393
human thought with divine faith " all these processes
are essential to the theologian some measure of them
is required in every educated man who will think rightly
on such subjects. I would not underrate the value of
this kind of work. It is necessary in the educated, if
well-grounded religion is to live among the people, and
faith is not to be wholly dissevered from intellectual truth.
At the same time it is carried on in the outworks rather
than in the citadel, it deals with the shells rather than with
the kernel of divine things. This vocation of the critic,
however useful for others, has dangers for himself. There
is a risk that criticism shall absorb his whole being. This
is no imaginary danger. We are not called on to believe
this or that doctrine which may be proposed to us till we
can do so from honest conviction. But we are called on
to trust, to trust ourselves to God, being sure that he
will lead us right, to keep close to him, and to trust the
romises which he whispers through our conscience; this
e can do, and we ought to do. Every scholar who is
Iso a religious man must have felt it, must be aware how
apt he is to approach the simplest spiritual truths as a
critic, not as a simple learner. And yet he feels that when
all is said and done, it is trust, not criticism, that the soul
lives by. If he is ever to get beyond the mere outer pre-
cinct and pass within the holy place, he must put off his
critical apparatus, and enter as a simple contrite-hearted
man. Not as men of science, not as critics, not as
philosophers, but as little children, shall we enter into
the kingdom of heaven. " Therefore," says Leighton,
speaking of filial prayer, " many a poor unlettered
Christian far outstrips your school rabbis in this attain-
ment, because it is not effectually taught in these lower
academies."
These are reflections needed perhaps at all times by
those immersed in thought and study, never more needed
than now. Numberless voices, through newspaper, pam-
phlet, periodical, from platform and pulpit, are telling us
that we are in the midst of a transition age, so loudly that
the dullest can not choose but hear. It is a busy, restless
time, eager to cast off the old and reach forward to the
new. It needs no diviner to tell us that this century will
394 SHAIRP
not pass without a great breaking up of the dogmatic
structures that have held ever since the Reformation or
the succeeding age. From many sides at once a simplify-
ing of the code, a revision of the standards, is being de-
manded. I will not ask whether this is good or bad, de-
sirable or not. It is enough that it is inevitable. From
such a removal of old landmarks two opposite results may
arise. Either it may make faith easier by taking cumbrous
forms out of the way it may make the direct approach to
Christ and God simple and more natural, may, in fact,
bring God nearer to the souls of men or it may remove
him to a greater distance, and make life more completely
secular. Which shall the result be? This depends for
each of us on the way we use the new state of things, on
the preparedness or non-preparedness of heart with which
we meet it. Often it is seen that great changes, which in
the long run turn to the good of the community, bring
suffering and grievous loss on their way to many an in-
dividual. And a time of transition, when the old bonds
are being broken up, is a time of trial to the spirits of
men. At such a time, in anxiety but not in despair, we
ask, How is the old piety to live on through all changes
into the new world that is to be? If the outward frame-
work that helped to strengthen our fathers is being re-
moved, the more the need that we should cleave to the
inward, the vital, the spiritual communion with Him on
whom the soul lives. Secular and worldly common sense
will discuss in newspapers, literary criticism in magazines,
these momentous changes; but such talk touches only the
outside aspect of them, and can not discern what is essen-
tial or what is not. Even refined intellectuality can not
much help us here. That which passes safely through all
changes is the tender conscience, the trusting heart, the
devout mind. Let us seek these, and the disciplines which
strengthen them. College learning is good, but not all
the learning of all the universities of Europe can com-
pensate for the loss of that which the youth reared in a
religious home has learned in childhood at his mother's
knee.
In all the best men you meet, perhaps the thing that is
most peculiar about them is the child's heart they bear
HINDRANCES TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH 395
within the man's. However they have differed in other
respects, in their tempers, gifts, attainments, in this they
agreed. With those things they were, so to speak, clothed
upon this was their very core, their essential self. And
this child's heart it is that is the organ of faith, trust,
heavenly communion. It is a very simple thing so simple
that worldly men are apt either not to perceive or to
despise it. And young persons, when they first grow up
and enter the world, are tempted to make little of it. They
think that now they are men they must put away childish
things, must learn the world, and conform to its ways and
estimates of things.
But the ra TOV vTjTrtov, the childish things, which St.
Paul put away, belong to a quite different side of child-
nature from the Tra&Lov, the little child which our Lord
recommended for our example.
We should try, as we grow up into manhood, and get
to know the world, to have this simplicity of childhood
kept fresh within us, still at the centre. If we allow the
world to rob us of it, as so many do, in boyhood, even
before manhood begins, we may be sure that the world
has nothing equal .to it to give us instead. And they who
may have for a time lost it, or had it obscured or put
into abeyance by contact with men, can not too soon seek
to have it restored within them. And the only way to pre-
serve this good thing, or have it, if lost, renewed, is to
open the heart to simple, truthful communion with God
and Christ, and try to bring the heart ever closer and closer
to him.
That this is intended to be our very inmost nature, the
way in which we are reared by Providence seems to show.
For all the first years of our life he surrounds us with
the warm charities of home; by these he calls out all our
earliest, deepest, most permanent feelings. School, col-
lege, the world follow, but their influences, great as they
are, never penetrate down, at least in natural characters, so
deep as those first affections. And then in mature life,
the home of childhood is generally, if possible, reproduced,
in a home of our own, in which all the early affections
are once more renewed, enhanced by the thoughtfulness
that life has brought.
39 6
SHAIRP
Let me close with reading what Pascal has left as his
Profession of Faith :
" I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it. I love
wealth, because it gives me the means of assisting the
wretched. I keep faith with all men. I do not render
evil to those who do it to me; but I desire a state for them
like to my own, in which I receive neither evil nor good
from the hand of man. I endeavour to be just, truthful,
sincere, and faithful to all men, and I have a tenderness
of heart for those to whom God has united me more
closely; and whether I am alone, or in the sight of men,
in all my actions I have in sight God, who must judge
them, and to wh'om I have consecrated them all.
' These are my sentiments, and I bless all the days of
my life my Redeemer, who has put them into me, and
who, from a man full of weakness, misery, concupiscence,
pride, and ambition, has made a man exempt from all
these evils by the strength of his grace, to which all the
glory of it is due, since I have in myself nothing but
misery and error."
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
26
MATTHEW ARNOLD was born in Laleham, England, December 24, 1822.
He was the oldest son of the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold, Head Master
of Rugby, and was educated there and at Oxford, where he won a prize
for a poem on Cromwell, and was made a fellow. He was private secre-
tary to Lord Lansdowne several years, and in 1857 was elected Professor
of Poetry at Oxford. He was sent by the British Government to observe
the educational systems on the Continent, and his reports attracted wide
attention. He lectured in the United States in 1883. He was a volumi-
nous writer. While his poetry is neither very deep nor very spirited, it
has its admirers among persons of taste and scholarship. Sometimes he
is demonstrably wide of the mark in his criticisms as on Emerson, for
instance but his essays generally are ranked high. The most famous
of them is that which follows, the title of which is from Dean Swift. His
essays and poems are published in a uniform edition in twelve volumes,
and his letters in three additional volumes. He died April 15, 1888.
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
IN one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine
speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion
to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture.
" People who talk about what they call culture! " said he,
contemptuously, " by which they mean a smattering of
the two dead languages of Greek and Latin." And he went
on to remark, in a strain with which modern speakers and
writers have made us very familiar, how poor a thing this
culture is, how little good it can do to the world, and how
absurd it is for its possessors to set much store by it. And
the other day a younger Liberal than Mr. Bright, one of
a school whose mission it is to bring into order and sys-
tem that body of truth with which the earlier Liberals
merely fumbled, a member of the University of Oxford,
and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, devel-
oped, in the sytematic and stringent manner of his school,
the thesis which Mr. Bright had propounded in only gen-
eral terms. " Perhaps the very silliest cant of the day,"
said Mr. Frederic Harrison, " is the cant about culture.
Culture is a desirable quality in a critic of new books, and
sits w r ell on a professor of belles-lettres; but as applied to
politics it means simply a turn for small fault-finding,
love of selfish ease, and indecision in action. The man of
culture is in politics one of the poorest mortals alive. For
simple pedantry and want of good sense no man is his
equal. No assumption is too unreal, no end is too un-
practical for him. But the active exercise of politics re-
quires common sense, sympathy, trust, resolution, and en-
thusiasm, qualities which your man of culture has carefully
rooted up, lest they damage the delicacy of his critical
olfactories. Perhaps they are the only class of responsible
beings in the community who caa not with safety be in-
trusted with power."
399
400 ARNOLD
Now, for my part, I do not wish to see men of culture
asking to be intrusted with power; and, indeed, I have
freely said that in my opinion the speech most proper, at
present, for a man of culture to make to a body of his
fellow-countrymen who get him into a committee-room,
is Socrates's " Know thyself! " and this is not a speech to
be made by men wanting to be intrusted with power.
For this very indifference to direct political action I have
been taken to task by the " Daily Telegraph," coupled,
by a strange perversity of fate, with just that very one
of the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the least,
and called " an elegant Jeremiah." It is because I say
(to use the words which the " Daily Telegraph " puts in
my mouth): " You mustn't make a fuss because you have
no vote that is vulgarity; you mustn't hold big meetings
to agitate for reform bills and to repeal corn laws; that is
the very height of vulgarity "; it is for this reason that I
am called sometimes an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a
spurious Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose
mission the writer in the " Daily Telegraph " has his
doubts. It is evident, therefore, that I have so taken my
line as not to be exposed to the whole brunt of Mr. Fred-
eric Harrison's censure. Still, I have often spoken in
praise of culture; I have striven to make all my works
and ways serve the interests of culture. I take culture
to be something a great deal more than what Mr. Fred-
eric Harrison and others call it, " a desirable quality in a
critic of new books." Nay, even though to a certain ex-
tent I am disposed to agree with Mr. Frederic Harrison,
that men of culture are just the class of responsible beings
in this community of ours who can not properly, at pres-
ent, be intrusted with power, I am not sure that I do not
think this the fault of our community rather than of the
men of culture. In short, although like Mr. Bright, and
Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the editor of the " Daily Tele-
graph," and a large body of valued friends of mine, I am
a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, re-
flection, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer
in culture. Therefore I propose now to try and inquire,
in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both my
taste and my powers, what culture really is, what good it
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 401
can do, what is our own special need of it; and I shall seek
to find some plain grounds on which a faith in culture
both my own faith in it and the faith of others may rest
securely.
The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity;
sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusive-
ness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume
itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which
is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is
valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as
an engine of social and class distinction, separating its
holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have
not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or
attach any value to it as culture at all. To find the real
ground for the very different estimate which serious peo-
ple will set upon culture, we must find some motive for
culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity;
and such a motive the word curiosity gives us.
I have before now pointed out that we English do not,
like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well
as in a bad sense. With us the word is always used in a
somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and intelligent
eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant
by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us
the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and
unedifying activity. In the " Quarterly Review," some
little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French
critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it
in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted
chiefly in this, that in our English way it left out of sight
the double sense really involved in the word curiosity,
thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with
blame if it was said that he was impelled in his operations
as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive
that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with
him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not
blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be
accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as
there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is
futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity
a desire after the things of the mind simply for their
402 ARNOLD
own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they
are; which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable.
Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies
a balance and regulation of mind which is not often
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very op-
posite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is
what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Mon-
tesquieu says: " The first motive which ought to impel
us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our
nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intel-
ligent." This is the true ground to assign for the genuine
scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture,
viewed simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a worthy
ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to
describe it.
But there is of culture another view, in which not solely
the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they
are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears
as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love
of our neighbour, the impulses toward action, help, and
beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing
human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the
noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than
we found it motives eminently such as are called social
come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main
and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described
not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its
origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfec-
tion. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of
the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the
moral and social passion for doing good. As, in the first
view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's
words, " To render an intelligent being yet more intelli-
gent! " so, in the second view of it, there is no better
motto which it can have than these words of Bishop
Wilson: "To make reason and the will of God prevail! "
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be
overhasty in determining what reason and the will of God
say, because its turn is for acting rather than thinking, and
it wants to be beginning to act; and whereas it is apt to
take its own conceptions, which proceed from its own
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 403
state of development and share in all the imperfections
and immaturities of this, for a basis of action. What dis-
tinguishes culture is that it is possessed by the scientific
passion as well as by the passion of doing good; that it
demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God,
and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to
substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no
action or institution can be salutary and stable which is
not based on reason and the will of God, it is not so
bent on acting and instituting, even with the great aim
of diminishing human error and misery ever before its
thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and insti-
tuting are of little use unless we know how and what we
ought to act and to institute.
This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching
than that other, which is founded solely on the scientific
passion for knowing. But it needs times of faith and
ardour, times when the intellectual horizon is opening and
widening all round us, to flourish in. And is not the close
and bounded intellectual horizon within which we have
long lived and moved now lifting up, and are not new
lights finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a
long time there was no passage for them to make their
way in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of
adapting the world's action to them. Where was the hope
of making reason and the will of God prevail among peo-
ple who had a routine which they had christened reason
and the will of God, in which they were inextricably
bound, and beyond which they had no power of looking?
But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine
social, political, religious has wonderfully yielded; the
iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully
yielded. The danger now is not that people should ob-
stinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to
pass for reason and the will of God, but either that they
should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too
easily, or else that they should underrate the importance
of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action
for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make
reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is
the moment for culture to be of service, culture which
4 4 ARNOLD
believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, be-
lieves in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection,
and is no longer debarred by a rigid, invincible exclusion
of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas,
simply because they are new.
The moment this view of culture is seized, the mo-
ment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour to see
things as they are, to draw toward a knowledge of the
universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at
in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go along
with or his misery to go counter to to learn, in short, the
will of God the moment, I say, culture is considered not
merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, but as the
endeavour, also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and
beneficent character of culture becomes manifest. The
mere endeavour to see and learn the truth for our own
personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for mak-
ing it prevail, a preparing the way for this, which always
serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame
absolutely in itself, and not only in its caricature and de-
generation. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame,
and disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because
in comparison with this wider endeavour of such great and
plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable.
And religion, the greatest and most important of the
efforts by which the human race has manifested its im-
pulse to perfect itself religion, that voice of the deepest
human experience does not only enjoin and san'ction the
aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting
ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it
prevail; but also, in determining generally in what human
perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identi-
cal with that which culture culture seeking the deter-
mination of this question through all the voices of human
experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science,
poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order
to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution
likewise reaches. Religion says: " The kingdom of God is
within you"; and culture, in like manner, places human
perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and pre-
dominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 405
our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing efficacy
and in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of
thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity,
wealth, and happiness of human nature. As I have said
on a former occasion: " It is in making endless additions
to self, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless
growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human
race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an in-
dispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." Not
a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming,
is the character of perfection as culture conceives it; and
here, too, it coincides with religion.
And because men are all members of one great whole,
and the sympathy which is in human nature will not allow
one member to be indifferent to the rest or to have a
perfect welfare independent of the rest, the expansion of
our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture
forms, must be a general expansion. Perfection, as cul-
ture conceives it, is not possible while the individual re-
mains isolated. The individual is required, under pain of
being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if he
disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march to-
ward perfection, to be continually doing all he can to en-
large and increase the volume of the human stream sweep-
ing thitherward. And here, once more, culture lays on
us the same obligation as religion, which says, as Bishop
Wilson has admirably put it, that " to promote the king-
dom of God is to increase and hasten one's own hap-
piness."
But, finally, perfection as culture from a thoroughly
disinterested study of human nature and human experi-
ence learns to conceive it is a harmonious expansion of
all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human
nature, and is not consistent with the over-development
of any one power at the expense of the rest. Here culture
goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived
by us.
If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of har-
monious perfection, general perfection, and perfection
which consists in becoming something rather than in hav-
ing something, in an inward condition of the mind and
4 o6 ARNOLD
spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances it is clear
that culture, instead of being the frivolous and useless
thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison,
and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very
important function to fulfil for mankind. And this func-
tion is particularly important in our modern world, of
which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree
than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical
and external, and tends constantly to become more so.
But above all in our own country has culture a weighty
part to perform, because here that mechanical character,
which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown
in the most eminent degree. Indeed, nearly all the char-
acters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them,
meet in this country with some powerful tendency which
thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of per-
fection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at
variance with the mechanical and material civilization in
esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in
esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a general
expansion of the human family is at variance with our
strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the un-
restrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim
of " every man for himself." Above all, the idea of per-
fection as a harmonious expansion of human nature is at
variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude
for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense
energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen
to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve
in this country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to
have, a hard time of it, for they will much oftener be re-
garded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spurious
Jeremiahs than as friends and benefactors. That, however,
will not prevent their doing in the end good service if they
persevere. And, meanwhile, the mode of action they have
to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against,
ought to be made quite clear for every one to see, who
may be willing to look at the matter attentively and dis-
passionately.
Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger;
often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 407
end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all,
is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a value
in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what
is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery?
what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but
machinery? what are, even, religious organizations but
machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accus-
tomed to speak of these things as if they were precious
ends in themselves, and therefore had some of the char-
acters of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have
before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for
proving the greatness and happiness of England as she is,
and for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. Mr.
Roebuck is never weary of reiterating this argument of
his, so I do not know why I should be weary of noticing
it. " May not every man in England say what he likes? "
Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is
quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he
likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspira-
tions of culture, which is the study of perfection, are not
satisfied unless what men say, when they may say what
they like, is worth saying has good in it, and more good
than bad. In the same way the " Times," replying to
some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour
of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that
every one should be free to do and look just as he likes.
But culture indefatigably tries not to make what each raw
person may like the rule by which he fashions himself,
but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beau-
tiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person
to like that.
And in the same way with respect to railroads and
coal. Every one must have observed the strange language
current during the late discussions as to the possible fail-
ures of our supplies of coal. Our coal, thousands of peo-
ple were saying, is the real basis of our national greatness;
if our coal runs short, there is an end of the greatness
of England. But what is greatness? culture makes us
ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite
love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of
possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and
4 o8
ARNOLD
admiration. If England were swallowed up by the sea
to-morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence,
would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of
mankind would most, therefore, show the evidences of
having possessed greatness the England of the last
twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of
splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our in-
dustrial operations depending on coal, were very little de-
veloped? Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind it
must be which makes us talk of things like coal or iron
as constituting the greatness of England, and how salutary
a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and
thus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing stand-
ards of perfection that are real!
Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works
for material advantage are directed, the commonest of
commonplaces tells us how men are always apt to regard
wealth as a precious end in itself; and certainly they have
never been so apt thus to regard it as they are in England
at the present time. Never did people believe anything
more firmly than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present
day believe that our greatness and welfare are proved by
our being so very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it
helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection,
to regard wealth but as machinery, and not only to say
as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machin-
ery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it
were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds
by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the pres-
ent, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The peo-
ple who believe most that our greatness and welfare are
proved by our being very rich, and who most give their
lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very
people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: " Con-
sider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their
manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them atten-
tively; observe the literature they read, the things which
give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of
their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of
their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth hav-
ing with the condition that one was to become just like
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 409
these people by having it? " And thus culture begets a
dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible value in
stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy
and industrial community, and which saves the future, as
one may hope, from being vulgarized, even if it can not
save the present.
Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, are
things which are nowhere treated in such an unintelli-
gent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. Both are
really machinery; yet how many people all around us do
we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them! Why,
one has heard people, fresh from reading certain articles
of the " Times " on the Registrar-General's returns of mar-
riages and births in this country, who would talk of our
large English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they
had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritori-
ous in them; as if the British Philistine would have only
to present himself before the Great Judge with his twelve
children in order to be received among the sheep as a
matter of right!
But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are not
to be classed with wealth and population as mere machin-
ery; they have a more real and essential value. True; but
only as they are more intimately connected with a perfect
spiritual condition than wealth or population are. The
moment we disjoin them from a perfect spiritual condi-
tion, and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their
own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of them
becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our worship of
wealth and population, and as unintelligent and vulgarizing
a worship as that is. Every one with anything like an
adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly marked
this subordination to higher and spiritual ends of the cul-
tivation of bodily vigour and activity. " Bodily exercise
profiteth little; but godliness is profitable unto all things,"
says the author of the " Epistle to Timothy." And the
utilitarian Franklin says just as explicitly, " Eat and drink
such an exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy
body, in reference to the services of the mind." But the
point of view of culture, keeping the mark of human per-
fection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning to
4 , ARNOLD
this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it,
a special and limited character, this point of view, I say,
of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus: " It
is a sign of d<f>vfa," says he that is, of a nature not finely
tempered " to give yourself up to things which relate to
the body; to make, for instance, a great fuss about exer-
cise, a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking,
a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about riding. All
these things ought to be done merely by the way; the
formation of the spirit and character must be our real
concern." This is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek
word ctyvta, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the
notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a
harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the char-
acters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which
unites " the two noblest of things " as Swift, who of
one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too little, most
happily calls them in his " Battle of the Books " " the
two noblest of things, sweetness and light." The evfafa
is the man who tends toward sweetness and light; the
</>i"79, on the other hand, is our Philistine. The immense
spiritual significance of the Greeks is due to their having
been inspired with this central and happy idea of the essen-
tial character of human perfection; and Mr. B right's mis-
conception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin,
comes itself, after all, from this wonderful significance of
the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our
education, and is in itself a kind of homage to it.
In thus making sweetness and light to be characters
of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows
one law with poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our
population, and our industrialism, many among us rely
upon our religious organizations to save us. I have called
religion a yet more important manifestation of human
nature than poetry, because it has worked on a broader
scale for perfection, and with greater masses of men. But
the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all
its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true
and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success
that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our ani-
mality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
411
which is the dominant idea of religion has been enabled
to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious
idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other.
The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which re-
ligion and poetry are one, in which the idea of beauty
and of a human nature perfect on all sides adds to itself a
religious and devout energy, and works in the strength
of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest and
instructiveness for us, though it was as, having regard
to the human race in general and, indeed, having regard
to the Greeks themselves, we must own a premature
attempt, an attempt which for success needed the moral
and religious fibre in humanity to be more braced and
developed than it had yet been. But Greece did not err
in having the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete
human perfection so present and paramount. It is impos-
sible to have this idea too present and paramount; only,
the moral fibre must be braced too. And we, because we
have braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in
the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, har-
mony, and complete human perfection is wanting or mis-
apprehended among us; and evidently it is wanting or
misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we do
on our religious organizations, which in themselves do
not and can not give us this idea, and think we have done
enough if we make them spread and prevail, then, I say,
we fall into our common fault of over-valuing machinery.
Nothing is more common than for people to confound
the inward peace and satisfaction which follows the sub-
duing of the obvious faults of our animality with what I
may call absolute inward peace and satisfaction the peace
and satisfaction which are reached as we draw near to
complete spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral per-
fection, or rather to relative moral perfection. No people
in the world have done more and struggled more to attain
this relative moral perfection than our English race has.
For no people in the world has the command to resist the
devil, to overcome the wicked one, in the nearest and
most obvious sense of those words, had such a pressing
force and reality. And we have had our reward, not only
in the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to
ARNOLD
this command has brought us, but also, and far more, in
great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me few
things are more pathetic than to see people, on the
strength of the inward peace and satisfaction which their
rudimentary efforts toward perfection have brought them,
employ, concerning their incomplete perfection and the
religious organizations within which they have found it,
language which properly applies only to complete perfec-
tion, and is a far-off echo of the human soul's prophecy of
it. Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in
abundance with this grand language. And very freely do
they use it; yet it is really the severest possible criticism
of such an incomplete perfection as alone we have yet
reached through our religious organizations.
The impulse of the English race toward moral devel-
opment and self-conquest has nowhere so powerfully
manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritan-
ism found so adequate an expression as in the religious
organization of the Independents. The modern Independ-
ents have a newspaper, the " Nonconformist," written
with great sincerity and ability. The motto, the standard,
the profession of faith which this organ of theirs carries
aloft, is: " The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestant-
ism of the Protestant Religion." There is sweetness and
light, and an ideal of complete harmonious human per-
fection! One need not go to culture and poetry to find
language to judge it. Religion, with its instinct for per-
fection, supplies language to judge it language, too,
which is in our mouths every day. " Finally, be of one
mind, united in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal
which judges the Puritan ideal: "The Dissidence of Dis-
sent and the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion! "
And religious organizations like this are what people be-
lieve in, rest in, and give their lives for! Such, I say, is
the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection,
of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality,
that the religious organization which has helped us to do
it can seem to us something precious, salutary, and to be
propagated, even when it wears such a brand of imperfec-
tion on its forehead as this. And men have got such a
habit of giving to the language of religion a special appli-
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
413
cation, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemna-
tion which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of
their religious organizations they have no ear; they are
sure to cheat themselves and to explain this condemnation
away. They can only be reached by the criticism which
culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be sophis-
ticated, and resolutely testing these organizations by the
ideal of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies
to them.
But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again
and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the neces-
sary first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the subdu-
ing of the great obvious faults of our animality, which
it is the glory of these religious organizations to have
helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They
have often been without the virtues as well as the faults
of the Puritan; it has been one of their dangers that they
so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much neglected
the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, exculpate
them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in
morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have
been punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been
rewarded for his performance. They have been punished
wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness
and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides,
remains the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puri-
tan's ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate,
although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded.
Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fa-
thers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection are
rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare
or Virgil souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that
in human nature is most humane, were eminent accom-
panying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable
company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them!
In the same way let us judge the religious organizations
which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good
and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do
not fail to let us see clearly that their idea of human per-
fection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence
of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant Re-
4 , 4 ARNOLD
ligion will never bring humanity to its true goal. As I
said with regard to wealth " Let us look at the life of
those who live in and for it " so I say with regard to
the religious organizations. Look at the life imaged in
such a newspaper as the " Nonconformist " a life of jeal-
ousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, open-
ings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal
of a human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring
with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection!
Another newspaper, representing, like the " Noncon-
formist," one of the religious organizations of this country,
was a short time ago giving an account of the crowd at
Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the vice and hide-
ousness which was to be seen in that crowd; and then the
writer turned suddenly round upon Professor Huxley and
asked him how he proposed to cure all this vice and hide-
ousness without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask
the asker this question: And how do you propose to cure
it with such a religion as yours? How is the ideal of a
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so nar-
row, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal of
human perfection, as is the life of your religious organiza-
tion as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and transform
all this vice and hideousness? Indeed, the strongest plea
for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the clear-
est proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection
held by the religious organizations expressing, as I have
said, the most widespread effort which the human race
has yet made after perfection is to be found in the state
of our life and society with these in possession of it, and
having been in possession of it I know not how many
hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious
organization or other; we all call ourselves, in the sublime
and aspiring language of religion which I have before
noticed, children of God. Children of God; it is an im-
mense pretension! and how are we to justify it? By the
works which we do, and the words which we speak. And
the work which we collective children of God do, our
grand centre of life, our city which we have builded for
us to dwell in, is London! London, with its unutterable ex-
ternal hideousness, and with its internal canker of " publice
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 415
egestas, privatim opulentia " to use the words which Sal-
lust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome unequalled in
the world! The word, again, which we children of God
speak, the voice which most hits our collective thought,
the newspaper with the largest circulation in England,
nay, with the largest circulation in the whole world, is the
" Daily Telegraph " ! I say that when our religious organi-
zations which I admit to express the most considerable
effort after perfection that our race has yet made land
us in no better result than this, it is high time to examine
carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it does
not leave out of account sides and forces of human nature
which we might turn to great use; whether it would not
be more operative if it were more complete. And I say
that the English reliance on our religious organizations
and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand,
is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity,
on population, on coal, on wealth mere belief in machin-
ery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counter-
acted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and
on drawing the human race onward to a more complete,
a harmonious perfection.
Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of per-
fection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of
God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude
toward all this machinery, even while it insists that it is
machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men do them-
selves by their blind belief in some machinery or other
whether it is wealth and industrialism, or whether it is the
cultivation of bodily strength and activity, or whether it
is a political organization, or whether it is a religious
organization oppose with might and main the tendency
to this or that political and religious organization, or to
games and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrial-
ism, and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which
sweetness and light give, and which is one of the rewards
of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see that
a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a preparation
for something in the future, salutary, and yet that the
generations or individuals who obey this tendency are sac-
rificed to it, that they fall short of the hope of perfection
ARNOLD
by following it; and that its mischiefs are to be criticised,
lest it should take too firm a hold and last after it has
served its purpose.
Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris
and others have pointed out the same thing how neces-
sary is the present great movement toward wealth and in-
dustrialism, in order to lay broad foundations of material
well-being for the society of the future. The worst of
these justifications is that they are generally addressed to
the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement
in question; at all events, that they are always seized with
the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as
quite justifying their life; and that thus they tend to
harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the neces-
sity of the movement toward fortune-making and exag-
gerated industrialism, readily allows that the future may
derive benefit from it; but insists, at the same time, that
the passing generations of industrialists, forming, for the
most part, the stout main body of Philistinism are sacri-
ficed to it. In the same way the result of all the games
and sports which occupy the passing generation of boys
and young men may be the establishment of a better and
sounder physical type for the future to work with. Cul-
ture does not set itself against the games and sports; it
congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good
use of its improved physical basis; but it points out that
our passing generation of boys and young men is, mean-
time, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to de-
velop the moral fibre of the English race, nonconformity
to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination over men's
minds, and to prepare the way for freedom of thought in
the distant future; still, culture points out that the har-
monious perfection of generations of Puritans and Non-
conformists has been, in consequence, sacrificed. Free-
dom of speech may be necessary for the society of the
future, but the young lions of the " Daily Telegraph " in
the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in
his country's government may be necessary for the society
of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Brad-
laugh are sacrificed.
Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults, and
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
417
she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in
want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford,
brought up amid the beauty and sweetness of that beau-
tiful place, have not failed to seize one truth the truth
that beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a
complete human perfection. When I insist on this I am
all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that
this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment
against hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom
of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposi-
tion to so many triumphant movements. And the senti-
ment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and has
shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our
political battles, we have not carried our main points, we
have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not
marched victoriously with the modern world; but we have
told silently upon the mind of the country, we have pre-
pared currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' posi-
tion when it seems gained, we have kept up our own com-
munications with the future. Look at the course of the
great movement which shook Oxford to its centre some
thirty years ago! It was directed, as any one who reads
Dr. Newman's " Apology " may see, against what in one
word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism prevailed;
it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour;
it was necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail.
The Oxford movement was broken, it failed; our wrecks
are scattered on every shore:
" Quae regie in terris nostri non plena laboris? "
But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it,
and as it really broke the Oxford movement? It was the
great middle-class liberalism, which had for the cardinal
points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-
government, in politics; in the social sphere, free-trade,
unrestricted competition, and the making of large indus-
trial fortunes; in the religious sphere the Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion.
I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than
this were not opposed to the Oxford movement; but this
was the force which really beat it; this was the force
4 i8
ARNOLD
which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with; this was
the force which till only the other day seemed to be the
paramount force in this country, and to be in posses-
sion of the future; this was the force whose achievements
fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and
whose rule he was so horror-struck to see threatened.
And where is this great force of Philistinism now? It is
thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yester-
day, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly
appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge
fully, but which is certainly a wholly different force from
middle-class liberalism; different in its cardinal points of
belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It loves
and admires neither the legislation of middle-class Par-
liaments, nor the local self-government of middle-class
vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of middle-class
industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent
and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant religion.
I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its own
ideals are better; all I say is that they are wholly different.
And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling
created by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for
beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aver-
sion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-
class liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous
and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism
who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell
the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the
ground under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty
years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and
supersession? It is in this manner that the sentiment of
Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this
manner long may it continue to conquer!
In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and
there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have said that
the new and more democratic force which is now su-
perseding our old middle-class liberalism can not yet be
rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to form.
We hear promises of its giving us administrative reform,
law reform, reform of education, and I know not what;
but those promises come rather from its advocates, wish-
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
419
ing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for super-
seding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies
which it has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has
plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom culture
may with advantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal
of human perfection; that this is an inward spiritual activ-
ity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased
light, increased life, increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who
has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class lib-
eralism and the world of democracy, but who brings most
of his ideas from the world of middle-class liberalism in
which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith
in machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen are
so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class
liberalism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of
people who " appear to have no proper estimate of the
value of the franchise "; he leads his disciples to believe
what the Englishman is always too ready to believe that
the having a vote, like the having a large family, or a
large business, or large muscles, has in itself some edify-
ing and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else
he cries out to the democracy " the men," as he calls
them, " upon whose shoulders the greatness of England
rests " he cries out to them: " See what you have done!
I look over this country and see the cities you have built,
the railroads you have made, the manufactures you have
produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the great-
est mercantile navy the world has ever seen! I see that
you have converted by your labours what was once a
wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden; I know
that you have created this wealth, and are a nation whose
name is a word of power throughout all the world." Why,
this is just the very style of laudation with which Mr.
Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle
classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is the
same fashion of teaching a man to value himself not on
what he is, not on his progress in sweetness and light, but
on the number of the railroads he has constructed, or the
bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle
classes are told they have done it all with their energy,
self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they
420
ARNOLD
have done it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching
the democracy to put its trust in achievements of this kind
is merely training them to be Philistines to take the place
of the Philistines whom they are superseding; and they,
too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit down
at the banquet of the future without having on a wedding
garment, and nothing excellent can then come from them.
Those who know their besetting faults, those who have
watched them and listened to them, or those who will
read the instructive account recently given of them by one
of themselves, the " Journeyman Engineer," will agree
that the idea which culture sets before us of perfection
an increased spiritual activity, having for its characters in-
creased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased
sympathy is an idea which the new democracy needs far
more than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or
the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances.
Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for
leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism,
but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of
democracy, though in this country they are novel and
untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism.
Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of ren-
ovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in
black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest
details a rational society for the future these are the ways
of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples
of Comte one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old friend of
mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly
expressing my respect for his talents and character are
among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in
paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile
to culture, and from a natural enough motive, for culture
is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the
signal marks of Jacobinism: its fierceness, and its addic-
tion to an abstract system. Culture is always assigning
to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent
of human destiny than their friends like. A current in
people's minds sets toward new ideas; people are dissatis-
fied with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo-
Saxon ideas, or any other; and some man, some Bentham
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
421
or Comte, who has the real merit of having early and
strongly felt and helped the new current, but who brings
plenty of narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feel-
ing and help of it, is credited with being the author of the
whole current, the fit person to be intrusted with its regu-
lation and to guide the human race.
The excellent German historian of the mythology of
Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome under
the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light,
healing, and reconciliation, will have us observe that it was
not so much the Tarquins who brought to Rome the new
worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman
people which set powerfully at that time toward a new
worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin
and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture
directs our attention to the natural current there is in
human affairs, and to its continual working, and will not
let us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings.
It makes us see not only his good side, but also how much
in him was of necessity limited and transient; nay, it even
feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased freedom and of an
ampler future, in so doing.
I remember, when I was under the influence of a mind
to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man
who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a
man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America
has yet produced Benjamin Franklin I remember the
relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's
imperturbable common sense, I came upon a project of his
for a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old
version, the style of which, says Franklin, has become
obsolete, and thence less agreeable. " I give," he con-
tinues, " a few verses, which may serve as a sample of the
kind of version I would recommend." We all recollect
the famous verse in our translation : " Then Satan an-
swered the Lord and said, * Doth Job fear God for
naught? ' Franklin makes this: " Does your Majesty
imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of personal
attachment and affection? " I well remember how, when
first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said
to myself, " After all, there is a stretch of humanity be-
27
422 ARNOLD
yond Franklin's victorious good sense!" So, after hear-
ing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern
society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the
rulers of our future, I open the " Deontology." There I
read: " While Xenophon was writing his history, and
Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talk-
ing nonsense under pretence of talking wisdom and moral-
ity. This morality of theirs consisted in words; this wis-
dom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every
man's experience." From the moment of reading that I
am delivered from the bondage of Bentham! the fanati-
cism of his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the
inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the rule
of human society for perfection.
Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a
system, of disciples, of a school; with men like Comte, or
the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much it may
find to admire in these personages, or in some of them, it
nevertheless remembers the text, " Be not ye called
Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But
Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on
from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached
perfection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for
perfection, that they may with the more authority recast
the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture eter-
nally passing onward and seeking is an impertinence
and an offence. But culture, just because it resists this
tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limita-
tions and errors of his own along with the true ideas of
which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobin-
ism itself a service.
So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past, and
of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past,
can not away with the inexhaustible indulgences proper
to culture, the consideration of circumstances, the severe
judgment of actions joined to the merciful judgment of
persons. ' The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr.
Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive!"
Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and he
complains that the man of culture stops him with a " turn
for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
423
in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except for " a
critic of new books or a professor of belles-lettres? " Why,
it is of use because, in the presence of the fierce exaspera-
tion which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses through
the whole production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks
that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human
nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because, like
religion that other effort after perfection it testifies
that where bitter envying and strife are there is confusion
and every evil work.
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweet-
ness and light. He who works for sweetness and light
works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He
who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works
only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, cul-
ture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion
for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater! the
passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we
all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and
light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkin-
dled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and
light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work
for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from say-
ing that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness
and light for as many as possible. Again and again I have
insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity,
how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how
those are the flowering times for literature and art and all
the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow
of life and thought, when the whole of society is in the full-
est measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, in-
telligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and real
beauty; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people
will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intel-
lectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think
proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordi-
nary popular literature is an example of this way of work-
ing on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoc-
trinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments con-
stituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our
religious and political organizations give an example of
424 ARNOLD
this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither
way; but culture works differently. It does not try to
teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try
to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-
made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away
with classes; to make the best that has been thought and
known in the world current everywhere; to make all men
live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they
may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely nourished
and not bound by them.
This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the
true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are
those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making
prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other,
the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have
laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, un-
couth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to hu-
manize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cul-
tivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge
and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of
sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the
middle ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence
the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard ex-
cited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the
end of the last century; and their services to Germany
were in this way inestimably precious. Generations will
pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works
far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder
will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these
two men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusi-
asm such as the names of the most gifted masters will
hardly awaken. And why? Because they humanized
knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and
intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse
sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God
prevail. With St. Augustine they said: " Let us not leave
thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou
didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of
light from" darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed
in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth,
mark the division of night and day, and announce the
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 425
revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and
the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth;
and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when
thou shalt send forth labourers into the harvest sown by
other hands than theirs; when thou shalt send forth new
labourers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be
not yet."
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
BY
GAIL HAMILTON
MARY ABBY DODGE, who is known in literature only as "Gail Ham-
ilton," was born in Hamilton, Mass., in 1833. She became a teacher
in Hartford, and afterward was a governess in the family of Gamaliel
Bailey, editor of the " National Era," in Washington, and was a contribu-
tor to that paper. She published her first book in 1862, and the others
followed in rapid succession for fifteen years. They were mostly collec-
tions of essays on modern American life, and their vivacity and forceful-
ness secured for them quick recognition and wide circulation. She was
a cousin of Mrs. James G. Elaine, and during a large part of Mr. Elaine's
life in Washington she was a member of his household. He bequeathed
all his papers to her, and her last work was his biography. She organ-
ized a class for Eible study in Washington, of which she was the leader,
and one of her latest books is a history of it. During the civil war her
pen was used vigorously in the national cause, and afterward she wrote
much for the reviews on political and social subjects. She died in her
native town, August 17, 1896. The essay chosen for this place is from
her volume entitled "Country Living and Country Thinking," and is
used by the courtesy of her surviving sister.
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
IF things would not run into each other so, it would be
a thousand times easier and a million times pleasanter
to get on in the world. Let the sheepiness be set on
one side and the goatiness on the other, and immediately
you know where you are. It is not necessary to ask that
there be any increase of the one or any diminution of the
other, but only that each shall pre-empt its own territory
and stay there. Milk is good, and water is good, but don't
set the milk-pail under the pump. Pleasure softens pain,
but pain embitters pleasure; and who would not rather
have his happiness concentrated into one memorable day,
that shall gleam and glow through a lifetime, than have it
spread out over a dozen comfortable, commonplace, hum-
drum forenoons and afternoons, each one as like the others
as two peas in a pod? Since the law of compensation ob-
tains, I suppose it is the best law for us; but if it had been
left with me, I should have made the clever people rich
and handsome, and left poverty and ugliness to the stupid
people; because don't you see? the stupid people won't
know they are ugly, and won't care if they are poor, but
the clever people will be hampered and tortured. I would
have given the good wives to the good husbands, and
made drunken men marry drunken women. Then there
would have been one family exquisitely happy, instead of
two struggling against misery. I would have made the
rose-stem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles.
I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's head,
and given the peacock the nightingale's voice, and not
set everything so at half and half.
But that is the way it is. We find the world made to
our hand. The wise men marry the foolish virgins, and
the splendid virgins marry dolts, and matters in general
28 429
GAIL HAMILTON
are so mixed up that the -choice lies between nice things
about spoiled, and vile things that are not so bad after
all, and it is hard to tell sometimes which you like best,
or which you loathe least.
I expect to lose every friend I have in the world by
the publication of this paper except the dunces who are
impaled in it. They will never read it, and if they do, will
never suspect I mean them; while the sensible and true
friends, who do me good and not evil all the days of their
lives, will think I am driving at their noble hearts, and
will at once haul off and leave me inconsolable. Still, I
am going to write it. You must open the safety-valve
once in a while, even if the steam does whiz and shriek,
or there will be an explosion, which is fatal, while the
whizzing and shrieking are only disagreeable.
Doubtless friendship has its advantages and its pleas-
ures; doubtless hostility has its isolations and its revenges;
still, if called upon to choose once for all between friends
and foes, I think, on the whole, I should cast my vote for
the foes. Twenty enemies will not do you the mischief of
one friend. Enemies you always know where to find.
They are in fair and square perpetual hostility, and you
keep your armour on and your sentinels posted; but with
friends you are inveigled into a false security, and, before
you know it, your honour, your modesty, your delicacy
are scudding before the gales. Moreover, with your friend
you can never make reprisals. If your enemy attacks you,
you can always strike back and hit hard. You are ex-
pected to defend yourself against him to the top of your
bent. He is your legal opponent in honourable warfare.
You can pour hot shot into him with murderous vigour,
and the more he writhes the better you feel. In fact, it
is rather refreshing to measure swords once in a while
with such a one. You like to exert your power and keep
yourself in practice. You do not rejoice so much in over-
coming your enemy as in overcoming. If a marble statue
could show fight, you would just as soon fight it; but as
it can not, you take something that can, and something,
besides, that has had the temerity to attack you, and so
has made a lawful target of itself. But against your friend
your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has dis-
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
431
gusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most
Christianly done. You can not hurl a thunderbolt, or pull
a trigger, or lisp a syllable, against those amiable mon-
sters who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all over
you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly
sigh for a good, stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under
any and every circumstance, will design you harm, and on
whom you can lavish your lusty blows with a hearty will
and a clear conscience.
Your enemy keeps clear of you. He neither grants
nor claims favours. He awards you your rights no more,
no less and demands the same from you. Consequently
there is no friction. Your friend, on the contrary, is con-
tinually getting himself tangled up with you " because he
is your friend." I have heard that Shelley was never better
pleased than when his associates made free with his coats,
boots, and hats for their own use, and that he appropriated
their property in the same way. Shelley was a poet, and
perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them, probably, in
a state of pure intellect. I am not a poet; I look at people
in the concrete. The most obvious thing about my friends
is their avoirdupois; and I prefer that they should wear
their own cloaks and suffer me to wear mine. There is no
neck in the world that I want my collar to span except
my own. It is very exasperating to me to go to my book-
case and miss a book of which I am in immediate and
pressing need, because an intimate friend has carried it
off without asking leave, on the score of his intimacy. I
have not, and do not wish to have, any alliance that shall
abrogate the eighth commandment. A great mistake is
lying round loose hereabouts a mistake fatal to many
friendships that did run well. The common fallacy is that
intimacy dispenses with the necessity of politeness. The
truth is just the opposite of this. The more points of
contact there are, the more danger of friction there is, and
the more carefully should people guard against it. If you
see a man only once a month, it is not of so vital impor-
tance that you do not trench on his rights, tastes, or
whims. He can bear to be crossed or annoyed occasion-
ally. If he does not have a very high regard for you it
is comparatively unimportant, because your paths are gen-
GAIL HAMILTON
erally so diverse. But you and the. man with whom you
dine every day have it in your power to make each other
exceedingly uncomfortable. A very little dropping will
wear away rock if it only keep at it. The thing that you
would not think of, if it occurred only twice a year, be-
comes an intolerable burden when it happens twice a day.
This is where husbands and wives run aground. They
take too much for granted. If they would but see that
they have something to gain, something to save, as well
as something to enjoy, it would be better for them; but
they proceed on the assumption that their love is an in-
exhaustible tank, and not a fountain depending for its
supply on the stream that trickles into it. So, for every
little annoying habit, or weakness, or fault, they draw on
the tank, without being careful to keep the supply open,
till they awake one morning to find the pump dry, and,
instead of love, at best, nothing but a cold habit of com-
placence. On the contrary, the more intimate friends be-
come, whether married or unmarried, the more scrupu-
lously should they strive to repress in themselves every-
thing annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and
each other everything pleasing. While each should draw
on his love to neutralize the faults of his friend, it is sui-
cidal to draw on his friend's love to neutralize his own
faults. Love should be cumulative, since it can not be
stationary. If it does not increase it decreases. Love,
like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of most
exotic fragility. It must be constantly and tenderly cher-
ished. Every noxious and foreign element must be
carefully removed from it. All sunshine, and sweet airs,
and morning dews, and evening showers, must breathe
upon it perpetual fragrance, or it dies into a hideous
and repulsive deformity, fit only to be cast out and trod-
den under foot of men, while, properly cultivated, it is a
Tree of Life.
Your enemy keeps clear of you, not only in business,
but in society. If circumstances thrust him into contact
with you, he is curt and centrifugal. But your friend
breaks in upon your " saintly solitude " with perfect
equanimity. He never for a moment harbours a suspicion
that he can intrude, " because he is your friend." So he
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
433
drops in on his way to the office to chat half an hour over
the latest news. The half hour isn't much in itself. If it
were after dinner you wouldn't mind it; but after break-
fast every moment " runs itself in golden sands," and the
break in your time crashes a worse break in your temper.
" Are you busy? " asks the considerate wretch, adding
insult to injury. What can you do? Say yes, and wound
his self-love forever? But he has a wife and family. You
respect their feelings, smile and smile, and are villain
enough to be civil with your lips, and hide the poison of
asps under your tongue till you have a chance to relieve
your o'ercharged heart by shaking your fist in impotent
wrath at his retreating form. You will receive the reward
of your hypocrisy, as you richly deserve, for ten to one
he will drop in again when he comes back from his office,
and arrest you wandering in Dreamland in the beautiful
twilight. Delighted to find that you are neither reading
nor writing the absurd dolt! as if a man weren't at work
unless he be wielding a sledge-hammer! he will preach
out, and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of your
golden eventide, " because he is your friend." You don't
care whether he is judge or jury whether he talks sense
or nonsense; you don't want him to talk at all. You don't
want him there any way. You want to be alone. If you
don't, why are you sitting there in the deepening twilight?
If you wanted him, couldn't you send for him? Why don't
you go out into the drawing-room, where are music, and
lights, and gay people? What right have I to suppose
that, because you are not using your eyes, you are not
using your brain? What right have I to set myself up
as judge of the value of your time, and so rob you of per-
haps the most delicious hour in all your day, on pretence
that it is of no use to you? take a pound of flesh clean
out of your heart, and trip on my smiling way as if I
had not earned the gallows?
And what in Heaven's name is the good of all this
ceaseless talk? To what purpose are you wearied, ex-
hausted, dragged out and out to the very extreme of tenu-
ity? A sprightly badinage, a running fire of nonsense for
half an hour, a tramp over unfamiliar ground with a fa-
miliar guide, a discussion of something with somebody
GAIL HAMILTON
who knows all about it, or who, not knowing, wants to
learn from you, a pleasant interchange of commonplaces
with a circle of friends around the fire, at such hours as
you give to society; all this is not only tolerable, but
agreeable, often positively delightful; but to have an in-
different person, on no score but that of friendship, break
into your sacred presence, and suck your blood through
indefinite cycles of time, is an abomination. If he clatters
on an indifferent subject, you can do well enough for
fifteen minutes, buoyed up by the hope that he will pres-
ently have a fit, or be sent for, or come to some kind of
an end. But when you gradually open to the conviction
that vis inertise rules the hour, and the thing which has
been is that which shall be, you wax listless; your chariot-
wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole drags in the
mud, and you speedily wallow in unmitigated disgust. If
he broaches a subject on which you have a real and deep
living interest, you shrink from unbosoming yourself to
him. You feel that it would be sacrilege. He feels noth-
ing of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in his
cowhide brogans, and does not see that they are not whip-
cords. He pokes his gold-headed cane in among your
treasures, blind to the fact that you are clutching both
arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold may
reveal their whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up
in your shell, projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally
as a sign of continued vitality; but the pachyderm does
not withdraw, and you gradually lower into an indignation
smothered, fierce, intense.
Why, why, why will people inundate their unfortunate
victims with such "weak, washy, everlasting floods"?
Why will they haul everything out into the open day?
Why will they make the Holy of Holies common and un-
clean? Why will they be so ineffably stupid as not to see
that there is that which speech profanes? Why will they
lower their drag-nets into the unfathomable waters, in the
vain attempt to bring up your pearls and gems, whose
lustre would pale to ashes in the garish light, whose only
sparkle is in the deep-sea soundings? Procul, O procul
este, profani!
Oh, the matchless power of silence! There are words
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
435
that concentrate in themselves the glory of a lifetime, but
there is a silence that is more precious than they. Speech
ripples over the surface of life, but silence sinks into its
depths. Airy pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasant
words. Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and
are not. When the heart is cleft to its core, there is no
speech nor language.
Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve your
characters by coming into my house and sitting mute for
two hours. Heaven forbid that your blood should be
found on my skirts! but I believe I shall kill you if you do.
The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on you
heretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire
to conduct my electricity to the receptive and kindly earth;
but if you intrude upon my magnetisms without any such
life-preserver, your future in this world is not worth a
crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed that
your talk but bruised. The only people with whom it is
a joy to sit silent are the people with whom it is a joy to
talk. Clear out!
Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas of con-
stancy which are generated and cherished in its name, if
not by its agency. Your enemies are intense, but tem-
porary. Time wears off the edge of hostility. It is the
alembic in which offences are dissolved into thin air, and
a calm indifference reigns in their stead. But your friends
are expected to be a permanent arrangement. They are
not only a sore evil, but of long continuance. Adhesive-
ness seems to be the head and front, the bones and blood,
of their creed. It is not the direction of the quality, but
the quality itself, which they swear by. Only stick, it is
no matter what you stick to. Fall out with a man, and
you can kiss and be friends as soon as you like; the re-
cording angel will set it down on the credit side of his
books. Fall in, and you are expected to stay in, ad in-
finitum, ad nauseam. No matter what combination of
laws got you there, there you are, and there you must stay,
for better, for worse, till merciful Death you do part or
you are " fickle." You find a man entertaining for an
hour, a week, a concert, a journey, and presto! you are
saddled with him forever. What preposterous absurdity!
436
GAIL HAMILTON
Do but look at it calmly. You are thrown into contact
with a person, and, as in duty bound, you proceed to
fathom him, for every man is a possible revelation. In
the deeps of his soul there may lie unknown worlds for
you. Consequently you proceed at once to experiment
on him. It takes a little while to get your tackle in order.
Then the line begins to run off rapidly, and your eager
soul cries out: " Ah! what depth! What perpetual calmness
must be down below! What rest is here for all my tumult!
What a grand, vast nature is this!" Surely, surely, you
are on the high seas. Surely, you will now float serenely
down the eternities! But by-and-bye there is a kink. You
find that, though the line runs off so fast, it does not go
down it only floats out. A current has caught it and
bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You
have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is noth-
ing but a shallow little brook, that you can ford all the
year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer
heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy
little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop.
What are you going to do about it? You are going to
wind up your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as
the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale
the purple hills, till you come to water again, when you
will unroll your lead and line for another essay. Is that
fickleness? What else can you do? Must you launch
your bark on the unquiet stream, against whose pebbly
bottom the keel continually grates and rasps your nerves,
simply that your reputation suffer no detriment? Fickle-
ness? There was no fickleness about it. You were trying
an experiment which you had every right to try. As soon
as you were satisfied you stopped. If you had stopped
sooner you would have been unsatisfied. If you had
stopped later you would have been dissatisfied. It is a
criminal contempt of the magnificent possibilities of life
not to lay hold of " God's occasions floating by." It is an
equally criminal perversion of them to cling tenaciously
to what was only the simulacrum of an occasion. A man
will toil many days and nights among the mountains to
find an ingot of gold, which, found, he bears home with
infinite pains and just rejoicing; but he would be a fool
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
437
who should lade his mules with iron pyrites to justify his
labours, however severe.
Fickleness! what is it, that we make such an ado about
it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usuri-
ous interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The
other is only thus a virtue. " Fickle as the winds " is our
death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds un-
fkkle? Would a perpetual northeaster lay us open to
perpetual gratitude? or is a soft south gale to be orisoned
and vespered forevermore?
I am tired of this eternal prating of devotion and con-
stancy. It is senseless in itself and harmful in its tend-
encies. The dictate of reason is to treat men and women
as we do oranges. Suck all the juice out and then let
them go. Where is the good of keeping the peel and pulp-
cells till they get old, dry, and mouldy? Let them go,
and they will help feed the earthworms and bugs and
beetles, who can hardly find existence a continued ban-
quet, and fertilize the earth which will have you give be-
fore you receive. Thus they will ultimately spring up in
new and beautiful shapes. Clung to with constancy, they
stain your knife and napkin, impart a bad odour to your
dining room, and degenerate into something that is neither
pleasant to the eye nor good for food. I believe in a rota-
tion of crops, morally and socially, as well as agriculturally.
When you have taken the measure of a man, when you
have sounded him and know that you can not wade in
him more than ankle-deep, when you have got out of him
all that he has to yield for your soul's sustenance and
strength, what is the next thing to be done? Obviously,
pass him on; and turn you " to fresh woods and pastures
new." Do you work him an injury? By no means.
Friends that are simply glued on, and don't grow out of,
are little worth. He has nothing more for you, nor you
for him; but he may be rich in juices wherewithal to nour-
ish the heart of another man, and their two lives, set to-
gether, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result
shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of
foliage, and perfectness of fruit; while you and he would
only have languished into aridity and a stunted crab-tree.
For my part, I desire to sweep off my old friends with
438
GAIL HAMILTON
the old year, and begin the new with a clean record. It
is a measure absolutely necessary. The snake does not
put on his new skin over the old one. He sloughs off the
first, before he dons the second. He would be a very
clumsy serpent if he did not. One can not have successive
layers of friendships any more than the snake has succes-
sive layers of skins. One must adopt some system to guard
against a congestion of the heart from plethora of loves.
I go in for the much-abused, fair-weather, skin-deep, April-
shower friends the friends who will drop off if let alone;
who must be kept awake to be kept at all; who will talk
and laugh with you as long as it suits your respective
humours and you are prosperous and happy; the blessed
butterfly race who flutter about you June mornings, and
when the clouds lower, v and the drops patter, and the
rains descend, and the winds blow, will spread their gay
wings and float gracefully away to sunny southern lands,
where the skies are yet blue and the breezes violet-
scented. They are not only agreeable, but deeply wise.
So long as a man keeps his streamer flying, his sails set,
and his hull above water, it is pleasant to paddle along-
side; but when the sails split, the yards crack, and the
keel goes staggering down, by all means paddle off. Why
should you be submerged in his whirlpool? Will he drown
any more easily because you are drowning with him?
Lung is lung. He dies from want of air, not from want
of sympathy. When a poor fellow sits down among the
ashes, the best thing his friends can do is to stand afar
off. Job bore the loss of property, children, health, with
equanimity. Satan himself found his match there; and
for all his buffetings, Job sinned not, nor charged God
foolishly. But Job's three friends must needs make an
appointment together to come and mourn with him and to
comfort him, and after this Job opened his mouth, and
cursed his day and no wonder.
Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you that
is astonishing to contemplate. It is not that they know
your affairs, which he who runs may read, but they know
you. From a bit of bone, Cuvier could predicate a whole
animal, even to the hide and hair. Such moral naturalists
are your dear five hundred friends. It seems to yourself
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
439
that you are immeasurably reticent. You know, of a cer-
tainty, that you project only the smallest possible frag-
ment of yourself. You yield your university to the bond
of common brotherhood; but your individualism what it
is that makes you you withdraws itself naturally, invol-
untarily, inevitably, into the background, the dim distance
which their eyes can not penetrate. But, from the fraction
which you do project, they construct another you, call it
by your name, and pass it around for the real, the actual
you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims,
to keep them at a distance, and they fancy this to be
your everyday equipment. They think your life holds
constant carnival. It is astonishing what ideas spring up
in the heads of sensible people. There are those who
assume that a person can never have had any grief, unless
somebody has died, or he has been disappointed in love,
not knowing that every avenue of joy lies open to the
tramp of pain. They see the flashing coronet on the
queen's brow, and they infer a diamond woman, not reck-
ing of the human heart that throbs wildly out of sight.
They see the foam-crest on the wave, and picture an At-
lantic Ocean of froth, and not the solemn sea that stands
below in eternal equipoise. You turn to them the lumi-
nous crescent of your life, and they call it the whole round
globe; and so they love you with a love that is agate, not
pearl, because what they love in you is something in-
finitely below the highest. They love you level; they have
never scaled your heights nor fathomed your depths. And
when they talk of you as familiarly as if they had taken
out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them inside
out, and wrung them, and shaken them; when they prate
of your transparency and openness, the abandonment with
which you draw aside the curtain and reveal the inmost
thoughts of your heart, you, who are to yourself a miracle
and a mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. They
are on the wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in
peace. They are indiscriminate and satisfied. They do
not know the relation of what appears to what is. If they
chance to skirt along the coasts of your Purple Island, it
will be only chance, and they will not know it. You may
close your portholes, lower your drawbridge, and make
440 GAIL HAMILTON
merry, for they will never come within gunshot of the
" Round Tower of your heart/'
There is no such thing as knowing a man intimately.
Every soul is, for the greater part of its mortal life, isolated
from every other. Whether it dwell in the Garden of
Eden or the Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone. Not only
do we jostle against the street crowd unknowingly and
unknown, but we go out and come in, we lie down and
rise up, with strangers. Jupiter and Neptune sweep the
heavens not more unfamiliar to us than the worlds that
circle our own hearthstone. Day after day, and year after
year, a person moves by your side; he sits at the same
table; he reads the same books; he kneels in the same
church. You know every hair of his head, every trick of
his lips, every tone of his voice; you can tell him far off
by his gait. Without seeing him you recognise his step,
his knock, his laugh. " Know him? Yes, I have known
him these twenty years." No, you don't know him. You
know his gait, and hair, and voice. You know what
preacher he hears, what ticket he voted, and what were his
last year's expenses; but you don't know him. He sits
quietly in his chair, but he is in the temple. You speak
to him; his soul comes out into the vestibule to answer
you, and returns and the gates are shut; therein you can
not enter. You were discussing the state of the country;
but when you ceased he opened a postern-gate, went down
a bank, and launched on a sea over whose waters you have
no boat to sail, no star to guide. You have loved and rev-
erenced him. He has been your concrete of truth and
nobleness. Unwittingly you touch a secret spring, and a
Bluebeard Chamber stands revealed. You give no sign;
you meet and part as usual; but a Dead Sea rolls between
you two forevermore.
It must be so. Not even to the nearest and dearest
can one unveil the secret place where his soul abideth, so
that there shall be no more any winding ways or hidden
chambers; but to your indifferent neighbour, what blind
alleys, and deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains! To
him who " touches the electric chain wherewith you're
darkly bound," your soul sends back an answering thrill.
One little window is opened, and there is short parley.
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS
441
Your ships speak each other now and then in welcome
though imperfect communication; but immediately you
strike out again into the great, shoreless sea, over which
you must sail forever alone. You may shrink from the
far-reaching solitudes of your heart, but no other foot than
yours can tread them, save those
" That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, to the bitter cross."
Be thankful that it is so that only His eye sees whose
hand formed. If we could look in, we should be appalled
at the vision. The worlds that glide around us are mys-
teries too high for us. We can not attain to them. The
naked soul is a sight too awful for man to look at and
live. There are individuals whose topography we would
like to know a little better, and there is danger that we
crash against each other while roaming around in the
dark; but, for all that, would we not have the constitu-
tion broken up. Somebody says, " In heaven there will
be no secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable.
(If that were a revelation from the King of Heaven, of
course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though to-
ward heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I
do not know that Tom, Dick, and Harry's notions of it
have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity
would destroy all individuality, and undermine the founda-
tions of society. Clairvoyance if there be any such thing
always seemed to me a stupid impertinence. When
people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front
door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't
wish them to climb in at the window, or creep through the
pantry, or, worst of all, float through the keyhole, and
catch me in undress. So I believe that in all worlds
thoughts will be the subjects of volition; more accurately
expressed when expression is desired, but just as entirely
suppressed when we will suppression.
After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from a preva-
lent confusion of ideas as to what constitutes a man your
friend. Friendship may stand for that peaceful compla-
cence which you feel toward all well-behaved people who
wear clean collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a
GAIL HAMILTON
very good meaning, if everybody will subscribe to it. But
sundry of these well-behaved people will mistake your
civility and complacence for a recognition of special affin-
ity, and proceed at once to frame an alliance offensive and
defensive while the sun and the moon shall endure. Oh,
the barnacles that cling to your keel in such waters! The
inevitable result is that they win your intense rancour. You
would feel a genial kindliness toward them if they would
be satisfied with that; but they lay out to be your spe-
cialty. They infer your innocent little inch to be the
standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad you to frenzy.
I mean you, you desperate little horror, who nearly de-
throned my reason six years ago! I always meant to have
my revenge, and here I impale you before the public.
For three months you fastened yourself upon me, and I
could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you
were an honest and excellent man? Did I not, twenty
times a day, wish you had been a villain, who had insulted
me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might have the un-
speakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you
added to your crimes virtue. Villainy had no part or lot
in you. You were a member of a church, in good and
regular standing; you had graduated with all the honours
worth mentioning; you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault
that I knew of; and you were so thoroughly good and re-
pulsive that you were a great grief to me. Do you think,
you dear, disinterested wretch, that I have forgotten how
you were continually putting yourself to horrible incon-
veniences on my account? Do you think I am not now
filled with remorse for the aversion that rooted itself in-
eradicably in my soul, and which now gloats over you
as you stand in the pillory where my own hands have fas-
tened you? But can Nature be crushed forever? Did I
not ruin my nerves, and seriously injure my temper, by
the overpowering pressure I laid upon them to keep them
quiet when you were by? Could I not, by the sense of
coming ill through all my quivering frame, presage your
advent as exactly as the barometer heralds the approach-
ing storm? Those three months of agony are little atoned
for by this late vengeance; but go in peace!
Mysterious are the ways of friendship. It is not a mat-
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS 443
ter of reason or of choice, but of magnetisms. You can
not always give the premises nor the argument, but the
conclusion is a palpable and stubborn fact. Abana and
Pharpar may be broad, and deep, and blue, and grand;
but only in Jordan shall your soul wash and be clean. A
thousand brooks are born of the sunshine and the moun-
tains; very, very few are they whose flow can mingle with
yours, and not disturb, but only deepen and broaden the
current.
Your friend! Who shall describe him, or worthily
paint what he is to you? No merchant, nor lawyer, nor
farmer, nor statesman, claims your suffrage, but a kingly
soul. He comes to you from God a prophet, a seer, a re-
vealer. He has a clear vision. His love is reverence. He
goes into the penetralia of your life, not presumptuously,
but with uncovered head, unsandalled feet, and pours liba-
tions at the innermost shrine. His incense is grateful. For
him the sunlight brightens, the skies grow rosy, and all the
days are Junes. Wrapped in his love, you float in a deli-
cious rest, rocked in the bosom of purple, scented waves.
Nameless melodies sing themselves through your heart.
A golden glow suffuses your atmosphere. A vague, fine
ecstasy thrills to the sources of life, and earth lays hold
on heaven. Such friendship is worship. It elevates the
most trifling services into rites. The humblest offices are
sanctified. All things are baptized into a new name. Duty
is lost in joy. Care veils itself in caresses. Drudgery be-
comes delight. There is no longer anything menial, small,
or servile. All is transformed
" Into something rich and strange."
The homely household ways lead through beds of spices
and orchards of pomegranates. The daily toil among your
parsnips and carrots is plucking May violets with the dew
upon them to meet the eyes you love upon their first
awaking. In the burden and heat of the day you hear the
rustling of summer showers and the whispering of sum-
mer winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of
labour to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life.
With your friend, speech and silence are one; for a com-
munion mysterious and intangible reaches across from
GAIL HAMILTON
heart to heart. The many dig and delve in your nature
with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water; he
only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power,
it bends at once to your secret. Your friendship, though
independent of language, gives to it life and light. The
mystic spirit stirs even in commonplaces, and the merest
question is an endearment. You are quiet because your
heart is overfull. You talk because it is pleasant, not be-
cause you have anything to say. You weary of terms that
are already love-laden, and you go out into the high-
ways and hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful
words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and filt them to
the brim with honey-dew. All things, great and small,
grand or humble, you press into your service, force
them to do soldier's duty, and your banner over them
is love.
With such a friendship, presence alone is happiness;
nor is absence wholly void, for memories, and hopes, and
pleasing fancies sparkle through the hours, and you know
the sunshine will come back.
For such friendship one is grateful. No matter that it
comes unsought, and comes not for the seeking. You do
not discuss the reasonableness of your gratitude. You
only know that your whole being bows with humility and
utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch
of all realms.
And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love dies
weakly with the occasion that gave it birth; but such
friendship is born of the gods, and immortal. Clouds and
darkness may sweep around it, but within the cloud the
glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it.
Time can not diminish, nor even dishonour annul it. Its
direction may have been earthly, but itself is divine. You
go back into your solitudes; all is silent as aforetime, but
you can not forget that a Voice once resounded there. A
Presence filled the valleys and gilded the mountain tops;
breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies and
roses; flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral
melody swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled
into song. And though now the warmth has faded out,
though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS 445
ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and
forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharp
air, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched
beneath. You go your way not disconsolate. There needs
but the Victorious Voice. At the touch of the Prince's
lips, life shall rise against and be perfected forevermore.
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
BY
RICHARD JEFFERIES
JOHN RICHARD JEFFERIES was born near Swindon, Wiltshire, Eng-
land, November 6, 1848. He adopted journalism as a profession, arid
spent his leisure time in writing novels, none of which were successful.
But when he removed to London and devoted his pen to rural and agri-
cultural topics he found his true place and won quick recognition. The
titles of most of his books indicate their character. They are, "The
Gamekeeper at Home," "Wild Life in a Southern County," "The
Amateur Poacher," " Round about a Great Estate," "Nature near Lon-
don," " Life of the Fields," " Red Deer," and " The Open Air." He also
wrote a romance of the future, entitled "After London, or Wild Eng-
land," and "The Story of my Heart," a singular autobiography. He
wrote of Nature and wild life with minute observation in a reverent
spirit and with a poetical style that have gained enthusiastic admirers
for his work. He died August 14, 1887. His life has been written by
H. S. Salt.
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
GREEN rushes, long and thick, standing up above
the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as
distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the
day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt
like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes
though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent;
rushes have a separate scent of green; so, too, have ferns,
very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from
brown sheaths, the tall stems, enlarged a little in the mid-
dle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and
freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the
earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry;
some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their
fibres, and the rushes the common rushes were full of
beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses
growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the
hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower
sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and
grass-blades touched. Smooth, round stems of angelica,,
big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope
of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising
like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back
the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which
blocked every avenue and winding bird's path of the bank.
But the " gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above
both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it
could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not
even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the
birds did not place their nests on or against them. Some-
thing in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps,
is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a
449
450
JEFFERIES
bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and
hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems,
though they will affix their nests to much less certain sup-
ports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the
rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the
mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No
cunning of glance could see through it; it would have
needed a ladder to help any one look over.
It was between the May and the June roses. The May
bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were
the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in
autumn. High up the briers had climbed, straight and
towering while there was a thorn or an ash sapling, or a
yellow-green willow, to uphold them, and then curving
over toward the meadow. The buds were on them, but
not yet open; it was between the May and the rose.
As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each
wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the
ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the
woods and hedges green waves and billows became full
of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn
leaves, broad-topped oak leaves, narrow ash sprays and
oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned
brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiff-
ening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and
breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of
bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a
living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself
was life. The strength of the earth went up through the
leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Im-
mortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the
summer to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest
creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter
shows us Matter in its dead form, like the primary rocks,
like granite and basalt clear but cold and frozen crystal.
Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising
from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power
of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in
countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living
things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to
breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the im-
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 45!
mense weight of Matter the dead, the crystallized press
ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of
Matter is to feed life to feed the green rushes, and the
roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above,
and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this
green and common rush than all the Alps.
Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just
visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would be ap-
parent through their texture. On the wings of the drag-
on-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a
prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more
delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill,
more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are
formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved
into the means and organs of life! Though not often con-
sciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of
summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving
themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf
push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed
flower. From the tiny, mottled egg come the wings that
by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvel-
lous transformation of clods and cold matter into living
things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every
blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal is an
inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the
oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly they are one
and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth
made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the
horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough,
reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much
for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed.
Not for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ulti-
mately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth
holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled
Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the be-
lief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the
flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, inter-
woven into man's existence. He shall take from all their
beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower
is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I
look in the glass I see that every line in my face means
452
JEFFERIES
pessimism ; but in spite of my face that is my experience
I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has
etched thin, crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has
cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sor-
row flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat
on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves, but onward,
and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field.
He is indeed despicable who can not look onward to the
ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright
of mind.
The long grass flowing toward the hedge has reared
in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and
greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a
mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to
the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in
the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the
path, the grass there can not send its tops so high; it has
left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-
grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the
sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes;
then the ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash,
hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a
low tower. The different tone of green shows that the
hedge is there of nut trees; but one great hawthorn
spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet
more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next
a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom. Returning
to this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the
meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest
twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among
the hedge parsley. Among the gray leaves of the willow
there is another flit of motion; and visible now against
the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished
at the moment from the many other little brown birds that
are known to be about. He got up into the willow from
the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or
fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and
immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two,
his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk,
jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could
keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 453
chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge
and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a white-
throat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Pres-
ently he will go out to the island apple tree and back
again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of
each other's affectionate company they can not remain
apart.
Watching the line of the hedge, about every two min-
utes, either near at hand or yonder, a bird darts out just
at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring
wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it
is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now
and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another
is a redstart. They are flyfishing all of them, seizing in-
sects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes
a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the
oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut
tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a
time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the
hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young
blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the
mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses,
protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still
have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April,
easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage
by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets
which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.
Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man
would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the
ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers
come. Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and
marks of scratching show where a doe has been prepar-
ing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead from mound
to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the par-
ticles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet
and fur. A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the
field, and perches in the chestnut. His presence, too, was
unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At this
season the crows are always in the mowing grass, search-
ing about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to fur-
row, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that
29
454 JEFFERIES
has wandered from the mound yonder. Very likely there
may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of
the long grass; thus hidden they can leave the shelter of
the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that
beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of
the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen.
Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound
which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to dis-
cover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in
the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will
soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over
the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a
hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of
hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear
it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it over-
comes all of it that is in the whole field. I can not define
it except by calling the hours of winter to mind they are
silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs an-
other in the wood; you hear the hoar frost crunch on the
grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in
itself. The sound of summer is everywhere in the pass-
ing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad-branching trees, in
the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that to-
gether make the summer varied are in motion. The sap
moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass
and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves
and square miles of grass blades for they would cover
acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge are draw-
ing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly
minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps
may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate
to the power of the ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the
swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the thou-
sand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl
about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth
itself. The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal
flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite
undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind
into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of
Nature.
By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 455
is less tall and admits the heat direct to the ground; here
there are blue flowers bluer than the wings of my fa-
vourite butterflies with white centres, the lovely bird's-
eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked.
The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the
mower, and those who linger in fields, but few else.
Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, im-
bedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the
grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves
the sun. From this island I look down into the depth of
the grasses. Red sorrel spires deep drinkers of reddest
sun wine stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten
the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the
gipsy-gold tint the reflection of fire on plates of the
precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight;
blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite
daisies, and they seem large so wide a disk, such fingers
of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much
green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and
by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the
tips of the grasses are varied in shape; some tend to
a point the foxtails some are hard and cylindrical;
others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest
branches with fruit and seed at the ends, which tremble as
the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming
of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain
green. Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the fox-
tails are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by nar-
row blades, but never become monotonous; sorrel stands
by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica
at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of
flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows
oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleas-
ant; however many times reduplicated, their beauty only
increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the
same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky,
but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hun-
dred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere, un-
explored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a
corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may
JEFFERIES
give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the
apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long
journey across to the clover fields or up to the thyme
lands; only a few go down into the mowing grass. The
hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they can not
bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or
boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open
and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by
the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep
under grass.
II
It is the patient humblebee that goes down into the
forest of the mowing grass. If entangled, the humblebee
climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign
of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly
glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself
as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cun-
ning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccha-
rine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there
is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the
way is not made clear for him that he may start straight
for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no
shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of
twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The
butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives
him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn;
but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass
stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where
he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one
cares for the humblebee. But down to the flowering
nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, wind-
ing in and out and round the branched buttercups, along
the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away
he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the
rough grasses and the mosses of the mound, a mere tunnel
beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn
overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. It
thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain
drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and
fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
457
along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a
crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses
are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten
down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears
the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the fields;
but the humblebee's home, under moss and matted fibres,
remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of
trees like a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and
the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer
for the rain, like verse with a rhyme; there will be more
honey in the flower. Humble he is, but wild; always in
the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets;
always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like
the bumblebee, being, at heart at least, forever roaming
among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In
such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impres-
sion of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths
traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost
level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and
fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening.
Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick
larches at the edge of plantations. They are no shelter,
but conceal one perfectly. The wood pigeons come home
to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have perma-
nent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home
to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear from
defiance; in fear they scream. The boom startles them,
and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits quietly feed
on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so
often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their
favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes
may be in the hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain
comes they take no heed whatever, but then make for
shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but
the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as
savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone,
more senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to
this day, though the printing press has set a foot on every
threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar
the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves,
45 g JEFFERIES
the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures
of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of
mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do
the vivid lightning; so trustful and so content with their
fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by rea-
son and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage
of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I
should lead a nearly perfect life.
The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have
been standing is shrunken like iron which has been heated
and let cool round the rim of a wheel. For a hundred
years the horses have rubbed against it while feeding
in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or
smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-
place. There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that
were caught anywhere have been carried away by birds
for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar, hard
as iron. A hundred times the mowing grass has grown
up around it, the birds have built their nests, the butter-
flies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from the oaks.
It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or by
the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The
greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I
came out, and all the time has been happily talking to his
love. He has left the hawthorn, indeed, but only for a
minute or two, to fetch a few seeds, and comes back each
time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no slow
movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing
to him and his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his
nest, is crossing from one great bough of the oak to an-
other. The dew even in the deepest and most tangled
grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers
that close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The
morning airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less and less
frequently as the heat increases. Vanishing from the sky,
the last fragments of cloud have left an untarnished azure.
Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and
thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the
greenfinches; all their thoughts are in their song-talk.
The sunny moment is to them all in all. So deeply are
they wrapped in it that they do not know whether it is a
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER
459
moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy,
for love. And with all their motions and stepping from
bough to bough, they are not restless; they have so much
time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the wild pars-
ley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and
partly fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly
comes and stays on a leaf a leaf much warmed by the
sun and shuts his wings. In a minute he opens them,
shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by just
when he chooses, and not before floats away. The flow-
ers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun. Haste-
lessness is the only word one can make up to describe it;
there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with
the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and
so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself
lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms
and gather more of it to me, could I do so.
All the procession of living and growing things passes.
The grass stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open,
and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps
it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the hum-
blebees, whose weight swings them along. About the
oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm, and the fern-
owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, can not
reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies,
and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of
the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths
burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and
gold flies; gnats, like smoke, around the tree tops; midges
so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a net full;
tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across
the path; blue dragon-flies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping
across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped
the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel
thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the
wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward
dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-
like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through
the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets
happy with their young.
460 JEFFERIES
Golden dandelion disks gold and orange of a hue
more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible
buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splash-
ing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy
kingfisher swiftly drawing himself, as you might draw a
stroke with a pencil, over a surface of the yellow butter-
cups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern,
thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour,
deep in the ditch under tjie shady hazel boughs. White
meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black flowered
sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find
the sword flags; the stout willow herbs will not be tram-
pled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink
lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black
moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother,
who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the
smooth surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is
rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sand-
pipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by
the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will
presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts
are forming, green beechmast is there green wedges
under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark
rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along
the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and
orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things
come not set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers
in the mowing grass.
Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and
the sweet lady's bed-straw, set as it were in the midst of a
little thorn-bush. The broad repetition of the yellow
clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and not one
spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away,
leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the
thousand from far and near. But one white campion
stands in the midst of the lake of yellow. The field is
scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been
emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are
seeding, the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn
with twigs. Among those seeding bluebells and dry twigs
and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he stavs all
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 461
day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of
charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of
seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the
larks run, and then for change of colour soar into the blue.
Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge around the cornfield,
buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal yet.
Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the
slope, are the purple heath bells, thyme, and flitting stone-
chats.
The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with
sparrows. It is their city, and there is a nest in every
crevice, almost under every tile. Sometimes the par-
tridges run between the ricks, and when the bats come out
of the roof, leverets play in the wagon-track. At even a
fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the
moths issue. On the narrow wagon-track which descends
along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down
by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focused
the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so
does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette.
The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the
wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the
spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few
rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with
blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could
find space to drink. So down again from this sun of Spain
to woody coverts where the wild hops are blocking every
avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to the
trees; where gray-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red,
rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the foot-
path, and teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-
fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are
associated with brake, and there seem more of them where
it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its
roots in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened
stem, and the width of its branching fronds, you may say
that it comes near to be a little tree. Beneath where the
ponds are bushy mare's tails grow, and on the moist banks
jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of
water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover
it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white but-
462 JEFFERIES
terfly follows along 'the wagon-road, the pheasants slip
away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches
loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an an-
cient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet con-
volvulus there is a hedge-sparrow's nest overhung with
ivy on which even now the last black berries cling.
There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall,
out of reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun
till it looks ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a
thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower; over
the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted
with innumerable footmarks of a flock of sheep that has
passed. The sound of their bleating still comes back, and
the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to
settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on
the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and
brier and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the
dust that has been scattered upon it. But see can it be?
Stretch a hand high, quick, and reach it down; the first,
the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet expected,
for the time is between the May and the roses, least of all
here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found the
first rose of June.
Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the
mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of
summer in old times! When perchance the sunny days
were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of
mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst
of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came
back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was re-
flected from them so the feeling in the heart returned ten-
fold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep en-
chantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in
the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth en-
amelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a
soft, warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in
the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of
the shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and
they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was
chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower be-
neath them again refined. There was a presence every-
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 463
where with us, though unseen; with us on the open hills,
and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the
'June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even
dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals;
all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs,
all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes
grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must up-
hold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart
grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak
gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul
some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer!
Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches
rises and sinks like the tinkle of a waterfall. The green-
finches have been by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes
now and then farther up the hedge where the brambles
and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he
is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came
just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on.
Every four or five minutes a charfinch sings close by, and
another fills the interval near the gateway. There are lin-
nets somewhere, but I can not from the old apple tree
fix their exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased;
they will begin again in ten minutes. The blackbirds do
not cease; the note uttered by a blackbird in the oak
yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near
the top of the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third
on the left-hand side. From one of the topmost boughs
of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for
awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest
branches of the highest tree.
A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch
in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing
a full hour. Presently he will commence again, and as
the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then
again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost
the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no
inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the sum-
mer he sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are
being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder
has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings him-
self into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike
464 JEFFERIES
calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend
from the swifts in the air. These descend, but the twit-
tering notes of the swallows do not reach so far; they are
too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and
now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks
are singing I know, but not within hearing from here;
a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice
passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field
dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving
in wide circles for awhile descend again to the corn.
These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful
enough to reach me, though they would were it not for
the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects,
and the ceaseless " Crake, crake! " of landrails. There
are at least two landrails in the mowing grass; one of
them just now seemed coming straight toward the apple
tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move,
when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild
parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without
a moment's pause, " Crake, crake! " till the thick hedge
seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over
my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a
dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs,
and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge.
Elms are a favourite tree of robins, not the upper branches,
but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to
have leaves in the spring.
The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually,
but I think the blackbirds when listened to are the masters
of the fields. Before one can finish another begins, like
the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that
the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now
here, now in the corners, then across the field, again in
the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it
rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist,
the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that
his liquid tone can not be matched. He utters a few de-
licious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the
oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the black-
bird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields
dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without
THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 465
the violet all the blue-bells and cowslips could not make
a spring, and without the blackbird even the nightingale
would be but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these
songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after
the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon
rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call,
and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "Crake, crake!"
will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will
utter its notes, and even at the darkest of the summer
night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As
the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up
will rise the larks singing and audible now, the cuckoo will
recommence, and the swallows will start again on their
tireless journey. So that the songs of the summer birds
are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays
day and night.
I can not leave it, I must stay under the old tree in
the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and
the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the
glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls
to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the im-
mense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy
of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little.
Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for
themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine;
in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for
me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thou-
sand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feel-
ing with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of
life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough
whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward
under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-
scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or
walking the footpath was never long enough, or my
strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The
exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life,
yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when
the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when
we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these
things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.
Let the shadow advance upon the dial I can watch it with
466 JEFFERIES
equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only
when the shadow is not there, when the clouds of winter
cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow
goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see
the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along
the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only
hours that are not wasted these hours that absorb the
soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else
is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers
and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in
the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias
sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense
of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought,
calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the
unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental
fear, is the ideal of Nature. If I can not achieve it, at
least I can think it.
CHILD'S PLAY
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON was born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850.
His father and grandfather were engineers especially employed in build-
ing lighthouses. Robert was educated at the university of his native
city, tried to learn his father's profession, then studied law, but at the age
of twenty-three was ordered south for his health. He went to the south
of France, and at the same time determined to follow the real bent of his
mind, which was for literature. He wrote many magazine articles, and
in 1878 appeared his first book, "An Inland Voyage," the story of a canoe
excursion on rivers in France. A year later he came to the United States
in the steerage of a steamer, as an " amateur emigrant," crossed the conti-
nent in an emigrant car, and in California married Mrs. Osbourne, whose
acquaintance he had made in an artist colony at Fontainebleau. On his
return to England he published two volumes of essays, followed by the
"New Arabian Nights" and "Treasure Island," the first of his books to
attract popular attention. He was an industrious and prolific writer, but
was obliged to move frequently to one place and another in search of
health, and at last (in 1889) found in the Samoan Islands a climate in
which he could live. He bought four hundred acres near Apia, and built
a house, which was his home until he died, December 3, 1894. In accord-
ance with his own wish, he was buried on the summit of Mount Vaea,
near his house. The strongest of his many stories are, " The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," " Kidnapped," and " Prince Otto."
He also published two volumes of poems, which have their admirers.
Some critical readers think his finest work is in his essays. He took a
warm interest in the Samoans and their history, which they reciprocated
with affectionate regard for Tusitala (the story-teller), as they called him.
CHILD'S PLAY
THE regret we have for our childhood is not wholly
justifiable: so much a man may lay down without
fear of public ribaldry; for, although we shake our
heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the
manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in
generous impulse we more than gain in the habit of gen-
erously watching others; and the capacity to enjoy Shake-
speare may balance a lost aptitude for playing at soldiers.
Terror is gone out of our lives, moreover; we no longer
see the devil in the bed-curtains nor lie awake to listen
to the wind. We go to school no more; and if we have
only exchanged one drudgery for another (which is by no
means sure), we are set free forever from the daily fear
of chastisement. And yet a great change has overtaken
us; and although we do not enjoy ourselves less, at least
we take our pleasure differently. We need pickles now-
adays to make Wednesday's cold mutton please our Fri-
day's appetite; and I can remember the time when to call
it red venison, and tell myself a hunter's story, would have
made it more palatable than the best of sauces. To the
grown person, cold mutton is cold mutton all the world
over; not all the mythology ever invented by man will
make it better or worse to him; the broad fact, the clamant
reality, of the mutton carries away before it such seduc-
tive figments. But for the child it is still possible to
weave an enchantment over eatables; and if he has but
read of a dish in a story-book, it will be heavenly manna
to him for a week.
If a grown man does not like eating and drinking and
exercise, if he is not something positive in his tastes, it
means he has a feeble body and should have some medi-
cine; but children may be pure spirits, if they will, and
30 469
STEVENSON
take their enjoyment in a world of moonshine. Sensation
does not count for so much in our first years as afterward;
something of the swaddling numbness of infancy clings
about us; we see and touch and hear through a sort of
golden mist. Children, for instance, are able enough to
see, but they have no great faculty for looking; they do
not use their eyes for the pleasure of using them, but for
by-ends of their own; and the things I call to mind seeing
most vividly, were not beautiful in themselves, but merely
interesting or enviable to me as I thought they might be
turned to practical account in play. Nor is the sense of
touch so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man.
If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sen-
sations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague,
and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of
heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of well-
being in bed. And here, of course, you will understand
pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain the most
deadly and tragical element in life, and the true com-
mander of man's soul and body alas! pain has its own
way with all of us; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon the
fairy garden where the child wanders in a dream, no less
surely than it rules upon the field of battle, or sends the
immortal war-god whimpering to his father; and inno-
cence, no more than philosophy, can protect us from this
sting. As for taste, when we bear in mind the excesses of
unmitigated sugar which delight a youthful palate, " it is
surely no very cynical asperity " to think taste a char-
acter of the maturer growth. Smell and hearing are per-
haps more developed; I remember many scents, many
voices, and a great deal of spring singing in the woods.
But hearing is capable of vast improvement as a means of
pleasure; and there is all the world between gaping won-
derment at the jargon of birds, and the emotion with
which a man listens to articulate music.
At the same time, and step by step with this increase
in the definition and intensity of what we feel which ac-
companies our growing age, another change takes place in
the sphere of intellect, by which all things are transformed
and seen through theories and associations as through col-
oured windows. We make to ourselves day by day, out of
CHILD'S PLAY 471
history, and gossip, and economical speculations, and God
knows what, a medium in which we walk and through
which we look abroad. We study shop windows with
other eyes than in our childhood, never to wonder, not
always to admire, but to make and modify our little in-
congruous theories about life. It is no longer the uniform
of a soldier that arrests our attention, but perhaps the flow-
ing carriage of a woman, or perhaps a countenance that
has been vividly stamped with passion and carries an ad-
venturous story written in its lines. The pleasure of sur-
prise is passed away; sugar-loaves and water-carts seem
mighty tame to encounter; and we walk the streets to make
romances and to sociologize. Nor must we deny that a
good many of us walk them solely for the purposes of
transit or in the interest of a livelier digestion. These,
indeed, may look back with mingled thoughts upon their
childhood, but the rest are in a better case; they know
more than when they were children, they understand bet-
ter, their desires and sympathies answer more nimbly to
the provocation of the senses, and their minds are brim-
ming with interest as they go about the world.
According to my contention, this is a flight to which
children can not rise. They are wheeled in perambulators
or dragged about by nurses in a pleasing stupor. A vague,
faint, abiding wonderment possesses them. Here and
there some specially remarkable circumstance, such as a
water-cart or a guardsman, fairly penetrates into the seat
of thought and calls them, for half a moment, out of them-
selves; and you may see them, still towed forward side-
ways by the inexorable nurse as by a sort of destiny, but
still staring at the bright object in their wake. It may be
some minutes before another such moving spectacle re-
awakens them to the world in which they dwell. For
other children they almost invariably show some intelli-
gent sympathy.'/" There is a fine fellow making mud
pies," they seem to say; "that I can understand, there is
some sense in mud pies." But the doings of their elders,
unless where they are speakingly picturesque or recom-
mend themselves by the quality of being easily imitable,
they let them go over their heads (as we say) without the
least regard. If it were not for this perpetual imitation,
STEVENSON
we should be tempted to fancy they despised us outright,
or only considered us in the light of creatures brutally
strong and brutally silly; among whom they condescended
to dwell in obedience like a philosopher at a barbarous
court. At times, indeed, they display an arrogance of dis-
regard that is truly staggering. Once, when I was groan-
ing aloud with physical pain, a young gentleman came into
the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow
and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he
accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of
the inexplicable conduct of his elders; and like a wise
young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the sub-
ject. Those elders, who care so little for rational enjoy-
ment, and are even the enemies of rational enjoyment for
others, he had accepted without understanding and with-
out complaint, as the rest of us accept the scheme of the
universe.
We grown people can tell ourselves a story, give and
take strokes until the bucklers ring, ride far and fast,
marry, fall, and die; all the while sitting quietly by the
fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly what a child
can not do, or does not do, at least, when he can find any-
thing else. He works all with lay figures and stage
properties. When his story comes to the righting, he must
rise, get something by way of a sword and have a set-to
with a piece of furniture, until he is out of breath. When
he comes to ride with the king's pardon, he must bestride
a chair, which he will so hurry and belabour, and on which
he will so furiously demean himself, that the messenger will
arrive, if not bloody with spurring, at least fiery red with
haste. If his romance involves an accident upon a cliff, he
must clamber in person about the chest of drawers and fall
bodily upon the carpet, before his imagination is satisfied.
Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys, in short, are in the same
category and answer the same end. Nothing can stagger
a child's faith; he accepts the clumsiest substitutes and
can swallow the most staring incongruities. The chair he
has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly cutting to
the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the accommo-
dation of a morning visitor, and he is nothing abashed; he
can skirmish by the hour with a stationary coal-scuttle;
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
From an etching by Samuel Hollyer
CHILD'S PLAY
473
in the midst of the enchanted pleasance, he can see, with-
out sensible shock, the gardener soberly digging potatoes
for the day's dinner. He can make abstraction of what-
ever does not fit into his fable; and he puts his eyes into
his pocket, just as we hold our noses in an unsavoury lane.
And so it is that, although the ways of children cross with
those of their elders in a hundred places daily, they never
go in the same direction nor so much as lie in the same
element. So may the telegraph wires intersect the line
of the high-road, or. so might a landscape painter and a
bagman visit the same country, and yet move in different
worlds.
People struck with these spectacles cry aloud about the
power of imagination in the young. Indeed, there may
be two words to that. It is, in some ways, but a pedes-
trian fancy that the child exhibits. It is the grown people
who make the nursery stories; all the children do is jeal-
ously to preserve the text. One out of a dozen reasons
why " Robinson Crusoe " should be so popular with youth
is that it hits their level in this matter to a nicety; Crusoe
was always at makeshifts and had, in so many words, to
play at a great variety of professions; and then the book
is all about tools, and there is nothing that delights a child
so much. Hammers and saws belong to a province of
life that positively calls for imitation. PThe juvenile lyrical
drama, surely of the most ancient Thespian model, wherein
the trades of mankind are successively simulated to the
running burden " On a cold and frosty morning," gives
a good instance of the artistic taste in children. And this
need for overt action and lay figures testifies to a defect
in the child's imagination which prevents him from carry-
ing out his novels in the privacy of his own heart. He
does not yet know enough of the world and men. His
experience is incomplete. That stage wardrobe and scene-
room that we call the memory is so ill provided that he
can overtake few combinations and body out few stories,
to his own content, without some external aid. He is at
the experimental stage; he is not sure how one would feel
in certain circumstances; to make sure, he must come as
near trying it as his means permit. And so here is young
heroism with a wooden sword, and mothers practise their
STEVENSON
kind vocation over a bit of jointed stick. It may be
laughable enough just now; but it is these same people
and these same thoughts, that not long hence, when they
are on the theatre of life, will make you weep and tremble.
For children think very much the same thoughts and
dream the same dreams as bearded men and marriage-
able women. No one is more romantic. Fame and hon-
our, the love of young men and the love of mothers, the
business man's pleasure in method, all these and others
they anticipate and rehearse in their play hours. Upon
us, who are further advanced and fairly dealing with the
threads of destiny, they only glance from time to time to
glean a hint for their own mimetic reproduction. Two
children playing at soldiers are far more interesting to
each other than one of the scarlet beings whom both are
busy imitating. This is perhaps the greatest oddity of all.
" Art for art " is their motto, and the doings of grown folk
are only interesting as the raw material for play. Not
Theophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously
upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the
reality; and they will parody an execution, a deathbed,
or the funeral of the young man of Nain, with all the
cheerfulness in the world.
The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course,
in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play,
is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely
upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of child-
hood. It is when we make castles in the air and personate
the leading character in our own romances that we re-
turn to the spirit of our first years. Only, there are several
reasons why the spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge.
Nowadays, when we admit this personal element into our
divagations we are apt to stir up uncomfortable and sor-
rowful memories, and remind ourselves sharply of old
wounds. Our day-dreams can no longer lie all in the air
like a story in the "Arabian Nights"; they read to us
rather like the history of a period in which we ourselves
had taken part, where we come across many unfortunate
passages and find our own conduct smartly reprimanded.
And then the child, mind you, acts his parts. He does
not merely repeat them to himself; he leaps, he runs, and
CHILD'S PLAY
475
sets the blood agog over all his body. And so his play
breathes him, and he no sooner assumes a passion than he
gives it vent. Alas! when 'we betake ourselves to our in-
tellectual form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying
prone in bed, we rouse many hot feelings for which we
can find no outlet. Substitutes are not acceptable to the
mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even to
rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one's enemy, al-
though it is perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play
still left within our reach, is not entirely satisfying, and is
even apt to lead to a visit and an interview which may
be the reverse of triumphant after all.
In the child's world of dim sensation, play is all in all.
" Making believe " is the gist of his whole life, and he
can not so much as take a walk except in character. I
could not learn my alphabet without some suitable mise-
en-scene, and had to act a business man in an office be-
fore I could sit down to my book. Will you kindly ques-
tion your memory, and find out how much you did, work
or pleasure, in good faith and soberness, and for how much
you had to cheat yourself with some invention? I re-
member, as though it were yesterday, the expansion of
spirit, the dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of
mustachios in burned cork, even when there was none to
see. Children are even content to forego what we call the
realities, and prefer the shadow to the substance. When
they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter
senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy be-
cause they are making believe to speak French. I have
said already how even the imperious appetite of hunger
suffers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the
fag end of an old song. And it goes deeper than this;
when children are together even a meal is felt as an inter-
ruption in the business of life; and they must find some
imaginative sanction, and tell themselves some sort of
story, to account for, to colour, to render entertaining,
the simple processes of eating and drinking. What won-
derful fancies I have heard evolved out of the pattern upon
teacups! from which there followed a code of rules and
a whole world of excitement, until tea-drinking began to
take rank as a game. When my cousin and I took our
STEVENSON
porridge of a morning, we had a device to enliven the
course of the meal. He ate his with sugar, and explained
it to be a country continually buried under snow. I took
mine with milk, and explained it to be a country suffer-
ing gradual inundation. You can imagine us exchanging
bulletins; how here was an island still unsubmerged, here
a valley not yet covered with snow; what inventions were
made; how his population lived in cabins on perches and
travelled on stilts, and how mine was always in boats;
how the interest grew furious, as the last corner of safe
ground was cut off on all sides and grew smaller every
moment; and how, in fine, the food was of altogether sec-
ondary importance, and might even have been nauseous,
so long as we seasoned it with these dreams. But per-
haps the most exciting moments I ever had over a meal
were in the case of calves'-feet jelly. It was hardly pos-
sible not to believe and you may be sure, so far from
trying, I did all I could to favour the illusion that some
part of it was hollow, and that sooner or later my spoon
would lay open the secret tabernacle of the golden rock.
There might some miniature " Red Beard " await his
hour; there might one find the treasures of the " Forty
Thieves," and bewildered Cassim beating about the walls.
And so I quarried on slowly, with bated breath, savouring
the interest. Believe me, I had little palate left for the
jelly; and though I preferred the taste when I took cream
with it, I used often to go without, because the cream
dimmed the transparent fractures.
Even with games this spirit is authoritative with right-
minded children. It is thus that hide-and-seek has so
pre-eminent a sovereignty, for it is the wellspring of ro-
mance, and the actions and the excitement to which it
gives rise lend themselves to almost any sort of fable. And
thus cricket, which is a mere matter of dexterity, palpably
about nothing and for no end, often fails to satisfy in-
fantile craving. It is a game, if you like, but not a game
of play. You can not tell yourself a story about cricket;
and the activity it calls forth can be justified on no ra-
tional theory. Even football, although it admirably simu-
lates the tug and the ebb and flow of battle, has presented
difficulties to the mind of young sticklers after verisimili-
CHILD'S PLAY 477
tude; and I knew at least one little boy wlio was mightily
exercised about the presence of the ball, and had to spirit
himself up, whenever he came to play, with an elaborate
story of enchantment, and take the missile as a sort of
talisman bandied about in conflict between two Arabian
nations.
To think of such a frame of mind is to become dis-
quieted about the bringing up of children. Surely they
dwell in a mythological epoch, and are not the contem-
poraries of their parents. What can they think of them?
what can they make of these bearded or petticoated giants
who look down upon their games? who move upon a
cloudy Olympus, following unknown designs apart from
rational enjoyment? who profess the tenderest solicitude
for children, and yet every now and again reach down out
of their altitude and terribly vindicate the prerogatives of
age? Off goes the child, corporally smarting, but morally
rebellious. Were there ever such unthinkable deities as
parents? I would give a great deal to know what, in nine
cases out of ten, is the child's unvarnished feeling. A
sense of past cajolery; a sense of personal attraction, at best
very feeble; above all, I should imagine, a sense of terror
for the untried residue of mankind go to make up the at-
traction that he feels. No wonder, poor little heart, with
such a weltering world in front of him, if he clings to the
hand he knows! The dread irrationality of the whole affair,
as it seems to children, is a thing we are all too ready to
forget. " Oh, why," I remember passionately wondering,
" why can we not all be happy and devote ourselves to
play? " And when children do philosophize, I believe it is
usually to very much the same purpose.
One thing, at least, comes very clearly out of these
considerations: that whatever we are to expect at the
hands of children, it should not be any peddling exactitude
about matters of fact. They walk in a vain show, and
among mists and rainbows; they are passionate after
dreams and unconcerned about realities; speech is a dif-
ficult art not wholly learned, and there is nothing in their
own tastes or purposes to teach them what we mean by
abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is inexact, even
if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge
478
STEVENSON
him with incompetence and not with dishonesty. And
why not extend the same allowance to imperfect speakers?
Let a stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet
inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them
heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, un-
breeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to
take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for
the deadly stiletto, and who passes three fourths of his
time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and
we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as
a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I
think it less than decent. You do not consider how little
the child sees, or how swift he is to weave what he
has seen into bewildering fiction; and that he cares no
more for what you call truth than you for a gingerbread
dragoon.
I am reminded, as I write, that the child is very in-
quiring as to the precise truth of stones. But, indeed, this
is a very different matter, and one bound up with the
subject of play, and the precise amount of playfulness, or
payability, to be looked for in the world. Many such
burning questions must arise in the course of nursery edu-
cation. Among the faima of this planet, which already
embraces the pretty soldier and the terrifying Irish beg-
garman, is or is not the child to expect a Bluebeard or
a Cormoran? Is he or is he not to look out for magi-
cians, kindly and potent? May he or may he not reason-
ably hope to be cast away upon a desert island, or turned
to such diminutive proportions that he can live on equal
terms with his lead soldiery, and go a cruise in his own
toy schooner? Surely all these are practical questions to a
neophyte entering upon life with a view to play. Precision
upon such a point the child can understand. But if you
merely ask him of his past behaviour, as to who threw
such a stone, for instance, or struck such and such a
match; or whether he had looked into a parcel or gone
by a forbidden path why, he can see no moment in
the inquiry, and it is ten to one he has already half
forgotten and half bemused himself with subsequent im-
aginings.
Jt would be easy to leave them in their native cloud-
CHILD'S PLAY
479
land, where they figure so prettily pretty like flowers and
innocent like dogs. They will come out of their gardens
soon enough, and have to go into offices and the witness
box. Spare them yet a while, O conscientious parent!
Let them doze among their playthings yet a little, for who
knows what a rough, warfaring existence lies before them
in the future?
THE END
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