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The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index

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Title: The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index

Editor: Arthur Mee
        J. A. Hammerton


        
Release date: January 18, 2014 [eBook #44704]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS — VOLUME 20 — MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE AND INDEX ***

Transcriber's note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_ and boldface
by =equals signs=. A complete Index of all 20 volumes of THE WORLD'S
GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end of this volume.




[Illustration: (signed) Matthew Arnold]




    THE WORLD'S
    GREATEST
    BOOKS


    JOINT EDITORS

    ARTHUR MEE
    Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge

    J. A. HAMMERTON
    Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia


    VOL. XX

    MISCELLANEOUS
    LITERATURE

    INDEX


    WM. H. WISE & CO.




_Table of Contents_


  PORTRAIT OF MATTHEW ARNOLD                    _Frontispiece_

  ADDISON, JOSEPH                                         PAGE
      Spectator                                              1

  ÆSOP
      Fables                                                10

  ARNOLD, MATTHEW
      Essays in Criticism                                   18

  BRANDES, GEORGE
      Main Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature        31

  BURTON, ROBERT
      Anatomy of Melancholy                                 41

  CARLYLE, THOMAS
      On Heroes and Hero Worship                            50
      Sartor Resartus                                       61

  CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS
      Concerning Friendship                                 70

  COBBETT, WILLIAM
      Advice to Young Men                                   78

  DEFOE, DANIEL
      Journal of the Plague Year                            90

  DESMOSTHENES
      Philippics                                            99

  EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
      English Traits                                       109
      Representative Men                                   118

  ERASMUS
      Familiar Colloquies                                  126
      In Praise of Folly                                   132

  GESTA ROMANORUM                                          140

  GOLDSMITH, OLIVER
      Citizen of the World                                 149

  HALLAM, HENRY
      Introduction to the Literature of Europe             158

  HAZLITT, WILLIAM
      Lectures on the English Poets                        169

  HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
      Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table                      181

  LA BRUYÈRE
      Characters                                           193

  LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE
      Imaginary Conversations                              203

  LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
      Reflections and Moral Maxims                         215

  LEONARDO DA VINCI
      Treatise on Painting                                 227

  LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM
      Laocoon                                              239

  MILL, JOHN STUART
      Essay on Liberty                                     248

  MILTON, JOHN
      Areopagitica                                         257

  PLUTARCH
      Parallel Lives                                       266

  STAËL, MME. DE
      On Germany                                           276

  TACITUS
      Germania                                             286

  TAINE
      History of English Literature                        298

  THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
      Walden                                               312

  TOCQUEVILLE, DE
      Democracy in America                                 324

  WALTON, IZAAK
      Complete Angler                                      334

  INDEX                                                    349




Miscellaneous




JOSEPH ADDISON

The Spectator

  "The Spectator," the most popular and elegant miscellany of
  English literature, appeared on the 1st of March, 1711. With an
  interruption of two years--1712 to 1714--during part of which
  time "The Guardian," a similar periodical, took its place, "The
  Spectator" was continued to the 20th of December, 1714. Addison's
  fame is inseparably associated with this periodical. He was the
  animating spirit of the magazine, and by far the most exquisite
  essays which appear in it are by him. Richard Steele, Addison's
  friend and coadjutor in "The Spectator," was born in Dublin
  in March, 1672, and died at Carmarthen on September 1, 1729.
  (Addison biography, see Vol. XVI, p. 1.)


_The Essays and the Essayist_

Addison's "Spectator" is one of the most interesting books in the
English language. When Dr. Johnson praised Addison's prose, it was
specially of "The Spectator" that he was speaking. "His page," he
says, "is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour.
His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor affected brevity; his
periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever
wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant
but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to Addison."

Johnson's verdict has been upheld, for it is chiefly by "The Spectator"
that Addison lives. None but scholars know his Latin verse and
his voluminous translations now. His "Cato" survives only in some
half-dozen occasional quotations. Two or three hymns of his, including
"The spacious firmament on high," and "When all Thy mercies, O my God,"
find a place in church collections; and his simile of the angel who
rides upon the whirlwind and directs the storm is used now and again
by pressmen and public speakers. But, in the main, when we think of
Addison, it is of "The Spectator" that we think.

Recall the time when it was founded. It was in the days of Queen Anne,
the Augustan age of the essay. There were no newspapers then, no
magazines or reviews, no Parliamentary reports, nothing corresponding
to the so-called "light literature" of later days. The only centres of
society that existed were the court, with the aristocracy that revolved
about it, and the clubs and coffee-houses, in which the commercial
and professional classes met to discuss matters of general interest,
to crack their jokes, and to exchange small talk about this, that and
the other person, man or woman, who might happen to figure, publicly
or privately, at the time. "The Spectator" was one of the first organs
to give form and consistency to the opinion, the humour and the gossip
engendered by this social contact.

One of the first, but not quite the first; for the less famous, though
still remembered, "Tatler" preceded it. And these two, "The Tatler" and
"The Spectator," have an intimate connection from the circumstance that
Richard Steele, who started "The Tatler" in April, 1709, got Addison to
write for it, and then joined with Addison in "The Spectator" when his
own paper stopped in January, 1711. Addison and Steele had been friends
since boyhood. They were contemporaries at the Charterhouse, and Steele
often spent his holidays in the parsonage of Addison's father.

The two friends were a little under forty years of age when "The
Spectator" began in March, 1711. It was a penny paper, and was
published daily, its predecessor having been published three times a
week. It began with a circulation of 3,000 copies, and ran up to about
10,000 before it stopped its daily issue in December, 1712. Macaulay,
writing in 1843, insists upon the sale as "indicating a popularity
quite as great as that of the most successful works of Scott and
Dickens in our time." The 555 numbers of the daily issue formed seven
volumes; and then there was a final eighth volume, made up of triweekly
issues: a total of 635 numbers, of which Addison wrote 274, and Steele
236.

To summarise the contents of these 635 numbers would require a volume.
They are so versatile and so varied. As one of Addison's biographers
puts it, to-day you have a beautiful meditation, brilliant in imagery
and serious as a sermon, or a pious discourse on death, or perhaps
an eloquent and scathing protest against the duel; while to-morrow
the whole number is perhaps concerned with the wigs, ruffles, and
shoe-buckles of the _macaroni_, or the hoops, patches, farthingales
and tuckers of the ladies. If you wish to see the plays and actors of
the time, "The Spectator" will always show them to you; and, moreover,
point out the dress, manners, and mannerisms, affectations, indecorums,
plaudits, or otherwise of the frequenters of the theatre.

For here is no newspaper, as we understand the term. "The Spectator"
from the first indulged his humours at the expense of the quidnuncs.
Says he:

"There is another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to
as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and
conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered
these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard
them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news
stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking.
These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve
o'clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges
of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch
mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet,
and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions
which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them
not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and
do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and
wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation
for the ensuing twelve hours."

Now, the essential, or at least the leading feature of "The Spectator"
is this: that the entertainment is provided by an imaginary set of
characters forming a Spectator Club. The club represents various
classes or sections of the community, so that through its members a
corresponding variety of interests and opinions is set before the
reader, the Spectator himself acting as a sort of final censor or
referee. Chief among the Club members is Sir Roger de Coverley, a
simple, kindly, honourable, old-world country gentleman. Here is the
description of this celebrated character:

"The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of
ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His
great-grandfather was inventor of that famous country dance which is
called after him. All who know that shire are very well acquainted
with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very
singular in his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good
sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world only as he
thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humour creates him
no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy; and his
being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and more
capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in town, he
lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason
he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next county
to him. Before this disappointment, Sir Roger was what you call a
fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and Sir George
Etherege, fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked Bully
Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him youngster. But being
ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very serious for a year
and a half; and though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last
got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterwards.
He continues to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that were in
fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humours, he
tells us, has been in and out twelve times since he first wore it. It
is said Sir Roger grew humble in his desires after he had forgot this
cruel beauty, insomuch that it is reported he was frequently offended
with beggars and gipsies; but this is looked upon by his friends rather
as matter of raillery than truth. He is now in his fifty-sixth year,
cheerful, gay, and hearty; keeps a good house both in town and country;
a great lover of mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his
behaviour that he is rather beloved than esteemed."

Then there is Sir Andrew Freeport, "a merchant of great eminence in the
City of London; a person of indefatigable industry, strong reason, and
great experience." He is "acquainted with commerce in all its parts;
and will tell you it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion
by arms; for true power is to be got by arts and industry. He will
often argue that, if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we
should gain from one nation; and if another, from another."

There is Captain Sentry, too, "a gentleman of great courage and
understanding, but invincible modesty," who in the club speaks for the
army, as the templar does for taste and learning, and the clergyman for
theology and philosophy.

And then, that the club may not seem to be unacquainted with "the
gallantries and pleasures of the age," there is Will Honeycomb, the
elderly man of fashion, who is "very ready at that sort of discourse
with which men usually entertain women." Will "knows the history of
every mode, and can inform you from which of the French king's wenches
our wives and daughters had this manner of curling their hair, that
way of placing their hoods; whose frailty was covered by such a sort
of petticoat; and whose vanity to show her foot made that part of the
dress so short in such a year. In a word, all his conversation and
knowledge have been in the female world. As other men of his age will
take notice to you what such a minister said upon such and such an
occasion, he will tell you when the Duke of Monmouth danced at court,
such a woman was then smitten, another was taken with him at the head
of his troop in the park. This way of talking of his very much enlivens
the conversation among us of a more sedate turn; and I find there is
not one of the company, but myself, who rarely speak at all, but speaks
of him as that sort of man who is usually called a well-bred fine
gentleman. To conclude his character, where women are not concerned, he
is an honest, worthy man."

Nor must we forget Will Wimble, though he is really an outsider. Will
is the younger son of a baronet: a man of no profession, looking after
his father's game, training his dogs, shooting, fishing, hunting,
making whiplashes for his neighbors, knitting garters for the ladies,
and afterwards slyly inquiring how they wear: a welcome guest at every
house in the county; beloved by all the lads and the children.

Besides these, and others, there is a fine little gallery of portraits
in Sir Roger's country neighbours and tenants. We have, for instance,
the yeoman who "knocks down a dinner with his gun twice or thrice a
week, and by that means lives much cheaper than those who have not
so good an estate as himself"; and we have Moll White, the reputed
witch, who, if she made a mistake at church and cried "Amen!" in a
wrong place, "they never failed to conclude that she was saying her
prayers backwards." We have the diverting captain, "young, sound,
and impudent"; we have a demure Quaker; we have Tom Touchy, a fellow
famous for "taking the law" of everybody; and we have the inn-keeper,
who, out of compliment to Sir Roger, "put him up in a sign-post before
the door," and then, when Sir Roger objected, changed the figure into
the Saracen's Head by "a little aggravation of the features" and the
addition of a pair of whiskers!

Best of all is the old chaplain. Sir Roger was "afraid of being
insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table"; so he got a university
friend to "find him out a clergyman, rather of plain sense than much
learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if
possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon." The genial
knight "made him a present of all the good sermons printed in English,
and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of
them in the pulpit." Thus, if Sir Roger happened to meet his chaplain
on a Saturday evening, and asked who was to preach to-morrow, he would
perhaps be answered: "The Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and
Dr. South in the afternoon." About which arrangement "The Spectator"
boldly observes: "I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy
would follow this example; and, instead of wasting their spirits in
laborious compositions of their own, would endeavour after a handsome
elocution, and all those other talents that are proper to enforce what
has been penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to
themselves, but more edifying to the people."

There is no end to the subjects discussed by "The Spectator." They
range from dreams to dress and duelling; from ghosts to gardening and
goats' milk; from wigs to wine and widows; from religion to riches
and riding; from servants to sign-posts and snuff-boxes; from love
to lodgings and lying; from beards to bankruptcy and blank verse; and
hundreds of other interesting themes. Correspondents often wrote to
emphasise this variety, for letters from the outside public were always
welcome. Thus one "Thomas Trusty":

"The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of
pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by
pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a senator or
a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a
prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjurer, with many other
different representations very entertaining, though still the same at
the bottom."

But perhaps, on the whole, woman and her little ways have the
predominant attention. Indeed, Addison expressly avowed this object of
engaging the special interests of the sex when he started. He says:

"There are none to whom this paper will be more useful than to the
female world. I have often thought that there has not been sufficient
pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the
fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they
are women than as they are reasonable creatures; and are more adapted
to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene
of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the principal
employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned
a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's
or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else
all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and
embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and
sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women; though I know
there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation,
that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
of awe and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders.
I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily
paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an
improving, entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds
of my female readers from greater trifles."

These reflections on the manners of women did not quite please Swift,
who wrote to Stella: "I will not meddle with 'The Spectator'; let him
_fair sex_ it to the world's end." But they pleased most other people,
as the main contents of "The Spectator" still please. Here is one
typical acknowledgment, signed "Leonora":

  Mr. Spectator,--Your paper is part of my tea-equipage; and my
  servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast
  this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, "'the
  Spectator' was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and
  she expected it every moment."

As an "abstract and brief chronicle of the time," this monumental work
of Addison and Steele is without peer. In its pages may be traced the
foundations of all that is noble and healthy in modern English thought;
and its charming sketches may be made the open sesame to a period and a
literature as rich as any our country has seen.




ÆSOP

Fables

  It is in the fitness of things that the early biographies of
  Æsop, the great fabulist, should be entirely fabulous. Macrobius
  has distinguished between _fabula_ and _fabulosa narratio_:
  "He would have a fable to be absolutely false, and a fabulous
  narration to be a number of fictions built upon a foundation of
  truth." The Lives of Æsop belong chiefly to the latter category.
  In the following pages what is known of the life of Æsop is set
  forth, together with condensed versions of some of his most
  characteristic fables, which have long passed into the wisdom of
  all nations, this being a subject that calls for treatment on
  somewhat different lines from the majority of the works dealt
  with in THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS.


_Introductory_

Pierre Bayle, in his judicious fashion, sums up what is said of Æsop in
antiquity, resting chiefly upon Plutarch. "Plutarch affirms: (1) That
Crœsus sent Æsop to Periander, the Tyrant of Corinth, and to the Oracle
of Delphi; (2) that Socrates found no other expedient to obey the God
of Dreams, without injuring his profession, than to turn the Fables of
Æsop into verse; (3) that Æsop and Solon were together at the Court of
Crœsus, King of Lydia; (4) that those of Delphi, having put Æsop to
death cruelly and unjustly, and finding themselves exposed to several
calamities on account of this injustice, made a public declaration that
they were ready to make satisfaction to the memory of Æsop; (5) that
having treated thereupon with a native of Samos, they were delivered
from the evil that afflicted them."

To this summary Bayle added a footnote concerning "The Life of
Æsop, composed by Meziriac": "It is a little book printed at
Bourg-en-Bress, in 1632. It contains only forty pages in 16. It is
becoming exceedingly scarce.... This is what I extract from it. It
is more probable that Æsop was born at Cotiœum, a town of Phrygia,
than that he was born at Sardis, or in the island of Samos, or at
Mesembria in Thrace. The first master that he served was one Zemarchus,
or Demarchus, surnamed Carasius, a native and inhabitant of Athens.
Thus it is probable that it was there he learned the purity of the
Greek tongue, as in its spring, and acquired the knowledge of moral
philosophy which was then in esteem....

"In process of time he was sold to Xanthus, a native of the Isle of
Samos, and afterwards to Idmon, or Iadmnon, the philosopher, who was
a Samian also, and who enfranchised him. After he had recovered his
liberty, he soon acquired a great reputation among the Greeks; so that
the report of his singular wisdom having reached the ears of Crœsus,
he sent to inquire after him; and having conceived an affection for
him, he obliged him by his favours to engage himself in his service to
the end of his life. He travelled through Greece--whether for his own
pleasure or for the private affairs of Crœsus is uncertain--and passing
by Athens, soon after Pisistratus had usurped the sovereign power there
and had abolished the popular state, and seeing that the Athenians
bore the yoke very impatiently, he told them the Fable of the Frogs
that asked a King of Jupiter. Afterwards he met the Seven Wise Men in
the City of Corinth at the Tyrant Periander's. Some relate that, in
order to show that the life of man is full of miseries, and that one
pleasure is attended with a thousand pains, Æsop used to say that when
Prometheus took the clay to form man, he did not temper it with water,
but with tears."

Concerning the death of this extraordinary man we read that Æsop went
to Delphi, with a great quantity of gold and silver, being ordered by
Crœsus to offer a great sacrifice to Apollo, and to give a considerable
sum to each inhabitant. The quarrel which arose between the Delphians
and him was the occasion, after his sending away the sacrifice, of his
sending back the money to Crœsus; for he thought that those for whom
this prince designed it had rendered themselves unworthy of it. The
inhabitants of Delphi contrived an accusation of sacrilege against him,
and, pretending that they had convicted him, cast him down from the top
of a rock.

Bayle has a long line of centuries at his back when he says: "Æsop's
lectures against the faults of men were the fullest of good sense and
wit that can be imagined." He substantiates this affirmation in the
following manner: "Can any inventions be more happy than the images
Æsop made use of to instruct mankind? They are exceedingly fit for
children, and no less proper for grown persons; they are all that is
necessary to perfect a precept --I mean the mixture of the useful with
the agreeable." He then quotes Aulus Gellius as saying: "Æsop the
Phrygian fabulist was not without reason esteemed to be wise, since he
did not, after the manner of the philosophers, severely and imperiously
command such things as were fit to be advised and persuaded, but by
feigning, diverting and entertaining apologues, he insinuates good
and wholesome advice into the minds of men with a kind of willing
attention."

Bayle continues: "At all times these have been made to succeed the
homespun stories of nurses. 'Let them learn to tell the Fables of
Æscop, which succeed the stories of the nursery, in pure and easy
style, and afterwards endeavour to write in the same familiar manner.'
They have never fallen into contempt. Our age, notwithstanding its
pride and delicacy, esteems and admires them, and shows them in a
hundred different shapes. The inimitable La Fontaine has procured them
in our time a great deal of honour and glory; and great commendations
are given to the reflections of an English wit, Sir Roger L'Estrange,
on these very fables."

Since the period when Pierre Bayle composed his great biographical
dictionary, the Fables of Æsop have perhaps suffered something of a
relapse in the favour of grown persons; but if one may judge from the
number of new editions illustrated for children, they are still the
delight of modern nurseries. There is this, however, to be said of
contemporary times--that the multitude of books in a nursery prevent
children from acquiring the profound and affectionate acquaintance with
Æsop which every child would naturally get when his fables were almost
the only book provided by the Press for juvenile readers.

It is questionable whether the fables will any longer produce the
really deep effect which they certainly have had in the past. But we
may be certain that some of them will always play a great part in the
wisdom of the common people, and that these particularly true and
striking apologues are secure of an eternal place in the literature
of nations. As an example of what we mean, we will tell as simply as
possible some of the most characteristic fables.


_The Dog and the Shadow_

A Dog, with a piece of stolen meat between his teeth, was one day
crossing a river by means of a plank, when he caught sight of another
dog in the water carrying a far larger piece of meat. He opened his
jaws to snap at the greater morsel, when the meat dropped in the stream
and was lost even in the reflection.


_The Dying Lion_

A Lion, brought to the extremity of weakness by old age and disease,
lay dying in the sunlight. Those whom he had oppressed in his strength
now came round about him to revenge themselves for past injuries. The
Boar ripped the flank of the King of Beasts with his tusks. The Bull
came and gored the Lion's sides with his horns. Finally, the Ass drew
near, and after carefully seeing that there was no danger, let fly with
his heels in the Lion's face. Then, with a dying groan, the mighty
creature exclaimed: "How much worse it is than a thousand deaths to be
spurned by so base a creature!"


_The Mountain in Labour_

A Mountain was heard to produce dreadful sounds, as though it were
labouring to bring forth something enormous. The people came and stood
about waiting to see what wonderful thing would be produced from this
labour. After they had waited till they were tired, out crept a Mouse.


_Hercules and the Waggoner_

A Waggoner was driving his team through a muddy lane when the wheels
stuck fast in the clay, and the Horses could get no farther. The Man
immediately dropped on his knees, and, crying bitterly, besought
Hercules to come and help him. "Get up and stir thyself, thou lazy
fellow!" replied Hercules. "Whip thy Horses, and put thy shoulder to
the wheel. If thou art in need of my help, when thou thyself hast
laboured, then shalt thou have it."


_The Frogs that Asked for a King_

The Frogs, who lived an easy, happy life in the ponds, once prayed to
Jupiter that he should give them a King. Jupiter was amused by this
prayer, and cast a log into the water, saying: "There, then, is a King
for you." The Frogs, frightened by the great splash, regarded their
King with alarm, until at last, seeing that he did not stir, some of
them jumped upon his back and began to be merry there, amused at such
a foolish King. However, King Log did not satisfy their ideas for very
long, and so once again they petitioned Jupiter to send them a King, a
real King who would rule over them, and not lie helpless in the water.
Then Jupiter sent the Frogs a Stork, who caught them by their legs,
tossed them in the air, and gobbled them up whenever he was hungry.
All in a hurry the Frogs besought Jupiter to take away King Stork
and restore them to their former happy condition. "No, no," answered
Jupiter; "a King that did you no hurt did not please you; make the best
of him you now have, lest a worse come in his place!"


_The Gnat and the Lion_

A lively and insolent Gnat was bold enough to attack a Lion, which he
so maddened by stinging the most sensitive parts of his nose, eyes
and ears that the beast roared with anguish and tore himself with
his claws. In vain were the Lion's efforts to rid himself of his
insignificant tormentor; again and again the insect returned and stung
the furious King of Beasts, till at last the Lion fell exhausted on the
ground. The triumphant Gnat, sounding his tiny trumpet, hovered over
the spot exulting in his victory. But it happened that in his circling
flight he got himself caught in the web of a Spider, which, fine and
delicate as it was, yet had power enough to hold the tiny insect a
prisoner. All the Gnat's efforts to escape only held him the more
tightly and firmly a prisoner, and he who had conquered the Lion became
in his turn the prey of the Spider.


_The Wolf and the Stork_

A Wolf ate his food so greedily that a bone stuck in his throat. This
caused him such great pain that he ran hither and thither, promising
to reward handsomely anyone who would remove the cause of his torture.
A Stork, moved with pity by the Wolf's cry of pain, and tempted also
by the reward, undertook the dangerous operation. When he had removed
the bone, the Wolf moved away, but the Stork called out and reminded
him of the promised reward. "Reward!" exclaimed the Wolf. "Pray, you
greedy fellow, what reward can you expect? You dared to put your head
in my mouth, and instead of biting it off, I let you take it out again
unharmed. Get away with you! And do not again place yourself in my
power."


_The Frog who Wanted to Be as Big as an Ox_

A vain Frog, surrounded by her children, looked up and saw an Ox
grazing near by. "I can be as big as the Ox," she said, and began to
blow herself out. "Am I as big now?" she inquired. "Oh, no; not nearly
so big!" said the little frogs. "Now?" she asked, blowing herself out
still more. "No, not nearly so big!" answered her children. "But now?"
she inquired eagerly, and blew herself out still more. "No, not even
now," they said; "and if you try till you burst yourself you will never
be so big." But the Frog would not listen, and attempting to make
herself bigger still, burst her skin and died.


_The Dog in the Manger_

A Dog lay in a manger which was full of hay. An Ox, being hungry, came
near, and was about to eat when the Dog started up, and, with angry
snarls, would not let the Ox approach. "Surly brute," said the Ox; "you
cannot eat the hay yourself, and you will let no one else have any."


_The Bundle of Faggots_

An honest Man had the unhappiness to have a quarrelsome family of
children. One day he called them before him, and bade them try to break
a bundle of faggots. All tried, and all failed. "Now," said he, "unbind
the bundle and take every stick by itself, and see if you cannot break
them." They did his bidding, and snapped all the sticks one by one with
the greatest possible ease. "This, my children," said the Father at
last, "is a true emblem of your condition. Keep together and you are
safe, divide and you are undone."


_The Fox Without a Tail_

A Fox was once caught in a trap by his tail, and in order to get free
was obliged to leave it behind. He knew that his fellows would make fun
of his tailless condition, so he made up his mind to induce them all to
part with their tails. At the next assemblage of Foxes he made a speech
on the uselessness of tails in general, and the inconvenience of a
Fox's tail in particular, declaring that never in his whole life had he
felt so comfortable as now in his tailless freedom. When he sat down,
a sly old Fox rose, and, waving his brush, said, with a sneer, that
if he had lost his tail, he would be convinced by the last speaker's
arguments, but until such an accident occurred he fully intended to
vote in favour of tails.


_The Blind Man and the Paralytic_

A blind man finding himself stopped in a rough and difficult road,
met with a paralytic and begged his assistance. "How can I help you,"
replied the paralytic, "when I can scarcely move myself along?" But,
regarding the blind man, he added: "However, you appear to have good
legs and a broad back, and, if you will lift me and carry me, I will
guide you safely through this difficulty, which is more than each one
can surmount for himself. You shall walk for me, and I will see for
you." "With all my heart," rejoined the blind man; and, taking the
paralytic on his shoulders, the two went cheerfully forward in a wise
partnership which triumphed over all difficulties.




MATTHEW ARNOLD

Essays in Criticism

  Matthew Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby (see Vol. X, p. 260),
  was born on December 24, 1822, and died on April 15, 1888. He was
  by everyday calling an inspector of schools and an educational
  expert, but by nature and grace a poet, a philosopher, a man of
  piety and of letters. Arnold almost ceased to write verse when
  he was forty-five, though not without having already produced
  some of the choicest poetry in the English language. Before
  that he had developed his theories of literary criticism in his
  "Essays in Criticism"; and about the time of his withdrawal
  from Oxford he published "Culture and Anarchy," in which his
  system of philosophy is broadly outlined. Later, in "St. Paul
  and Protestantism," "Literature and Dogma" and "God and the
  Bible," he tried to adjust Christianity according to the light of
  modern knowledge. In his "Lectures on Translating Homer," he had
  expressed views on criticism and its importance that were new to,
  and so were somewhat adversely discussed by the Press. Whereupon,
  in 1865, with a militant joy, he re-entered the fray and defined
  the province of criticism in the first of a series of "Essays in
  Criticism," showing the narrowness of the British conception.
  "The Literary Influence of Academies" was a subject that enabled
  him to make a further comparison between the literary genius of
  the French and of the English people, and a number of individual
  critiques that followed only enhanced his great and now
  undisputed position both as a poet and as a critic. The argument
  of the two general essays is given here.


_I.--Creative Power and Critical Power_

Many objections have been made to a proposition of mine about
criticism: "Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the
intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years,
has been a critical effort--the endeavour, in all branches of
knowledge, to see the object as in itself it really is." I added that
"almost the last thing for which one would come to English literature
was just that very thing which now Europe most desired--criticism,"
and that the power and value of English literature were thereby
impaired. More than one rejoinder declared that the importance here
again assigned to criticism was excessive, and asserted the inherent
superiority of the creative effort of the human spirit over its
critical effort. A reporter of Wordsworth's conversation quotes a
judgment to the same effect: "Wordsworth holds the critical power very
low; indeed, infinitely lower than the inventive."

The critical power is of lower rank than the inventive--true; but, in
assenting to this proposition, we must keep in mind that men may have
the sense of exercising a free creative activity in other ways than
in producing great works of literature or art; and that the exercise
of the creative power in the production of great works of literature
or art is not at all epochs and under all conditions possible. This
creative power works with elements, with materials--what if it has not
those materials ready for its use? Now, in literature, the elements
with which creative power works are ideas--the best ideas on every
matter which literature touches, current at the time. The grand work of
literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition; its gift lies
in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and
spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself
in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in most
effective and attractive combinations, making beautiful works with
them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself
amidst the order of the ideas, in order to work freely; and these it
is not so easy to command. This is really why great creative epochs in
literature are so rare--because, for the creation of a master-work of
literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power
of the moment; and the man is not enough without the moment.

The creative power has for its happy exercise appointed elements, and
those elements are not in its control. Nay, they are more within the
control of the critical power. It is the business of the critical
power in all branches of knowledge to see the object as in itself it
really is. Thus it tends at last to make an intellectual situation of
which the creative power can avail itself. It tends to establish an
order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with
that which it displaces--to make the best ideas prevail. Presently
these new ideas reach society; the touch of truth is the touch of life;
and there is a stir and growth everywhere. Out of this stir and growth
come the creative epochs of literature.


_II.--The Literary "Atmosphere"_

It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our
literature through the first quarter of the nineteenth century had
about it something premature, and for this cause its productions are
doomed to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less
splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded
without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work
with. In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force,
did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so
incoherent, Wordsworth, profound as he is, so wanting in completeness
and variety.

It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry at this
epoch. Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading;
Pindar and Sophocles had not many books; Shakespeare was no deep
reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles and the England
of Shakespeare the poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest
degree animating and nourishing to creative power.

Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and the long and widely
combined critical effort of Germany formed for Goethe when he lived
and worked. In the England of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century there was neither a national glow of life and thought, such
as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a force of learning and
criticism, such as was to be found in Germany. The creative power
of poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a
basis--a thorough interpretation of the world was necessarily denied to
it.

At first it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the French
Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius
equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time
of Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its powerful episode
of the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French
Revolution took a character which essentially distinguished it from
such movements as these. The French Revolution found, undoubtedly, its
motive power in the intelligence of men, and not in their practical
sense. It appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, certain,
permanent. The year 1789 asked of a thing: Is it rational? That a
whole nation should have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure
reason is a very remarkable thing when we consider how little of mind,
or anything so worthy or quickening as mind, comes into the motives
which in general impel great masses of men. In spite of the crimes and
follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives, from
the force, truth and universality of the ideas which it took for its
law, a unique and still living power; and it is, and will probably long
remain, the greatest, the most animating event in history.

But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical
application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here
an Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for
hours. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot
be too much lived with; but to transport them abruptly into the world
of politics and practice, violently to revolutionise this world to
their bidding--that is quite another thing. "Force and right are the
governors of the world; force till right is ready" Joubert has said.
The grand error of the French Revolution was that it set at naught
the second great half of that maxim--force till right is ready--and,
rushing furiously into the political sphere, created in opposition to
itself what I may call an epoch of concentration.

The great force of that epoch of concentration was England, and the
great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. I will not
deny that his writings are often disfigured by the violence and
passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was
bounded and his observations therefore at fault; but for those who
can make the needful corrections what distinguishes these writings
is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth--they
contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration. Now, an
epoch of expansion seems to be opening in this country. In spite of
the absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material
progress, this progress is likely to lead in the end to an apparition
of intellectual life. It is of the last importance that English
criticism should discern what rule it ought to take, to avail itself
of the field now opening to it. That rule may be summed up in one
word--disinterestedness.


_III.--The Virtue of Detachment_

How is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from
practice; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is
to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. Its
business is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the
world, and by making this known to create a current of fresh and true
ideas. What is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It
is that our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having
practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the
first thing, and the play of the mind the second--so much play of mind
as is compatible with the prosecution of these practical ends is all
that is wanted.

An organ like the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, existing as just an organ
for a free play of mind, we have not; but we have the "Edinburgh
Review," existing as an organ of the old Whigs, and for as much play
of mind as may suit its being that; we have the "Quarterly Review,"
existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may
suit its being that; we have the "British Quarterly Review," existing
as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as much play of mind
as may suit its being that; we have "The Times," existing as an organ
of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play
of mind as may suit its being that. And so on through all the various
fractions, political and religious, of our society--every fraction
has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all
fractions in the common pleasure of a free, disinterested play of mind
meets with no favour. Yet no other criticism will ever attain any real
authority, or make any real way towards its end--the creating of a
current of true and fresh ideas.

It will be said that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue
of detachment, criticism condemns itself to a slow and obscure work;
but it is the only proper work of criticism. Whoever sets himself to
see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle;
but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its work that
adequate ideas will ever get current at all. For the practical man is
not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these distinctions truth and
the highest culture greatly find their account. To act is so easy, as
Goethe says, and to think is so hard. Criticism must maintain its
independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well meant
efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction if, in
the sphere of the ideal, they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must
be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness of spiritual
perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a power which, in
the practical sphere, may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the
spiritual shortcomings of powers that in the practical sphere may be
beneficent.

By the very nature of things much of the best that is known and
thought in the world cannot be of English growth--must be foreign;
by the nature of things, again, it is just this that we are least
likely to know, while English thought is streaming in upon us from all
sides, and takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant of its
existence. The English critic must dwell much on foreign thought, and
with particular heed on any part of it, which, while significant and
fruitful in itself, is for any reason specially likely to escape him.

Again, judging is often spoken of as the critic's business; and so in
some sense it is. But the judgment which almost insensibly forms itself
in a fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable
one; and, therefore, knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the
critic's great concern for himself. And it is by communicating fresh
knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass along with it--as a sort
of companion and clue--that he will generally do most good to his
readers.

To get near the standard of the best that is known and thought in the
world, every critic should possess one great literature at least beside
his own; and the more unlike his own the better. For the criticism I am
concerned with regards Europe as being for intellectual and spiritual
purposes one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
to a common result.

I conclude with what I said at the beginning. To have the sense of
creative activity is not denied to criticism; but then criticism must
be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then
it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense of creative
activity, a sense which a man of insight and conscience will prefer
to that he might derive from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate
creation. And at some epochs no other creation is possible. Still, in
full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs only to genuine
creation; in literature we must never forget that. But what true man of
letters ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a gifted
nature to come into possession of a current of true and living ideas,
and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely to
underrate it. The glorious epochs of Æschylus and Shakespeare make us
feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is the true life of
literature; there is the promised land towards which criticism can only
beckon.


_IV.--Should We Have an Academy?_

It is impossible to put down a book like the history of the French
Academy by Pellisson and D'Olivet without being led to reflect upon
the absence in our own country of any institution like the French
Academy, upon the probable causes of this absence, and upon its
results. Improvement of the language was the declared grand aim for the
operations of that academy. Its statutes of foundation say expressly
that "the Academy's principal function shall be to work with all
the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to our
language, and rendering it pure, eloquent and capable of treating
the arts and sciences." It is said that Richelieu had it in his mind
that French should succeed Latin in its general ascendancy, as Latin
had succeeded Greek. If it were so, even this wish has to some extent
been fulfilled. This was not all Richelieu had in his mind, however.
The new academy was meant to be a literary tribunal, a high court of
letters, and this is what it has really been.

Such an effort, to set up a recognised authority, imposing on us a
high standard in matters of intellect and taste, has many enemies in
human nature. We all of us like to go our own way, and not to be forced
out of the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us. We like
to be suffered to lie comfortably on the old straw of our habits,
especially of our intellectual habits, even though this straw may not
be very fine and clean. But if this effort to limit the freedom of our
lower nature finds enemies in human nature, it also finds auxiliaries
in it. Man alone of living creatures, says Cicero, goes feeling after
the discovery of an order, a law of good taste; other creatures
submissively fulfil the law of their nature.

Now in France, says M. Sainte-Beuve, "the first consideration for us is
not whether we are amused and pleased by a work of art or of mind, or
is it whether we are touched by it. What we seek above all to learn is
whether we were right in being amused with it, and in applauding it,
and in being moved by it." A Frenchman has, to a considerable degree,
what one may call a conscience in intellectual matters. Seeing this, we
are on the road to see why the French have their Academy and we have
nothing of the kind.

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of our nation?
Our greatest admirers would not claim for us an open and clear mind,
a quick and flexible intelligence. Rather would they allege as our
chief spiritual characteristics energy and honesty--most important and
fruitful qualities in the intellectual and spiritual, as in the moral
sphere, for, of what we call genius, energy is the most essential
part. Now, what that energy, which is the life of genius, above
everything demands and insists upon, is freedom--entire independence of
authority, prescription and routine, the fullest power to extend as
it will. Therefore, a nation whose chief spiritual characteristic is
energy will not be very apt to set up in intellectual matters a fixed
standard, an authority like an academy. By this it certainly escapes
real inconveniences and dangers, and it can, at the same time, reach
undeniably splendid heights in poetry and science. We have Shakespeare,
and we have Newton. In the intellectual sphere there can be no higher
names.

On the other hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work
are specially the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of
intelligence. In prose literature they are of first-rate importance.
These are elements that can, to a certain degree, be appropriated,
while the free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate and
maintain them, and therefore a nation with an eminent turn for them
naturally establishes academies.


_V.--Our Loss Through Provinciality_

How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! How much better do
the productions of its spirit show in the qualities of genius than in
the qualities of intelligence! But the question as to the utility of
academies to the intellectual life of a nation is not settled when we
say that we have never had an academy, yet we have, confessedly, a very
great literature. It is by no means sure that either our literature
or the general intellectual life of our nation has got already
without academies all that academies can give. Our literature, in
spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short in form, method,
precision, proportions, arrangement--all things where intelligence
proper comes in. It may be weak in prose, full of haphazard, crudeness,
provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering; and instead of
always fixing our thoughts upon the points in which our literature is
strong, we should, from time to time, fix them upon those in which
it is weak. In France, the Academy serves as a sort of centre and
rallying-point to educated opinion, and gives it a force which it has
not got here. In the bulk of the intellectual work of a nation which
has no centre, no intellectual metropolis like an academy, there is
observable a note of provinciality. Great powers of mind will make a
man think profoundly, but not even great powers of mind will keep his
taste and style perfectly sound and sure if he is left too much to
himself with no sovereign organ of opinion near him.

Even men like Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Theirs is too often
extravagant prose; prose too much suffered to indulge its caprices;
prose at too great a distance from the centre of good taste; prose with
the note of provinciality; Asiatic prose, somewhat barbarously rich and
overloaded. The note of provinciality in Addison is to be found in the
commonplace of his ideas, though his style is classical. Where there
is no centre like an academy, if you have genius and powerful ideas,
you are apt not to have the best style going; if you have precision of
style and not genius, you are apt not to have the best ideas going.

The provincial spirit exaggerates the value of its ideas for want of
a high standard at hand by which to try them; it is hurried away by
fancies; it likes and dislikes too passionately, too exclusively; its
admiration weeps hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams at the
mouth. So we get the eruptive and aggressive manner in literature. Not
having the lucidity of a large and centrally-placed intelligence, the
provincial spirit has not its graciousness; it does not persuade, it
makes war; it has not urbanity, the tone of the city, of the centre,
the tone that always aims at a spiritual and intellectual effect. It
loves hard-hitting rather than persuading. The newspaper, with its
party spirit, its resolute avoidance of shades and distinctions, is
its true literature. In England there needs a miracle of genius like
Shakespeare to produce balance of mind, and a miracle of intellectual
delicacy like Dr. Newman's to produce urbanity of style.

The reader will ask for some practical conclusion about the
establishment of an academy in this country, and perhaps I shall hardly
give him the one he expects. Nations have their own modes of acting,
and these modes are not easily changed; they are even consecrated when
great things have been done in them. When a literature has produced
a Shakespeare and a Milton, when it has even produced a Barrow and a
Burke, it cannot well abandon its traditions; it can hardly begin at
this late time of day with an institution like the French Academy. An
academy quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest
literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of intellectual
tone and taste, we shall hardly have, and perhaps ought not to wish to
have. But then every one amongst us with any turn for literature at all
will do well to remember to what shortcomings and excesses, which such
an academy tends to correct, we are liable, and the more liable, of
course, for not having it. He will do well constantly to try himself in
respect of these, steadily to widen his culture, and severely to check
in himself the provincial spirit.


_VI.--Some Illustrative Criticisms_

To try and approach Truth on one side after another, not to strive or
cry, not to persist in pressing forward on any one side with violence
and self-will--it is only thus that mortals may hope to gain any vision
of the mysterious goddess whom we shall never see except in outline.

The grand power of poetry is the power of dealing with things so as to
awaken in us a wonderfully full, new and intimate sense of them and
of our relation with them, so that we feel ourselves to be in contact
with the essential nature of those objects, to have their secret, and
be in harmony with them, and this feeling calms and satisfies us as no
other can. Maurice de Guérin manifested this magical power of poetry in
singular eminence. His passion for perfection disdained all poetical
work that was not perfectly adequate and felicitous.

His sister Eugénie de Guérin has the same characteristic
quality--distinction. Of this quality the world is impatient; it
chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates it, but ends by
receiving its influence and by undergoing its law. This quality at last
inexorably corrects the world's blunders, and fixes the world's ideals.

Heine claimed that he was "a brave soldier in the war of the liberation
of humanity." That was his significance. He was, if not pre-eminently
a brave, yet a brilliant soldier in the war of liberation of humanity.
He was not an adequate interpreter of the modern world, but only a
brilliant soldier.

Born in 1754, and dying in 1824, Joseph Joubert chose to hide his life;
but he was a man of extraordinary ardour in the search for truth and
of extraordinary fineness in the perception of it. He was one of those
wonderful lovers of light who, when they have an idea to put forth,
brood long over it first, and wait patiently till it shines.




GEORGE BRANDES

Main Currents of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century

  George Brandes was born in Copenhagen on February 4, 1842, and
  was educated at the University of Copenhagen. The appearance
  of his "Æsthetic Studies" in 1868 established his reputation
  among men of letters of all lands. His criticism received a
  philosophic bent from his study of John Stuart Mill, Comte, and
  Renan. Complaint is often made of the bias exhibited by Brandes
  in his works, which is somewhat of a blemish on the breadth
  of his judgment. This bias finds its chief expression in his
  anti-clericalism. His publications number thirty-three volumes,
  and include works on history, literature, and criticism. He
  has written studies of Shakespeare, of Lord Beaconsfield, of
  Ibsen, and of Ferdinand Lassalle. His greatest work is the "Main
  Currents of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century." The field
  covered is so vast that any attempted synopsis of the volume is
  impossible here, so in this place we merely indicate the scope of
  Brandes's monumental work, and state his general conclusions.


_The Man and the Book_

This remarkable essay in literary criticism is limited to the first
half of the nineteenth century; it concludes with the historical
turning-point of 1848. Within this period the author discovers, first,
a reaction against the literature of the eighteenth century; and then,
the vanquishment of that reaction. Or, in other words, there is first
a fading away and disappearance of the ideas and feelings of the
preceding century, and then a return of the ideas of progress in new
and higher waves.

"Literary history is, in its profoundest significance, psychology, the
study, the history of the soul"; and literary criticism is, with our
author, nothing less than the interior history of peoples. Whether we
happen to agree or to disagree with his personal sympathies, which
lie altogether with liberalism and whether his interpretation of these
complex movements be accepted or rejected by future criticism, it is at
least unquestionable that his estimate of his science is the right one,
and that his method is the right one, and that no one stands beside
Brandes as an exponent.

The historical movement of the years 1800 to 1848 is here likened to a
drama, of which six different literary groups represent the six acts.
The first three acts incorporate the reaction against progress and
liberty. They are, first, the French Emigrant Literature, inspired
by Rousseau; secondly, the semi-Catholic Romantic school of Germany,
wherein the reaction has separated itself more thoroughly from the
contemporary struggle for liberty, and has gained considerably in
depth and vigour; and, thirdly, the militant and triumphant reaction
as shown in Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais, Lamartine and Victor Hugo,
standing out for pope and monarch. The drama of reaction has here come
to its climax; and the last three acts are to witness its fall, and the
revival, in its place, of the ideas of liberty and of progress.

"It is one man, Byron, who produces the revulsion in the great drama."
And Byron and his English contemporaries, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott,
Keats and Shelley, hold the stage in the fourth act, "Naturalism in
England." The fifth act belongs to the Liberal movement in France, the
"French Romantic School," including the names of Lamennais, Lamartine
and Hugo in their second phase; and also those of De Musset and George
Sand. The movement passes from France into "Young Germany," where the
sixth act is played by Heine, Ruge, Feuerbach and others; and the
ardent revolutionary writers of France and of Germany together prepare
for the great political transformation of 1848.


_I.--The Emigrant Literature_

At the beginning of our period, France was subjected to two successive
tyrannies: those, namely, of the Convention and of the Empire, both of
which suppressed all independent thought and literature. Writers were,
perforce, emigrants beyond the frontiers of French power, and were, one
and all, in opposition to the Reign of Terror, or to the Napoleonic
tyranny, or to both; one and all they were looking forward to the new
age which should come.

There was, therefore, a note of expectancy in this emigrant literature,
which had also the advantage of real knowledge, gained in long exile,
of foreign lands and peoples. Although it reacts against the dry and
narrow rationalism of the eighteenth century, it is not as yet a
complete reaction against the Liberalism of that period; the writers
of the emigrant group are still ardent in the cause of Liberty. They
are contrary to the spirit of Voltaire; but they are all profoundly
influenced by Rousseau.

Chateaubriand's romances, "Atala" and "René," Rousseau's "The New
Héloïse" and Goethe's "Werther" are the subjects of studies which lead
our critic to a consideration of that new spiritual condition of which
they are the indications. "All the spiritual maladies," he says, "which
make their appearance at this time may be regarded as the products
of two great events--the emancipation of the individual and the
emancipation of thought."

Every career now lies open, potentially, to the individual. His
opportunities, and therefore his desires, but not his powers, have
become boundless; and "inordinate desire is always accompanied by
inordinate melancholy." His release from the old order, which limited
his importance, has set him free for self-idolatry; the old laws
have broken down, and everything now seems permissible. He no longer
feels himself part of a whole; he feels himself to be a little world
which reflects the great world. The belief in the saving power of
enlightenment had been rudely shaken, and the minds of men were
confused like an army which receives contradictory orders in the midst
of a battle. Sénancour, Nodier and Benjamin Constant have left us
striking romances picturing the human spirit in this dilemma; they show
also a new feeling for Nature, new revelations of subjectivity, and new
ideas of womanhood and of passion.

But of the emigrant literature Madame de Staël is the chief and
central figure. The lawless savagery of the Revolution did not weaken
her fidelity to personal and political freedom. "She wages war with
absolutism in the state and hypocrisy in society. She teaches her
countrymen to appreciate the characteristics and literature of the
neighbouring nations; she breaks down with her own hands the wall of
self-sufficiency with which victorious France had surrounded itself.
Barante, with his perspective view of eighteenth-century France, only
continues and completes her work."


_II.--The Romantic School in Germany_

German Romanticism continues the growing reaction against the
eighteenth century; yet, though it is essentially reaction, it is not
mere reaction, but contains the seeds of a new development. It is
intellectual, poetical, philosophical and full of real life.

This literary period, marked by the names of Hölderlin, A. W. Schlegel,
Tieck, Jean Paul Richter, Schleiermacher, Wackenroder, Novalis, Arnim,
Brentano, resulted in little that has endured. It produced no typical
forms; the character of its literature is musical rather than plastic;
its impulse is not a clear perception or creation, but an infinite and
ineffable aspiration.

An intenser spiritual life was at once the impulse and the goal of
the Romanticists, in whom wonder and infinite desire are born again.
A sympathetic interest in the fairy tale and the legend, in the face
of Nature and in her creatures, in history, institutions and law, and
a keener emotional sensitiveness in poetry, were the result of this
refreshed interior life. In religion, the movement was towards the
richly-coloured mystery and child-like faith of Catholicism; and in
respect of human love it was towards freedom, spontaneity, intensity,
and against the hard bonds of social conventions.

But its emotions became increasingly morbid, abnormal and ineffectual.
Romanticism tended really, not to the spiritual emancipation that was
its avowed aim, but to a refinement of sensuality; an indolent and
passive enjoyment is its actual goal; and it repudiates industry and
utility as the philistine barriers which exclude us from Paradise.
Retrogression, the going back to a fancied Paradise or Golden Age, is
the central idea of Romanticism, and is the secret of the practical
ineffectiveness of the movement.

Friedrich Schlegel's romance, "Lucinde," is a very typical work of
this period. It is based on the Romantic idea that life and poetry are
identical, and its aim is to counsel the transformation of our actual
life into a poem or work of art. It is a manifesto of self-absorption
and of subjectivity; the reasoned defence of idleness, of enjoyment, of
lawlessness, of the arbitrary expression of the Self, supreme above all.

The mysticism of Novalis, who preferred sickness to health, night to
day, and invested death itself with sensual delights, is described by
himself as voluptuousness. It is full of a feverish, morbid desire,
which becomes at last the desire for nothingness. The "blue flower," in
his story "Heinrich von Ofterdingen," is the ideal, personal happiness,
sought for in all Romanticism, but by its very nature never attainable.


_III.--The Reaction in France_

Herein we have the culmination of the reactionary movement. Certain
authors are grouped together as labouring for the re-establishment of
the fallen power of authority; and by the principle of authority is to
be understood "the principle which assumes the life of the individual
and of the nation to be based upon reverence for inherited tradition."
Further, "the principle of authority in general stood or fell with the
authority of the Church. When that was undermined, it drew all other
authorities with it in its fall."

After a study of the Revolution in its quality as a religious movement,
and the story of the Concordat, our author traces the genesis of
this extreme phase of the reaction. Its promoters were all of noble
birth and bound by close ties to the old royal families; their aim
was political rather than religious; "they craved for religion as
a panacea for lawlessness." Their ruling idea was the principle of
externality, as opposed to that of inward, personal feeling and private
investigation; it was the principle of theocracy, as opposed to the
sovereignty of the people; it was the principle of power, as opposed to
the principles of human rights and liberties.

Chateaubriand's famous book, "Le Génie du Christianisme," devoid of
real feeling, attempts to vindicate authority by means of an appeal
to sentiment, as if taking for granted that a reasoned faith was now
impossible. His point of view is romantic, and therefore, religiously,
false; his reasoning is of the "how beautiful!" style.

But the principle was enthroned by Count Joseph de Maistre, a very
different man. The minister of the King of Sardinia at the court
of Russia, he gained the emperor's confidence by his strong and
pure character, his royalist principles, and his talents. His more
important works, "Du Pape," "De l'Eglise Gallicane," and "Soirées de
St. Pétersbourg," are the most uncompromising defence of political
and religious autocracy. The fundamental idea of his works is that
"there is no human society without government, no government without
sovereignty, and no sovereignty without infallibility." Beside De
Maistre stands Bonald, a man of the same views, but without the other's
daring and versatile wit. Chateaubriand's prose epic "Les Martyrs," the
mystically sensual writings of Madame Krüdener, and the lyric poetry
of Lamartine and Victor Hugo further popularised the reaction, which
reached its breaking point in Lamennais.

It was at this moment, April, 1824, that the news came of Byron's death
in Greece. The illusion dissolved; the reaction came to an end. The
principle of authority fell, never to rise again; and the Immanuelistic
school was succeeded by the Satanic.


_IV.--Naturalism in England_

The distinguishing character which our author discovers in the English
poets is a love of Nature, of the country and the sea, of domestic
animals and vegetation. This Naturalism, common to Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Scott, Keats, Moore, Shelley and Byron, becomes, when
transferred to social interests, revolutionary; the English poet is
a Radical. Literary questions interest him not; he is at heart a
politician.

The political background of English intellectual life at this period
is painted forcibly and in the darkest tones. It was "dark with
terror produced in the middle classes by the excesses of the liberty
movement in France, dark with the tyrannic lusts of proud Tories and
the Church's oppressions, dark with the spilt blood of Irish Catholics
and English artisans." In the midst of all this misery, Wordsworth and
Coleridge recalled the English mind to the love of real Nature and to
the love of liberty. Wordsworth's conviction was that in town life
and its distractions men had forgotten Nature, and had been punished
for it; constant social intercourse had dissipated their talents and
impaired their susceptibility to simple and pure impressions. His
naturalism is antagonistic to all official creeds; it is akin to the
old Greek conception of Nature, and is impregnated with pantheism.

The separate studies which follow, dealing with the natural Romanticism
of Coleridge, Southey's Oriental Romanticism, the Lake school's
conception of Liberty, the Historic Naturalism of Scott, the sensuous
poetry of Keats, the poetry of Irish opposition and revolt, Thomas
Campbell's poetry of freedom, the Republican Humanism of Landor,
Shelley's Radical Naturalism, and like subjects, are of the highest
importance to every English reader who would understand the time in
which he lives. But Byron's is the heroic figure in this act. "Byron's
genius takes possession of him, and makes him great and victorious in
his argument, directing his aim with absolute certainty to the vital
points." Byron's whole being burned with the profoundest compassion
for the immeasurable sufferings of humanity. It was liberty that he
worshipped, and he died for liberty.


_V.--The Romantic School in France_

During the Revolution the national property had been divided into
twenty times as many hands as before, and with the fall of Napoleon
the industrial period begins. All restrictions had been removed
from industry and commerce, and capital became the moving power of
society and the object of individual desires. The pursuit of money
helps to give to the literature of the day its romantic, idealistic
stamp. Balzac alone, however, made money the hero of his epic. Other
great writers of the period, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, George
Sand, Beyle, Mérimée, Théophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, kept as far as
possible from the new reality.

The young Romanticists of 1830 burned with a passion for art and a
detestation of drab bourgeoisie. A break with tradition was demanded
in all the arts; the original, the unconscious, the popular, were what
they aimed at. It was now, as in Hugo's dramas, that the passionate
plebeian appeared on the scene as hero; Mérimée, as in "Carmen,"
painted savage emotions; Nodier's children spoke like real children;
George Sand depicted, in woman, not conscious virtue and vice, but the
innate nobility and natural goodness of a noble woman's heart. The poet
was no longer looked on as a courtier, but as the despised high-priest
of humanity.

The French Romantic school is the greatest literary school of the
nineteenth century. It displayed three main tendencies--the endeavour
to reproduce faithfully some real piece of past history or some phase
of modern life; the endeavour after perfection of form; and enthusiasm
for great religious or social reformatory ideas. These three tendencies
are traced out in the ideals and work of the brilliant authors of the
period; in George Sand, for instance, who proclaimed that the mission
of art is a mission of sentiment and love; and in Balzac, who views
society as the scientist investigates Nature--"he never moralises and
condemns; he never allows himself to be led by disgust or enthusiasm to
describe otherwise than truthfully; nothing is too small, nothing is
too great to be examined and explained."

The impressions which our author gives of Sainte-Beuve, Gautier,
George Sand, Balzac and Mérimée are vivid and concrete; they are high
achievements in literary portraiture, set in a real historic background.


_VI.--Young Germany_

The personality, writings, and actions of Byron had an extraordinary
influence upon "Young Germany," a movement initiated by Heine and
Börne, and characterised by a strong craving for liberty. "Byron,
with his contempt for the real negation of liberty that lay concealed
beneath the 'wars of liberty' against Napoleon, with his championship
of the oppressed, his revolt against social custom, his sensuality and
spleen, his passionate love of liberty in every domain, seemed to the
men of that day to be an embodiment of all that they understood by the
modern spirit, modern poetry."

The literary group known as Young Germany has no creative minds of the
highest, and only one of very high rank, namely, Heine. "It denied, it
emancipated, it cleared up, it let in fresh air. It is strong through
its doubt, its hatred of thraldom, its individualism." The Germany of
those days has been succeeded by a quite new Germany, organised to
build up and to put forth material strength, and the writers of the
first half of the nineteenth century, who were always praising France
and condemning the sluggishness of their own country, are but little
read.

The literary figures of this period who are painted by our author, are
Börne, Heine, Immermann, Menzel, Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, Rahel Varnhagen
von Ense, Bettina von Arnim, Charlotte Stieglitz, and many others, to
whose writings, in conjunction with those of the French Romanticists,
Brandes ascribes the general revolt of the oppressed peoples of Europe
in 1848. Of the men of that date he says: "They had a faith that could
remove mountains, and a hope that could shake the earth. Liberty,
parliament, national unity, liberty of the Press, republic, were to
them magic words, at the very sound of which their hearts leaped like
the heart of a youth who suddenly sees his beloved."




ROBERT BURTON

The Anatomy of Melancholy

  Robert Burton was born on February 8, 1576, of an old family, at
  Lindley, Leicestershire, England; was educated at the free school
  of Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, and at Brasenose College,
  Oxford, and in 1599 was elected student of Christ Church. In
  1616 he was presented with the vicarage of St. Thomas, Oxford,
  and in 1636 with the rectory of Segrave, in Leicestershire, and
  kept both these livings until his death. But he lived chiefly
  in his rooms at Christ Church, Oxford, where, burrowing in the
  treasures of the Bodleian Library, he elaborated his learned
  and whimsical book. He died on January 25, 1639, and was buried
  in Christ Church Cathedral. The "Anatomy of Melancholy" is
  an enormous compendium of sound sense, sly humour, universal
  erudition, mediæval science, fantastic conceits, and noble
  sentiments, arranged in the form of a most methodical treatise,
  divided, and subdivided again, into sections dealing with every
  conceivable aspect of this fell disorder. It is an intricate
  tissue of quotations and allusions, and its interest lies as
  much in its texture as in its argument. The "Anatomy" consists
  of an introduction, "Democritus Junior to the Reader," and
  then of three "Partitions," of which the first treats of the
  Causes of Melancholy, the second of its Cure, and the third
  of Love-Melancholy, wherewith is included the Melancholy of
  Superstition.


_I.--Democritus Junior to the Reader_

Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what
antic or personate actor this is that so insolently intrudes upon this
common theatre to the world's view, arrogating another man's name;
whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say. Seek not after
that which is hid; if the contents please thee, suppose the man in the
moon, or whom thou wilt, to be the author; I would not willingly be
known.

I have masked myself under this visard because, like Democritus,
I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life in the
university, penned up most part in my study. Though by my profession
a divine, yet, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I
had a great desire to have some smattering in all subjects; which Plato
commends as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave
of one science, as most do, but to rove abroad, to have an oar in every
man's boat, to taste of every dish, and to sip of every cup; which,
saith Montaigne, was well performed by Aristotle.

I have little, I want nothing; all my treasure is in Minerva's tower.
Though I lead a monastic life, myself my own theatre, I hear and see
what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, in court and
country. Amid the gallantry and misery of the world, jollity, pride,
perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy, subtlety, knavery,
candour, and integrity, I rub on in private, left to a solitary life
and mine own domestic discontents.

So I call myself Democritus, to assume a little more liberty of speech,
or, if you will needs know, for that reason which Hippocrates relates,
how, coming to visit him one day, he found Democritus in his garden
at Abdera, under a shady bower, with a book on his knees, busy at
his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. The subject of his
book was melancholy and madness. About him lay the carcasses of many
several beasts, newly by him cut up and anatomised; not that he did
contemn God's creatures, but to find out the seat of this black bile,
or melancholy, and how it is engendered in men's bodies, to the intent
he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings teach others
how to avoid it; which good intent of his Democritus Junior is bold to
imitate, and because he left it imperfect and it is now lost, to revive
again, prosecute, and finish in this treatise. I seek not applause; I
fear good men's censures, and to their favourable acceptance I submit
my labours. But as the barking of a dog I contemn those malicious and
scurrile obloquies, flouts, calumnies of railers and detractors.

Of the necessity of what I have said, if any man doubt of it, I shall
desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as Cyprian adviseth
Donate; supposing himself to be transported to the top of some high
mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of this wavering
world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it. St. Hierom,
out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness, conceived that he
saw them dancing in Rome; and if thou shalt climb to see, thou shalt
soon perceive that all the world is mad, that it is melancholy, dotes;
that it is a common prison of gulls, cheats, flatterers, etc., and
needs to be reformed. Kingdoms and provinces are melancholy; cities
and families, all creatures vegetal, sensible and rational, all sorts,
sects, ages, conditions, are out of tune; from the highest to the
lowest have need of physic. Who is not brain-sick? Oh, giddy-headed
age! Mad endeavours! Mad actions!

If Democritus were alive now, and should but see the superstition of
our age, our religious madness, so many professed Christians, yet so
few imitators of Christ, so much talk and so little conscience, so many
preachers and such little practice, such variety of sects--how dost
thou think he might have been affected? What would he have said to see,
hear, and read so many bloody battles, such streams of blood able to
turn mills, to make sport for princes, without any just cause? Men well
proportioned, carefully brought up, able in body and mind, led like
so many beasts to the slaughter in the flower of their years, without
remorse and pity, killed for devils' food, 40,000 at once! At once?
That were tolerable; but these wars last always; and for many ages,
nothing so familiar as this hacking and hewing, massacres, murders,
desolations! Who made creatures, so peaceable, born to love, mercy,
meekness, so to rave like beasts and run to their own destruction?

How would our Democritus have been affected to see so many lawyers,
advocates, so many tribunals, so little justice; so many laws, yet
never more disorders; the tribunal a labyrinth; to see a lamb executed,
a wolf pronounce sentence? What's the market but a place wherein they
cozen one another, a trap? Nay, what's the world itself but a vast
chaos, a theatre of hypocrisy, a shop of knavery, a scene of babbling,
the academy of vice? A warfare, in which you must kill or be killed,
wherein every man is for himself; no charity, love, friendship, fear of
God, alliance, affinity, consanguinity, can contain them. Our goddess
is Queen Money, to whom we daily offer sacrifice. It's not worth,
virtue, wisdom, valour, learning, honesty, religion, for which we are
respected, but money, greatness, office, honour. All these things are
easy to be discerned, but how would Democritus have been moved had he
seen the secrets of our hearts! All the world is mad, and every member
of it, and I can but wish myself and them a good physician, and all of
us a better mind.


_II.--The Causes of Melancholy_

The impulsive cause of these miseries in man was the sin of our first
parent, Adam; and this, belike, is that which our poets have shadowed
unto us in the tale of Pandora's Box, which, being opened through
her curiosity, filled the world full of all manner of diseases. But
as our sins are the principal cause, so the instrumental causes of
our infirmities are as diverse as the infirmities themselves. Stars,
heavens, elements, and all those creatures which God hath made, are
armed against sinners. But the greatest enemy to man is man, his own
executioner, a wolf, a devil to himself and others. Again, no man
amongst us so sound that hath not some impediment of body or mind.
There are diseases acute and chronic, first and secondary, lethal,
salutary, errant, fixed, simple, compound, etc. Melancholy is the most
eminent of the diseases of the phantasy or imagination; and dotage,
phrensy, madness, hydrophobia, lycanthropy, St. Vitus' dance, and
ecstasy are forms of it.

Melancholy is either in disposition or habit. In disposition it is that
transitory melancholy which comes and goes upon every small occasion
of sorrow; we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish,
ill-disposed, and solitary; and from these dispositions no man living
is free; none so wise, patient, happy, generous, or godly, that can
vindicate himself.

Melancholy is a cold and dry, thick, black, and sour humour, purged
from the spleen; it is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and
choler, preserving them in the blood and nourishing the bones. Such as
have the Moon, Saturn, Mercury, misaffected in their genitures; such as
live in over-cold or over-hot climates; such as are solitary by nature;
great students, given to much contemplation; such as lead a life out of
action; all are most subject to melancholy.

Six things are much spoken of amongst physicians as principal causes
of this disease; if a man be melancholy, he hath offended in one of
the six. They are diet, air, exercise, sleeping, and walking, and
perturbations of the mind.

Idleness, the badge of gentry, or want of exercise, the bane of body
and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief,
one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other
maladies, the devil's cushion and chief reposal, begets melancholy
sooner than anything else. Such as live at ease, and have no ordinary
employment to busy themselves about, cannot compose themselves to do
aught; they cannot abide work, though it be necessary, easy, as to
dress themselves, write a letter, or the like. He or she that is idle,
be they never so rich, fortunate, happy, let them have all that heart
can desire, they shall never be pleased, never well in body and mind,
but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping,
sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every
object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some
foolish phantasy or other.

Others, giving way to the passions and perturbations of fear, grief,
shame, revenge, hatred, malice, etc., are torn in pieces, as Actæon was
with his dogs, and crucify their own souls. Every society and private
family is full of envy; it takes hold of all sorts of men, from prince
to ploughman; scarce three in a company, but there is siding, faction,
emulation, between two of them, some jar, private grudge, heart-burning
in the midst. Scarce two great scholars in an age, but with bitter
invectives they fall foul one on the other. Being that we are so
peevish and perverse, insolent and proud, so factious and seditious,
malicious and envious, we do maul and vex one another, torture,
disquiet, and precipitate ourselves into that gulf of woes and cares,
aggravate our misery and melancholy, and heap upon us hell and eternal
damnation.


_III.--The Cure of Melancholy_

"It matters not," saith Paracelsus, "whether it be God or the devil,
angels or unclean spirits, cure him, so that he be eased." Some have
recourse to witches; but much better were it for patients that are
troubled with melancholy to endure a little misery in this life than
to hazard their souls' health for ever. All unlawful cures are to be
refused, and it remains to treat of those that are admitted.

These are such as God hath appointed, by virtue of stones, herbs,
plants, meats, and the like, which are prepared and applied to our use
by the art and industry of physicians, God's intermediate ministers.
We must begin with prayer and then use physic; not one without the
other, but both together.

Diet must be rectified in substance and in quantity; air rectified;
for there is much in choice of place and of chamber, in opportune
opening and shutting of windows, and in walking abroad at convenient
times. Exercise must be rectified of body and mind. Hawking, hunting,
fishing are good, especially the last, which is still and quiet, and
if so be the angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walk and
pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams. But the most pleasant of
all pastimes is to make a merry journey now and then with some good
companions, to visit friends, see cities, castles, towns, to walk
amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, to disport in some pleasant plain.
St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is almost ravished
with the pleasures of it. "Good God," saith he, "what a company of
pleasures hast Thou made for man!" But what is so fit and proper to
expel idleness and melancholy as study? What so full of content as
to read, and see maps, pictures, statues, jewels, and marbles, so
exquisite to be beheld that, as Chrysostom thinketh, "if any man be
sickly or troubled in mind, and shall but stand over against one of
Phidias's images, he will forget all care in an instant?"

If thou receivest wrong, compose thyself with patience to bear it.
Thou shalt find greatest ease to be quiet. I say the same of scoffs,
slanders, detractions, which tend to our disgrace; 'tis but opinion;
if we would neglect or contemn them, they would reflect disgrace on
them that offered them. "Yea, but I am ashamed, disgraced, degraded,
exploded; my notorious crimes and villainies are come to light!" Be
content; 'tis but a nine days' wonder; 'tis heavy, ghastly, fearful
news at first, but thine offence will be forgotten in an instant. Thou
art not the first offender, nor shalt thou be the last. If he alone
should accuse thee that were faultless, how many executioners, how
many accusers, would thou have? Shall every man have his desert, thou
wouldst peradventure be a saint in comparison. Be not dismayed; it is
human to err. Be penitent, ask forgiveness, and vex thyself no more.
Doth the moon care for the barking of a dog?


_IV.--Love-Melancholy_

There will not be wanting those who will much discommend this treatise
of love-melancholy, and object that it is too light for a divine,
too phantastical, and fit only for a wanton poet. So that they may
be admired for grave philosophers, and staid carriage, they cannot
abide to hear talk of love-toys; in all their outward actions they are
averse; and yet, in their cogitations, they are all but as bad, if not
worse than others. I am almost afraid to relate the passions which this
tyrant love causeth among men; it hath wrought such stupendous and
prodigious effects, such foul offences.

As there be divers causes of this heroical love, so there be many good
remedies, among which good counsel and persuasion are of great moment,
especially if it proceed from a wise, fatherly, discreet person. They
will lament and howl for a while; but let him proceed, by foreshewing
the miserable dangers that will surely happen, the pains of hell, joys
of paradise, and the like; and this is a very good means, for love is
learned of itself, but hardly left without a tutor.

In sober sadness, marriage is a bondage, a thraldom, a hindrance to all
good enterprises; "he hath married a wife, and therefore cannot come";
a rock on which many are saved, many are cast away. Not that the thing
is evil in itself, or troublesome, but full of happiness, and a thing
which pleases God; but to indiscreet, sensual persons, it is a feral
plague, many times an hell itself. If thy wife be froward, all is in
an uproar; if wise and learned, she will be insolent and peevish; if
poor, she brings beggary; if young, she is wanton and untaught. Say
the best, she is a commanding servant; thou hadst better have taken a
good housewifely maid in her smock. Since, then, there is such hazard,
keep thyself as thou art; 'tis good to match, much better to be free.
Consider withal how free, how happy, how secure, how heavenly, in
respect, a single man is.

But when all is said, since some be good, some bad, let's put it to the
venture. Marry while thou mayest, and take thy fortune as it falls.
Be not so covetous, so distrustful, so curious and nice, but let's
all marry; to-morrow is St. Valentine's Day. Since, then, marriage
is the last and best cure of heroical love, all doubts are cured and
impediments removed; God send us all good wives!

Take this for a corollory and conclusion; as thou tenderest thine own
welfare in love-melancholy, in the melancholy of religion, and in all
other melancholy; observe this short precept--Be not solitary; be not
idle.




THOMAS CARLYLE

On Heroes and Hero-Worship

  This is the last of four series of lectures which Carlyle (see
  Vol. IX, p. 99) delivered in London in successive years, and is
  the only series which was published. The "Lectures on Heroes"
  were given in May, 1840, and were published, with emendations
  and additions, from the reporter's notes in 1841. The preceding
  series were on "German Literature," 1837; "The Successive Periods
  of European Culture," 1838; and "The Revolutions of Modern
  Europe," 1839. Carlyle's profound and impassioned belief in the
  quasi-divine inspiration of great men, in the authoritative
  nature of their "message," and in their historical effectiveness,
  was a reaction against a way of writing history which finds the
  origin of events in "movements," "currents," and "tendencies"
  neglecting or minimising the power of personality. For Carlyle,
  biography was the essential element in history; his view of
  events was the dramatic view, as opposed to the scientific
  view. It is idle to inquire which is the better or truer view,
  where both are necessary. But Carlyle is here specially tilting
  against a prejudice which has so utterly passed away that it
  is difficult even to imagine it. This was to the effect that
  eminent historical figures have been in some sense impostors.
  This work suffers a good deal from its origin, but, like others
  of Carlyle's writings, it has had great effect in discrediting a
  barren and flippant rationalism.


_I.--The Hero as Divinity_

We have undertaken to discourse on great men, their manner of
appearance in our world's business, how they shaped themselves in the
world's history, what ideas men formed of them, and what work they did.
We are to treat of hero-worship and the heroic in human affairs. The
topic is as wide as universal history itself, for the history of what
man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the history of the
great men who have worked here.

It is well said that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to
him. I do not mean the Church creed which he professes, but the thing
that he does practically believe, the manner in which he feels himself
to be spiritually related to the unseen world. Was it heathenism, a
plurality of gods, a mere sensuous representation of the mystery of
life, and for chief recognised element therein physical force? Was it
Christianism; faith in an Invisible as the only reality; time ever
resting on eternity; pagan empire of force displaced by the nobler
supremacy of holiness? Was it scepticism, uncertainty, and inquiry
whether there was an unseen world at all, or perhaps unbelief and flat
denial? The answer to these questions gives us the soul of the history
of the man or nation.

Odin, the central figure of Scandinavian paganism, shall be our emblem
of the hero as divinity. And in the first place I protest against the
theory that this paganism or any other religion has consisted of mere
quackery, priestcraft, and dupery. Quackery gives birth to nothing;
gives death to all. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies, and
paganism, to its followers, was at one time earnestly true. Nor can
we admit that other theory, which attributed these mythologies to
allegory, or to the play of poetic minds. Pagan religion, like every
other, is indeed a symbol of what men felt about the universe, but a
practical guiding knowledge of this mysterious life of theirs, and not
a perfect poetic symbol of it, has been the want of men. The "Pilgrim's
Progress" is a just and beautiful allegory, but it could never have
preceded the faith which it symbolises. Men never risked their soul's
life on allegories; there was a kind of fact at the heart of paganism.

To the primitive pagan thinker, who was simple as a child, yet had
a man's depth and strength, nature had as yet no name. It stood
naked, flashing in on him, beautiful, awful, unspeakable; nature was
preternatural. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was
then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. Still more was the
body of man, and the mystery of his consciousness, an emblem to them of
God, and truly worshipful.

How much more, then, was the worship of a hero reasonable--the
transcendent admiration of a great man! For great men are still
admirable. At bottom there is nothing else admirable. Admiration for
one higher than himself is to this hour the vivifying influence in
man's life, and is the germ of Christianity itself. The greatest of all
heroes is One whom we do not name here.

Without doubt there was a first teacher and captain of these northern
peoples, an Odin palpable to the sense, a real hero of flesh and blood.
Tradition calls him inventor of the Runes, or Scandinavian alphabet,
and again of poetry. To the wild Norse souls this noble-hearted man was
hero, prophet, god. That the man Odin, speaking with a hero's voice and
heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his people the
infinite importance of valour, how man thereby became a god; and that
his people believed this message of his, and thought it a message out
of Heaven, and believed him a divinity for telling it to them--this
seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse religion. For that
religion was a sternly impressive consecration of valour.


_II.--The Hero as Prophet_

We turn now to Mohammedanism among the Arabs for the second phase of
hero-worship, wherein the hero is not now regarded as a god, but as
one God-inspired, a prophet. Mohammed is not the most eminent prophet,
but is the one of whom we are freest to speak. Nor is he the truest of
prophets but I do esteem him a true one. Let us try to understand what
he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him will
then be more answerable.

Certainly he was no scheming impostor, no falsehood incarnate; theories
of that kind are the product of an age of scepticism, and indicate the
saddest spiritual paralysis. A false man found a religion? Why, a false
man cannot build a brick house! No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell,
no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest
about it. Sincerity is the great characteristic of all men in any way
heroic.

The Arabs are a notable people; their country itself is notable.
Consider that wide, waste horizon of sand, empty, silent like a sea;
you are all alone there, left alone with the universe; by day a fierce
sun blazing down with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep
heaven, with its stars--a fit country for a swift-handed, deep-hearted
race of men. The Arab character is agile, active, yet most meditative,
enthusiastic. Hospitable, taciturn, earnest, truthful, deeply
religious, the Arabs were a people of great qualities, waiting for the
day when they should become notable to all the world.

Here, in the year 570 of our era, the man Mohammed was born, and grew
up in the bosom of the wilderness, alone with Nature and his own
thoughts. From an early age he had been remarked as a thoughtful man,
and his companions named him "The Faithful." He was forty before he
talked of any mission from Heaven. All this time living a peaceful
life, he was looking through the shows of things into things themselves.

Then, having withdrawn to a cavern near Mecca for a month of prayer and
meditation, he told his wife Kadijah that, by the unspeakable favour of
Heaven, he was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That
all these idols and formulas were nothing; that there was one God in
and over all; that God is great and is the reality. _Allah akbar_,
"God is great"; and then _Islam_, "we must submit to Him."

This is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and
invincible, while he joins himself to the great deep law of the
world, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances,
profit-and-loss calculations. This is the soul of Islam, and is
properly also the soul of Christianity. We are to receive whatever
befalls us as sent from God above. Islam means in its way the denial
of self, annihilation of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that
Heaven has revealed to our earth. In Mohammed, and in his Koran, I
find first of all sincerity, the total freedom from cant. For these
twelve centuries his religion has been the guidance of a fifth part of
mankind, and, above all, it has been a religion heartily believed.

The Arab nation was a poor shepherd people; a hero-prophet was sent
down to them; within one century afterwards Arabia is at Grenada on
this hand, at Delhi on that!


_III.--The Hero as Poet_

The hero as divinity and as prophet are productions of old ages, not
to be repeated in the new. We are now to see our hero in the less
ambitious, but also less questionable, character of poet. For the hero
can be poet, prophet, king, priest, or what you will, according to the
kind of world he finds himself born into. I have no notion of a truly
great man that could not be all sorts of men.

Indeed, the poet and prophet, participators in the open secret of the
universe, are one; though the prophet has seized the sacred mystery
rather on its moral side, and the poet on the æsthetic side. Poetry is
essentially a song; its thoughts are musical not in word only, but in
heart and in substance.

Shakespeare and Dante are our two canonised poets; they dwell
apart, none equal, none second to them. Dante's book was written, in
banishment, with his heart's blood. His great soul, homeless on earth,
made its home more and more in that awful other world. The three
kingdoms--_Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, _Paradiso_--are like compartments of
a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled up there, stern, solemn,
awful; Dante's world of souls. It is the sincerest of all poems.
Sincerity here, too, we find to be the measure of worth. Intensity is
the prevailing character of his genius; his greatness lies in fiery
emphasis and depth; it is seen even in the graphic vividness of his
painting. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed in the firmament, at which
the great and high of all ages kindle themselves.

As Dante embodies musically the inner life of the Middle Ages, so
Shakespeare embodies for us its outer life, its chivalries, courtesies,
humours, ambitions. Dante gave us the soul of Europe; Shakespeare gave
us its body. Of this Shakespeare of ours, the best judgment of Europe
is slowly pointing to the conclusion that he is the chief of all poets,
the greatest intellect who has left record of himself in the way of
literature.

It is in portrait-painting, the delineation of men, that the greatness
of Shakespeare comes out most decisively. His calm, creative
perspicacity is unexampled. The word that will describe the thing
follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. He takes
in all kinds of men--a Falstaff, Othello, Juliet, Coriolanus; sets them
all forth to us in their rounded completeness, loving, just, the equal
brother of all.

The degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of
the man, and Shakespeare's is the greatest of intellects. Novalis
beautifully remarks of him that those dramas of his are products of
nature, too, deep as nature herself. Shakespeare's art is not artifice;
the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or pre-contrivance. The
latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakespeare, new
elucidations of their own human being.

Shakespeare, too, was a prophet, in his way, of an insight analogous to
the prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to
this man also divine, unspeakable, deep as Tophet, high as heaven. "We
are such stuff as dreams are made of." There rises a kind of universal
psalm out of Shakespeare, not unfit to make itself heard among the
still more sacred psalms.

England, before long, this island of ours, will hold but a small
fraction of the English; east and west to the antipodes there will be a
Saxondom covering great spaces of the globe. What is it that can keep
all these together into virtually one nation, so that they do not fall
out and fight, but live at peace? Here, I say, is an English king whom
no time or chance can dethrone! King Shakespeare shines over us all, as
the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs; we can fancy
him as radiant aloft over all the nations of Englishmen, a thousand
years hence. Truly it is a great thing for a nation that it gets an
articulate voice.


_IV.--The Hero as Priest_

The priest, too, is a kind of prophet. In him, also, there is required
to be a light of inspiration. He presides over the worship of the
people, and is the uniter of them with the unseen Holy. He is their
spiritual captain, as the prophet is their spiritual king with many
captains.

Luther and Knox were by express vocation priests, yet it will suit us
better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character as
reformers. The battling reformer is from time to time a needful and
inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting; the very things
that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions, and
need to be shaken off and left behind us--a business often of enormous
difficulty.

We are to consider Luther as an idol-breaker, a bringer back of men to
reality, for that is the function of great men and teachers. Thus it
was that Luther said to the Pope, "This thing of yours that you call a
pardon of sins, is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It, and so much like
it, is nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. God's Church is not a
semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. Standing on this, I, a
poor German monk, am stronger than you all."

The most interesting phase which the Reformation anywhere assumes
is that of Puritanism, which even got itself established as a
Presbyterianism and National Church among the Scotch, and has produced
in the world very notable fruit. Knox was the chief priest and founder
of that faith which became the faith of Scotland, of New England, of
Oliver Cromwell; and that which Knox did for his nation we may really
call a resurrection as from death. The people began to live. Scotch
literature and thought, Scotch industry, James Watt, David Hume, Walter
Scott, Robert Burns--I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the
heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that
without the Reformation they would not have been.

Knox could not live but by fact. He is an instance to us how a
man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic. We find in Knox a good,
honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; he was a narrow,
inconsiderable man as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt,
instinctive adherence to truth, in real sincerity, he has no superior.
His heart is of the true prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl
of Morton, at his grave, "who never feared the face of man."


_V.--The Hero as Man of Letters_

The hero as man of letters is a new and singular phenomenon. Living
in his squalid garret and rusty coat; ruling from his grave after
death whole nations and generations; he must be regarded as our most
important modern person. Such as he may be, he is the soul of all.
Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a
prophet, priest, or divinity for doing.

The three great prophets of the eighteenth century, that singular
age of scepticism, were Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns; they were not,
indeed, heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it,
struggling under mountains of impediment.

As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of
our great English souls. It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his
speaking still in some sort from the heart of nature, though in the
current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a prophet. The highest
gospel he preached was a kind of moral prudence, coupled with this
other great gospel, "Clear your mind of cant!" These two things, joined
together, were, perhaps, the greatest gospel that was possible at that
time.

Of Rousseau and his heroism I cannot say so much. He was not a strong
man; but a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather
than strong. Yet, at least he was heartily in earnest, if ever man was;
his ideas possessed him like demons.

The fault and misery of Rousseau was egoism, which is the source and
summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected
himself into victory over mere desire; a mean hunger was still his
motive principle. He was a very vain man, hungry for the praises of
men. The whole nature of the man was poisoned; there was nothing but
suspicion, self-isolation, and fierce, moody ways.

And yet this Rousseau, with his celebrations of nature, even of savage
life in nature, did once more touch upon reality and struggle towards
reality. Strangely through all that defacement, degradation, and almost
madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of
real heavenly fire. Out of all that withered, mocking philosophism,
scepticism, and persiflage of his day there has arisen in this man the
ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this life of ours is true, not
a theorem, but a fact.

The French Revolution found its evangelist in Rousseau. His
semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, and such
like, helped to produce a delirium in France generally. It is difficult
to say what the governors of the world could do with such a man. What
he could do with them is clear enough--guillotine a great many of them.

The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all. The largest soul of all
the British lands appeared under every disadvantage; uninstructed,
poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that,
in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the
country he lived in.

We find in Burns a noble, rough genuineness, the true simplicity of
strength, and a deep and earnest element of sunshine and joyfulness;
yet the chief quality, both of his poetry and of his life, is
sincerity--a wild wrestling with the truth of things.


_VI.--The Hero as King_

The commander over men, to whose will our wills are to be subordinated
and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing
so, may be reckoned the most important of great men. He is called
_Rex_, "Regulator"; our own name is still better--king, which means
"can-ning," "able-man."

In rebellious ages, when kingship itself seems dead and abolished,
Cromwell and Napoleon step forth again as kings. The old ages are
brought back to us; the manner in which kings were made, and kingship
itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these two.

The war of the Puritans was a section of that universal war which alone
makes up the true history of the world--the war of Belief against
Unbelief; the struggle of men intent on the real essence of things,
against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. And among
these Puritans Cromwell stood supreme, grappling like a giant, face
to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things. Yet Cromwell
alone finds no hearty apologist anywhere. Selfish ambition, dishonesty,
duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartuffe; turning all that
noble struggle for constitutional liberty into a sorry farce played for
his own benefit. This, and worse, is the character they give him.

From of old, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to
me. All that we know of him betokens an earnest, hearty sincerity.
Everywhere we have to note his decisive, practical eye, how he drives
towards the practicable, and has a genuine insight into what is fact.
Such an intellect does not belong to a false man; the false man sees
false shows, plausibilities, expediences; the true man is needed to
discern even practical truth.

Napoleon by no means seems to me so great a man as Cromwell. His
enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode
mainly in our little England, are but as the high stilts on which the
man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I
find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort.

"False as a bulletin," became a proverb in Napoleon's time. Yet he had
a sincerity, a certain instinctive, ineradicable feeling for reality;
and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. He had an
instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His companions, we are
told, were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no
God; they had proved it by all manner of logic. Napoleon, looking up
into the stars, answers, "Very ingenious, Messieurs; but who made all
that?" The atheistic logic runs off from him like water; the great fact
stares him in the face. So, too, in practice; he, as every man that can
be great, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the
matter, and drives straight towards that.

Accordingly, there was a faith in him, genuine so far as it went. That
this new, enormous democracy is an insuppressible fact, which the
whole world cannot put down--this was a true insight of his, and took
his conscience and enthusiasm along with it. And did he not interpret
the dim purport of it well? _La carrière ouverte aux talents_--"the
implements to him who can handle them"--this actually is the truth, and
even the whole truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution or any
revolution could mean. It is a great, true message from our last great
man.




Sartor Resartus

  "Sartor Resartus," first published in "Frazer's Magazine" in
  1833-34, is Thomas Carlyle's most popular work, and is largely
  autobiographical.


I.--_The Philosophy of Clothes_

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch
of science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or
less effect, for five thousand years and upwards, it is surprising
that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether
in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the subject
of clothes. Every other tissue has been dissected, but the vestural
tissue of woollen or other cloth, which man's soul wears as its outmost
wrappage, has been quite overlooked. All speculation has tacitly
figured man as a clothed animal, whereas he is by nature a naked
animal, and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks
himself in clothes.

But here, as in so many other cases, learned, indefatigable,
deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. The editor of these sheets
has lately received a new book from Professor Teufelsdröckh, of
Weissnichtwo, treating expressly of "Clothes, their Origin and
Influence" (1831). This extensive volume, a very sea of thought,
discloses to us not only a new branch of philosophy, but also
the strange personal character of Professor Teufelsdröckh, which
is scarcely less interesting. We were just considering how the
extraordinary doctrines of this book might best be imparted to our
own English nation, when we received a letter from Herr Hofrath
Heuschrecke, our professor's chief associate, offering us the requisite
documents for a biography of Teufelsdröckh. This was the origin of our
"Sartor Resartus," now presented in the vehicle of "Frazer's Magazine."

Professor Teufelsdröckh, when we knew him at Weissnichtwo, lived a
still and self-contained life, devoted to the higher philosophies and
to a certain speculative radicalism. The last words that he spoke in
our hearing were to propose a toast in the coffee-house--"The cause of
the poor, in heaven's name and the devil's." But we looked for nothing
moral from him, still less anything didactico-religious.

Brave Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? In thine eyes,
deep under thy shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy,
have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire?
Our friend's title was that of Professor of Things in General, but he
never delivered any course. We used to sit with him in his attic,
overlooking the town; he would contemplate that wasp-nest or bee-hive
spread out below him, and utter the strangest thoughts. "That living
flood, pouring through these streets, is coming from eternity, going
onward to eternity. These are apparitions. What else?" Thus he lived
and meditated with Heuschrecke as Boswell for his Johnson.

"As Montesquieu wrote a 'Spirit of Laws,'" observes our professor, "so
could I write a 'Spirit of Clothes,' for neither in tailoring nor in
legislating does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is ever
guided by the mysterious operations of the mind." And so he deals with
Paradise and fig-leaves, and proceeds to view the costumes of all
mankind, in all countries, in all times.

The first purpose of clothes, he imagines, was not warmth or decency,
but ornament. "Yet what have they not become? Increased security
and pleasurable heat soon followed; divine shame or modesty, as yet
a stranger to the anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously
under clothes, a mystic shrine for the holy in man. Clothes gave us
individuality, distinctions, social polity; clothes have made men of
us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us."

Teufelsdröckh dwells chiefly on the seams, tatters, and unsightly
wrong-side of clothes, but he has also a superlative transcendentalism.
To him, man is a soul, a spirit, and divine apparition, whose flesh
and senses are but a garment. He deals much in the feeling of wonder,
insisting that wonder is the only reasonable temper for the denizen
of our planet. "Wonder," he says, "is the basis of worship," and
that progress of science, which is to destroy wonder and substitute
mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with him. "Clothes,
despicable as we think them, are unspeakably significant."


_II.--Biography of Teufelsdröckh_

So far as we can gather from the disordered papers which have been
placed in our hands, the genesis of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh is obscure.
We see nothing but an exodus out of invisibility into visibility.
In the village of Entepfuhl we find a childless couple, verging on
old age. Andreas Futteral, who has been a grenadier sergeant under
Frederick the Great, is now cultivating a little orchard. To him and
Gretchen his wife there entered one evening a stranger of reverend
aspect, who deposited a silk-covered basket, saying, "Good people, here
is an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof; with high recompense, or
else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." Therein
they found, as soon as he had departed, a little infant in the softest
sleep. Our philosopher tells us that this story, told him in his
twelfth year, produced a quite indelible impression. Who was his
unknown father, whom he was never able to meet?

We receive glimpses of his childhood, schooldays, and university life,
and then meet with him in that difficulty, common to young men, of
"getting under way." "Not what I have," he says, "but what I do, is my
kingdom; and we should grope throughout our lives from one expectation
and disappointment to another were we not saved by one thing--our
hunger." He had thrown up his legal profession, and found himself
without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of
decided belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. So he
sets out over an unknown sea; but a certain Calypso Island at the very
outset falsifies his whole reckoning.

"Nowhere," he says, "does Heaven so immediately reveal itself to the
young man as in the young maiden. The feeling of our young forlorn
towards the queens of this earth was, and indeed is, altogether
unspeakable. A visible divinity dwelt in them; to our young friend all
women were holy, were heavenly. And if, on a soul so circumstanced,
some actual air-maiden should cast kind eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou
too mayest love and be loved,' and so kindle him--good Heaven, what an
all-consuming fire were probably kindled!"

Such a fire of romance did actually burst forth in Herr Diogenes.
We know not who "Blumine" was, nor how they met. She was young,
hazel-eyed, beautiful, high-born, and of high spirit, but unhappily
dependent and insolvent, living perhaps on the bounty of moneyed
relatives. "To our friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and
happy; the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on
thirsty grass. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his; in the balmy
twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting
again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those soft,
small fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily
withdrawn."

Poor Teufelsdröckh, it is clear to demonstration thou art smit!
Flame-clad, thou art scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards
insanity, for prize of a high-souled brunette, as if the earth held but
one and not several of these! "One morning, he found his morning-star
all dimmed and dusky-red; doomsday had dawned; they were to meet no
more!" Their lips were joined for the first time and the last, and
Teufelsdröckh was made immortal by a kiss. And then--"thick curtains
of night rushed over his soul, and he fell, through the ruins as of a
shivered universe, towards the abyss."

He quietly lifts his pilgrim-staff, and begins a perambulation and
circumambulation of the terraqueous globe. We find him in Paris, in
Vienna, in Tartary, in the Sahara, flying with hunger always parallel
to him, and a whole infernal chase in his rear. He traverses mountains
and valleys with aimless speed, writing with footprints his sorrows,
that his spirit may free herself, and he become a man. Vain truly
is the hope of your swiftest runner to escape from his own shadow!
We behold him, through these dim years, in a state of crisis, of
transition; his aimless pilgrimings are but a mad fermentation,
wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve
itself.

Man has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically
the "Place of Hope"; yet our professor, for the present, is quite shut
out from hope. As he wanders wearisomely through this world he has
now lost all tidings of another and higher. "Doubt," says he, "had
darkened into unbelief." It is all a grim desert, this once fair world
of his; and no pillar of cloud by day, and no pillar of fire by night,
any longer guides the pilgrim. "Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as
of enchantment, divided me from all living; was there, in the wide
world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine? O Heaven, no,
there was none! To me the universe was all void of life, of purpose,
of volition, even of hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable
steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb
from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and mill of death!

"Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole
French capital or suburbs, was I, one sultry dog-day, after much
perambulation, toiling along the dirty little Rue Saint Thomas de
l'Enfer, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over
pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits
were a little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a thought in
me, and I asked myself, 'What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like
a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and
trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that
lies before thee? Death? Well, death; and say the pangs of Tophet too,
and all that the devil and man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast
thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatever it be; and, as a
child of freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet,
while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!'
And, as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole
soul; and I shook base fear away from me for ever. Ever from that time,
the temper of my misery was changed; not fear or whining sorrow was it,
but indignation and grim fire-eyed defiance.

"Thus had the _Everlasting No_ pealed authoritatively through all the
recesses of my being, of my _Me_; and then was it that my whole _Me_
stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its
protest. The Everlasting No had said, 'Behold, thou art fatherless,
outcast, and the universe is mine, the devil's'; to which my whole _Me_
now made answer, 'I am not thine, but free, and for ever hate thee!'

"It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual new-birth,
or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a
man."

Our wanderer's unrest was for a time but increased. "Indignation and
defiance are not the most peaceable inmates," yet it was no longer
a quite hopeless unrest. He looked away from his own sorrows, over
the many-coloured world, and few periods of his life were richer in
spiritual culture than this. He had reached the Centre of Indifference
wherein he had accepted his own nothingness. "I renounced utterly, I
would hope no more and fear no more. To die or to live was to me alike
insignificant. Here, then, as I lay in that Centre of Indifference,
cast by benignant upper influence into a healing sleep, the heavy
dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new heaven and a new
earth. I saw that man can do without happiness and instead thereof find
blessedness. Love not pleasure; love God. This is the _Everlasting
Yea_, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and
works, it is well with him. In this poor, miserable, hampered,
despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is
thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free!
Produce! produce! Work while it is called to-day."


_III.--The Volume on Clothes_

In so capricious a work as this of the professor's, our course
cannot be straightforward, but only leap by leap, noting significant
indications here and there. Thus, "perhaps the most remarkable incident
in modern history," he says, "is George Fox's making to himself a suit
of leather, when, desiring meditation and devout prayer to God, he
took to the woods, chose the hollow of a tree for his lodging and wild
berries for his food, and for clothes stitched himself one perennial
suit of leather. Then was there in broad Europe one free man, and Fox
was he!"

Under the title "Church-Clothes," by which Teufelsdröckh signifies the
forms, the vestures, under which men have at various periods embodied
and represented for themselves the religious principle, he says, "These
are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures
of human existence. Church-clothes are first spun and woven by society;
outward religion originates by society; society becomes possible by
religion."

Of "symbols," as means of concealment and yet of revelation, thus
uniting in themselves the efficacies at once of speech and of silence,
our professor writes, "In the symbol proper there is ever, more or
less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the
Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the finite; to
stand visible, and, as it were, attainable there. Of this sort are all
true works of art; in them, if thou know a work of art from a daub of
artifice, wilt thou discern eternity looking through time; the God-like
rendered visible. But nobler than all in this kind are the lives of
heroic God-inspired men, for what other work of art is so divine?" And
again, "Of this be certain, wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant
into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst
thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow superficial
faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding."

As for Helotage, or that lot of the poor wherein no ray of heavenly nor
even of earthly knowledge visits him, Teufelsdröckh says, "That there
should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call
a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute."

In another place, our professor meditates upon the awful procession of
mankind. "Like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge
from the inane; haste stormfully across the astonished earth; then
plunge again into the inane. But whence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense
knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery,
from God and to God.

   "We are such stuff
    As dreams are made of, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep!"




MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

Concerning Friendship

  The dialogue "Concerning Friendship" was composed immediately
  after the assassination of Julius Cæsar, and was suggested by the
  conduct of certain friends of the mighty dead, who were trying,
  in the name of friendship, to inflame the populace against the
  cause of the conspirators. (Cicero biography, see Vol. IX, p.
  155, and also p. 274 of the present volume.)


_A Dialogue_

FANNIUS: I agree with you, Lælius; never was man better known for
justice or for glory than Scipio Africanus. That is why everyone in
Rome is looking to you; everyone is asking me, and Scævola here, how
the wise Lælius is bearing the loss of his dead friend. For they call
you wise, you know, in the same sense as the oracle called Socrates
wise, because you believe that your happiness depends on yourself
alone, and that virtue can fortify the soul against every calamity. May
we know, then, how you bear your sorrow?

SCÆVOLA: He says truly; many have asked me the same question. I tell
them that you are composed and patient, though deeply touched by the
death of your dearest friend, and one of the greatest of men.

LÆLIUS: You have answered well. True it is that I sorrow for a friend
whose like I shall never see again; but it is also true that I need
no consolations, since I believe that no evil has befallen Scipio.
Whatever misfortune there is, is my misfortune, and any immoderate
distress would show self-love, not love for him. What a man he was!
Well, he is in heaven; and I sometimes hope that the friendship of
Scipio and Lælius may live in human memory.

FANNIUS: Yes--your friendship: what do you believe about friendship?

SCÆVOLA: That's what we want to know.

LÆLIUS: Who am I, to speak on such a subject all on a sudden? You
should go to these Greek professionals, who can spin you a discourse
on anything at a moment's notice. For my part, I can only advise
this--prize friendship above all earthly things. We seem to be made
for friendship; it is our great stand-by whether in weal or woe. Yet
I can say this too: friendship cannot be except among the good. I
don't mean a fantastical and unattainable pitch of goodness such as
the philosophers prate about; I mean the genuine, commonplace goodness
of flesh and blood, that actually exists. I mean such men as live in
honour, justice, and liberality, and are consistent, and are neither
covetous nor licentious, nor brazen-faced; such men are good enough for
us, because they follow Nature as far as they can.

Friendship consists of a perfect conformity of opinion upon all
subjects, divine and human, together with a feeling of kindness and
attachment. And though some prefer riches, health, power, honours,
or even pleasure, no greater boon than friendship, with the single
exception of wisdom, has been given by the gods to man. It is quite
true that our highest good depends on virtue; but virtue inevitably
begets and nourishes friendship. What a part, for instance, friendship
has played in the lives of the good men we have known--the Catos, the
Galli, the Scipios, and the like!

How manifold, again, are its benefits! What greater delight is there
than to have one with whom you may talk as if with yourself? One who
will joy in your good fortune, and bear the heaviest end of your
burdens! Other things are good for particular purposes, friendship
for all; neither water nor fire has so many uses. But in one respect
friendship transcends everything else: it throws a brilliant gleam of
hope over the future, and banishes despondency. Whoever has a true
friend sees in him a reflection of himself; and each is strong in the
strength and rich in the wealth of the other.

If you consider that the principle of harmony and benevolence is
necessary to the very existence of families and states, you will
understand how high a thing is friendship, in which that harmony and
benevolence reach their perfect flower. There was a philosopher of
Agrigentum who explained the properties of matter and the movements of
bodies in terms of affection and repulsion; and however that may be,
everyone knows that these are the real forces in human life. Who does
not applaud the friendship that shares in mortal dangers, whether in
real life or in the play?

SCÆVOLA: You speak highly of friendship. What are its principles and
duties?

LÆLIUS: Do we desire a friend because of our own weakness and
deficiency, in order that we may obtain from him what we lack
ourselves, repaying him by reciprocal service? Or is all that only an
incident of friendship, and does the bond derive from a remoter and
more beautiful origin, in the heart of Nature herself? For my part,
I take the latter view. Friendship is a natural emotion, and not an
arrangement of convenience. Its character may be recognised even in
the lower animals, and much more plainly in the love of human parents
for their children, and, most of all, in our affection for a congenial
friend, whom we see in an atmosphere of virtue and worth.

The other is not an ignoble theory, but it leaves us in the difficulty
that if it were true, the weakest, meanest, and poorest of humanity
would be the most inclined to friendship. But it is the strong, rich,
independent, and self-reliant man, deeply founded in wisdom and
dignity, who makes great friendships. What did Africanus need of me, or
I of him? Advantages followed, but they did not lead. But there are
people who will always be referring everything to the one principle of
self-advantage; they have no eyes for anything great and god-like. Let
us leave such theorists alone; the plain fact is, that whenever worth
is seen, love for it is enkindled. Associations founded upon interest
presently dissolve, because interest changes; but Nature never changes,
and therefore true friendships are imperishable.

Scipio used to say that it was exceedingly difficult to carry on a
friendship to the end of life, because the paths of interest so often
diverge. There may be competition for office, or a dishonorable request
may be refused, or some other accident may be fatal to the bond. This
refusal to join in a nefarious course of action is often the end of a
friendship, and it is worth inquiring how far the claims of affection
ought to extend. Tiberius Gracchus, when he troubled the state, was
deserted by almost all his friends; one of them who had assisted him
told me that he had such high regard for Gracchus that he could refuse
him nothing. "But what," said I, "if he had asked you to set fire to
the capitol?" "I would have done it!"

What an infamous confession! No degree of friendship can justify
a crime; and since virtue is the foundation of friendship, crime
must inevitably undermine it. Let this, then, be the rule of
friendship--never to make disgraceful requests, and never to grant them
when they are made.

Among the perverse, over-subtle ideas of certain Greek philosophers is
the maxim that we should be very cool in the matter of friendship. They
say that we have enough to do with our own affairs, without taking on
other people's affairs too; and that our minds cannot be serenely at
leisure if we are liable to be tortured by the sorrows of a friend.
They advise, also, that friendships should be sought for the sake of
protection, and not for the sake of kindliness. O noble philosophy!
They put out the sun in the heavens, and offer us instead a freedom
from care that is worse than worthless. Virtue has not a heart of
stone, but is gentle and compassionate, rejoicing with the joyful and
weeping with those who mourn. True virtue is never unsocial, never
haughty.

With regard to the limits of friendship, I have heard three several
maxims, but disapprove them all. First, that we ought to feel towards
our friend exactly as we feel towards ourselves. That would never
do; for we do many things for our friends that we should never think
of doing for ourselves. We ask favours and reprehend injuries for a
friend, where we would not solicit for, or defend, ourselves. Secondly,
that our kindness to a friend should be meted out in precise equipoise
to his kindness to us. This is too miserable a theory: friendship
is opulent and generous. The third is, that we should take our
friend's own estimate of himself, and act upon it. This is the worst
principle of the three; for if our friend is over-humble, diffident or
despondent, it is the very business of friendship to cheer him and urge
him on. But Scipio used to condemn yet another principle that is worse
still. Some one--he thought it must have been a bad man--once said that
we ought to remember in friendship that some day the friend might be an
enemy. How, in that state of mind, could one be a friend at all?

A sound principle, I think, is this. In the friendship of upright men
there ought to be an unrestricted communication of every interest,
every purpose, every inclination. Then, in any matter of importance
to the life or reputation of your friend, you may deviate a little
from the strictest line of conduct so long as you do not do anything
that is actually infamous. Then, with regard to the choice of friends,
Scipio used to say that men were more careful about their sheep and
goats than about their friends. Choose men of constancy, solidity, and
firmness; and until their trustworthiness has been tested, be moderate
in your affection and confidence. Seek first of all for sincerity. Your
friend should also have an open, genial, and sociable temper, and his
sympathies should be the same as yours. He must not be ready to believe
accusations. Lastly, his talk and manner should be debonair; we don't
want austerities and solemnities in friendship.

I have heard it suggested that we ought perhaps to prefer new friends
to old, as we prefer a young horse to an old one. Satiety should have
no place in friendship. Old wines are the best, and so are the friends
of many years. Do not despise the acquaintance that promises to ripen
into something better; but do not sacrifice for it the deeply rooted
intimacy. Even inanimate things take hold of our hearts by long custom;
we love the mountains and forests of our youth.

There is often a great disparity in respect of rank or talent between
intimate friends. Whenever that is so, let the superior place himself
on the level of the inferior; let him share all his advantages with his
friend. The best way to reap the full harvest of genius, or of merit,
or of any other excellence, is to encourage all one's kindred and
associates to enjoy it too. But if the superior ought to condescend to
the inferior, so the inferior ought to be free from envy. And let him
not make a fuss about such services as he has been able to render.

To pass from the noble friendships of the wise to more commonplace
intimacies, we cannot leave out of account the necessity that sometimes
arises of breaking off a friendship. A man falls into scandalous
courses, his disgrace is reflected on his companions, and their
relation must come to an end. Well, the end had best come gradually and
gently, unless the offence is so detestable that an abrupt and final
cutting of the acquaintance is absolutely inevitable. Disengage, if
possible, rather than cut. And let the matter end with estrangement;
let it not proceed to active animosity and hostility. It is very
unbecoming to engage in public war with a man who has been known as
one's friend. On two separate occasions Scipio thought it right to
withdraw his confidence from certain friends. In each case he kept his
dignity and self-command; he was grieved, but never bitter. Of course,
the best way to guard against such unfortunate occurrences is to take
the greatest care in forming friendships. All excellence is rare, and
that moral excellence which makes fit objects for friendship is as rare
as any.

On the other hand, it would be unreasonable and presumptuous in anyone
to expect to find a friend of a quality to which he himself can never
hope to attain, or to demand from his friend an indulgence which he
is not prepared himself to offer. Friendship was given us to be an
incentive to virtue, and not as an indulgence to vice or to mediocrity;
in order that, since a solitary virtue cannot scale the peaks, it may
do so with the loyal help of a comrade. A comradeship of this kind
includes within it all that men most desire.

Think nobly of friendship, and conduct yourselves wisely in it, for in
one way or another it enters into the life of every man. Even Timon of
Athens, whose one impulse was a brutal misanthropy, must needs seek a
confidant into whose mind he may instil his detestable venom. I have
heard, and I agree with it, that though a man should contemplate from
the heavens the universal beauty of creation, he would soon weary of it
without a companion for his admiration.

Of course, there are rubs in friendship which a sensible man will learn
to avoid, or to ignore, or to bear them cheerfully. Admonitions and
reproofs must have their part in true amity, and it is as difficult
to utter them tactfully as it is to receive them in good part.
Complaisance seems more propitious to friendship than are these naked
truths. But though truth may be painful, complaisance is more likely
in the long run to prove disastrous. It is no kindness to allow a
friend to rush headlong to ruin. Let your remonstrances be free from
bitterness and from insult; let your complaisance be affable, but never
servile. As for adulation, there are no words bad enough for it. Even
the populace have only contempt for the politician who flatters them.
Despise the insinuations of the sycophant, for what is more shameful
than to be made a fool of?

I tell you, sirs, that it is virtue that lasts; that begets real
friendships and maintains them. Lay, therefore, while you are young,
the foundations of a virtuous life.




WILLIAM COBBETT

Advice to Young Men

  William Cobbett, the celebrated English political writer, was
  born in March, 1762, at Farnham in Surrey. He took a dislike to
  rural occupations, and at an early age went to London, where
  he was employed for a few months as a copying clerk. This work
  was distasteful to him, and he enlisted in the army, and went
  with his regiment to Nova Scotia. On returning to England in
  1791, he obtained his discharge, married, and went to America.
  In Philadelphia he commenced his career as a political writer.
  Cobbett's "Advice to Young Men" was published in 1830. It has
  always been the most popular of his books, partly because of
  its subject, and partly because it illustrates so well the bold
  and forceful directness of his style. An intensely egotistical
  and confident man, Cobbett believed that his own strangely
  inconsistent life was a model for all men. Yet, contrary to what
  might have been expected, he was a delightful man in the domestic
  circle, and the story of his marriage--which has been narrated
  in his "Rural Rides"--is one of the romances of literary life.
  The original introduction to the "Advice" contained personal
  reference incredible in anyone except Cobbett. Said he, "Few will
  be disposed to question my fitness for the task. If such a man be
  not qualified to give advice, no man is qualified." And he went
  on to claim for himself "genius and something more." He certainly
  had a remarkable fund of commonsense, except when his subject was
  himself. Cobbett died June 18, 1835.


_I.--To a Youth_

You are arrived, let us suppose, at the age of from fourteen to nearly
twenty, and I here offer you my advice towards making you a happy man,
useful to all about you, and an honour to those from whom you sprang.
Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed in your mind that
you have no right to live in this world without doing work of some sort
or other. To wish to live on the labour of others is to contemplate a
fraud.

Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in
independence. Turn your back on what is called interest. Write it on
your heart that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own
exertions, for that which a man owes to favour or to partiality, that
same favour or partiality is constantly liable to take from him.

The great source of independence the French express in three words,
"_Vivre de peu_." "To live upon little" is the great security against
slavery; and this precept extends to dress and other things besides
food and drink. Extravagance in dress arises from the notion that all
the people in the street will be looking at you as you walk out; but
all the sensible people that happen to see you will think nothing at
all about you. Natural beauty of person always will and must have some
weight, even with men, and great weight with women; but this does not
want to be set off by expensive clothes.

A love of what is called "good eating and drinking," if very unamiable
in a grown-up person, is perfectly hateful in a youth. I have never
known such a man worthy of respect.

Next, as to amusements. Dancing is at once rational and healthful;
it is the natural amusement of young people, and none but the most
grovelling and hateful tyranny, or the most stupid and despicable
fanaticism, ever raised its voice against it. As to gaming, it is
always criminal, either in itself or in its tendency. The basis of it
is covetousness; a desire to take from others something for which you
have given, and intend to give, no equivalent.

Be careful in choosing your companions; and lay down as a rule never to
be departed from that no youth or man ought to be called your friend
who is addicted to indecent talk.

In your manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are
preferable to simpering and crawling. Be obedient where obedience is
due; for it is no act of meanness to yield implicit and ready obedience
to those who have a right to demand it at your hands. None are so saucy
and disobedient as slaves; and, when you come to read history, you
will find that in proportion as nations have been free has been their
reverence for the laws.

Let me now turn to the things which you ought to do. And, first of
all, the husbanding of your time. Young people require more sleep than
those that are grown up, and the number of hours cannot well be, on an
average, less than eight. An hour in bed is better than an hours spent
over the fire in an idle gossip.

Money is said to be power; but superior sobriety, industry, and
activity are still a more certain source of power. Booklearning is not
only proper, but highly commendable; and portions of it are absolutely
necessary in every case of trade or profession. One of these portions
is distinct reading, plain and neat writing, and arithmetic. The
next thing is the grammar of your own language, for grammar is the
foundation of all literature. Excellence in your own calling is the
first thing to be aimed at. After this may come general knowledge.
Geography naturally follows grammar; and you should begin with that of
this kingdom. When you come to history, begin also with that of your
own country; and here it is my bounded duty to put you well on your
guard. The works of our historians are, as far as they relate to former
times, masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever
seen.


_II.--To a Young Man_

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility; though
poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment,
a thing much more imaginary than real. Resolve to set this false shame
of being poor at defiance. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of
their names, ought to use them prudently and sparingly, and to keep
their expenses always within the bounds of their income, be it what it
may.

One of the effectual means of doing this is to purchase with ready
money. Innumerable things are not bought at all with ready money which
would be bought in case of trust; it is so much easier to order a thing
than to pay for it. I believe that, generally speaking, you pay for the
same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do in the
case of ready money. The purchasing with ready money really means that
you have more money to purchase with.

A great evil arising from the desire not to be thought poor is the
destructive thing honoured by the name of "speculation," but which
ought to be called gambling. It is a purchasing of something to be sold
again with a great profit at a considerable hazard. Your life, while
you are thus engaged, is the life of a gamester: a life of general
gloom, enlivened now and then by a gleam of hope or of success.

In all situations of life avoid the trammels of the law. If you win
your suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish?
Better to put up with the loss of one pound than with two, with all the
loss of time and all the mortification and anxiety attending a law suit.

Unless your business or your profession be duly attended to there can
be no real pleasure in any other employment of a portion of your time.
Men, however, must have some leisure, some relaxation from business;
and in the choice of this relaxation much of your happiness will depend.

Where fields and gardens are at hand, they present the most rational
scenes for leisure. Nothing can be more stupid than sitting,
sotting over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and
articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things.

Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. To come at
the true history of a country you must read its laws; you must read
books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must
particularly inform yourselves as to prices of labour and of food. But
there is one thing always to be guarded against, and that is not to
admire and applaud anything you read merely because it is the fashion
to admire and applaud it. Read, consider well what you read, form your
own judgments, and stand by that judgment until fact or argument be
offered to convince you of your error.


_III.--To a Lover_

There are two descriptions of lovers on whom all advice would be
wasted, namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers
reason as to deprive the party of his sober senses, and those who love
according to the rules of arithmetic, or measure their matrimonial
expectations by the claim of the land-surveyor.

I address myself to the reader whom I suppose to be a real lover, but
not so smitten as to be bereft of reason. You should never forget that
marriage is a thing to last for life, and that, generally speaking, it
is to make life happy or miserable.

The things which you ought to desire in a wife are chastity, sobriety,
industry, frugality, cleanliness, knowledge of domestic affairs, good
temper and beauty.

Chastity, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so
essential that without it no female is fit to be a wife. If prudery
mean false modesty, it is to be despised; but if it mean modesty pushed
to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. The very elements of
jealousy ought to be avoided, and the only safeguard is to begin well
and so render infidelity and jealousy next to impossible.

By sobriety I mean sobriety of conduct. When girls arrive at that
age which turns their thoughts towards the command of a house it
is time for them to cast away the levity of a child. Sobriety is a
title to trustworthiness, and that is a treasure to prize above all
others. But in order to possess this precious trustworthiness you must
exercise your reason in the choice of a partner. If she be vain, fond
of flattery, given to gadding about, coquettish, she will never be
trustworthy, and you will be unjust if you expect it at her hands. But
if you find in her that innate sobriety of which I have been speaking,
there requires on your part confidence and trust without any limit.

An ardent-minded young man may fear that sobriety of conduct in a young
woman argues a want of warmth; but my observation and experience tell
me that levity, not sobriety, is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred,
the companion of a want of ardent feeling.

There is no state in life in which industry in the wife is not
necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family. If she be lazy
there will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed, and this,
even among the wealthy, is a great curse. But who is to tell whether a
girl will make an industrious woman? There are certain outward signs,
which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides.

If you find the tongue lazy you may be nearly certain that the hands
and feet are the same. The pronunciation of an industrious person is
generally quick, distinct, and firm. Another mark of industry is a
quick step and a tread showing that the foot comes down with a hearty
good will.

Early rising is another mark of industry. It is, I should imagine,
pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the
dew, never beholds the rising sun.

Frugality. This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean
stinginess; it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure.
The outward and vulgar signs of extravagance are all the hardware
which women put upon their persons. The girl who has not the sense to
perceive that her person is disfigured, and not beautified by parcels
of brass, tin, and other hardware stuck about her body, is too great a
fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.

Cleanliness is a capital ingredient. Occasional cleanliness is not the
thing that an English or American husband wants; he wants it always. A
sloven in one thing is a sloven in all things. Make up your mind to a
rope rather than to live with a slip-shod wife.

Knowledge of domestic affairs is so necessary in every wife that
the lover ought to have it continually in his eye. A wife must not
only know how things ought to be done, but how to do them. I cannot
form an idea of a more unfortunate being than a girl with a mere
boarding-school education and without a future to enable her to keep a
servant when married. Of what use are her accomplishments?

Good temper is a very difficult thing to ascertain beforehand--smiles
are so cheap. By "good temper" I do not mean easy temper--a serenity
which nothing disturbs is a mark of laziness. Sulkiness, querulousness,
cold indifference, pertinacity in having the last word, are bad things
in a young woman, but of all the faults of temper your melancholy
ladies are the worst. Most wives are at times misery-makers, but the
melancholy carry it on as a regular trade.

The great use of female beauty is that it naturally tends to keep the
husband in good humour with himself, to make him pleased with his
bargain.

As to constancy in lovers, even when marriage has been promised, and
that, too, in the most solemn manner, it is better for both parties
to break off than to be coupled together with the reluctant assent of
either.


_IV.--To a Husband_

It is as a husband that your conduct will have the greatest effect on
your happiness. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and
education, is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.

First convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; make her
clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption that
there are children coming. The great danger of all is beginning with a
servant. The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as her
husband? If the wife be not able to do all the work to be done in the
house, she ought not to have been able to marry.

The next thing to be attended to is your demeanour towards a young
wife. The first frown that she receives from you is a dagger to her
heart. Let nothing put you out of humour with her.

Every husband who spends his leisure time in company other than that
of his wife and family tells her and them that he takes more delight
in other company than in theirs. Resolve from the very first never to
spend an hour from home unless business or some necessary and rational
purpose demand it. If you are called away your wife ought to be fully
apprised of the probable duration of the absence and of the time of
return. When we consider what a young woman gives up on her wedding
day, how can a just man think anything a trifle that affects her
happiness?

Though these considerations may demand from us the kindest possible
treatment of a wife, the husband is to expect dutiful deportment at
her hands. A husband under command is the most contemptible of God's
creatures. Am I recommending tyranny? Am I recommending disregard of
the wife's opinions and wishes? By no means. But the very nature of
things prescribes that there must be a head of every house, and an
undivided authority. The wife ought to be heard, and patiently heard;
she ought to be reasoned with, and, if possible, convinced; but if she
remain opposed to the husband's opinion, his will must be obeyed.

I now come to that great bane of families--jealousy. One thing every
husband can do in the way of prevention, and that is to give no
ground for it. Few characters are more despicable than that of a
jealous-headed husband, and that, not because he has grounds, but
because he has not grounds.

If to be happy in the married state requires these precautions, you may
ask: Is it not better to remain single? The cares and troubles of the
married life are many, but are those of the single life few? Without
wives men are poor, helpless mortals.

As to the expense, I firmly believe that a farmer married at
twenty-five, and having ten children during the first ten years, would
be able to save more money during these years than a bachelor of the
same age would be able to save, on the same farm, in a like space of
time. The bachelor has no one on whom he can in all cases rely. To me,
no being in this world appears so wretched as he.


_V.--To a Father_

It is yourself that you see in your children. They are the great and
unspeakable delight of your youth, the pride of your prime of life,
and the props of your old age. From the very beginning ensure in them,
if possible, an ardent love for their mother. Your first duty towards
them is resolutely to prevent their drawing the means of life from any
breast but hers. That is their own; it is their birthright.

The man who is to gain a living by his labour must be drawn away from
home; but this will not, if he be made of good stuff, prevent him from
doing his share of the duty due to his children. There ought to be no
toils, no watchings, no breakings of rest, imposed by this duty, of
which he ought not to perform his full share, and that, too, without
grudging. The working man, in whatever line, and whether in town or
country, who spends his day of rest away from his wife and children is
not worthy of the name of father.

The first thing in the rearing of children who have passed from the
baby state is, as to the body, plenty of good food; and, as to the
mind, constant good example in the parents. There is no other reason
for the people in the American states being generally so much taller
and stronger than the people in England are, but that, from their
birth, they have an abundance of good food; not only of food, but of
rich food. Nor is this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter,
for a tall man is worth more than a short man. Good food, and plenty of
it, is not more necessary to the forming of a stout and able body than
to the forming of an active and enterprising spirit. Children should
eat often, and as much as they like at a time. They will never take, of
plain food, more than it is good for them to take.

The next thing after good and plentiful and plain food is good air.
Besides sweet air, children want exercise. Even when they are babies in
arms they want tossing and pulling about, and talking and singing to.
They will, when they begin, take, if you let them alone, just as much
exercise as nature bids them, and no more.

I am of opinion that it is injurious to the mind to press book-learning
upon a child at an early age. I must impress my opinion upon every
father that his children's happiness ought to be his first object;
that book-learning, if it tend to militate against this, ought to be
disregarded. A man may read books for ever and be an ignorant creature
at last, and even the more ignorant for his reading.

And with regard to young women, everlasting book-reading is absolutely
a vice. When they once get into the habit they neglect all other
matters, and, in some cases, even their very dress. Attending to the
affairs of the house--to the washing, the baking, the brewing, the
cooking of victuals, the management of the poultry and the garden,
these are their proper occupations.


_VI.--To the Citizen_

Having now given my advice to the youth, the man, the lover, the
husband, and the father, I shall tender it to the citizen. To act well
our part as citizens we ought clearly to understand what our rights
are; for on our enjoyment of these depend our duties, rights going
before duties, as value received goes before payments. The great right
of all is the right of taking a part in the making of the laws by which
we are governed.

It is the duty of every man to defend his country against an enemy, a
duty imposed by the law of nature as well as by that of civil society.
Yet how are you to maintain that this is the duty of every man if you
deny to some men the enjoyment of a share in making the laws? The poor
man has a body and a soul as well as the rich man; like the latter, he
has parents, wife, and children; a bullet or a sword is as deadly to
him as to the rich man; yet, notwithstanding this equality, he is to
risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of
rights! Why are the poor to risk their lives? To uphold the laws and
to protect property--property of which they are said to possess none?
What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection
of property, and then in the same breath tell them that they are not
allowed to share in the making of the laws, because, and only because,
they have no property!

Here, young man of sense and of spirit, here is the point on which you
are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause
of the rich, and to echo the woes of the fallen great; but be it your
part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their
rights.

If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather,
if it were a fanciful thing, if it were only a speculative theory, if
it were but an abstract principle, it might be considered as of little
importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter. Who lets
another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? It is the
first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right
of self-government where it exists, and to restore it where it has been
lost. Men are in such a case labouring, not for the present day only,
but for ages to come. If life should not allow them time to see their
endeavours crowned, their children will see it.




DANIEL DEFOE

A Journal of the Plague Year

  "A Journal of the Plague Year" appeared in 1722. In its second
  edition it received the title of "A History of the Plague." This
  book was suggested by the public anxiety caused by a fearful
  visitation of the plague at Marseilles in the two preceding
  years. As an account of the epidemic in London, it has all the
  vividness of Defoe's fiction, while it is acknowledged to be
  historically accurate. (Defoe biography, see Vol. III, p. 26.)


_I.--A Stricken City_

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest
of my neighbours, heard that the plague was returned again in Holland.
We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread
rumours and reports of things; but such things as these were gathered
from the letters of merchants, and from them were handed about by word
of mouth only. In December, two Frenchmen died of the plague in Long
Acre, or, rather, at the upper end of Drury Lane. The secretaries
of state got knowledge of it, and two physicians and a surgeon were
ordered to go to the house and make inspection. This they did, and,
finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies, they gave
their opinions publicly, that they died of the plague; whereupon it was
given in to the parish clerk, and he also returned them to the Hall;
and it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in the usual manner,
thus:

    Plague, 2; Parishes infected, 1.

The distemper spread slowly, and in the beginning of May, the city
being healthy, we began to hope that as the infection was chiefly among
the people at the other end of the town, it might go no further. We
continued in these hopes for a few days, but it was only for a few,
for the people were no more to be deceived thus; they searched the
houses, and found that the plague was really spread every way, and that
many died of it every day; and accordingly, in the weekly bill for
the next week, the thing began to show itself. There was, indeed, but
fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and collusion.

Now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in June the
infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills rose high. Yet all
that could conceal their distempers did it to prevent their neighbours
shunning them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their houses.

I lived without Aldgate, midway between Aldgate church and Whitechapel
Bars, and our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end
of the town their consternation was very great, and the richer sort
of people, especially the nobility and gentry, from the west part of
the city, thronged out of town with their families and servants. In
Whitechapel, where I lived, nothing was to be seen but waggons and
carts, with goods, women, servants, children, etc., all hurrying away.
This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and it filled me
with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city.

I now began to consider seriously how I should dispose of myself,
whether I should resolve to stay in London, or shut up my house and
flee. I had two important things before me: the carrying on of my
business and shop, and the preservation of my life in so dismal a
calamity. My trade was a saddler, and though a single man, I had a
family of servants and a house and warehouses filled with goods, and to
leave them all without any overseer had been to hazard the loss of all
I had in the world.

I had resolved to go; but, one way or other, I always found that to
appoint to go away was always crossed by some accident or other, so as
to disappoint and put it off again; and I advise every person, in such
a case, to keep his eye upon the particular providences which occur
at that time, and take them as intimations from Heaven of what is his
unquestioned duty to do in such a case. Add to this, that, turning over
the Bible which lay before me, I cried out, "Well, I know not what
to do; Lord, direct me!" and at that juncture, casting my eye down,
I read: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in
darkness.... A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy
right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." I scarce need tell the
reader that from that moment I resolved that I would stay in the town,
casting myself entirely upon the protection of the Almighty.

The court removed in the month of June, and went to Oxford, where it
pleased God to preserve them; for which I cannot say they showed any
great token of thankfulness, and hardly anything of reformation, though
they did not want being told that their crying voices might, without
breach of charity, have gone far in bringing that terrible judgment
upon the whole nation.

A blazing star or comet had appeared for several months before the
plague, and there had been universal melancholy apprehensions of some
dreadful calamity. The people were at this time more addicted to
prophecies, dreams, and old wives' fables, than ever they were before
or since. Some ran about the streets with oral predictions, one crying,
"Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed!" Another poor naked
creature cried, "Oh, the great and dreadful God!" repeating these words
continually, with voice and countenance full of horror, and a swift
pace, and nobody could ever find him to stop. Some saw a flaming sword
in a hand coming out of a cloud; others, hearses and coffins in the
air; others, heaps of dead bodies unburied. But those who were really
serious and religious applied themselves in a truly Christian manner to
the proper work of repentance and humiliation. Many consciences were
awakened, many hard hearts melted into tears. People might be heard in
the streets as we passed along, calling upon God for mercy, and saying,
"I have been a thief," or "a murderer," and the like; and none dared
stop to make the least inquiry into such things, or to comfort the poor
creatures that thus cried out. The face of London was now strangely
altered; it was all in tears; the shrieks of women and children at the
windows and doors, where their dearest relations were dead, were enough
to pierce the stoutest heart.

About June, the lord mayor and aldermen began more particularly to
concern themselves for the regulation of the city, by the shutting up
of houses. Examiners were appointed in every parish to order the house
to be shut up wherever any person sick of the infection was found. A
night watchman and a day watchman were appointed to each infected house
to prevent any person from coming out or going into the same. Women
searchers were appointed in each parish to examine the bodies of such
as were dead, to see if they had died of the infection, and over these
were appointed physicians and chirurgeons. Other orders were made with
regard to giving notice of sickness, sequestration of the sick, airing
the goods and bedding of the infected, burial of the dead, cleansing
of the streets, forbidding wandering beggars, loose persons, and idle
assemblages, and the like. One of these orders was--"That every house
visited be marked with a red cross of a foot long, in the middle of the
door, with these words, 'LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US,' to be set close over
the same cross." Many got out of their houses by stratagem after they
were shut up, and thus spread the plague; in one place they blowed up
their watchman with gunpowder and burnt the poor fellow dreadfully, and
while he made hideous cries, the whole family got out at the windows;
others got out by bribing the watchman, and I have seen three watchmen
publicly whipped through the streets for suffering people to go out.


_II.--How the Dead Were Buried_

I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, and
when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of Aldgate I could not
resist going to see it. A terrible pit it was, forty feet long, about
sixteen wide, and in one part they dug it to near twenty feet deep,
until they could go no deeper for the water. It was filled in just two
weeks, when they had thrown into it 1,114 bodies from our own parish.

I got admittance into the churchyard by the sexton, who at first
refused me, but at last said: "Name of God, go in; depend upon it,
'twill be a sermon to you, it may be the best that ever you heard. It
is a speaking sight," says he; and with that he opened the door and
said, "Go, if you will." I stood wavering for a good while, but just at
that interval I saw two links come over from the end of the Minories,
and heard the bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart coming over the
streets, so I went in.

The scene was awful and full of terror. The cart had in it sixteen or
seventeen bodies; some were wrapped in sheets or rugs, some little
other than naked, or so loose that what covering they had fell from
them in the shooting out of the cart, and they fell quite naked among
the rest. But the matter was not much to them, seeing they were all
dead, and were to be huddled together into the common grave of mankind,
as we may call it; for here was no difference made, but poor and rich
went together. The cart was turned round, and the bodies shot into the
pit promiscuously.

There was following the cart a poor unhappy gentleman who fell down in
a swoon when the bodies were shot into the pit. The buriers ran to him
and took him up, and after he had come to himself, they led him away to
the Pye tavern, over against the end of Houndsditch. His case lay so
heavy on my mind that after I had gone home I must go out again into
the street and go to the Pye tavern, to inquire what became of him.

It was by this time one in the morning, and yet the poor gentleman was
there. The people of the house were civil and obliging, but there was a
dreadful set of fellows that used their house, and who, in the middle
of all this horror, met there every night, and behaved with revelling
and roaring extravagances, so that the master and mistress of the
house were terrified at them. They sat in a room next the street, and
as often as the dead-cart came along, they would open the windows and
make impudent mocks and jeers at the sad lamentations of the people,
especially if they heard the poor people call upon God to have mercy
upon them.

They were at this vile work when I came to the house, ridiculing the
unfortunate man, and his sorrow for his wife and children, taunting him
with want of courage to leap into the pit and go to Heaven with them,
and adding profane and blasphemous expressions.

I gently reproved them, being not unknown to two of them. But I cannot
call to mind the abominable raillery which they returned to me, making
a jest of my calling the plague the Hand of God. They continued this
wretched course three or four days; but they were, every one of them,
carried into the great pit before it was quite filled up.

In my walks I had daily many dismal scenes before my eyes, as of
persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screechings
of women, and the like. Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury,
of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman
gave three frightful screeches, and then cried: "Oh Death! Death!
Death!" in a most inimitable tone, which struck me with horror and a
chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole
street, neither did any other window open; for people had no curiosity
now, nor could anybody help another. I went on into Bell Alley.

Just in Bell Alley, at the right hand of the passage, there was a
more terrible cry than that, and I could hear women and children run
screaming about the rooms distracted. A garret window opened, and
somebody from a window on the other side of the alley called and
asked, "What is the matter?" upon which, from the first window it was
answered: "O Lord, my old master has hanged himself!" The other asked
again: "Is he quite dead?" And the first answered, "Ay, ay, quite
dead--quite dead and cold."

It is scarce credible what dreadful things happened every day, people
in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings,
which was indeed intolerable, oftentimes laying violent hands on
themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, etc.; mothers
murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere
fright, without any infection; others frightened into despair, idiocy,
or madness.

There were a great many robberies and wicked practices committed even
in this dreadful time. The power of avarice was so strong in some that
they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder; and in houses where
all the inhabitants had died and been carried out, they would break in
without regard to the danger of infection, and take even the bedclothes.


_III.--Universal Desolation_

For about a month together, I believe there did not die less than 1,500
or 1,700 a day, one day with another; and in the beginning of September
good people began to think that God was resolved to make a full end of
the people in this miserable city. Whole families, and, indeed, whole
streets of families were swept away together, and the infection was so
increased that at length they shut up no houses at all. People gave
themselves up to their fears, and thought that nothing was to be hoped
for but an universal desolation. It was even in the height of this
despair that it pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury
of the contagion.

When the people despaired of life and abandoned themselves, it had a
very strange effect for three or four weeks; it made them bold and
venturous; they were no more shy of one another, nor restrained within
doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and ran desperately into
any company. It brought them to crowd into the churches; looking on
themselves as all so many dead corpses, they behaved as if their lives
were of no consequence, compared to the work which they came about
there.

The conduct of the lord mayor and magistrates was all the time
admirable, so that bread was always to be had in plenty, and cheap
as usual; provisions were never wanting in the markets; the streets
were kept free from all manner of frightful objects--dead bodies, or
anything unpleasant; and for a time fires were kept burning in the
streets to cleanse the air of infection.

Many remedies were tried; but it is my opinion, and I must leave it as
a prescription, that the best physic against the plague is to run away
from it. I know people encourage themselves by saying, "God is able to
keep us in the midst of danger," and this kept thousands in the town,
whose carcasses went into the great pits by cart-loads. Yet of the
pious ladies who went about distributing alms to the poor, and visiting
infected families, though I will not undertake to say that none of
those charitable people were suffered to fall under the calamity, yet I
may say this, that I never knew any of them to fall under it.

Such is the precipitant disposition of our people, that no sooner had
they observed that the distemper was not so catching as formerly, and
that if it was catched it was not so mortal, and that abundance of
people who really fell sick recovered again daily, than they made no
more of the plague than of an ordinary fever, nor indeed so much. They
went into the very chambers where others lay sick. This rash conduct
cost a great many their lives, who had been preserved all through the
heat of the infection, and the bills of mortality increased again four
hundred in the first week of November.

But it pleased God, by the continuing of wintry weather, so to restore
the health of the city that by February following we reckoned the
distemper quite ceased. The time was not far off when the city was to
be purged with fire, for within nine months more I saw it all lying in
ashes.

I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year with a stanza of
my own:

    A dreadful plague in London was
      In the year sixty-five,
    Which swept an hundred thousand souls
      Away; yet I alive!




DEMOSTHENES

The Philippics

  Demosthenes, by universal consensus of opinion the greatest
  orator the world has known, was born at Athens 385 B.C. and
  died 322 B.C. His birth took place just nineteen years after
  the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War. Losing his father when
  he was yet a child, his wealth was frittered away by three
  faithless guardians, whom he prosecuted when he came of age.
  This dispute, and some other struggles, led him into public
  life, and by indomitable perseverance he overcame the difficulty
  constituted by certain physical disqualifications. Identifying
  himself for life entirely with the interests of Athens, he became
  the foremost administrator in the state, as well as its most
  eloquent orator. His stainless character, his matchless powers
  of advocacy, his fervent patriotism, and his fine diplomacy,
  render him altogether one of the noblest figures of antiquity.
  His fame rests mainly on "The Philippics"; those magnificent
  orations delivered during a series of several years against the
  aggressions of Philip of Macedon; though the three "Olynthiacs,"
  and the oration "De Coronâ," and several other speeches are
  monumental of the genius of Demosthenes, more especially the "De
  Coronâ." He continued to resist the Macedonian domination during
  the career of Alexander the Great, and was exiled, dying, it is
  supposed, by poison administered by himself, at Calauria. (Cf.
  also p. 273 of this volume.) This epitome has been prepared from
  the original Greek.


_I.--"Men of Athens, Arouse Yourselves!"_

The subject under discussion on this occasion, men of Athens, is not
new, and there would be no need to speak further on it if other orators
deliberated wisely. First, I advise you not to regard the present
aspect of affairs, miserable though it truly is, as entirely hopeless.
For the primary cause of the failure is your own mismanagement. If any
consider it difficult to overcome Philip because of the power that he
has attained, and because of our disastrous loss of many fortresses,
they should remember how much he has gained by achieving alliances.

If, now, you will emulate his policy, if every citizen will devote
himself assiduously to the service of his country, you will assuredly
recover all that has been lost, and punish Philip. For he has his
enemies, even among his pretended friends. All dread him because your
inertia has prevented you from providing any refuge for them. Hence the
height of arrogance which he now displays and the constantly expanding
area of his conquests.

When, men of Athens, will you realise that your attitude is the cause
of this situation? For you idle about, indulging in gossip over
circumstances, instead of grappling with the actualities. Were this
antagonist to pass away, another enemy like him would speedily be
produced by your policy, for Philip is what he is not so much through
his own prowess as through your own indifference.

As to the plan of action to be initiated, I say that we must inaugurate
it by providing fifty triremes, also the cavalry and transports and
boats needed for the fleet. Thus we should be fully prepared to cope
with the sudden excursions of Philip to Thermopylæ or any other point.
Besides this naval force, you should equip an army of 2,000 foot
soldiers, of whom 500 should be Athenians, the remainder mercenaries,
together with 250 cavalry, including 50 Athenians. Lastly, we should
have an auxiliary naval contingent of ten swift galleys.

We are now conducting affairs farcically. For we act neither as if
we were at peace, nor as if we had entered on a war. You enlist your
soldiers not for warfare, but for religious pageants, and for parades
and processions in the market-place. We must consolidate our resources,
embody permanent forces, not temporary levies hastily enlisted, and
we must secure winter quarters for our troops in those islands which
possess harbours and granaries for the corn.

No longer, men of Athens, must you continue the mere discussion of
measures without ever executing any of your projects. Remember that
Philip sustains his power by drawing on the resources of your own
allies.

But by adopting my plan you will at one and the same time deprive him
of his chief sources of supply, and place yourselves out of the reach
of danger. The policy he has hitherto pursued will be effectually
thwarted. No longer will he be able to capture your citizens, as he did
by attacking Lemnos and Imbros, or to seize your Paralus, as he did on
his descent at Marathon.

But, men of Athens, you spend far larger sums of money on the splendid
Panathenaic and Dionysian festivals than on your naval and military
armaments. Moreover, those festivals are always punctually celebrated,
while your preparations for war are always behindhand. Then, when a
critical juncture arrives, we find our forces are totally inadequate to
the emergency.

Having larger resources than any other state, you, Athenians, have
never adequately availed yourselves of them. You never anticipate the
movements of Philip, but simply drift after him, sending forces to
Thermopylæ if you hear he is there, or to any other quarter where he
may happen to be. Such policy might formerly be excused, but now it
is as disgraceful as it is intolerable. Are we to wait for Philip's
aggressiveness to cease? It never will do so unless we resist it. Shall
we not assume the offensive and descend on his coast with some of our
forces?

Nothing will result from mere oratory and from mutual recrimination
among ourselves. My own conviction is that Philip is encouraged by our
inertia, and that he is carried away by his own successes, but that he
has no fixed plan of action that can be guessed by foolish chatterers.
Men of Athens, let us for the future abandon such an attitude, and let
us bear in mind that we must depend not on the help of others, but on
ourselves alone. Unless we go to attack Philip where he is, Philip will
come to attack us where we are.


_II.--Beware the Guile of Philip_

Nothing, men of Athens, is done as a sequel to the speeches which
are delivered and approved concerning the outrageous proceedings of
Philip. You are earnest in discussion; he is earnest in action. If we
are to be complacently content because we employ the better arguments,
well and good; but if we are successfully to resist this formidable
and increasing power, we must be prepared to entertain advice that is
salutary, however unpalatable, rather than counsel which is easy and
pleasant.

If you give me any credit for clear perception, I beg you to attend
to what I plead. After subduing Thermopylæ and the Phocians, Philip
quickly apprehended that you could not be induced by any selfish
considerations to abandon other Greek states to him. The Thebans,
Messenians, and Argives he lured by bribes. But he knew how, in
the past, your predecessors scorned the overtures of his ancestor,
Alexander of Macedon, sent by Mardonius the Persian to induce the
Athenians to betray the rest of the Greeks. It was not so with the
Argives and the Thebans, and thus Philip calculates that their
successors will care nothing for the interests of the Greeks generally.
So he favours them, but not you.

Everything demonstrates Philip's animosity against Athens. He is
instinctively aware that you are conscious of his plots against
you, and ascribes to you a feeling of hatred against him. Eager to
be beforehand with us, he continues to negotiate with Thebans and
Peloponnesians, assuming that they may be beguiled with ease.

I call to mind how I addressed the Messenians and the Argives,
reminding them how Philip had dishonourably given certain of their
territories to the Olynthians. Would the Olynthians then have listened
to any disparagements of Philip? Assuredly not. Yet they were soon
shamefully betrayed and cheated by him. It is unsafe for commonwealths
to place confidence in despots. In like manner were the Thessalians
deceived when he had ejected their tyrants and had restored to
them Nicasa and Magnesia, for he instituted the new tyranny of the
Decemvirate. Philip is equally ready with gifts and promises on the one
hand, and with fraud and deceit on the other.

"By Jupiter," said I to those auditors, "the only infallible defence of
democracies against despots is the absolute refusal of all confidence
in them. Always to mistrust them is the only safeguard. What is it that
you seek to secure? Liberty? Then do you not perceive that the very
titles worn by Philip prove him to be adverse to this? For every king
and tyrant is an enemy to freedom and an opponent to laws."

But though my speeches and those of other emissaries were received
with vociferous applause, all the same those who thus manifested
profound approbation will never be able to resist the blandishments and
overtures of Philip. It may well be so with those other Greeks. But
you, O Athenians, surely should understand your own interests better.
For otherwise irreparable disaster must ensue.

In justice, men of Athens, you should summon the men who communicated
to you the promises which induced you to consent to peace. Their
statements misled us; otherwise, neither would I have gone as
ambassador, nor would you have ceased hostilities. Also, you should
call those who, after my return from my second embassy, contradicted my
report. I then protested against the abandonment of Thermopylæ and of
the Phocians.

They ridiculed me as a water-drinker, and they persuaded you that
Philip would cede to you Oropus and Eubœa in exchange for Amphipolis,
and also that he would humble the Thebans and at his own charges cut
through the Chersonese. Your anger will be excited in due time when
you realise what you have hitherto disregarded, namely, that these
projects on the part of Philip are devised against Athens.

Though all know it only too well, let me remind you who it was,
even Æschines himself, who induced you by his persuasion to abandon
Thermopylæ and Phocis. By possessing control over these, Philip now
commands also the road to Attica and Peloponnesus.

Hence the present situation is this, that you must now consider,
not distant affairs, but the means of defending your homes and of
conducting a war in Attica, that war having become inevitable through
those events, grievous though it will be to every citizen when it
begins. May the gods grant that the worst fears be not fully confirmed!


_III.--Athens Must Head the War_

Various circumstances, men of Athens, have reduced our affairs to the
worst possible state, this lamentable crisis being due mainly to the
specious orators who seek rather to please you than wisely to guide
you. Flattery has generated perilous complacency, and now the position
is one of extreme danger. I am willing either to preserve silence,
or to speak frankly, according to your disposition. Yet all may be
repaired if you awaken to your duty, for Philip has not conquered you;
you have simply made no real effort against him.

Strange to say, while Philip is actually seizing cities and
appropriating various portions of our territory, some among us affirm
that there is really no war. Thus, caution is needed in speech, for
those who suggest defensive measures may afterwards be indicted for
causing hostilities. Now, let those who maintain that we are at peace
propose a resolution for suitable plans. But if you are invaded by an
armed aggressor, who pretends to be at peace with you, what can you do
but initiate measures of defence?

Both sides may profess to be at peace, and I do not demur; but it
is madness to style that a condition of peace which allows Philip
to subjugate all other states and then to assail you last of all.
His method of proceeding is to prepare to attack you, while securing
immunity from the danger of being attacked by you.

If we wait for him to declare war, we wait in vain. For he will treat
us as he did the Olynthians and the Phocians. Professing to be their
ally, he appropriated territories belonging to them. Do you imagine
he would declare war against you before commencing operations of
encroachment? Never, so long as he knows that you are willing to be
deceived.

By a series of operations he has been infringing the peace: by his
attempt to seize Megara, by his intervention in Eubœa, by his excursion
into Thrace. I reckon that the virtual beginnings of hostilities
must be dated from the day that he completed the subjugation of the
Thracians. From your other orators I differ in deeming any discussion
irrelevant respecting the Chersonese or Byzantium. Aid these, indeed;
but let the safety of all Greece alike be the subject of your
deliberations.

What I would emphasise is that to Philip have been conceded liberties
of encroachment and aggression, by you first of all, such as in former
days were always contested by war. He has attacked and enslaved city
after city of the Greeks. You Athenians were for seventy-three years
the supreme leaders in Hellas, as were the Spartans for twenty-nine
years. Then after the battle of Leuctra the Thebans acquired paramount
influence. But neither you nor these others ever arrogated the right to
act according to your pleasure.

If you appeared to act superciliously towards any state, all the other
states sided with that one which was aggrieved. Yet all the errors
committed by our predecessors and by those of the Spartans during the
whole of that century were trivial compared with the wrongs perpetrated
by Philip during these thirteen years. Cruel has been his destruction
of Olynthus, of Methone, of Apollonia, and of thirty-two cities on the
borders of Thrace, and also the extermination of the Phocians. And now
he domineers ruthlessly over Thessaly and Eubœa. Yet all we Greeks of
various nationalities are in so abjectly miserable a condition that,
instead of arranging embassies and declaring our indignation, we
entrench ourselves in isolation in our several cities.

It must be reflected that when wrongs were inflicted by other states,
by us or the Spartans, these faults were at any rate committed by
genuine sons of Greece. How much more hateful is the offence when
perpetrated against a household by a slave or an alien than by a son or
other member of the family! But Philip is not only no son of Hellas; he
is not even a reputable barbarian, but only a vile fellow of Macedon,
a country from which formerly even a respectable slave could not be
purchased!

What is lacking to his unspeakable arrogance? Does he not assemble the
Pythian games, command Thermopylæ, garrison the passes, secure prior
access to the oracle at Delphi, and dictate the form of government for
Thessaly? All this the Greeks look upon with toleration; they seem
to regard it as they would some tempest, each hoping it will fall on
someone else. We are all passive and despondent, mutually distrusting
each other instead of the common foe.

How different the noble spirit of former days! How different that old
passion for liberty which is now superseded by the love of servitude!
Then corruption was so deeply detested that there was no pardon for
the guilt of bribery. Now venality is laughed at and bribery goes
unpunished. In ships, men, equipment, and revenues our resources are
larger than ever before, but corruption neutralises them all.

But preparations for war are not sufficient. You must not only be ready
to encounter the foes without, but must punish those who among you are
the creatures of Philip, like those who caused the ruin of Olynthus by
betraying the cavalry and by securing the banishment of Apollonides.
Similar treachery brought about the downfall of other cities. The same
fate may befall us. What, then, must be done?

When we have done all that is needful for our own defence, let us next
send our emissaries to all the other states with the intelligence
that we are ready. If you imagine that others will save Greece while
you avoid the conflict, you cherish a fatal delusion. This enterprise
devolves on you; you inherit it from your ancestors.


_IV.--Exterminate the Traitors!_

Men of Athens, your chief misfortune is that, though for the passing
moment you heed important news, you speedily scatter and forget what
you have just heard. You have become fully acquainted with the doings
of Philip, and you well know how great is his ambition; and yet, so
profound has been our indifference that we have earned the contempt
of several other states, which now prefer to undertake their defence
separately rather than in alliance with us.

You must become more deeply convinced than you have been hitherto that
our destruction is the supreme anxiety of Philip. The special object of
his hatred is your democratic constitution. Our mode of procedure is a
mockery, for we are always behind in the execution of our schemes. You
must form a permanent army with a regular organisation, and with funds
sufficient for its maintenance.

Most of all, money is needed to meet coming requirements. There was a
time when money was forthcoming and everything necessary was performed.
Why do we now decline to do our duty? In a time of peril to the
commonwealth the affluent should freely contribute of their possessions
for the welfare of the country; but each class has its obligations to
the state and should observe them.

Many and inveterate are the causes of our present difficulties. You, O
Athenians, have surrendered the august position which your predecessors
bequeathed you, and have indolently permitted a stranger to usurp it.
The present crisis involves peril for all the states, but to Athens
most of all; and that not so much on account of Philip's schemes of
conquest, as of your neglect.

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