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diff --git a/1360.txt b/1360.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6640f32 --- /dev/null +++ b/1360.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4663 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Historical Lectures and Essays, by Charles +Kingsley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Historical Lectures and Essays + + +Author: Charles Kingsley + +Release Date: May 12, 2005 [eBook #1360] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1902 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS +by Charles Kingsley + + +Contents: + +The First Discovery of America +Cyrus, Servant of the Lord +Ancient Civilisation +Rondelet +Vesalius +Paracelsus +Buchanan + + + + +THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA + + +Let me begin this lecture {1} with a scene in the North Atlantic 863 +years since. + +"Bjarne Grimolfson was blown with his ship into the Irish Ocean; and +there came worms and the ship began to sink under them. They had a boat +which they had payed with seals' blubber, for that the sea-worms will not +hurt. But when they got into the boat they saw that it would not hold +them all. Then said Bjarne, 'As the boat will only hold the half of us, +my advice is that we should draw lots who shall go in her; for that will +not be unworthy of our manhood.' This advice seemed so good that none +gainsaid it; and they drew lots. And the lot fell to Bjarne that he +should go in the boat with half his crew. But as he got into the boat, +there spake an Icelander who was in the ship and had followed Bjarne from +Iceland, 'Art thou going to leave me here, Bjarne?' Quoth Bjarne, 'So it +must be.' Then said the man, 'Another thing didst thou promise my +father, when I sailed with thee from Iceland, than to desert me thus. For +thou saidst that we both should share the same lot.' Bjarne said, 'And +that we will not do. Get thou down into the boat, and I will get up into +the ship, now I see that thou art so greedy after life.' So Bjarne went +up into the ship, and the man went down into the boat; and the boat went +on its voyage till they came to Dublin in Ireland. Most men say that +Bjarne and his comrades perished among the worms; for they were never +heard of after." + +This story may serve as a text for my whole lecture. Not only does it +smack of the sea-breeze and the salt water, like all the finest old Norse +sagas, but it gives a glimpse at least of the nobleness which underlay +the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the +culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian +peoples had their great times; when the old fierceness of the worshippers +of Thor and Odin was tempered, without being effeminated, by the Faith of +the "White Christ," till the very men who had been the destroyers of +Western Europe became its civilisers. + +It should have, moreover, a special interest to Americans. For--as +American antiquaries are well aware--Bjarne was on his voyage home from +the coast of New England; possibly from that very Mount Hope Bay which +seems to have borne the same name in the time of those old Norsemen, as +afterwards in the days of King Philip, the last sachem of the Wampanong +Indians. He was going back to Greenland, perhaps for reinforcements, +finding, he and his fellow-captain, Thorfinn, the Esquimaux who then +dwelt in that land too strong for them. For the Norsemen were then on +the very edge of discovery, which might have changed the history not only +of this continent but of Europe likewise. They had found and colonised +Iceland and Greenland. They had found Labrador, and called it Helluland, +from its ice-polished rocks. They had found Nova Scotia seemingly, and +called it Markland, from its woods. They had found New England, and +called it Vinland the Good. A fair land they found it, well wooded, with +good pasturage; so that they had already imported cows, and a bull whose +lowings terrified the Esquimaux. They had found self-sown corn too, +probably maize. The streams were full of salmon. But they had called +the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes. Quaint enough, and bearing in +its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding +of the wild fox-grapes. How Leif the Fortunate, almost as soon as he +first landed, missed a little wizened old German servant of his father's, +Tyrker by name, and was much vexed thereat, for he had been brought up on +the old man's knee, and hurrying off to find him met Tyrker coming back +twisting his eyes about--a trick of his--smacking his lips and talking +German to himself in high excitement. And when they get him to talk +Norse again, he says: "I have not been far, but I have news for you. I +have found vines and grapes!" "Is that true, foster-father?" says Leif. +"True it is," says the old German, "for I was brought up where there was +never any lack of them." + +The saga--as given by Rafn--had a detailed description of this quaint +personage's appearance; and it would not he amiss if American +wine-growers should employ an American sculptor--and there are great +American sculptors--to render that description into marble, and set up +little Tyrker in some public place, as the Silenus of the New World. + +Thus the first cargoes homeward from Vinland to Greenland had been of +timber and of raisins, and of vine-stocks, which were not like to thrive. + +And more. Beyond Vinland the Good there was said to be another land, +Whiteman's Land--or Ireland the Mickle, as some called it. For these +Norse traders from Limerick had found Ari Marson, and Ketla of Ruykjanes, +supposed to have been long since drowned at sea, and said that the people +had made him and Ketla chiefs, and baptized Ari. What is all this? and +what is this, too, which the Esquimaux children taken in Markland told +the Northmen, of a land beyond them where the folk wore white clothes, +and carried flags on poles? Are these all dreams? or was some part of +that great civilisation, the relics whereof your antiquarians find in so +many parts of the United States, still in existence some 900 years ago; +and were these old Norse cousins of ours upon the very edge of it? Be +that as it may, how nearly did these fierce Vikings, some of whom seemed +to have sailed far south along the shore, become aware that just beyond +them lay a land of fruits and spices, gold and gems? The adverse current +of the Gulf Stream, it may be, would have long prevented their getting +past the Bahamas into the Gulf of Mexico; but, sooner or later, some +storm must have carried a Greenland viking to San Domingo or to Cuba; and +then, as has been well said, some Scandinavian dynasty might have sat +upon the throne of Mexico. + +These stories are well known to antiquarians. They may be found, almost +all of them, in Professor Rafn's "Antiquitates Americanae." The action +in them stands out often so clear and dramatic, that the internal +evidence of historic truth is irresistible. Thorvald, who, when he saw +what seems to be, they say, the bluff head of Alderton at the south-east +end of Boston Bay, said, "Here should I like to dwell," and, shot by an +Esquimaux arrow, bade bury him on that place, with a cross at his head +and a cross at his feet, and call the place Cross Ness for evermore; +Gudrida, the magnificent widow, who wins hearts and sees strange deeds +from Iceland to Greenland, and Greenland to Vinland and back, and at +last, worn out and sad, goes off on a pilgrimage to Rome; Helgi and +Finnbogi, the Norwegians, who, like our Arctic voyagers in after times, +devise all sorts of sports and games to keep the men in humour during the +long winter at Hope; and last, but not least, the terrible Freydisa, who, +when the Norse are seized with a sudden panic at the Esquimaux and flee +from them, as they had three weeks before fled from Thorfinn's bellowing +bull, turns, when so weak that she cannot escape, single-handed on the +savages, and catching up a slain man's sword, puts them all to flight +with her fierce visage and fierce cries--Freydisa the Terrible, who, in +another voyage, persuades her husband to fall on Helgi and Finnbogi, when +asleep, and murder them and all their men; and then, when he will not +murder the five women too, takes up an axe and slays them all herself, +and getting back to Greenland, when the dark and unexplained tale comes +out, lives unpunished, but abhorred henceforth. All these folks, I say, +are no phantoms, but realities; at least, if I can judge of internal +evidence. + +But beyond them, and hovering on the verge of Mythus and Fairyland, there +is a ballad called "Finn the Fair," and how + + An upland Earl had twa braw sons, + My story to begin; + The tane was Light Haldane the strong, + The tither was winsome Finn. + +and so forth; which was still sung, with other "rimur," or ballads, in +the Faroes, at the end of the last century. Professor Rafn has inserted +it, because it talks of Vinland as a well-known place, and because the +brothers are sent by the princess to slay American kings; but that Rime +has another value. It is of a beauty so perfect, and yet so like the old +Scotch ballads in its heroic conception of love, and in all its forms and +its qualities, that it is one proof more, to any student of early +European poetry, that we and these old Norsemen are men of the same +blood. + +If anything more important than is told by Professor Rafn and Mr. Black +{2} be now known to the antiquarians of Massachusetts, let me entreat +them to pardon my ignorance. But let me record my opinion that, though +somewhat too much may have been made in past years of certain +rock-inscriptions, and so forth, on this side of the Atlantic, there can +be no reasonable doubt that our own race landed and tried to settle on +the shore of New England six hundred years before their kinsmen, and, in +many cases, their actual descendants, the august Pilgrim Fathers of the +seventeenth century. And so, as I said, a Scandinavian dynasty might +have been seated now upon the throne of Mexico. And how was that strange +chance lost? First, of course, by the length and danger of the coasting +voyage. It was one thing to have, like Columbus and Vespucci, Cortes and +Pizarro, the Azores as a halfway port; another to have Greenland, or even +Iceland. It was one thing to run south-west upon Columbus's track, +across the Mar de Damas, the Ladies' Sea, which hardly knows a storm, +with the blazing blue above, the blazing blue below, in an ever-warming +climate, where every breath is life and joy; another to struggle against +the fogs and icebergs, the rocks and currents of the dreary North +Atlantic. No wonder, then, that the knowledge of Markland, and Vinland, +and Whiteman's Land died away in a few generations, and became but +fireside sagas for the winter nights. + +But there were other causes, more honourable to the dogged energy of the +Norse. They were in those very years conquering and settling nearer home +as no other people--unless, perhaps, the old Ionian Greeks--conquered and +settled. + +Greenland, we have seen, they held--the western side at least--and held +it long and well enough to afford, it is said, 2,600 pounds of walrus' +teeth as yearly tithe to the Pope, besides Peter's pence, and to build +many a convent, and church, and cathedral, with farms and homesteads +round; for one saga speaks of Greenland as producing wheat of the finest +quality. All is ruined now, perhaps by gradual change of climate. + +But they had richer fields of enterprise than Greenland, Iceland, and the +Faroes. Their boldest outlaws at that very time--whether from Norway, +Sweden, Denmark, or Britain--were forming the imperial life-guard of the +Byzantine Emperor, as the once famous Varangers of Constantinople; and +that splendid epoch of their race was just dawning, of which my lamented +friend, the late Sir Edmund Head, says so well in his preface to Viga +Glum's Icelandic Saga, "The Sagas, of which this tale is one, were +composed for the men who have left their mark in every corner of Europe; +and whose language and laws are at this moment important elements in the +speech and institutions of England, America, and Australia. There is no +page of modern history in which the influence of the Norsemen and their +conquests must not be taken into account--Russia, Constantinople, Greece, +Palestine, Sicily, the coasts of Africa, Southern Italy, France, the +Spanish Peninsula, England, Scotland, Ireland, and every rock and island +round them, have been visited, and most of them at one time or the other +ruled, by the men of Scandinavia. The motto on the sword of Roger +Guiscard was a proud one: + + Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer. + +Every island, says Sir Edmund Head, and truly--for the name of almost +every island on the coast of England, Scotland, and Eastern Ireland, ends +in either _ey_ or _ay_ or _oe_, a Norse appellative, as is the word +"island" itself--is a mark of its having been, at some time or other, +visited by the Vikings of Scandinavia. + +Norway, meanwhile, was convulsed by war; and what perhaps was of more +immediate consequence, Svend Fork-beard, whom we Englishmen call +Sweyn--the renegade from that Christian Faith which had been forced on +him by his German conqueror, the Emperor Otto II.--with his illustrious +son Cnut, whom we call Canute, were just calling together all the most +daring spirits of the Baltic coasts for the subjugation of England; and +when that great feat was performed, the Scandinavian emigration was +paralysed, probably, for a time by the fearful wars at home. While the +king of Sweden, and St. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, were setting on +Denmark during Cnut's pilgrimage to Rome, and Cnut, sailing with a mighty +fleet to Norway, was driving St. Olaf into Russia, to return and fall in +the fratricidal battle of Stiklestead--during, strangely enough, a total +eclipse of the sun--Vinland was like enough to remain still uncolonised. +After Cnut's short-lived triumph--king as he was of Denmark, Norway, +England, and half Scotland, and what not of Wendish Folk inside the +Baltic--the force of the Norsemen seems to have been exhausted in their +native lands. Once more only, if I remember right, did "Lochlin," really +and hopefully send forth her "mailed swarm" to conquer a foreign land; +and with a result unexpected alike by them and by their enemies. Had it +been otherwise, we might not have been here this day. + +Let me sketch for you once more--though you have heard it, doubtless, +many a time--the tale of that tremendous fortnight which settled the fate +of Britain, and therefore of North America; which decided--just in those +great times when the decision was to be made--whether we should be on a +par with the other civilised nations of Europe, like them the "heirs of +all the ages," with our share not only of Roman Christianity and Roman +centralisation--a member of the great comity of European nations, held +together in one Christian bond by the Pope--but heirs also of Roman +civilisation, Roman literature, Roman Law; and therefore, in due time, of +Greek philosophy and art. No less a question than this, it seems to me, +hung in the balance during that fortnight of autumn, 1066. + +Poor old Edward the Confessor, holy, weak, and sad, lay in his new choir +of Westminster--where the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary +were at rest. The crowned ascetic had left no heir behind. England +seemed as a corpse, to which all the eagles might gather together; and +the South-English, in their utter need, had chosen for their king the +ablest, and it may be the justest, man in Britain--Earl Harold +Godwinsson: himself, like half the upper classes of England then, of the +all-dominant Norse blood; for his mother was a Danish princess. Then out +of Norway, with a mighty host, came Harold Hardraade, taller than all +men, the ideal Viking of his time. Half-brother of the now dead St. +Olaf, severely wounded when he was but fifteen, at Stiklestead, when Olaf +fell, he had warred and plundered on many a coast. He had been away to +Russia to King Jaroslaf; he had been in the Emperor's Varanger guard at +Constantinople--and, it was whispered, had slain a lion there with his +bare hands; he had carved his name and his comrades' in Runic +characters--if you go to Venice you may see them at this day--on the +loins of the great marble lion, which stood in his time not in Venice but +in Athens. And now, king of Norway and conqueror, for the time, of +Denmark, why should he not take England, as Sweyn and Canute took it +sixty years before, when the flower of the English gentry perished at the +fatal battle of Assingdune? If he and his half-barbarous host had +conquered, the civilisation of Britain would have been thrown back, +perhaps, for centuries. But it was not to be. + +England _was_ to be conquered by the Norman; but by the civilised, not +the barbaric; by the Norse who had settled, but four generations before, +in the North East of France under Rou, Rollo, Rolf the Ganger--so-called, +they say, because his legs were so long that, when on horseback, he +touched the ground and seemed to gang, or walk. He and his Norsemen had +taken their share of France, and called it Normandy to this day; and +meanwhile, with that docility and adaptability which marks so often truly +great spirits, they had changed their creed, their language, their +habits, and had become, from heathen and murderous Berserkers, the most +truly civilised people of Europe, and--as was most natural then--the most +faithful allies and servants of the Pope of Rome. So greatly had they +changed, and so fast, that William Duke of Normandy, the +great-great-grandson of Rolf the wild Viking, was perhaps the finest +gentleman, as well as the most cultivated sovereign, and the greatest +statesman and warrior in all Europe. + +So Harold of Norway came with all his Vikings to Stamford Bridge by York; +and took, by coming, only that which Harold of England promised him, +namely, "forasmuch as he was taller than any other man, seven feet of +English ground." + +The story of that great battle, told with a few inaccuracies, but told as +only great poets tell, you should read, if you have not read it already, +in the "Heimskringla" of Snorri Sturluson, the Homer of the North: + + High feast that day held the birds of the air and the beasts of the + field, + White-tailed erne and sallow glede, + Dusky raven, with horny neb, + And the gray deer the wolf of the wood. + +The bones of the slain, men say, whitened the place for fifty years to +come. + +And remember, that on the same day on which that fight befell--September +27, 1066--William, Duke of Normandy, with all his French-speaking +Norsemen, was sailing across the British Channel, under the protection of +a banner consecrated by the Pope, to conquer that England which the Norse- +speaking Normans could not conquer. + +And now King Harold showed himself a man. He turned at once from the +North of England to the South. He raised the folk of the Southern, as he +had raised those of the Central and Northern shires; and in sixteen +days--after a march which in those times was a prodigious feat--he was +entrenched upon the fatal down which men called Heathfield then, and +Senlac, but Battle to this day--with William and his French Normans +opposite him on Telham hill. + +Then came the battle of Hastings. You all know what befell upon that +day; and how the old weapon was matched against the new--the English axe +against the Norman lance--and beaten only because the English broke their +ranks. If you wish to refresh your memories, read the tale once more in +Mr. Freeman's "History of England," or Professor Creasy's "Fifteen +Decisive Battles of the World," or even, best of all, the late Lord +Lytton's splendid romance of "Harold." And when you go to England, go, +as some of you may have gone already, to Battle; and there from off the +Abbey grounds, or from Mountjoye behind, look down off what was then "The +Heathy Field," over the long slopes of green pasture and the rich hop- +gardens, where were no hop-gardens then, and the flat tide-marshes +winding between the wooded heights, towards the southern sea; and imagine +for yourselves the feelings of an Englishman as he contemplates that +broad green sloping lawn, on which was decided the destiny of his native +land. Here, right beneath, rode Taillefer up the slope before them all, +singing the song of Roland, tossing his lance in air and catching it as +it fell, with all the Norse berserker spirit of his ancestors flashing +out in him, at the thought of one fair fight, and then purgatory, or +Valhalla--Taillefer perhaps preferred the latter. Yonder on the left, in +that copse where the red-ochre gully runs, is Sanguelac, the drain of +blood, into which (as the Bayeux tapestry, woven by Matilda's maids, +still shows) the Norman knights fell, horse and man, till the gully was +bridged with writhing bodies for those who rode after. Here, where you +stand--the crest of the hill marks where it must have been--was the +stockade on which depended the fate of England. Yonder, perhaps, stalked +out one English squire or house-carle after another: tall men with long- +handled battle-axes--one specially terrible, with a wooden helmet which +no sword could pierce--who hewed and hewed down knight on knight, till +they themselves were borne to earth at last. And here, among the trees +and ruins of the garden, kept trim by those who know the treasure which +they own, stood Harold's two standards of the fighting-man and the dragon +of Wessex. And here, close by (for here, for many a century, stood the +high altar of Battle Abbey, where monks sang masses for Harold's soul), +upon this very spot the Swan-neck found her hero-lover's corpse. "Ah," +says many an Englishman--and who will blame him for it--"how grand to +have died beneath that standard on that day!" Yes, and how right. And +yet how right, likewise, that the Norman's cry of _Dexaie_!--"God +Help!"--and not the English hurrah, should have won that day, till +William rode up Mountjoye in the afternoon to see the English army, +terrible even in defeat, struggling through copse and marsh away toward +Brede, and, like retreating lions driven into their native woods, slaying +more in the pursuit than they slew even in the fight. + +But so it was to be; for so it ought to have been. You, my American +friends, delight, as I have said already, in seeing the old places of the +old country. Go, I beg you, and look at that old place, and if you be +wise, you will carry back from it one lesson: That God's thoughts are not +as our thoughts; nor His ways as our ways. + +It was a fearful time which followed. I cannot but believe that our +forefathers had been, in some way or other, great sinners, or two such +conquests as Canute's and William's would not have fallen on them within +the short space of sixty years. They did not want for courage, as +Stamford Brigg and Hastings showed full well. English swine, their +Norman conquerors called them often enough; but never English cowards. +Their ruinous vice, if we are to trust the records of the time, was what +the old monks called accidia--[Greek text]--and ranked it as one of the +seven deadly sins: a general careless, sleepy, comfortable habit of mind, +which lets all go its way for good or evil--a habit of mind too often +accompanied, as in the case of the Angle-Danes, with self-indulgence, +often coarse enough. Huge eaters and huger drinkers, fuddled with ale, +were the men who went down at Hastings--though they went down like +heroes--before the staid and sober Norman out of France. + +But those were fearful times. As long as William lived, ruthless as he +was to all rebels, he kept order and did justice with a strong and steady +hand; for he brought with him from Normandy the instincts of a truly +great statesman. And in his sons' time matters grew worse and worse. +After that, in the troubles of Stephen's reign, anarchy let loose tyranny +in its most fearful form, and things were done which recall the cruelties +of the old Spanish _conquistadores_ in America. Scott's charming romance +of "Ivanhoe" must be taken, I fear, as a too true picture of English +society in the time of Richard I. + +And what came of it all? What was the result of all this misery and +wrong? + +This, paradoxical as it may seem: That the Norman conquest was the making +of the English people; of the Free Commons of England. + +Paradoxical, but true. First, you must dismiss from your minds the too +common notion that there is now, in England, a governing Norman +aristocracy, or that there has been one, at least since the year 1215, +when Magna Charta was won from the Norman John by Normans and by English +alike. For the first victors at Hastings, like the first +_conquistadores_ in America, perished, as the monk chronicles point out, +rapidly by their own crimes; and very few of our nobility can trace their +names back to the authentic Battle Abbey roll. The great majority of the +peers have sprung from, and all have intermarried with, the Commons; and +the peerage has been from the first, and has become more and more as +centuries have rolled on, the prize of success in life. + +The cause is plain. The conquest of England by the Normans was not one +of those conquests of a savage by a civilised race, or of a cowardly race +by a brave race, which results in the slavery of the conquered, and +leaves the gulf of caste between two races--master and slave. That was +the case in France, and resulted, after centuries of oppression, in the +great and dreadful revolution of 1793, which convulsed not only France +but the whole civilised world. But caste, thank God, has never existed +in England, since at least the first generation after the Norman +conquest. + +The vast majority, all but the whole population of England, have been +always free; and free, as they are not where caste exists to change their +occupations. They could intermarry, if they were able men, into the +ranks above them; as they could sink, if they were unable men, into the +ranks below them. Any man acquainted with the origin of our English +surnames may verify this fact for himself, by looking at the names of a +single parish or a single street of shops. There, jumbled together, he +will find names marking the noblest Saxon or Angle blood--Kenward or +Kenric, Osgood or Osborne, side by side with Cordery or Banister--now +names of farmers in my own parish--or other Norman-French names which may +be, like those two last, in Battle Abbey roll--and side by side the +almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or +Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the +ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be +now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own +forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. When I search +through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, I find the same +jumble of names--West Saxon, Angle, Danish, Norman, and French-Norman +likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many of high nobility, +all worked together, as at home, to form the Free Commoners of England. + +If any should wish to know more on this curious and important subject, +let me recommend them to study Ferguson's "Teutonic Name System," a book +from which you will discover that some of our quaintest, and seemingly +most plebeian surnames--many surnames, too, which are extinct in England, +but remain in America--are really corruptions of good old Teutonic names, +which our ancestors may have carried in the German Forest, before an +Englishman set foot on British soil; from which he will rise with the +comfortable feeling that we English-speaking men, from the highest to the +lowest, are literally kinsmen. Nay, so utterly made up now is the old +blood-feud between Norseman and Englishman, between the descendants of +those who conquered and those who were conquered, that in the children of +our Prince of Wales, after 800 years, the blood of William of Normandy is +mingled with the blood of the very Harold who fell at Hastings. And so, +by the bitter woes which followed the Norman conquest was the whole +population, Dane, Angle, and Saxon, earl and churl, freeman and slave, +crushed and welded together into one homogeneous mass, made just and +merciful towards each other by the most wholesome of all teachings, a +community of suffering; and if they had been, as I fear they were, a lazy +and a sensual people, were taught + + That life is not as idle ore, + But heated hot with burning fears, + And bathed in baths of hissing tears, + And battered with the strokes of doom + To shape and use. + +But how did these wild Vikings become Christian men? It is a long story. +So stanch a race was sure to be converted only very slowly. Noble +missionaries as Ansgar, Rembert, and Poppo, had worked for 150 years and +more among the heathens of Denmark. But the patriotism of the Norseman +always recoiled, even though in secret, from the fact that they were +German monks, backed by the authority of the German emperor; and many a +man, like Svend Fork-beard, father of the great Canute, though he had the +Kaiser himself for godfather, turned heathen once more the moment he was +free, because his baptism was the badge of foreign conquest, and neither +pope nor kaiser should lord it over him, body or soul. St. Olaf, indeed, +forced Christianity on the Norse at the sword's point, often by horrid +cruelties, and perished in the attempt. But who forced it on the +Norsemen of Scotland, England, Ireland, Neustria, Russia, and all the +Eastern Baltic? It was absorbed and in most cases, I believe, gradually +and willingly, as a gospel and good news to hearts worn out with the +storm of their own passions. And whence came their Christianity? Much +of it, as in the case of the Danes, and still more of the French Normans, +came direct from Rome, the city which, let them defy its influence as +they would, was still the fount of all theology, as well as of all +civilisation. But I must believe that much of it came from that +mysterious ancient Western Church, the Church of St. Patric, St. Bridget, +St. Columba, which had covered with rude cells and chapels the rocky +islets of the North Atlantic, even to Iceland itself. Even to Iceland; +for when that island was first discovered, about A.D. 840, the Norsemen +found in an isle, on the east and west and elsewhere, Irish books and +bells and wooden crosses, and named that island Papey, the isle of the +popes--some little colony of monks, who lived by fishing, and who are +said to have left the land when the Norsemen settled in it. Let us +believe, for it is consonant with reason and experience, that the sight +of those poor monks, plundered and massacred again and again by the +"mailed swarms of Lochlin," yet never exterminated, but springing up +again in the same place, ready for fresh massacre, a sacred plant which +God had planted, and which no rage of man could trample out--let us +believe, I say, that that sight taught at last to the buccaneers of the +old world that there was a purer manliness, a loftier heroism, than the +ferocious self-assertion of the Berserker, even the heroism of humility, +gentleness, self-restraint, self-sacrifice; that there was a strength +which was made perfect in weakness; a glory, not of the sword but of the +cross. We will believe that that was the lesson which the Norsemen +learnt, after many a wild and blood-stained voyage, from the monks of +Iona or of Derry, which caused the building of such churches as that +which Sightrys, king of Dublin, raised about the year 1030, not in the +Norse but in the Irish quarter of Dublin: a sacred token of amity between +the new settlers and the natives on the ground of a common faith. Let us +believe, too, that the influence of woman was not wanting in the good +work--that the story of St. Margaret and Malcolm Canmore was repeated, +though inversely, in the case of many a heathen Scandinavian jarl, who, +marrying the princely daughter of some Scottish chieftain, found in her +creed at last something more precious than herself; while his brother or +his cousin became, at Dublin or Wexford or Waterford, the husband of some +saffron-robed Irish princess, "fair as an elf," as the old saying was; +some "maiden of the three transcendent hues," of whom the old book of +Linane says: + + Red as the blood which flowed from stricken deer, + White as the snow on which that blood ran down, + Black as the raven who drank up that blood; + +--and possibly, as in the case of Brian Boru's mother, had given his fair- +haired sister in marriage to some Irish prince, and could not resist the +spell of their new creed, and the spell too, it may be, of some sister of +theirs who had long given up all thought of earthly marriage to tend the +undying fire of St. Bridget among the consecrated virgins of Kildare. + +I am not drawing from mere imagination. That such things must have +happened, and happened again and again, is certain to anyone who knows, +even superficially, the documents of that time. And I doubt not that, in +manners as well as in religion, the Norse were humanised and civilised by +their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both +peoples had valour, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which +the burly angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however +humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, +playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in +Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in +Ireland and in Scotland, two schools of lyric poetry second to none in +the world. + +And so they were converted to what was then a dark and awful creed; a +creed of ascetic self-torture and purgatorial fires for those who escape +the still more dreadful, because endless, doom of the rest of the human +race. But, because it was a sad creed, it suited better, men who had, +when conscience re-awakened in them, but too good reason to be sad; and +the minsters and cloisters which sprang up over the whole of Northern +Europe, and even beyond it, along the dreary western shores of Greenland +itself, are the symbols of a splendid repentance for their own sins and +for the sins of their forefathers. + +Gudruna herself, of whom I spoke just now, one of those old Norse +heroines who helped to discover America, though a historic personage, is +a symbolic one likewise, and the pattern of a whole class. She too, +after many journeys to Iceland, Greenland, and Winland, goes on a +pilgrimage to Rome, to get, I presume, absolution from the Pope himself +for all the sins of her strange, rich, stormy, wayward life. + +Have you not read--many of you surely have--La Motte Fouque's romance of +"Sintram?" It embodies all that I would say. It is the spiritual drama +of that early Middle Age; very sad, morbid if you will, but true to fact. +The Lady Verena ought not, perhaps, to desert her husband, and shut +herself up in a cloister. But so she would have done in those old days. +And who shall judge her harshly for so doing? When the brutality of the +man seems past all cure, who shall blame the woman if she glides away +into some atmosphere of peace and purity, to pray for him whom neither +warnings nor caresses will amend? It is a sad book, "Sintram." And yet +not too sad. For they were a sad people, those old Norse forefathers of +ours. Their Christianity was sad; their minsters sad; there are few +sadder, though few grander, buildings than a Norman church. + +And yet, perhaps, their Christianity did not make them sad. It was but +the other and the healthier side of that sadness which they had as +heathens. Read which you will of the old sagas--heathen or +half-Christian--the Eyrbiggia, Viga Glum, Burnt Niall, Grettir the +Strong, and, above all, Snorri Sturluson's "Heimskringla" itself--and you +will see at once how sad they are. There is, in the old sagas, none of +that enjoyment of life which shines out everywhere in Greek poetry, even +through its deepest tragedies. Not in complacency with Nature's beauty, +but in the fierce struggle with her wrath, does the Norseman feel +pleasure. Nature to him was not, as in Mr. Longfellow's exquisite poem, +{3} the kind old nurse, to take him on her knee and whisper to him, ever +anew, the story without an end. She was a weird witch-wife, mother of +storm demons and frost giants, who must be fought with steadily, warily, +wearily, over dreary heaths and snow-capped fells, and rugged nesses and +tossing sounds, and away into the boundless sea--or who could live?--till +he got hardened in the fight into ruthlessness of need and greed. The +poor strip of flat strath, ploughed and re-ploughed again in the short +summer days, would yield no more; or wet harvests spoiled the crops, or +heavy snows starved the cattle. And so the Norseman launched his ships +when the lands were sown in spring, and went forth to pillage or to +trade, as luck would have, to summerted, as he himself called it; and +came back, if he ever came, in autumn to the women to help at harvest- +time, with blood upon his hand. But had he stayed at home, blood would +have been there still. Three out of four of them had been mixed up in +some man-slaying, or had some blood-feud to avenge among their own kin. + +The whole of Scandinavia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Orkney, and the rest, +remind me ever of that terrible picture of the great Norse painter, +Tiddeman, in which two splendid youths, lashed together, in true Norse +duel fashion by the waist, are hewing each other to death with the short +axe, about some hot words over their ale. The loss of life, and that of +the most gallant of the young, in those days must have been enormous. If +the vitality of the race had not been even more enormous, they must have +destroyed each other, as the Red Indians have done, off the face of the +earth. They lived these Norsemen, not to live--they lived to die. For +what cared they? Death--what was death to them? what it was to the +Jomsburger Viking, who, when led out to execution, said to the headsman: +"Die! with all pleasure. We used to question in Jomsburg whether a man +felt when his head was off? Now I shall know; but if I do, take care, +for I shall smite thee with my knife. And meanwhile, spoil not this long +hair of mine; it is so beautiful." + +But, oh! what waste! What might not these men have done if they had +sought peace, not war; if they had learned a few centuries sooner to do +justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God? + +And yet one loves them, blood-stained as they are. Your own poets, men +brought up under circumstances, under ideas the most opposite to theirs, +love them, and cannot help it. And why? It is not merely for their bold +daring, it is not merely for their stern endurance; nor again that they +had in them that shift and thrift, those steady and common-sense business +habits, which made their noblest men not ashamed to go on voyages of +merchandise. Nor is it, again, that grim humour--humour as of the modern +Scotch--which so often flashes out into an actual jest, but more usually +underlies unspoken all their deeds. Is it not rather that these men are +our forefathers? that their blood runs in the veins of perhaps three men +out of four in any general assembly, whether in America or in Britain? +Startling as the assertion may be, I believe it to be strictly true. + +Be that as it may, I cannot read the stories of your western men, the +writings of Bret Harte, or Colonel John Hay, for instance, without +feeling at every turn that there are the old Norse alive again, beyond +the very ocean which they first crossed, 850 years ago. + +Let me try to prove my point, and end with a story, as I began with one. + +It is just thirty years before the Norman conquest of England, the +evening of the battle of Sticklestead. St. Olaf's corpse is still lying +unburied on the hillside. The reforming and Christian king has fallen in +the attempt to force Christianity and despotism on the Conservative and +half-heathen party--the free bonders or yeoman-farmers of Norway. +Thormod, his poet--the man, as his name means, of thunder mood--who has +been standing in the ranks, at last has an arrow in his left side. He +breaks off the shaft, and thus sore wounded goes up, when all is lost, to +a farm where is a great barn full of wounded. One Kimbe comes, a man out +of the opposite or bonder part. "There is great howling and screaming in +there," he says. "King Olaf's men fought bravely enough: but it is a +shame brisk young lads cannot bear their wounds. On what side wert thou +in the fight?" "On the best side," says the beaten Thormod. Kimbe sees +that Thormod has a good bracelet on his arm. "Thou art surely a king's +man. Give me thy gold ring and I will hide thee, ere the bonders kill +thee." + +Thormod said, "Take it, if thou canst get it. I have lost that which is +worth more;" and he stretched out his left hand, and Kimbe tried to take +it. But Thormod, swinging his sword, cut off his hand; and it is said +Kimbe behaved no better over his wound than those he had been blaming. + +Then Thormod went into the barn; and after he had sung his song there in +praise of his dead king, he went into an inner room, where was a fire, +and water warming, and a handsome girl binding up men's wounds. And he +sat down by the door; and one said to him, "Why art thou so dead pale? +Why dost thou not call for the leech?" Then sung Thormod: + + "I am not blooming; and the fair + And slender maiden loves to care + For blooming youths. Few care for me, + With Fenri's gold meal I can't fee;" + +and so forth, improvising after the old Norse fashion. Then Thormod got +up and went to the fire, and stood and warmed himself. And the nurse- +girl said to him, "Go out, man, and bring some of the split-firewood +which lies outside the door." He went out and brought an armful of wood +and threw it down. Then the nurse-girl looked him in the face, and said, +"Dreadful pale is this man. Why art thou so?" Then sang Thormod: + + "Thou wonderest, sweet bloom, at me, + A man so hideous to see. + The arrow-drift o'ertook me, girl, + A fine-ground arrow in the whirl + Went through me, and I feel the dart + Sits, lovely lass, too near my heart." + +The girl said, "Let me see thy wound." Then Thormod sat down, and the +girl saw his wounds, and that which was in his side, and saw that there +was a piece of iron in it; but could not tell where it had gone. In a +stone pot she had leeks and other herbs, and boiled them, and gave the +wounded man of it to eat. But Thormod said, "Take it away; I have no +appetite now for my broth." Then she took a great pair of tongs and +tried to pull out the iron; but the wound was swelled, and there was too +little to lay hold of. Now said Thormod, "Cut in so deep that thou canst +get at the iron, and give me the tongs." She did as he said. Then took +Thormod the gold bracelet off his hand and gave it the nurse-girl, and +bade her do with it what she liked. + +"It is a good man's gift," said he. "King Olaf gave me the ring this +morning." + +Then Thormod took the tongs and pulled the iron out. But on the iron was +a barb, on which hung flesh from the heart, some red, some white. When +he saw that, he said, "The king has fed us well. I am fat, even to the +heart's roots." And so leant back and was dead. + + + + +CYRUS, THE SERVANT OF-THE LORD {4} + + +I wish to speak to you to-night about one of those old despotic empires +which were in every case the earliest known form of civilisation. Were I +minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt +and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay--as +did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire--and, after raising a +laugh at the expense of the old system say: See what a superior people +you are now--how impossible, under free and enlightened institutions, is +anything so base and so absurd as went on, even in despotic France before +the Revolution of 1793. Well, that would be on the whole true, thank +God; but what need is there to say it? + +Let us keep our scorn for our own weaknesses, our blame for our own sins, +certain that we shall gain more instruction, though not more amusement, +by hunting out the good which is in anything than by hunting out its +evil. I have chosen, not the worst, but the best despotism which I could +find in history, founded and ruled by a truly heroic personage, one whose +name has become a proverb and a legend, that so I might lift up your +minds, even by the contemplation of an old Eastern empire, to see that +it, too, could be a work and ordinance of God, and its hero the servant +of the Lord. For we are almost bound to call Cyrus, the founder of the +Persian Empire, by this august title for two reasons--First, because the +Hebrew Scriptures call him so; the next, because he proved himself to be +such by his actions and their consequences--at least in the eyes of those +who believe, as I do, in a far-seeing and far-reaching Providence, by +which all human history is + + Bound by gold chains unto the throne of God. + +His work was very different from any that need be done, or can be done, +in these our days. But while we thank God that such work is now as +unnecessary as impossible; we may thank God likewise that, when such work +was necessary and possible, a man was raised up to do it: and to do it, +as all accounts assert, better, perhaps, than it had ever been done +before or since. + +True, the old conquerors, who absorbed nation after nation, tribe after +tribe, and founded empires on their ruins, are now, I trust, about to be +replaced, throughout the world, as here and in Britain at home, by free +self-governed peoples: + + The old order changeth, giving place to the new; + And God fulfils Himself in many ways, + Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. + +And that custom of conquest and empire and transplantation did more than +once corrupt the world. And yet in it, too, God may have more than once +fulfilled His own designs, as He did, if Scripture is to be believed, in +Cyrus, well surnamed the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire some +2400 years ago. For these empires, it must be remembered, did at least +that which the Roman Empire did among a scattered number of savage +tribes, or separate little races, hating and murdering each other, +speaking different tongues, and worshipping different gods, and losing +utterly the sense of a common humanity, till they looked on the people +who dwelt in the next valley as fiends, to be sacrificed, if caught, to +their own fiends at home. Among such as these, empires did introduce +order, law, common speech, common interest, the notion of nationality and +humanity. They, as it were, hammered together the fragments of the human +race till they had moulded them into one. They did it cruelly, clumsily, +ill: but was there ever work done on earth, however noble, which was +not--alas, alas!--done somewhat ill? + +Let me talk to you a little about the old hero. He and his hardy +Persians should be specially interesting to us. For in them first does +our race, the Aryan race, appear in authentic history. In them first did +our race give promise of being the conquering and civilising race of the +future world. And to the conquests of Cyrus--so strangely are all great +times and great movements of the human family linked to each other--to +his conquests, humanly speaking, is owing the fact that you are here, and +I am speaking to you at this moment. + +It is an oft-told story: but so grand a one that I must sketch it for +you, however clumsily, once more. + +In that mountain province called Farsistan, north-east of what we now +call Persia, the dwelling-place of the Persians, there dwelt, in the +sixth and seventh centuries before Christ, a hardy tribe, of the purest +blood of Iran, a branch of the same race as the Celtic, Teutonic, Greek, +and Hindoo, and speaking a tongue akin to theirs. They had wandered +thither, say their legends, out of the far north-east, from off some +lofty plateau of Central Asia, driven out by the increasing cold, which +left them but two mouths of summer to ten of winter. + +They despised at first--would that they had despised always!--the +luxurious life of the dwellers in the plains, and the effeminate customs +of the Medes--a branch of their own race who had conquered and +intermarried with the Turanian, or Finnish tribes; and adopted much of +their creed, as well as of their morals, throughout their vast but short- +lived Median Empire. "Soft countries," said Cyrus himself--so runs the +tale--"gave birth to small men. No region produced at once delightful +fruits and men of a war-like spirit." Letters were to them, probably, +then unknown. They borrowed them in after years, as they borrowed their +art, from Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Semitic nations whom they +conquered. From the age of five to that of twenty, their lads were +instructed but in two things--to speak the truth and to shoot with the +bow. To ride was the third necessary art, introduced, according to +Xenophon, after they had descended from their mountain fastnessess to +conquer the whole East. + +Their creed was simple enough. Ahura Mazda--Ormuzd, as he has been +called since--was the one eternal Creator, the source of all light and +life and good. He spake his word, and it accomplished the creation of +heaven, before the water, before the earth, before the cow, before the +tree, before the fire, before man the truthful, before the Devas and +beasts of prey, before the whole existing universe; before every good +thing created by Ahura Mazda and springing from Truth. + +He needed no sacrifices of blood. He was to be worshipped only with +prayers, with offerings of the inspiring juice of the now unknown herb +Homa, and by the preservation of the sacred fire, which, understand, was +not he, but the symbol--as was light and the sun--of the good spirit--of +Ahura Mazda. They had no images of the gods, these old Persians; no +temples, no altars, so says Herodotus, and considered the use of them a +sign of folly. They were, as has been well said of them, the Puritans of +the old world. When they descended from their mountain fastnesses, they +became the iconoclasts of the old world; and the later Isaiah, out of the +depths of national shame, captivity, and exile, saw in them +brother-spirits, the chosen of the Lord, whose hero Cyrus, the Lord was +holding by His right hand, till all the foul superstitions and foul +effeminacies of the rotten Semitic peoples of the East, and even of Egypt +itself, should be crushed, though, alas! only for awhile, by men who felt +that they had a commission from the God of light and truth and purity, to +sweep out all that with the besom of destruction. + +But that was a later inspiration. In earlier, and it may be happier, +times the duty of the good man was to strive against all evil, disorder, +uselessness, incompetence in their more simple forms. "He therefore is a +holy man," says Ormuzd in the Zend-avesta, "who has built a dwelling on +the earth, in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, +and flocks and herds; he who makes the earth produce barley, he who +cultivates the fruits of the soil, cultivates purity; he advances the law +of Ahura Mazda as much as if he had offered a hundred sacrifices." + +To reclaim the waste, to till the land, to make a corner of the earth +better than they found it, was to these men to rescue a bit of Ormuzd's +world out of the usurped dominion of Ahriman; to rescue it from the +spirit of evil and disorder for its rightful owner, the Spirit of Order +and of Good. + +For they believed in an evil spirit, these old Persians. Evil was not +for them a lower form of good. With their intense sense of the +difference between right and wrong it could be nothing less than hateful; +to be attacked, exterminated, as a personal enemy, till it became to them +at last impersonate and a person. + +Zarathustra, the mystery of evil, weighed heavily on them and on their +great prophet, Zoroaster--splendour of gold, as I am told his name +signifies--who lived, no man knows clearly when or clearly where, but who +lived and lives for ever, for his works follow him. He, too, tried to +solve for his people the mystery of evil; and if he did not succeed, who +has succeeded yet? Warring against Ormuzd, Ahura Mazda, was Ahriman, +Angra Mainyus, literally the being of an evil mind, the ill-conditioned +being. He was labouring perpetually to spoil the good work of Ormuzd +alike in nature and in man. He was the cause of the fall of man, the +tempter, the author of misery and death; he was eternal and uncreate as +Ormuzd was. But that, perhaps, was a corruption of the purer and older +Zoroastrian creed. With it, if Ahriman were eternal in the past, he +would not be eternal in the future. Somehow, somewhen, somewhere, in the +day when three prophets--the increasing light, the increasing truth, and +the existing truth--should arise and give to mankind the last three books +of the Zend-avesta, and convert all mankind to the pure creed, then evil +should be conquered, the creation become pure again, and Ahriman vanish +for ever; and, meanwhile, every good man was to fight valiantly for +Ormuzd, his true lord, against Ahriman and all his works. + +Men who held such a creed, and could speak truth and draw the bow, what +might they not do when the hour and the man arrived? They were not a +_big_ nation. No; but they were a _great_ nation, even while they were +eating barley-bread and paying tribute to their conquerors the Medes, in +the sterile valleys of Farsistan. + +And at last the hour and the man came. The story is half +legendary--differently told by different authors. Herodotus has one +tale, Xenophon another. The first, at least, had ample means of +information. Astyages is the old shah of the Median Empire, then at the +height of its seeming might and splendour and effeminacy. He has married +his daughter, the Princess Mandane, to Cambyses, seemingly a vassal-king +or prince of the pure Persian blood. One night the old man is troubled +with a dream. He sees a vine spring from his daughter, which overshadows +all Asia. He sends for the Magi to interpret; and they tell him that +Mandane will have a son who will reign in his stead. Having sons of his +own, and fearing for the succession, he sends for Mandane, and, when her +child is born, gives it to Harpagus, one of his courtiers, to be slain. +The courtier relents, and hands it over to a herdsman, to be exposed on +the mountains. The herdsman relents in turn, and bring the babe up as +his own child. + +When the boy, who goes by the name of Agradates, is grown, he is at play +with the other herdboys, and they choose him for a mimic king. Some he +makes his guards, some he bids build houses, some carry his messages. The +son of a Mede of rank refuses, and Agradates has him seized by his guards +and chastised with the whip. The ancestral instincts of command and +discipline are showing early in the lad. + +The young gentleman complains to his father, the father to the old king, +who of course sends for the herdsman and his boy. The boy answers in a +tone so exactly like that in which Xenophon's Cyrus would have answered, +that I must believe that both Xenophon's Cyrus and Herodotus's Cyrus +(like Xenophon's Socrates and Plato's Socrates) are real pictures of a +real character; and that Herodotus's story, though Xenophon says nothing +of it, is true. + +He has done nothing, the noble boy says, but what was just. He had been +chosen king in play, because the boys thought him most fit. The boy whom +he had chastised was one of those who chose him. All the rest obeyed: +but he would not, till at last he got his due reward. "If I deserve +punishment for that," says the boy, "I am ready to submit." + +The old king looks keenly and wonderingly at the young king, whose +features seem somewhat like his own. Likely enough in those days, when +an Iranian noble or prince would have a quite different cast of +complexion and of face from a Turanian herdsman. A suspicion crosses +him; and by threats of torture he gets the truth from the trembling +herdsman. + +To the poor wretch's rapture the old king lets him go unharmed. He has a +more exquisite revenge to take, and sends for Harpagus, who likewise +confessed the truth. The wily old tyrant has naught but gentle words. It +is best as it is. He has been very sorry himself for the child, and +Mandane's reproaches had gone to his heart. "Let Harpagus go home and +send his son to be a companion to the new-found prince. To-night there +will be great sacrifices in honour of the child's safety, and Harpagus is +to be a guest at the banquet." + +Harpagus comes; and after eating his fill, is asked how he likes the +king's meat? He gives the usual answer; and a covered basket is put +before him, out of which he is to take--in Median fashion--what he likes. +He finds in it the head and hands and feet of his own son. Like a true +Eastern he shows no signs of horror. The king asks him if he knew what +flesh he had been eating. He answers that he knew perfectly. That +whatever the king did pleased him. + +Like an Eastern courtier, he knew how to dissemble, but not to forgive, +and bided his time. The Magi, to their credit, told Astyages that his +dream had been fulfilled, that Cyrus--as we must now call the foundling +prince--had fulfilled it by becoming a king in play, and the boy is let +to go back to his father and his hardy Persian life. But Harpagus does +not leave him alone, nor perhaps, do his own thoughts. He has wrongs to +avenge on his grandfather. And it seems not altogether impossible to the +young mountaineer. + +He has seen enough of Median luxury to despise it and those who indulge +in it. He has seen his own grandfather with his cheeks rouged, his +eyelids stained with antimony, living a womanlike life, shut up from all +his subjects in the recesses of a vast seraglio. + +He calls together the mountain rulers; makes friends with Tigranes, an +Armenian prince, a vassal of the Mede, who has his wrongs likewise to +avenge. And the two little armies of foot-soldiers--the Persians had no +cavalry--defeat the innumerable horsemen of the Mede, take the old king, +keep him in honourable captivity, and so change, one legend says, in a +single battle, the fortunes of the whole East. + +And then begins that series of conquests of which we know hardly +anything, save the fact that they were made. The young mountaineer and +his playmates, whom he makes his generals and satraps, sweep onward +towards the West, teaching their men the art of riding, till the Persian +cavalry becomes more famous than the Median had been. They gather to +them, as a snowball gathers in rolling, the picked youth of every tribe +whom they overcome. They knit these tribes to them in loyalty and +affection by that righteousness--that truthfulness and justice--for which +Isaiah in his grandest lyric strains has made them illustrious to all +time; which Xenophon has celebrated in like manner in that exquisite book +of his--the "Cyropaedia." The great Lydian kingdom of Croesus--Asia +Minor as we call it now--goes down before them. Babylon itself goes +down, after that world-famed siege which ended in Belshazzar's feast; and +when Cyrus died--still in the prime of life, the legends seem to say--he +left a coherent and well-organised empire, which stretched from the +Mediterranean to Hindostan. + +So runs the tale, which to me, I confess, sounds probable and rational +enough. It may not do so to you; for it has not to many learned men. +They are inclined to "relegate it into the region of myth;" in plain +English, to call old Herodotus a liar, or at least a dupe. What means +those wise men can have at this distance of more than 2000 years, of +knowing more about the matter than Herodotus, who lived within 100 years +of Cyrus, I for myself cannot discover. And I say this without the least +wish to disparage these hypercritical persons. For there are--and more +there ought to be, as long as lies and superstitions remain on this +earth--a class of thinkers who hold in just suspicion all stories which +savour of the sensational, the romantic, even the dramatic. They know +the terrible uses to which appeals to the fancy and the emotions have +been applied, and are still applied to enslave the intellects, the +consciences, the very bodies of men and women. They dread so much from +experience the abuse of that formula, that "a thing is so beautiful it +must be true," that they are inclined to reply: "Rather let us say +boldly, it is so beautiful that it cannot be true. Let us mistrust, or +even refuse to believe _a priori_, and at first sight, all startling, +sensational, even poetic tales, and accept nothing as history, which is +not as dull as the ledger of a dry-goods' store." But I think that +experience, both in nature and in society, are against that ditch-water +philosophy. The weather, being governed by laws, ought always to be +equable and normal, and yet you have whirlwinds, droughts, thunderstorms. +The share-market, being governed by laws, ought to be always equable and +normal, and yet you have startling transactions, startling panics, +startling disclosures, and a whole sensational romance of commercial +crime and folly. Which of us has lived to be fifty years old, without +having witnessed in private life sensation tragedies, alas! sometimes too +fearful to be told, or at least sensational romances, which we shall take +care not to tell, because we shall not be believed? Let the ditch-water +philosophy say what it will, human life is not a ditch, but a wild and +roaring river, flooding its banks, and eating out new channels with many +a landslip. It is a strange world, and man, a strange animal, guided, it +is true, usually by most common-place motives; but, for that reason, +ready and glad at times to escape from them and their dulness and +baseness; to give vent, if but for a moment, in wild freedom, to that +demoniac element, which, as Goethe says, underlies his nature and all +nature; and to prefer for an hour, to the normal and respectable ditch- +water, a bottle of champagne or even a carouse on fire-water, let the +consequences be what they may. + +How else shall we explain such a phenomenon as those old crusades? Were +they undertaken for any purpose, commercial or other? Certainly not for +lightening an overburdened population. Nay, is not the history of your +own Mormons, and their exodus into the far West, one of the most +startling instances which the world has seen for several centuries, of +the unexpected and incalculable forces which lie hid in man? Believe me, +man's passions, heated to igniting point, rather than his prudence cooled +down to freezing point, are the normal causes of all great human +movement. And a truer law of social science than any that political +economists are wont to lay down, is that old _Dov' e la donna_? of the +Italian judge, who used to ask, as a preliminary to every case, civil or +criminal, which was brought before him, _Dov' e la donna_? "Where is the +lady?" certain, like a wise old gentleman, that a woman was most probably +at the bottom of the matter. + +Strangeness? Romance? Did any of you ever read--if you have not you +should read--Archbishop Whately's "Historic Doubts about the Emperor +Napoleon the First"? Therein the learned and witty Archbishop proved, as +early as 1819, by fair use of the criticism of Mr. Hume and the Sceptic +School, that the whole history of the great Napoleon ought to be treated +by wise men as a myth and a romance, that there is little or no evidence +of his having existed at all; and that the story of his strange successes +and strange defeats was probably invented by our Government in order to +pander to the vanity of the English nation. + +I will say this, which Archbishop Whately, in a late edition, +foreshadows, wittily enough--that if one or two thousand years hence, +when the history of the late Emperor Napoleon the Third, his rise and +fall, shall come to be subjected to critical analysis by future +Philistine historians of New Zealand or Australia, it will be proved by +them to be utterly mythical, incredible, monstrous--and that all the +more, the more the actual facts remain to puzzle their unimaginative +brains. What will they make two thousand years hence, of the landing at +Boulogne with the tame eagle? Will not that, and stranger facts still, +but just as true, be relegated to the region of myth, with the dream of +Astyages, and the young and princely herdsman playing at king over his +fellow-slaves? + +But enough of this. To me these bits of romance often seem the truest, +as well as the most important portions of history. + +When old Herodotus tells me how, King Astyages having guarded the +frontier, Harpagus sent a hunter to young Cyrus with a fresh-killed hare, +telling him to open it in private; and how, sewn up in it was the letter, +telling him that the time to rebel was come, I am inclined to say, That +must be true. It is so beneath the dignity of history, so quaint and +unexpected, that it is all the more likely _not_ to have been invented. + +So with that other story--How young Cyrus, giving out that his +grandfather had made him general of the Persians, summoned them all, each +man with a sickle in his hand, into a prairie full of thorns, and bade +them clear it in one day; and how when they, like loyal men, had +finished, he bade them bathe, and next day he took them into a great +meadow and feasted them with corn and wine, and all that his father's +farm would yield, and asked them which day they liked best; and, when +they answered as was to be expected, how he opened his parable and told +them, "Choose, then, to work for the Persians like slaves, or to be free +with me." + +Such a tale sounds to me true. It has the very savour of the parables of +the Old Testament; as have, surely, the dreams of the old Sultan, with +which the tale begins. Do they not put us in mind of the dreams of +Nebuchadnezzar, in the Book of Daniel? + +Such stories are actually so beautiful that they are very likely to be +true. Understand me, I only say likely; the ditch-water view of history +is not all wrong. Its advocates are right in saying great historic +changes are not produced simply by one great person, by one remarkable +event. They have been preparing, perhaps for centuries. They are the +result of numberless forces, acting according to laws, which might have +been foreseen, and will be foreseen, when the science of History is more +perfectly understood. + +For instance, Cyrus could not have conquered the Median Empire at a +single blow, if first that empire had not been utterly rotten; and next, +if he and his handful of Persians had not been tempered and sharpened, by +long hardihood, to the finest cutting edge. + +Yes, there were all the materials for the catastrophe--the cannon, the +powder, the shot. But to say that the Persians must have conquered the +Medes, even if Cyrus had never lived, is to say, as too many philosophers +seem to me to say, that, given cannon, powder, and shot, it will fire +itself off some day if we only leave it alone long enough. + +It may be so. But our usual experience of Nature and Fact is, that +spontaneous combustion is a rare and exceptional phenomenon; that if a +cannon is to be fired, someone must arise and pull the trigger. And I +believe that in Society and Politics, when a great event is ready to be +done, someone must come and do it--do it, perhaps, half unwittingly, by +some single rash act--like that first fatal shot fired by an electric +spark. + +But to return to Cyrus and his Persians. + +I know not whether the "Cyropaedia" is much read in your schools and +universities. But it is one of the books which I should like to see, +either in a translation or its own exquisite Greek, in the hands of every +young man. It is not all fact. It is but a historic romance. But it is +better than history. It is an ideal book, like Sidney's "Arcadia" or +Spenser's "Fairy Queen"--the ideal self-education of an ideal hero. And +the moral of the book--ponder it well, all young men who have the chance +or the hope of exercising authority among your follow-men--the noble and +most Christian moral of that heathen book is this: that the path to solid +and beneficent influence over our fellow-men lies, not through brute +force, not through cupidity, but through the highest morality; through +justice, truthfulness, humanity, self-denial, modesty, courtesy, and all +which makes man or woman lovely in the eyes of mortals or of God. + +Yes, the "Cyropaedia" is a noble book, about a noble personage. But I +cannot forget that there are nobler words by far concerning that same +noble personage, in the magnificent series of Hebrew Lyrics, which begins +"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord"--in which the +inspired poet, watching the rise of Cyrus and his Puritans, and the fall +of Babylon, and the idolatries of the East, and the coming deliverance of +his own countrymen, speaks of the Persian hero in words so grand that +they have been often enough applied, and with all fitness, to one greater +than Cyrus, and than all men: + + Who raised up the righteous man from the East, + And called him to attend his steps? + Who subdued nations at his presence, + And gave him dominion over kings? + And made them like the dust before his sword, + And the driven stubble before his bow? + He pursueth them, he passeth in safety, + By a way never trodden before by his feet. + Who hath performed and made these things, + Calling the generations from the beginning? + I, Jehovah, the first and the last, I am the same. + + Behold my servant, whom I will uphold; + My chosen, in whom my soul delighteth; + I will make my spirit rest upon him, + And he shall publish judgment to the nations. + He shall not cry aloud, nor clamour, + Nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. + The bruised reed he shall not break, + And the smoking flax he shall not quench. + He shall publish justice, and establish it. + His force shall not be abated, nor broken, + Until he has firmly seated justice in the earth, + And the distant nations shall wait for his Law. + Thus saith the God, even Jehovah, + Who created the heavens, and stretched them out; + Who spread abroad the earth, and its produce: + I, Jehovah, have called thee for a righteous end, + And I will take hold of thy hand, and preserve thee, + And I will give thee for a covenant to the people, + And for a light to the nations; + To open the eyes of the blind, + To bring the captives out of prison, + And from the dungeon those who dwell in darkness. + I am Jehovah--that is my name; + And my glory will I not give to another, + Nor my praise to the graven idols. + + Who saith to Cyrus--Thou art my shepherd, + And he shall fulfil all my pleasure: + Who saith to Jerusalem--Thou shalt be built; + And to the Temple--Thou shalt be founded. + Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, + To Cyrus whom I hold fast by his right hand, + That I may subdue nations under him, + And loose the loins of kings; + That I may open before him the two-leaved doors, + And the gates shall not be shut; + I will go before thee + And bring the mountains low. + The gates of brass will I break in sunder, + And the bars of iron hew down. + And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, + And the hoards hid deep in secret places, + That thou mayest know that I am Jehovah. + I have surnamed thee, though thou knowest not me. + I am Jehovah, and none else; + Beside me there is no God. + I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me, + That they may know from the rising of the sun, + And from the west, that there is none beside me; + I am Jehovah, and none else; + Forming light and creating darkness; + Forming peace, and creating evil. + I, Jehovah, make all these. + +This is the Hebrew prophet's conception of the great Puritan of the Old +World who went forth with such a commission as this, to destroy the idols +of the East, while + + The isles saw that, and feared, + And the ends of the earth were afraid; + They drew near, they came together; + Everyone helped his neighbour, + And said to his brother, Be of good courage. + + The carver encouraged the smith, + He that smoothed with the hammer + Him that smote on the anvil; + Saying of the solder, It is good; + And fixing the idol with nails, lest it be moved; + +But all in vain; for as the poet goes on: + + Bel bowed down, and Nebo stooped; + Their idols were upon the cattle, + A burden to the weary beast. + They stoop, they bow down together; + They could not deliver their own charge; + Themselves are gone into captivity. + +And what, to return, what was the end of the great Cyrus and of his +empire? + +Alas, alas! as with all human glory, the end was not as the beginning. + +We are scarce bound to believe positively the story how Cyrus made one +war too many, and was cut off in the Scythian deserts, falling before the +arrows of mere savages; and how their queen, Tomyris, poured blood down +the throat of the dead corpse, with the words, "Glut thyself with the +gore for which thou hast thirsted." But it may be true--for Xenophon +states it expressly, and with detail--that Cyrus, from the very time of +his triumph, became an Eastern despot, a sultan or a shah, living apart +from his people in mysterious splendour, in the vast fortified palace +which he built for himself; and imitating and causing his nobles and +satraps to imitate, in all but vice and effeminacy, the very Medes whom +he had conquered. And of this there is no doubt--that his sons and their +empire ran rapidly through that same vicious circle of corruption to +which all despotisms are doomed, and became within 250 years, even as the +Medes, the Chaldeans, the Lydians, whom they had conquered, children no +longer of Ahura Mazda, but of Ahriman, of darkness and not of light, to +be conquered by Alexander and his Greeks even more rapidly and more +shamefully than they had conquered the East. + +This is the short epic of the Persian Empire, ending, alas! as all human +epics are wont to end, sadly, if not shamefully. + +But let me ask you, Did I say too much, when I said, that to these +Persians we owe that we are here to-night? + +I do not say that without them we should not have been here. God, I +presume, when He is minded to do anything, has more than one way of doing +it. + +But that we are now the last link in a chain of causes and effects which +reaches as far back as the emigration of the Persians southward from the +plateau of Pamir, we cannot doubt. + +For see. By the fall of Babylon and its empire the Jews were freed from +their captivity--large numbers of them at least--and sent home to their +own Jerusalem. What motives prompted Cyrus, and Darius after him, to do +that deed? + +Those who like to impute the lowest motives may say, if they will, that +Daniel and the later Isaiah found it politic to worship the rising sun, +and flatter the Persian conquerors: and that Cyrus and Darius in turn +were glad to see Jerusalem rebuilt, as an impregnable frontier fortress +between them and Egypt. Be it so; I, who wish to talk of things noble, +pure, lovely, and of good report, would rather point you once more to the +magnificent poetry of the later Isaiah which commences at the 40th +chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and say--There, upon the very face of the +document, stands written the fact that the sympathy between the faithful +Persian and the faithful Jew--the two puritans of the Old World, the two +haters of lies, idolatries, superstitions, was actually as intense as it +ought to have been, as it must have been. + +Be that as it may, the return of the Jews to Jerusalem preserved for us +the Old Testament, while it restored to them a national centre, a sacred +city, like that of Delphi to the Greeks, Rome to the Romans, Mecca to the +Muslim, loyalty to which prevented their being utterly absorbed by the +more civilised Eastern races among whom they had been scattered abroad as +colonies of captives. + +Then another, and a seemingly needful link of cause and effect ensued: +Alexander of Macedon destroyed the Persian Empire, and the East became +Greek, and Alexandria, rather than Jerusalem, became the head-quarters of +Jewish learning. But for that very cause, the Scriptures were not left +inaccessible to the mass of mankind, like the old Pehlevi liturgies of +the Zend-avesta, or the old Sanscrit Vedas, in an obsolete and hieratic +tongue, but were translated into, and continued in, the then all but +world-wide Hellenic speech, which was to the ancient world what French is +to the modern. + +Then the East became Roman, without losing its Greek speech. And under +the wide domination of that later Roman Empire--which had subdued and +organised the whole known world, save the Parthian descendants of those +old Persians, and our old Teutonic forefathers in their German forests +and on their Scandinavian shores--that Divine book was carried far and +wide, East and West, and South, from the heart of Abyssinia to the +mountains of Armenia, and to the isles of the ocean, beyond Britain +itself to Ireland and to the Hebrides. + +And that book--so strangely coinciding with the old creed of the earlier +Persians--that book, long misunderstood, long overlain by the dust, and +overgrown by the parasitic fungi of centuries, that book it was which +sent to these trans-Atlantic shores the founders of your great nation. +That book gave them their instinct of Freedom, tempered by reverence for +Law. That book gave them their hatred of idolatry; and made them not +only say but act upon their own words, with these old Persians and with +the Jewish prophets alike, Sacrifice and burnt offering thou wouldst not; +Then said we, Lo, we come. In the volume of the book it is written of +us, that we come to do thy will, O God. Yes, long and fantastic is the +chain of causes and effects, which links you here to the old heroes who +came down from Central Asia, because the land had grown so wondrous cold, +that there were ten months of winter to two of summer; and when simply +after warmth and life, and food for them and for their flocks, they +wandered forth to found and help to found a spiritual kingdom. + +And even in their migration, far back in these dim and mystic ages, have +we found the earliest link of the long chain? Not so. What if the +legend of the change of climate be the dim recollection of an enormous +physical fact? What if it, and the gradual depopulation of the whole +north of Asia, be owing, as geologists now suspect, to the slow and age- +long uprise of the whole of Siberia, thrusting the warm Arctic sea +farther and farther to the northward, and placing between it and the +Highlands of Thibet an ever-increasing breadth of icy land, destroying +animals, and driving whole races southward, in search of the summer and +the sun? + +What if the first link in the chain, as yet conceivable by man, should be +the cosmic changes in the distribution of land and water, which filled +the mouths of the Siberian rivers with frozen carcases of woolly mammoth +and rhinoceros; and those again, doubt it not, of other revolutions, +reaching back and back, and on and on, into the infinite unknown? Why +not? For so are all human destinies + + Bound with gold chains unto the throne of God. + + + + +ANCIENT CIVILISATION {5} {6} + + +There is a theory abroad in the world just now about the origin of the +human race, which has so many patent and powerful physiological facts to +support it that we must not lightly say that it is absurd or impossible; +and that is, that man's mortal body and brain were derived from some +animal and ape-like creature. Of that I am not going to speak now. My +subject is: How this creature called man, from whatever source derived, +became civilised, rational, and moral. And I am sorry to say that there +is tacked on by many to the first theory, another which does not follow +from it, and which has really nothing to do with it, and it is this: That +man, with all his wonderful and mysterious aspirations, always +unfulfilled yet always precious, at once his torment and his joy, his +very hope of everlasting life; that man, I say, developed himself, +unassisted, out of a state of primaeval brutishness, simply by +calculations of pleasure and pain, by observing what actions would pay in +the long run and what would not; and so learnt to conquer his selfishness +by a more refined and extended selfishness, and exchanged his brutality +for worldliness, and then, in a few instances, his worldliness for next- +worldliness. I hope I need not say that I do not believe this theory. If +I did, I could not be a Christian, I think, nor a philosopher either. At +least, if I thought that human civilisation had sprung from such a +dunghill as that, I should, in honour to my race, say nothing about it, +here or elsewhere. + +Why talk of the shame of our ancestors? I want to talk of their honour +and glory. I want to talk, if I talk at all, about great times, about +noble epochs, noble movements, noble deeds, and noble folk; about times +in which the human race--it may be through many mistakes, alas! and sin, +and sorrow, and blood-shed--struggled up one step higher on those great +stairs which, as we hope, lead upward towards the far-off city of God; +the perfect polity, the perfect civilisation, the perfect religion, which +is eternal in the heavens. + +Of great men, then, and noble deeds I want to speak. I am bound to do so +first, in courtesy to my hearers. For in choosing such a subject I took +for granted a nobleness and greatness of mind in them which can +appreciate and enjoy the contemplation of that which is lofty and heroic, +and that which is useful indeed, though not to the purses merely or the +mouths of men, but to their intellects and spirits; that highest +philosophy which, though she can (as has been sneeringly said of her) +bake no bread, she--and she alone, can at least do this--make men worthy +to eat the bread which God has given them. + +I am bound to speak on such subjects, because I have never yet met, or +read of, the human company who did not require, now and then at least, +being reminded of such times and such personages--of whatsoever things +are just, pure, true, lovely, and of good report, if there be any manhood +and any praise to think, as St. Paul bids us all, of such things, that we +may keep up in our minds as much as possible a lofty standard, a pure +ideal, instead of sinking to the mere selfish standard which judges all +things, even those of the world to come, by profit and by loss, and into +that sordid frame of mind in which a man grows to believe that the world +is constructed of bricks and timber, and kept going by the price of +stocks. + +We are all tempted, and the easier and more prosperous we are, the more +we are tempted, to fall into that sordid and shallow frame of mind. +Sordid even when its projects are most daring, its outward luxuries most +refined; and shallow, even when most acute, when priding itself most on +its knowledge of human nature, and of the secret springs which, so it +dreams, move the actions and make the history of nations and of men. All +are tempted that way, even the noblest-hearted. _Adhaesit pavimento +venter_, says the old psalmist. I am growing like the snake, crawling in +the dust, and eating the dust in which I crawl. I try to lift up my eyes +to the heavens, to the true, the beautiful, the good, the eternal +nobleness which was before all time, and shall be still when time has +passed away. But to lift up myself is what I cannot do. Who will help +me? Who will quicken me? as our old English tongue has it. Who will +give me life? The true, pure, lofty human life which I did _not_ inherit +from the primaeval ape, which the ape-nature in me is for ever trying to +stifle, and make me that which I know too well I could so easily become--a +cunninger and more dainty-featured brute? Death itself, which seems at +times so fair, is fair because even it may raise me up and deliver me +from the burden of this animal and mortal body: + + 'Tis life, not death for which I pant; + 'Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant; + More life, and fuller, that I want. + +Man? I am a man not by reason of my bones and muscles, nerves and brain, +which I have in common with apes and dogs and horses. I am a man--thou +art a man or woman--not because we have a flesh--God forbid! but because +there is a spirit in us, a divine spark and ray, which nature did not +give, and which nature cannot take away. And therefore, while I live on +earth, I will live to the spirit, not to the flesh, that I may be, +indeed, a _man_; and this same gross flesh, this animal ape-nature in me, +shall be the very element in me which I will renounce, defy, despise; at +least, if I am minded to be, not a merely higher savage, but a truly +higher civilised man. Civilisation with me shall mean, not more wealth, +more finery, more self-indulgence--even more aesthetic and artistic +luxury; but more virtue, more knowledge, more self-control, even though I +earn scanty bread by heavy toil; and when I compare the Caesar of Rome or +the great king, whether of Egypt, Babylon, or Persia, with the hermit of +the Thebaid, starving in his frock of camel's hair, with his soul fixed +on the ineffable glories of the unseen, and striving, however wildly and +fantastically, to become an angel and not an ape, I will say the hermit, +and not the Caesar, is the civilised man. + +There are plenty of histories of civilisation and theories of +civilisation abroad in the world just now, and which profess to show you +how the primeval savage has, or at least may have, become the civilised +man. For my part, with all due and careful consideration, I confess I +attach very little value to any of them: and for this simple reason that +we have no facts. The facts are lost. + +Of course, if you assume a proposition as certainly true, it is easy +enough to prove that proposition to be true, at least to your own +satisfaction. If you assert with the old proverb, that you may make a +silk purse out of a sow's ear, you will be stupider than I dare suppose +anyone here to be, if you cannot invent for yourselves all the +intermediate stages of the transformation, however startling. And, +indeed, if modern philosophers had stuck more closely to this old +proverb, and its defining verb "make," and tried to show how some person +or persons--let them be who they may--men, angels, or gods--made the +sow's ear into the silk purse, and the savage into the sage--they might +have pleaded that they were still trying to keep their feet upon the firm +ground of actual experience. But while their theory is, that the sow's +ear grew into a silk purse of itself, and yet unconsciously and without +any intention of so bettering itself in life, why, I think that those who +have studied the history which lies behind them, and the poor human +nature which is struggling, and sinning, and sorrowing, and failing +around them, and which seems on the greater part of this planet going +downwards and not upwards, and by no means bettering itself, save in the +increase of opera-houses, liquor-bars, and gambling-tables, and that +which pertaineth thereto; then we, I think, may be excused if we say with +the old Stoics--[Greek text]--I withhold my judgment. I know nothing +about the matter yet; and you, oh my imaginative though learned friends, +know I suspect very little either. + + Eldest of things, Divine Equality: + +so sang poor Shelley, and with a certain truth. For if, as I believe, +the human race sprang from a single pair, there must have been among +their individual descendants an equality far greater than any which has +been known on earth during historic times. But that equality was at best +the infantile innocence of the primary race, which faded away in the race +as quickly, alas! as it does in the individual child. Divine--therefore +it was one of the first blessings which man lost; one of the last, I +fear, to which he will return; that to which civilisation, even at its +best yet known, has not yet attained, save here and there for short +periods; but towards which it is striving as an ideal goal, and, as I +trust, not in vain. + +The eldest of things which we see actually as history is not equality, +but an already developed hideous inequality, trying to perpetuate itself, +and yet by a most divine and gracious law, destroying itself by the very +means which it uses to keep itself alive. + +"There were giants in the earth in those days. And Nimrod began to be a +mighty one in the earth"-- + + A mighty hunter; and his game was man. + +No; it is not equality which we see through the dim mist of bygone ages. + +What we do see is--I know not whether you will think me superstitious or +old-fashioned, but so I hold--very much what the earlier books of the +Bible show us under symbolic laws. Greek histories, Roman histories, +Egyptian histories, Eastern histories, inscriptions, national epics, +legends, fragments of legends--in the New World as in the Old--all tell +the same story. Not the story without an end, but the story without a +beginning. As in the Hindoo cosmogony, the world stands on an elephant, +and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on--what? No man knows. +I do not know. I only assert deliberately, waiting, as Napoleon says, +till the world come round to me, that the tortoise does not stand--as is +held by certain anthropologists, some honoured by me, some personally +dear to me--upon the savages who chipped flints and fed on mammoth and +reindeer in North-Western Europe, shortly after the age of ice, a few +hundred thousand years ago. These sturdy little fellows--the kinsmen +probably of the Esquimaux and Lapps--could have been but the +_avant-couriers_, or more probably the fugitives from the true mass of +mankind--spreading northward from the Tropics into climes becoming, after +the long catastrophe of the age of ice, once more genial enough to +support men who knew what decent comfort was, and were strong enough to +get the same, by all means fair or foul. No. The tortoise of the human +race does not stand on a savage. The savage may stand on an ape-like +creature. I do not say that he does not. I do not say that he does. I +do not know; and no man knows. But at least I say that the civilised man +and his world stand not upon creatures like to any savage now known upon +the earth. For first, it seems to be most unlikely; and next, and more +important to an inductive philosopher, there is no proof of it. I see no +savages becoming really civilised men--that is, not merely men who will +ape the outside of our so-called civilisation, even absorb a few of our +ideas; not merely that; but truly civilised men who will think for +themselves, invent for themselves, act for themselves; and when the +sacred lamp of light and truth has been passed into their hands, carry it +on unextinguished, and transmit it to their successors without running +back every moment to get it relighted by those from whom they received +it: and who are bound--remember that--patiently and lovingly to relight +it for them; to give freely to all their fellow-men of that which God has +given to them and to their ancestors; and let God, not man, be judge of +how much the Red Indian or the Polynesian, the Caffre or the Chinese, is +capable of receiving and of using. + +Moreover, in history there is no record, absolutely no record, as far as +I am aware, of any savage tribe civilising itself. It is a bold saying. +I stand by my assertion: most happy to find myself confuted, even in a +single instance; for my being wrong would give me, what I can have no +objection to possess, a higher opinion than I have now, of the unassisted +capabilities of my fellow-men. + +But civilisation must have begun somewhen, somewhere, with some person, +or some family, or some nation; and how did it begin? + +I have said already that I do not know. But I have had my dream--like +the philosopher--and as I have not been ashamed to tell it elsewhere, I +shall not be ashamed to tell it here. And it is this: + +What if the beginnings of true civilisation in this unique, abnormal, +diseased, unsatisfied, incomprehensible, and truly miraculous and +supernatural race we call man, had been literally, and in actual fact, +miraculous and supernatural likewise? What if that be the true key to +the mystery of humanity and its origin? What if the few first chapters +of the most ancient and most sacred book should point, under whatever +symbols, to the actual and the only possible origin of civilisation, the +education of a man, or a family by beings of some higher race than man? +What if the old Puritan doctrine of Election should be even of a deeper +and wider application than divines have been wont to think? What if +individuals, if peoples, have been chosen out from time to time for a +special illumination, that they might be the lights of the earth, and the +salt of the world? What if they have, each in their turn, abused that +divine teaching to make themselves the tyrants, instead of the ministers, +of the less enlightened? To increase the inequalities of nature by their +own selfishness, instead of decreasing them, into the equality of grace, +by their own self-sacrifice? What if the Bible after all was right, and +even more right than we were taught to think? + +So runs my dream. If, after I have confessed to it, you think me still +worth listening to, in this enlightened nineteenth century, I will go on. + +At all events, what we see at the beginning of all known and half-known +history, is not savagery, but high civilisation, at least of an outward +and material kind. Do you demur? Then recollect, I pray you, that the +three oldest peoples known to history on this planet are Egypt, China, +Hindostan. The first glimpses of the world are always like those which +the book of Genesis gives us; like those which your own continent gives +us. As it was 400 years ago in America, so it was in North Africa and in +Asia 4000 years ago, or 40,000 for aught I know. Nay, if anyone should +ask--And why not 400,000 years ago, on Miocene continents long sunk +beneath the Tropic sea? I for one have no rejoinder save--We have no +proofs as yet. + +There loom up, out of the darkness of legend, into the as yet dim dawn of +history, what the old Arabs call Races of pre-Adamite Sultans--colossal +monarchies, with fixed and often elaborate laws, customs, creeds; with +aristocracies, priesthoods--seemingly always of a superior and conquering +race; with a mass of common folk, whether free or half-free, composed of +older conquered races; of imported slaves too, and their descendants. + +But whence comes the royal race, the aristocracy, the priesthood? You +inquire, and you find that they usually know not themselves. They are +usually--I had almost dared to say, always--foreigners. They have +crossed the neighbouring mountains. The have come by sea, like Dido to +Carthage, like Manco Cassae and Mama Belle to America, and they have +sometimes forgotten when. At least they are wiser, stronger, fairer, +than the aborigines. They are to them--as Jacques Cartier was to the +Indians of Canada--as gods. They are not sure that they are not +descended from gods. They are the Children of the Sun, or what not. The +children of light, who ray out such light as they have, upon the darkness +of their subjects. They are at first, probably, civilisers, not +conquerors. For, if tradition is worth anything--and we have nothing +else to go upon--they are at first few in number. They come as settlers, +or even as single sages. It is, in all tradition, not the many who +influence the few, but the few who influence the many. + +So aristocracies, in the true sense, are formed. + +But the higher calling is soon forgotten. The purer light is soon +darkened in pride and selfishness, luxury and lust; as in Genesis, the +sons of God see the daughters of men, that they are fair; and they take +them wives of all that they choose. And so a mixed race springs up and +increases, without detriment at first to the commonwealth. For, by a +well-known law of heredity, the cross between two races, probably far +apart, produces at first a progeny possessing the forces, and, alas! +probably the vices of both. And when the sons of God go in to the +daughters of men, there are giants in the earth in those days, men of +renown. The Roman Empire, remember, was never stronger than when the old +Patrician blood had mingled itself with that of every nation round the +Mediterranean. + +But it does not last. Selfishness, luxury, ferocity, spread from above, +as well as from below. The just aristocracy of virtue and wisdom becomes +an unjust one of mere power and privilege; that again, one of mere wealth +corrupting and corrupt; and is destroyed, not by the people from below, +but by the monarch from above. The hereditary bondsmen may know + + Who would be free, + Himself must strike the blow. + +But they dare not, know not how. The king must do it for them. He must +become the State. "Better one tyrant," as Voltaire said, "than many." +Better stand in fear of one lion far away, than of many wolves, each in +the nearest wood. And so arise those truly monstrous Eastern despotisms, +of which modern Persia is, thank God, the only remaining specimen; for +Turkey and Egypt are too amenable of late years to the influence of the +free nations to be counted as despotisms pure and simple--despotisms in +which men, instead of worshipping a God-man, worship the hideous +counterfeit, a Man-god--a poor human being endowed by public opinion with +the powers of deity, while he is the slave of all the weaknesses of +humanity. But such, as an historic fact, has been the last stage of +every civilisation--even that of Rome, which ripened itself upon this +earth the last in ancient times, and, I had almost said, until this very +day, except among the men who speak Teutonic tongues, and who have +preserved through all temptations, and reasserted through all dangers, +the free ideas which have been our sacred heritage ever since Tacitus +beheld us, with respect and awe, among our German forests, and saw in us +the future masters of the Roman Empire. + +Yes, it is very sad, the past history of mankind. But shall we despise +those who went before us, and on whose accumulated labours we now stand? + +Shall we not reverence our spiritual ancestors? Shall we not show our +reverence by copying them, at least whenever, as in those old Persians, +we see in them manliness and truthfulness, hatred of idolatries, and +devotion to the God of light and life and good? And shall we not feel +pity, instead of contempt, for their ruder forms of government, their +ignorances, excesses, failures--so excusable in men who, with little or +no previous teaching, were trying to solve for themselves for the first +time the deepest social and political problems of humanity. + +Yes, those old despotisms we trust are dead, and never to revive. But +their corpses are the corpses, not of our enemies, but of our friends and +predecessors, slain in the world-old fight of Ormuzd against +Ahriman--light against darkness, order against disorder. Confusedly they +fought, and sometimes ill: but their corpses piled the breach and filled +the trench for us, and over their corpses we step on to what should be to +us an easy victory--what may be to us, yet, a shameful ruin. + +For if we be, as we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the +light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour? What if the +light which is in us should become darkness? For myself, when I look +upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern times, so far +from boasting of that liberty in which I delight--and to keep which I +freely, too, could die--I rather say, in fear and trembling, God help us +on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to make us free; responsible, +each individual of us, not only to ourselves, but to Him and all mankind. +For if we fall we shall fall I know not whither, and I dare not think. + +How those old despotisms, the mighty empires of old time, fell, we know, +and we can easily explain. Corrupt, luxurious, effeminate, eaten out by +universal selfishness and mutual fear, they had at last no organic +coherence. The moral anarchy within showed through, at last burst +through, the painted skin of prescriptive order which held them together. +Some braver and abler, and usually more virtuous people, often some +little, hardy, homely mountain tribe, saw that the fruit was ripe for +gathering; and, caring naught for superior numbers--and saying with +German Alaric when the Romans boasted of their numbers, "The thicker the +hay the easier it is mowed"--struck one brave blow at the huge inflated +wind-bag--as Cyrus and his handful of Persians struck at the Medes; as +Alexander and his handful of Greeks struck afterwards at the Persians--and +behold, it collapsed upon the spot. And then the victors took the place +of the conquered; and became in their turn an aristocracy, and then a +despotism; and in their turn rotted down and perished. And so the +vicious circle repeated itself, age after age, from Egypt and Assyria to +Mexico and Peru. + +And therefore, we, free peoples as we are, have need to watch, and +sternly watch, ourselves. Equality of some kind or other is, as I said, +our natural and seemingly inevitable goal. But which equality? For +there are two--a true one and a false; a noble and a base; a healthful +and a ruinous. There is the truly divine equality, and there is the +brute equality of sheep and oxen, and of flies and worms. There is the +equality which is founded on mutual envy. The equality which respects +others, and the equality which asserts itself. The equality which longs +to raise all alike, and the equality which desires to pull down all +alike. The equality which says: Thou art as good as I, and it may be +better too, in the sight of God. And the equality which says: I am as +good as thou, and will therefore see if I cannot master thee. + +Side by side, in the heart of every free man, and every free people, are +the two instincts struggling for the mastery, called by the same name, +but bearing the same relation to each other as Marsyas to Apollo, the +Satyr to the God. Marsyas and Apollo, the base and the noble, are, as in +the old Greek legend, contending for the prize. And the prize is no less +a one than all free people of this planet. + +In proportion as that nobler idea conquers, and men unite in the equality +of mutual respect and mutual service, they move one step farther towards +realising on earth that Kingdom of God of which it is written: "The +despots of the nations exercise dominion over them, and they that +exercise authority over them are called benefactors. But he that will be +great among you let him be the servant of all." + +And in proportion as that base idea conquers, and selfishness, not self- +sacrifice, is the ruling spirit of a State, men move on, one step +forward, towards realising that kingdom of the devil upon earth, "Every +man for himself and the devil take the hindmost." Only, alas! in that +evil equality of envy and hate, there is no hindmost, and the devil takes +them all alike. + +And so is a period of discontent, revolution, internecine anarchy, +followed by a tyranny endured, as in old Rome, by men once free, because +tyranny will at least do for them what they were too lazy and greedy and +envious to do for themselves. + + And all because they have forgot + What 'tis to be a man--to curb and spurn. + The tyrant in us: the ignobler self + Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute; + And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain, + No purpose, save its share in that wild war + In which, through countless ages, living things + Compete in internecine greed. Ah, loving God, + Are we as creeping things, which have no lord? + That we are brutes, great God, we know too well; + Apes daintier-featured; silly birds, who flaunt + Their plumes, unheeding of the fowler's step; + Spiders, who catch with paper, not with webs; + Tigers, who slay with cannon and sharp steel, + Instead of teeth and claws:--all these we are. + Are we no more than these, save in degree? + Mere fools of nature, puppets of strong lusts, + Taking the sword, to perish by the sword + Upon the universal battle-field, + Even as the things upon the moor outside? + + The heath eats up green grass and delicate herbs; + The pines eat up the heath; the grub the pine; + The finch the grub; the hawk the silly finch; + And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey, + Eats what he lists. The strong eat up the weak; + The many eat the few; great nations, small; + And he who cometh in the name of all + Shall, greediest, triumph by the greed of all, + And, armed by his own victims, eat up all. + While ever out of the eternal heavens + Looks patient down the great magnanimous God, + Who, Master of all worlds, did sacrifice + All to Himself? Nay: but Himself to all; + Who taught mankind, on that first Christmas Day, + What 'tis to be a man--to give, not take; + To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour; + To lift, not crush; if need, to die, not live. + +"He that cometh in the name of all"--the popular military despot--the +"saviour of his country"--he is our internecine enemy on both sides of +the Atlantic, whenever he rises--the inaugurator of that Imperialism, +that Caesarism into which Rome sank, when not her liberties merely, but +her virtues, were decaying out of her--the sink into which all wicked +States, whether republics or monarchies, are sure to fall, simply because +men must eat and drink for to-morrow they die. The Military and +Bureaucratic Despotism which keeps the many quiet, as in old Rome, by +_panem et circenses_--bread and games--or, if need be, Pilgrimages; that +the few may make money, eat, drink, and be merry, as long as it can last. +That, let it ape as it may--as did the Caesars of old Rome at first--as +another Emperor did even in our own days--the forms of dead freedom, +really upholds an artificial luxury by brute force; and consecrates the +basest of all aristocracies, the aristocracy of the money-bag, by the +divine sanction of the bayonet. + +That at all risks, even at the price of precious blood, the free peoples +of the earth must ward off from them; for, makeshift and stop-gap as it +is, it does not even succeed in what it tries to do. It does not last. +Have we not seen that it does not, cannot last? How can it last? This +falsehood, like all falsehoods, must collapse at one touch of Ithuriel's +spear of truth and fact. And-- + +"Then saw I the end of these men. Namely, how Thou dost set them in +slippery places, and casteth them down. Suddenly do they perish, and +come to a fearful end. Yea, like as a dream when one awaketh, so shalt +Thou make their image to vanish out of the city." + +Have we not seen that too, though, thank God, neither in England nor in +the United States? + +And then? What then? None knows, and none can know. + +The future of France and Spain, the future of the Tropical Republics of +Spanish America, is utterly blank and dark; not to be prophesied, I hold, +by mortal man, simply because we have no like cases in the history of the +past whereby to judge the tendencies of the present. Will they revive? +Under the genial influences of free institutions will the good seed which +is in them take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards? and make them all +what that fair France has been, in spite of all her faults, so often in +past years--a joy and an inspiration to all the nations round? Shall it +be thus? God grant it may; but He, and He alone, can tell. We only +stand by, watching, if we be wise, with pity and with fear, the working +out of a tremendous new social problem, which must affect the future of +the whole civilised world. + +For if the agonising old nations fail to regenerate themselves, what can +befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail +it must? What but that lower depth within the lowest deep? + + That last dread mood + Of sated lust, and dull decrepitude. + No law, no art, no faith, no hope, no God. + When round the freezing founts of life in peevish ring, + Crouched on the bare-worn sod, + Babbling about the unreturning spring, + And whining for dead creeds, which cannot save, + The toothless nations shiver to their grave. + +And we, who think we stand, let us take heed lest we fall. Let us +accept, in modesty and in awe, the responsibility of our freedom, and +remember that that freedom can be preserved only in one old-fashioned +way. Let us remember that the one condition of a true democracy is the +same as the one condition of a true aristocracy, namely, virtue. Let us +teach our children, as grand old Lilly taught our forefathers 300 years +ago--"It is virtue, gentlemen, yea, virtue that maketh gentlemen; that +maketh the poor rich, the subject a king, the lowborn noble, the deformed +beautiful. These things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can +overturn, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither +sickness abate, nor age abolish." + +Yes. Let us teach our children thus on both sides of the Atlantic. For +if they--which God forbid--should grow corrupt and weak by their own +sins, there is no hardier race now left on earth to conquer our +descendants and bring them back to reason, as those old Jews were brought +by bitter shame and woe. And all that is before them and the whole +civilised world, would be long centuries of anarchy such as the world has +not seen for ages--a true Ragnarok, a twilight of the very gods, an age +such as the wise woman foretold in the old Voluspa. + + When brethren shall be + Each other's bane, + And sisters' sons rend + The ties of kin. + Hard will be that age, + An age of bad women, + An axe-age, a sword-age, + Shields oft cleft in twain, + A storm-age, a wolf-age, + Ere earth meet its doom. + +So sang, 2000 years ago, perhaps, the great unnamed prophetess, of our +own race, of what might be, if we should fail mankind and our own calling +and election. + +God grant that day may never come. But God grant, also, that if that day +does come, then may come true also what that wise Vala sang, of the day +when gods, and men, and earth should be burnt up with fire. + + When slaked Surtur's flame is, + Still the man and the maiden, + Hight Valour and Life, + Shall keep themselves hid + In the wood of remembrance. + The dew of the dawning + For food it shall serve them: + From them spring new peoples. + +New peoples. For after all is said, the ideal form of human society is +democracy. + +A nation--and, were it even possible, a whole world--of free men, lifting +free foreheads to God and Nature; calling no man master--for one is their +master, even God; knowing and obeying their duties towards the Maker of +the Universe, and therefore to each other, and that not from fear, nor +calculation of profit or loss, but because they loved and liked it, and +had seen the beauty of righteousness and trust and peace; because the law +of God was in their hearts, and needing at last, it may be, neither king +nor priest, for each man and each woman, in their place, were kings and +priests to God. Such a nation--such a society--what nobler conception of +mortal existence can we form? Would not that be, indeed, the kingdom of +God come on earth? + +And tell me not that that is impossible--too fair a dream to be ever +realised. All that makes it impossible is the selfishness, passions, +weaknesses, of those who would be blest were they masters of themselves, +and therefore of circumstances; who are miserable because, not being +masters of themselves, they try to master circumstance, to pull down iron +walls with weak and clumsy hands, and forget that he who would be free +from tyrants must first be free from his worst tyrant, self. + +But tell me not that the dream is impossible. It is so beautiful that it +must be true. If not now, nor centuries hence, yet still hereafter. God +would never, as I hold, have inspired man with that rich imagination had +He not meant to translate, some day, that imagination into fact. + +The very greatness of the idea, beyond what a single mind or generation +can grasp, will ensure failure on failure--follies, fanaticisms, +disappointments, even crimes, bloodshed, hasty furies, as of children +baulked of their holiday. + +But it will be at last fulfilled, filled full, and perfected; not perhaps +here, or among our peoples, or any people which now exist on earth: but +in some future civilisation--it may be in far lands beyond the sea--when +all that you and we have made and done shall be as the forest-grown +mounds of the old nameless civilisers of the Mississippi valley. + + + + +RONDELET, {7} THE HUGUENOT NATURALIST {8} + + +"Apollo, god of medicine, exiled from the rest of the earth, was straying +once across the Narbonnaise in Gaul, seeking to fix his abode there. +Driven from Asia, from Africa, and from the rest of Europe, he wandered +through all the towns of the province in search of a place propitious for +him and for his disciples. At last he perceived a new city, constructed +from the ruins of Maguelonne, of Lattes, and of Substantion. He +contemplated long its site, its aspect, its neighbourhood, and resolved +to establish on this hill of Montpellier a temple for himself and his +priests. All smiled on his desires. By the genius of the soil, by the +character of the inhabitants, no town is more fit for the culture of +letters, and above all of medicine. What site is more delicious and more +lovely? A heaven pure and smiling; a city built with magnificence; men +born for all the labours of the intellect. All around vast horizons and +enchanting sites--meadows, vines, olives, green champaigns; mountains and +hills, rivers, brooks, lagoons, and the sea. Everywhere a luxuriant +vegetation--everywhere the richest production of the land and the water. +Hail to thee sweet and dear city! Hail, happy abode of Apollo, who +spreadest afar the light of the glory of thy name!" + +"This fine tirade," says Dr. Maurice Raynaud--from whose charming book on +the "Doctors of the Time of Moliere" I quote--"is not, as one might +think, the translation of a piece of poetry. It is simply part of a +public oration by Francois Fanchon, one of the most illustrious +chancellors of the faculty of medicine of Montpellier in the seventeenth +century." "From time immemorial," he says, "'the faculty' of Montpellier +had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of the sacred and the +profane. The theses which were sustained there began by an invocation to +God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these words: 'This +thesis will be sustained in the sacred Temple of Apollo.'" + +But however extravagant Chancellor Fanchon's praises of his native city +may seem, they are really not exaggerated. The Narbonnaise, or +Languedoc, is perhaps the most charming district of charming France. In +the far north-east gleam the white Alps; in the far south-west the white +Pyrenees; and from the purple glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on +the north-west, the Herault slopes gently down towards the "Etangs," or +great salt-water lagoons, and the vast alluvial flats of the Camargue, +the field of Caius Marius, where still run herds of half-wild horses, +descended from some ancient Roman stock; while beyond all glitters the +blue Mediterranean. The great almond orchards, each one sheet of rose- +colour in spring; the mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, the vineyards, +cover every foot of available upland soil: save where the rugged and arid +downs are sweet with a thousand odoriferous plants, from which the bees +extract the famous white honey of Narbonne. The native flowers and +shrubs, of a beauty and richness rather Eastern than European, have made +the "Flora Montpeliensis," and with it the names of Rondelet and his +disciples, famous among botanists; and the strange fish and shells upon +its shores afforded Rondelet materials for his immortal work upon the +"Animals of the Sea." The innumerable wild fowl of the Benches du Rhone; +the innumerable songsters and other birds of passage, many of them +unknown in these islands, and even in the north of France itself, which +haunt every copse of willow and aspen along the brook-sides; the gaudy +and curious insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and yet +bracing sunlight; all these have made the district of Montpellier a home +prepared by Nature for those who study and revere her. + +Neither was Chancellor Fanchon misled by patriotism, when he said the +pleasant people who inhabit that district are fit for all the labours of +the intellect. They are a very mixed race, and, like most mixed races, +quick-witted, and handsome also. There is probably much Roman blood +among them, especially in the towns; for Languedoc, or Gallia +Narbonnensis, as it was called of old, was said to be more Roman than +Rome itself. The Roman remains are more perfect and more interesting--so +the late Dr. Whewell used to say--than any to be seen now in Italy; and +the old capital, Narbonne itself, was a complete museum of Roman +antiquities ere Francis I. destroyed it, in order to fortify the city +upon a modern system against the invading armies of Charles V. There +must be much Visigothic blood likewise in Languedoc: for the Visigothic +Kings held their courts there from the fifth century, until the time that +they were crushed by the invading Moors. Spanish blood, likewise, there +may be; for much of Languedoc was held in the early Middle Age by those +descendants of Eudes of Aquitaine who established themselves as kings of +Majorca and Arragon; and Languedoc did not become entirely French till +1349, when Philip le Bel bought Montpellier of those potentates. The +Moors, too, may have left some traces of their race behind. They held +the country from about A.D. 713 to 758, when they were finally expelled +by Charles Martel and Eudes. One sees to this day their towers of meagre +stonework, perched on the grand Roman masonry of those old amphitheatres, +which they turned into fortresses. One may see, too--so tradition +holds--upon those very amphitheatres the stains of the fires with which +Charles Martel smoked them out; and one may see, too, or fancy that one +sees, in the aquiline features, the bright black eyes, the lithe and +graceful gestures, which are so common in Languedoc, some touch of the +old Mahommedan race, which passed like a flood over that Christian land. + +Whether or not the Moors left behind any traces of their blood, they left +behind, at least, traces of their learning; for the university of +Montpellier claimed to have been founded by Moors at a date of altogether +abysmal antiquity. They looked upon the Arabian physicians of the Middle +Age, on Avicenna and Averrhoes, as modern innovators, and derived their +parentage from certain mythic doctors of Cordova, who, when the Moors +were expelled from Spain in the eighth century, fled to Montpellier, +bringing with them traditions of that primaeval science which had been +revealed to Adam while still in Paradise; and founded Montpellier, the +mother of all the universities in Europe. Nay, some went farther still, +and told of Bengessaus and Ferragius, the physicians of Charlemagne, and +of Marilephus, chief physician of King Chilperic, and even--if a letter +of St. Bernard's was to be believed--of a certain bishop who went as +early as the second century to consult the doctors of Montpellier; and it +would have been in vain to reply to them that in those days, and long +after them, Montpellier was not yet built. The facts are said to be: +that as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century Montpellier had +its schools of law, medicine, and arts, which were erected into a +university by Pope Nicholas IV. in 1289. + +The university of Montpellier, like--I believe--most foreign ones, +resembled more a Scotch than an English university. The students lived, +for the most part, not in colleges, but in private lodgings, and +constituted a republic of their own, ruled by an abbe of the scholars, +one of themselves, chosen by universal suffrage. A terror they were +often to the respectable burghers, for they had all the right to carry +arms; and a plague likewise, for, if they ran in debt, their creditors +were forbidden to seize their books, which, with their swords, were +generally all the property they possessed. If, moreover, anyone set up a +noisy or unpleasant trade near their lodgings, the scholars could compel +the town authorities to turn him out. They were most of them, probably, +mere boys of from twelve to twenty, living poorly, working hard, +and--those at least of them who were in the colleges--cruelly beaten +daily, after the fashion of those times; but they seem to have comforted +themselves under their troubles by a good deal of wild life out of +school, by rambling into the country on the festivals of the saints, and +now and then by acting plays; notably, that famous one which Rabelais +wrote for them in 1531: "The moral comedy of the man who had a dumb +wife;" which "joyous _patelinage_" remains unto this day in the shape of +a well-known comic song. That comedy young Rondelet must have seen +acted. The son of a druggist, spicer, and grocer--the three trades were +then combined--in Montpellier, and born in 1507, he had been destined for +the cloister, being a sickly lad. His uncle, one of the canons of +Maguelonne, near by, had even given him the revenues of a small chapel--a +job of nepotism which was common enough in those days. But his heart was +in science and medicine. He set off, still a mere boy, to Paris to study +there; and returned to Montpellier, at the age of eighteen, to study +again. + +The next year, 1530, while still a scholar himself, he was appointed +procurator of the scholars--a post which brought him in a small fee on +each matriculation--and that year he took a fee, among others, from one +of the most remarkable men of that or of any age, Francois Rabelais +himself. + +And what shall I say of him?--who stands alone, like Shakespeare, in his +generation; possessed of colossal learning--of all science which could be +gathered in his days--of practical and statesmanlike wisdom--of knowledge +of languages, ancient and modern, beyond all his compeers--of eloquence, +which when he speaks of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it +were, inspired--of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance--of esteem, +genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate +of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,--and all +this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a +dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character +likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and +the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man +conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is +the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality, +practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle, +luxurious life; to die--says the legend--saying, "I go to seek a great +perhaps," and to leave behind him little save a school of +Pantagruelists--careless young gentlemen, whose ideal was to laugh at +everything, to believe in nothing, and to gratify their five senses like +the brutes which perish. There are those who read his books to make them +laugh; the wise man, when he reads them, will be far more inclined to +weep. Let any young man who may see these words remember, that in him, +as in Rabelais, the ape and the man are struggling for the mastery. Let +him take warning by the fate of one who was to him as a giant to a pigmy; +and think of Tennyson's words-- + + Arise, and fly + The reeling faun, the sensual feast; + Strive upwards, working out the beast, + And let the ape and tiger die. + +But to return. Down among them there at Montpellier, like a brilliant +meteor, flashed this wonderful Rabelais, in the year 1530. He had fled, +some say, for his life. Like Erasmus, he had no mind to be a martyr, and +he had been terrified at the execution of poor Louis de Berquin, his +friend, and the friend of Erasmus likewise. This Louis de Berquin, a man +well known in those days, was a gallant young gentleman and scholar, +holding a place in the court of Francis I., who had translated into +French the works of Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon, and had asserted +that it was heretical to invoke the Virgin Mary instead of the Holy +Spirit, or to call her our Hope and our Life, which titles--Berquin +averred--belonged alone to God. Twice had the doctors of the Sorbonne, +with that terrible persecutor, Noel Beda, at their head, seized poor +Berquin, and tried to burn his books and him; twice had that angel in +human form, Marguerite d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I., saved him from +their clutches; but when Francis--taken prisoner at the battle of +Pavia--at last returned from his captivity in Spain, the suppression of +heresy and the burning of heretics seemed to him and to his mother, +Louise of Savoy, a thank-offering so acceptable to God, that Louis +Berquin--who would not, in spite of the entreaties of Erasmus, purchase +his life by silence--was burnt at last on the Place de Greve, being first +strangled, because he was of gentle blood. + +Montpellier received its famous guest joyfully. Rabelais was now forty- +two years old, and a distinguished savant; so they excused him his three +years' undergraduate's career, and invested him at once with the red gown +of the bachelors. That red gown--or, rather, the ragged phantom of it--is +still shown at Montpellier, and must be worn by each bachelor when he +takes his degree. Unfortunately, antiquarians assure us that the +precious garment has been renewed again and again--the students having +clipped bits of it away for relics, and clipped as earnestly from the new +gowns as their predecessors had done from the authentic original. + +Doubtless, the coming of such a man among them to lecture on the +Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Ars Parva of Galen, not from the Latin +translations then in use, but from original Greek texts, with comments +and corrections of his own, must have had a great influence on the minds +of the Montpellier students; and still more influence--and that not +altogether a good one--must Rabelais's lighter talk have had, as he +lounged--so the story goes--in his dressing-gown upon the public place, +picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and +the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their +vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him +may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, +too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable +in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier at that +day. Rabelais seems to have liked Rondelet, and no wonder: he was a +cheery, lovable, honest little fellow, very fond of jokes, a great +musician and player on the violin, and who, when he grew rich, liked +nothing so well as to bring into his house any buffoon or +strolling-player to make fun for him. Vivacious he was, hot-tempered, +forgiving, and with a power of learning and a power of work which were +prodigious, even in those hard-working days. Rabelais chaffs Rondelet, +under the name of Rondibilis; for, indeed, Rondelet grew up into a very +round, fat, little man; but Rabelais puts excellent sense into his mouth, +cynical enough, and too cynical, but both learned and humorous; and, if +he laughs at him for being shocked at the offer of a fee, and taking it, +nevertheless, kindly enough, Rondelet is not the first doctor who has +done that, neither will he be the last. + +Rondelet, in his turn, put on the red robe of the bachelor, and received, +on taking his degree, his due share of fisticuffs from his dearest +friends, according to the ancient custom of the University of +Montpellier. He then went off to practise medicine in a village at the +foot of the Alps, and, half-starved, to teach little children. Then he +found he must learn Greek; went off to Paris a second time, and +alleviated his poverty there somewhat by becoming tutor to a son of the +Viscomte de Turenne. There he met Gonthier of Andernach, who had taught +anatomy at Louvain to the great Vesalius, and learned from him to +dissect. We next find him setting up as a medical man amid the wild +volcanic hills of the Auvergne, struggling still with poverty, like +Erasmus, like George Buchanan, like almost every great scholar in those +days; for students then had to wander from place to place, generally on +foot, in search of new teachers, in search of books, in search of the +necessaries of life; undergoing such an amount of bodily and mental toil +as makes it wonderful that all of them did not--as some of them doubtless +did--die under the hard training, or, at best, desert the penurious Muses +for the paternal shop or plough. + +Rondelet got his doctorate in 1537, and next year fell in love with and +married a beautiful young girl called Jeanne Sandre, who seems to have +been as poor as he. + +But he had gained, meanwhile, a powerful patron; and the patronage of the +great was then as necessary to men of letters as the patronage of the +public is now. Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Maguelonne--or rather then +of Montpellier itself, whither he had persuaded Paul II. to transfer the +ancient see--was a model of the literary gentleman of the sixteenth +century; a savant, a diplomat, a collector of books and manuscripts, +Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, which formed the original nucleus of the +present library of the Louvre; a botanist, too, who loved to wander with +Rondelet collecting plants and flowers. He retired from public life to +peace and science at Montpellier, when to the evil days of his master, +Francis I., succeeded the still worse days of Henry II., and Diana of +Poitiers. That Jezebel of France could conceive no more natural or easy +way of atoning for her own sins than that of hunting down heretics, and +feasting her wicked eyes--so it is said--upon their dying torments. +Bishop Pellicier fell under suspicion of heresy: very probably with some +justice. He fell, too, under suspicion of leading a life unworthy of a +celibate churchman, a fault which--if it really existed--was, in those +days, pardonable enough in an orthodox prelate, but not so in one whose +orthodoxy was suspected. And for awhile Pellicier was in prison. After +his release he gave himself up to science, with Rondelet and the school +of disciples who were growing up around him. They rediscovered together +the Garum, that classic sauce, whose praises had been sung of old by +Horace, Martial, and Ausonius; and so child-like, superstitious if you +will, was the reverence in the sixteenth century for classic antiquity, +that when Pellicier and Rondelet discovered that the Garum was made from +the fish called Picarel--called Garon by the fishers of Antibes, and +Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions of the Latin +Gerres--then did the two fashionable poets of France, Etienne Dolet and +Clement Marot, think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises of +the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A proud day, too, was it for +Pellicier and Rondelet, when wandering somewhere in the marshes of the +Camargue, a scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop, and +in the lovely pink flowers of the water-germander he recognised the +Scordium of the ancients. "The discovery," says Professor Planchon, +"made almost as much noise as that of the famous Garum; for at that +moment of naive fervour on behalf of antiquity, to re-discover a plant of +Dioscorides or of Pliny was a good fortune and almost an event." + +I know not whether, after his death, the good bishop's bones reposed +beneath some gorgeous tomb, bedizened with the incongruous half-Pagan +statues of the Renaissance; but this at least is certain, that Rondelet's +disciples imagined for him a monument more enduring than of marble or of +brass, more graceful and more curiously wrought than all the sculptures +of Torrigiano or Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli or Michael Angelo himself. +For they named a lovely little lilac snapdragon, _Linaria Domini +Pellicerii_--"Lord Pellicier's toad-flax;" and that name it will keep, we +may believe, as long as winter and summer shall endure. + +But to return. To this good Patron--who was the Ambassador at Venice--the +newly-married Rondelet determined to apply for employment; and to Venice +he would have gone, leaving his bride behind, had he not been stayed by +one of those angels who sometimes walk the earth in women's shape. Jeanne +Sandre had an elder sister, Catharine, who had brought her up. She was +married to a wealthy man, but she had no children of her own. For four +years she and her good husband had let the Rondelets lodge with them, and +now she was a widow, and to part with them was more than she could bear. +She carried Rondelet off from the students who were seeing him safe out +of the city, brought him back, settled on him the same day half her +fortune, and soon after settled on him the whole, on the sole condition +that she should live with him and her sister. For years afterwards she +watched over the pretty young wife and her two girls and three boys--the +three boys, alas! all died young--and over Rondelet himself, who, +immersed in books and experiments, was utterly careless about money; and +was to them all a mother--advising, guiding, managing, and regarded by +Rondelet with genuine gratitude as his guardian angel. + +Honour and good fortune, in a worldly sense, now poured in upon the +druggist's son. Pellicier, his own bishop, stood godfather to his first- +born daughter. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, and that wise and learned +statesman, the Cardinal of Tournon, stood godfathers a few years later to +his twin boys; and what was of still more solid worth to him, Cardinal +Tournon took him to Antwerp, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and more than once to +Rome; and in these Italian journeys of his he collected many facts for +the great work of his life, that "History of Fishes" which he dedicated, +naturally enough, to the cardinal. This book with its plates is, for the +time, a masterpiece of accuracy. Those who are best acquainted with the +subject say, that it is up to the present day a key to the whole +ichthyology of the Mediterranean. Two other men, Belon and Salviani, +were then at work on the same subject, and published their books almost +at the same time; a circumstance which caused, as was natural, a three- +cornered duel between the supporters of the three naturalists, each party +accusing the other of plagiarism. The simple fact seems to be that the +almost simultaneous appearance of the three books in 1554-55 is one of +those coincidences inevitable at moments when many minds are stirred in +the same direction by the same great thoughts--coincidences which have +happened in our own day on questions of geology, biology, and astronomy; +and which, when the facts have been carefully examined, and the first +flush of natural jealousy has cooled down, have proved only that there +were more wise men than one in the world at the same time. + +And this sixteenth century was an age in which the minds of men were +suddenly and strangely turned to examine the wonders of nature with an +earnestness, with a reverence, and therefore with an accuracy, with which +they had never been investigated before. "Nature," says Professor +Planchon, "long veiled in mysticism and scholasticism, was opening up +infinite vistas. A new superstition, the exaggerated worship of the +ancients, was nearly hindering this movement of thought towards facts. +Nevertheless, Learning did her work. She rediscovered, reconstructed, +purified, commented on the texts of ancient authors. Then came in +observation, which showed that more was to be seen in one blade of grass +than in any page of Pliny. Rondelet was in the middle of this crisis a +man of transition, while he was one of progress. He reflected the past; +he opened and prepared the future. If he commented on Dioscorides, if he +remained faithful to the theories of Galen, he founded in his 'History of +Fishes' a monument which our century respects. He is above all an +inspirer, an initiator; and if he wants one mark of the leader of a +school, the foundation of certain scientific doctrines, there is in his +speech what is better than all systems, the communicative power which +urges a generation of disciples along the path of independent research, +with Reason for guide, and Faith for aim." + +Around Rondelet, in those years, sometimes indeed in his house--for +professors in those days took private pupils as lodgers--worked the group +of botanists whom Linnaeus calls "the Fathers," the authors of the +descriptive botany of the sixteenth century. Their names, and those of +their disciples and their disciples again, are household words in the +mouth of every gardener, immortalised, like good Bishop Pellicier, in the +plants that have been named after them. The Lobelia commemorates Lobel, +one of Rondelet's most famous pupils, who wrote those "Adversaria" which +contain so many curious sketches of Rondelet's botanical expeditions, and +who inherited his botanical (as Joubert his biographer inherited his +anatomical) manuscripts. The Magnolia commemorates the Magnols; the +Sarracenia, Sarrasin of Lyons; the Bauhinia, Jean Bauhin; the Fuchsia, +Bauhin's earlier German master, Leonard Fuchs; and the Clusia--the +received name of that terrible "Matapalo" or "Scotch attorney," of the +West Indies, which kills the hugest tree, to become as huge a tree +itself--immortalises the great Clusius, Charles de l'Escluse, citizen of +Arras, who, after studying civil law at Louvain, philosophy at Marburg, +and theology at Wittemberg under Melancthon, came to Montpellier in 1551, +to live in Rondelet's own house, and become the greatest botanist of his +age. + +These were Rondelet's palmy days. He had got a theatre of anatomy built +at Montpellier, where he himself dissected publicly. He had, says +tradition, a little botanic garden, such as were springing up then in +several universities, specially in Italy. He had a villa outside the +city, whose tower, near the modern railway station, still bears the name +of the "Mas de Rondelet." There, too, may be seen the remnants of the +great tanks, fed with water brought through earthen pipes from the +Fountain of Albe, wherein he kept the fish whose habits he observed. +Professor Planchon thinks that he had salt-water tanks likewise; and thus +he may have been the father of all "Aquariums." He had a large and +handsome house in the city itself, a large practice as physician in the +country round; money flowed in fast to him, and flowed out fast likewise. +He spent much upon building, pulling down, rebuilding, and sent the bills +in seemingly to his wife and to his guardian angel Catharine. He himself +had never a penny in his purse: but earned the money, and let his ladies +spend it; an equitable and pleasant division of labour which most married +men would do well to imitate. A generous, affectionate, careless little +man, he gave away, says his pupil and biographer, Joubert, his valuable +specimens to any savant who begged for them, or left them about to be +stolen by visitors, who, like too many collectors in all ages, possessed +light fingers and lighter consciences. So pacific was he meanwhile, and +so brave withal that even in the fearful years of "The Troubles," he +would never carry sword, nor even tuck or dagger: but went about on the +most lonesome journeys as one who wore a charmed life, secure in God and +in his calling, which was to heal, and not to kill. + +These were the golden years of Rondelet's life; but trouble was coming on +him, and a stormy sunset after a brilliant day. He lost his sister-in- +law, to whom he owed all his fortunes, and who had watched ever since +over him and his wife like a mother; then he lost his wife herself under +most painful circumstances; then his best-beloved daughter. Then he +married again, and lost the son who was born to him; and then came, as to +many of the best in those days, even sorer trials, trials of the +conscience, trials of faith. + +For in the meantime Rondelet had become a Protestant, like many of the +wisest men round him; like, so it would seem from the event, the majority +of the university and the burghers of Montpellier. It is not to be +wondered at. Montpellier was a sort of halfway resting-place for +Protestant preachers, whether fugitive or not, who were passing from +Basle, Geneva, or Lyons, to Marguerite of Navarre's little Protestant +court at Pan or at Nerac, where all wise and good men, and now and then +some foolish and fanatical ones, found shelter and hospitality. Thither +Calvin himself had been, passing probably through Montpellier and +leaving--as such a man was sure to leave--the mark of his foot behind +him. At Lyons, no great distance up the Rhone, Marguerite had helped to +establish an organised Protestant community; and when in 1536 she herself +had passed through Montpellier, to visit her brother at Valence, and +Montmorency's camp at Avignon, she took with her doubtless Protestant +chaplains of her own, who spoke wise words--it may be that she spoke wise +words herself--to the ardent and inquiring students of Montpellier. +Moreover, Rondelet and his disciples had been for years past in constant +communication with the Protestant savants of Switzerland and Germany, +among whom the knowledge of nature was progressing as it never had +progressed before. For--it is a fact always to be remembered--it was +only in the free air of Protestant countries the natural sciences could +grow and thrive. They sprung up, indeed, in Italy after the restoration +of Greek literature in the fifteenth century; but they withered there +again only too soon under the blighting upas shade of superstition. +Transplanted to the free air of Switzerland, of Germany, of Britain, and +of Montpellier, then half Protestant, they developed rapidly and surely, +simply because the air was free; to be checked again in France by the +return of superstition with despotism super-added, until the eve of the +great French Revolution. + +So Rondelet had been for some years Protestant. He had hidden in his +house for a long while a monk who had left his monastery. He had himself +written theological treatises: but when his Bishop Pellicier was +imprisoned on a charge of heresy, Rondelet burnt his manuscripts, and +kept his opinions to himself. Still he was a suspected heretic, at last +seemingly a notorious one; for only the year before his death, going to +visit patients at Perpignan, he was waylaid by the Spaniards, and had to +get home through bypasses of the Pyrenees, to avoid being thrown into the +Inquisition. + +And those were times in which it was necessary for a man to be careful, +unless he had made up his mind to be burned. For more than thirty years +of Rondelet's life the burning had gone on in his neighbourhood; +intermittently it is true: the spasms of superstitious fury being +succeeded, one may charitably hope, by pity and remorse; but still the +burnings had gone on. The Benedictine monk of St. Maur, who writes the +history of Languedoc, says, quite _en passant_, how someone was burnt at +Toulouse in 1553, luckily only in effigy, for he had escaped to Geneva: +but he adds, "next year they burned several heretics," it being not worth +while to mention their names. In 1556 they burned alive at Toulouse Jean +Escalle, a poor Franciscan monk, who had found his order intolerable; +while one Pierre de Lavaur, who dared preach Calvinism in the streets of +Nismes, was hanged and burnt. So had the score of judicial murders been +increasing year by year, till it had to be, as all evil scores have to be +in this world, paid off with interest, and paid off especially against +the ignorant and fanatic monks who for a whole generation, in every +university and school in France, had been howling down sound science, as +well as sound religion; and at Montpellier in 1560-61, their debt was +paid them in a very ugly way. News came down to the hot southerners of +Languedoc of the so-called conspiracy of Amboise.--How the Duc de Guise +and the Cardinal de Lorraine had butchered the best blood in France under +the pretence of a treasonable plot; how the King of Navarre and the +Prince de Conde had been arrested; then how Conde and Coligny were ready +to take up arms at the head of all the Huguenots of France, and try to +stop this life-long torturing, by sharp shot and cold steel; then how in +six months' time the king would assemble a general council to settle the +question between Catholics and Huguenots. The Huguenots, guessing how +that would end, resolved to settle the question for themselves. They +rose in one city after another, sacked the churches, destroyed the +images, put down by main force superstitious processions and dances; and +did many things only to be excused by the exasperation caused by thirty +years of cruelty. At Montpellier there was hard fighting, murders--so +say the Catholic historians--of priests and monks, sack of the new +cathedral, destruction of the noble convents which lay in a ring round +Montpellier. The city and the university were in the hands of the +Huguenots, and Montpellier became Protestant on the spot. + +Next year came the counter-blow. There were heavy battles with the +Catholics all round the neighbourhood, destruction of the suburbs, +threatened siege and sack, and years of misery and poverty for +Montpellier and all who were therein. + +Horrible was the state of France in those times of the wars of religion +which began in 1562; the times which are spoken of usually as "The +Troubles," as if men did not wish to allude to them too openly. Then, +and afterwards in the wars of the League, deeds were done for which +language has no name. The population decreased. The land lay untilled. +The fair face of France was blackened with burnt homesteads and ruined +towns. Ghastly corpses dangled in rows upon the trees, or floated down +the blood-stained streams. Law and order were at an end. Bands of +robbers prowled in open day, and bands of wolves likewise. But all +through the horrors of the troubles we catch sight of the little fat +doctor riding all unarmed to see his patients throughout Languedoc; going +vast distances, his biographers say, by means of regular relays of +horses, till he too broke down. Well, for him, perhaps, that he broke +down when he did; for capture and recapture, massacre and pestilence, +were the fate of Montpellier and the surrounding country, till the better +times of Henry IV. and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, when liberty of +worship was given to the Protestants for awhile. + +In the burning summer of 1566, Rondelet went a long journey to Toulouse, +seemingly upon an errand of charity, to settle some law affairs for his +relations. The sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough +still. It must have been horrible in those days of barbarism and +misrule. Dysentery was epidemic at Toulouse then, and Rondelet took it. +He knew from the first that he should die. He was worn out, it is said, +by over-exertion; by sorrow for the miseries of the land; by fruitless +struggles to keep the peace, and to strive for moderation in days when +men were all immoderate. But he rode away a day's journey--he took two +days over it, so weak he was--in the blazing July sun, to a friend's sick +wife at Realmont, and there took to his bed, and died a good man's death. +The details of his death and last illness were written and published by +his cousin Claude Formy; and well worth reading they are to any man who +wishes to know how to die. Rondelet would have no tidings of his illness +sent to Montpellier. He was happy, he said, in dying away from the tears +of his household, and "safe from insult." He dreaded, one may suppose, +lest priests and friars should force their way to his bedside, and try to +extort some recantation from the great savant, the honour and glory of +their city. So they sent for no priest to Realmont; but round his bed a +knot of Calvinist gentlemen and ministers read the Scriptures, and sang +David's psalms, and prayed; and Rondelet prayed with them through long +agonies, and so went home to God. + +The Benedictine monk-historian of Languedoc, in all his voluminous +folios, never mentions, as far as I can find, Rondelet's existence. Why +should he? The man was only a druggist's son and a heretic, who healed +diseases, and collected plants, and wrote a book on fish. But the +learned men of Montpellier, and of all Europe, had a very different +opinion of him. His body was buried at Realmont; but before the schools +of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an inscription thereon +setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were +composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin, +but in Greek, Hebrew, and even Chaldee. + +So lived and so died a noble man; more noble, to my mind, than many a +victorious warrior, or successful statesman, or canonised saint. To know +facts, and to heal diseases, were the two objects of his life. For them +he toiled, as few men have toiled; and he died in harness, at his +work--the best death any man can die. + + + + +VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST {9} + + +I cannot begin a sketch of the life of this great man better than by +trying to describe a scene so picturesque, so tragic in the eyes of those +who are wont to mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes of those +who prefer to laugh over them, that the reader will not be likely to +forget either it or the actors in it. + +It is a darkened chamber in the College of Alcala, in the year 1562, +where lies, probably in a huge four-post bed, shrouded in stifling +hangings, the heir-apparent of the greatest empire in the then world, Don +Carlos, only son of Philip II. and heir-apparent of Spain, the +Netherlands, and all the Indies. A short sickly boy of sixteen, with a +bull head, a crooked shoulder, a short leg, and a brutal temper, he will +not be missed by the world if he should die. His profligate career seems +to have brought its own punishment. To the scandal of his father, who +tolerated no one's vices save his own, as well as to the scandal of the +university authorities of Alcala, he has been scouring the streets at the +head of the most profligate students, insulting women, even ladies of +rank, and amenable only to his lovely young stepmother, Elizabeth of +Valois, Isabel de la Paz, as the Spaniards call her, the daughter of +Catherine do Medicis, and sister of the King of France. Don Carlos +should have married her, had not his worthy father found it more +advantageous for the crown of Spain, as well as more pleasant for him, +Philip, to marry her himself. Whence came heart-burnings, rage, +jealousies, romances, calumnies, of which two last--in as far at least as +they concern poor Elizabeth--no wise man now believes a word. + +Going on some errand on which he had no business--there are two stories, +neither of them creditable nor necessary to repeat--Don Carlos has fallen +downstairs and broken his head. He comes, by his Portuguese mother's +side, of a house deeply tainted with insanity; and such an injury may +have serious consequences. However, for nine days the wound goes on +well, and Don Carlos, having had a wholesome fright, is, according to +Doctor Olivarez, the _medico de camara_, a very good lad, and lives on +chicken broth and dried plums. But on the tenth day comes on numbness of +the left side, acute pains in the head, and then gradually shivering, +high fever, erysipelas. His head and neck swell to an enormous size; +then comes raging delirium, then stupefaction, and Don Carlos lies as one +dead. + +A modern surgeon would, probably, thanks to that training of which +Vesalius may be almost called the father, have had little difficulty in +finding out what was the matter with the luckless lad, and little +difficulty in removing the evil, if it had not gone too far. But the +Spanish physicians were then, as many of them are said to be still, as +far behind the world in surgery as in other things; and indeed surgery +itself was then in its infancy, because men, ever since the early Greek +schools of Alexandria had died out, had been for centuries feeding their +minds with anything rather than with facts. Therefore the learned +morosophs who were gathered round Don Carlos's sick bed had become +according to their own confession, utterly confused, terrified, and at +their wits' end. + +It is the 7th of May, the eighteenth day after the accident according to +Olivarez's story: he and Dr Vega have been bleeding the unhappy prince, +enlarging the wound twice, and torturing him seemingly on mere guesses. +"I believe," says Olivarez, "that all was done well: but as I have said, +in wounds in the head there are strange labyrinths." So on the 7th they +stand round the bed in despair. Don Garcia de Toledo, the prince's +faithful governor, is sitting by him, worn out with sleepless nights, and +trying to supply to the poor boy that mother's tenderness which he has +never known. Alva, too, is there, stern, self-compressed, most terrible, +and yet most beautiful. He has a God on earth, and that is Philip his +master; and though he has borne much from Don Carlos already, and will +have to bear more, yet the wretched lad is to him as a son of God, a +second deity, who will by right divine succeed to the inheritance of the +first; and he watches this lesser deity struggling between life and death +with an intensity of which we, in these less loyal days, can form no +notion. One would be glad to have a glimpse of what passed through that +mind, so subtle and so ruthless, so disciplined and so loyal withal: but +Alva was a man who was not given to speak his mind, but to act it. + +One would wish, too, for a glimpse of what was passing through the mind +of another man, who has been daily in that sick chamber, according to +Olivarez's statement, since the first of the month: but he is one who has +had, for some years past, even more reason than Alva for not speaking his +mind. What he looked like we know well, for Titian has painted him from +the life--a tall, bold, well-dressed man, with a noble brain, square and +yet lofty, short curling locks and beard, an eye which looks as though it +feared neither man nor fiend--and it has had good reason to fear both--and +features which would be exceeding handsome, but for the defiant +snub-nose. That is Andreas Vesalius, of Brussels, dreaded and hated by +the doctors of the old school--suspect, moreover, it would seem to +inquisitors and theologians, possibly to Alva himself; for he has dared +to dissect human bodies; he has insulted the mediaevalists at Paris, +Padua, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, in open theatre; he has turned the heads of +all the young surgeons in Italy and France; he has written a great book, +with prints in it, designed, some say, by Titian--they were actually done +by another Netherlander, John of Calcar, near Cleves--in which he has +dared to prove that Galen's anatomy was at fault throughout, and that he +had been describing a monkey's inside when he had pretended to be +describing a man's; and thus, by impudence and quackery, he has wormed +himself--this Netherlander, a heretic at heart, as all Netherlanders are, +to God as well as to Galen--into the confidence of the late Emperor +Charles V., and gone campaigning with him as one of his physicians, +anatomising human bodies even on the battle-field, and defacing the +likeness of Deity; and worse than that, the most religious King Philip is +deceived by him likewise, and keeps him in Madrid in wealth and honour; +and now, in the prince's extreme danger, the king has actually sent for +him, and bidden him try his skill--a man who knows nothing save about +bones and muscles and the outside of the body, and is unworthy the name +of a true physician. + +One can conceive the rage of the old Spanish pedants at the +Netherlander's appearance, and still more at what followed, if we are to +believe Hugo Bloet of Delft, his countryman and contemporary. {10} +Vesalius, he says, saw that the surgeons had bound up the wound so tight +that an abscess had formed outside the skull, which could not break: he +asserted that the only hope lay in opening it; and did so, Philip having +given leave, "by two cross-cuts. Then the lad returned to himself, as if +awakened from a profound sleep, affirming that he owed his restoration to +life to the German doctor." + +Dionysius Daza, who was there with the other physicians and surgeons, +tells a different story: "The most learned, famous, and rare Baron +Vesalius," he says, advised that the skull should be trepanned; but his +advice was not followed. + +Olivarez's account agrees with that of Daza. They had opened the wounds, +he says, down to the skull before Vesalius came. Vesalius insisted that +the injury lay inside the skull, and wished to pierce it. Olivarez +spends much labour in proving that Vesalius had "no great foundation for +his opinion:" but confesses that he never changed that opinion to the +last, though all the Spanish doctors were against him. Then on the 6th, +he says, the Bachelor Torres came from Madrid, and advised that the skull +should be laid bare once more; and on the 7th, there being still doubt +whether the skull was not injured, the operation was performed--by whom +it is not said--but without any good result, or, according to Olivarez, +any discovery, save that Vesalius was wrong, and the skull uninjured. + +Whether this second operation of the 7th of May was performed by +Vesalius, and whether it was that of which Bloet speaks, is an open +question. Olivarez's whole relation is apologetic, written to justify +himself and his seven Spanish colleagues, and to prove Vesalius in the +wrong. Public opinion, he confesses, had been very fierce against him. +The credit of Spanish medicine was at stake: and we are not bound to +believe implicitly a paper drawn up under such circumstances for Philip's +eye. This, at least, we gather: that Don Carlos was never trepanned, as +is commonly said; and this, also, that whichever of the two stories is +true, equally puts Vesalius into direct, and most unpleasant, antagonism +to the Spanish doctors. {11} + +But Don Carlos still lay senseless; and yielding to popular clamour, the +doctors called in the aid of a certain Moorish doctor, from Valencia, +named Priotarete, whose unguents, it was reported, had achieved many +miraculous cures. The unguent, however, to the horror of the doctors, +burned the skull till the bone was as black as the colour of ink; and +Olivarez declares he believes it to have been a preparation of pure +caustic. On the morning of the 9th of May, the Moor and his unguents +were sent away, "and went to Madrid, to send to heaven Hernando de Vega, +while the prince went back to our method of cure." + +Considering what happened on the morning of the 10th of May, we should +now presume that the second opening of the abscess, whether by Vesalius +or someone else, relieved the pressure on the brain; that a critical +period of exhaustion followed, probably prolonged by the Moor's premature +caustic, which stopped the suppuration: but that God's good handiwork, +called nature, triumphed at last; and that therefore it came to pass that +the prince was out of danger within three days of the operation. But he +was taught, it seems, to attribute his recovery to a very different +source from that of a German knife. For on the morning of the 9th, when +the Moor was gone, and Don Carlos lay seemingly lifeless, there descended +into his chamber a _Deus e machina_, or rather a whole pantheon of +greater or lesser deities, who were to effect that which medical skill +seemed not to have effected. Philip sent into the prince's chamber +several of the precious relics which he usually carried about with him. +The miraculous image of the Virgin of Atocha, in embroidering garments +for whom, Spanish royalty, male and female, has spent so many an hour ere +now, was brought in solemn procession and placed on an altar at the foot +of the prince's bed; and in the afternoon there entered, with a +procession likewise, a shrine containing the bones of a holy anchorite, +one Fray Diego, "whose life and miracles," says Olivarez, "are so +notorious:" and the bones of St. Justus and St. Pastor, the tutelar +saints of the university of Alcala. Amid solemn litanies the relics of +Fray Diego were laid upon the prince's pillow, and the sudarium, or +mortuary cloth, which had covered his face, was placed upon the prince's +forehead. + +Modern science might object that the presence of so many personages, +however pious or well intentioned, in a sick chamber on a hot Spanish May +day, especially as the bath had been, for some generations past, held in +religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish and Mussulman +tendencies, might have somewhat interfered with the chances of the poor +boy's recovery. Nevertheless the event seems to have satisfied Philip's +highest hopes; for that same night (so Don Carlos afterwards related) the +holy monk Diego appeared to him in a vision, wearing the habit of St. +Francis, and bearing in his hand a cross of reeds tied with a green band. +The prince stated that he first took the apparition to be that of the +blessed St. Francis; but not seeing the stigmata, he exclaimed, "How? +Dost thou not bear the marks of the wounds?" What he replied Don Carlos +did not recollect; save that he consoled him, and told him that he should +not die of that malady. + +Philip had returned to Madrid, and shut himself up in grief in the great +Jeronymite monastery. Elizabeth was praying for her step-son before the +miraculous images of the same city. During the night of the 9th of May +prayers went up for Don Carlos in all the churches of Toledo, Alcala, and +Madrid. Alva stood all that night at the bed's foot. Don Garcia de +Toledo sat in the arm-chair, where he had now sat night and day for more +than a fortnight. The good preceptor, Honorato Juan, afterwards Bishop +of Osma, wrestled in prayer for the lad the whole night through. His +prayer was answered: probably it had been answered already, without his +being aware of it. Be that as it may, about dawn Don Carlos's heavy +breathing ceased; he fell into a quiet sleep; and when he awoke all +perceived at once that he was saved. + +He did not recover his sight, seemingly on account of the erysipelas, for +a week more. He then opened his eyes upon the miraculous image of +Atocha, and vowed that, if he recovered, he would give to the Virgin, at +four different shrines in Spain, gold plate of four times his weight; and +silver plate of seven times his weight, when he should rise from his +couch. So on the 6th of June he rose, and was weighed in a fur coat and +a robe of damask, and his weight was three arrobas and one pound--seventy- +six pounds in all. On the 14th of June he went to visit his father at +the episcopal palace; then to all the churches and shrines in Alcala, and +of course to that of Fray Diego, whose body it is said he contemplated +for some time with edifying devotion. The next year saw Fray Diego +canonised as a saint, at the intercession of Philip and his son; and thus +Don Carlos re-entered the world, to be a terror and a torment to all +around him, and to die--not by Philip's cruelty, as his enemies reported +too hastily indeed, yet excusably, for they knew him to be capable of any +wickedness--but simply of constitutional insanity. + +And now let us go back to the history of "that most learned, famous, and +rare Baron Vesalius," who had stood by and seen all these things done; +and try if we cannot, after we have learned the history of his early +life, guess at some of his probable meditations on this celebrated +clinical case; and guess also how those meditations may have affected +seriously the events of his afterlife. + +Vesalius (as I said) was a Netherlander, born at Brussels in 1513 or +1514. His father and grandfather had been medical men of the highest +standing in a profession which then, as now, was commonly hereditary. His +real name was Wittag, an ancient family of Wesel, on the Rhine, from +which town either he or his father adopted the name of Vesalius, +according to the classicising fashion of those days. Young Vesalius was +sent to college at Louvain, where he learned rapidly. At sixteen or +seventeen he knew not only Latin, but Greek enough to correct the proofs +of Galen, and Arabic enough to become acquainted with the works of the +Mussulman physicians. He was a physicist too, and a mathematician, +according to the knowledge of those times; but his passion--the study to +which he was destined to devote his life--was anatomy. + +Little or nothing (it must be understood) had been done in anatomy since +the days of Galen of Pergamos, in the second century after Christ, and +very little even by him. Dissection was all but forbidden among the +ancients. The Egyptians, Herodotus tells us, used to pursue with stones +and curses the embalmers as soon as they had performed their unpleasant +office; and though Herophilus and Erasistratus are said to have dissected +many subjects under the protection of Ptolemy Soter in Alexandria itself: +yet the public feeling of the Greeks as well as of the Romans continued +the same as that of the ancient Egyptians; and Galen was fain--as +Vesalius proved--to supplement his ignorance of the human frame by +describing that of an ape. Dissection was equally forbidden among the +Mussulmans; and the great Arabic physicians could do no more than comment +on Galen. The same prejudice extended through the Middle Age. Medical +men were all clerks, _clerici_, and as such forbidden to shed blood. The +only dissection, as far as I am aware, made during the Middle Age was one +by Mundinus in 1306; and his subsequent commentaries on Galen--for he +dare allow his own eyes to see no more than Galen had seen before +him--constituted the best anatomical manual in Europe till the middle of +the fifteenth century. + +Then, in Italy at least, the classic Renaissance gave fresh life to +anatomy as to all other sciences. Especially did the improvements in +painting and sculpture stir men up to a closer study of the human frame. +Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on muscular anatomy. The artist and +the sculptor often worked together, and realised that sketch of Michael +Angelo's in which he himself is assisting Fallopius, Vesalius's famous +pupil, to dissect. Vesalius soon found that his thirst for facts could +not be slaked by the theories of the Middle Age; so in 1530 he went off +to Montpellier, where Francis I. had just founded a medical school, and +where the ancient laws of the city allowed the faculty each year the body +of a criminal. From thence, after becoming the fellow-pupil and the +friend of Rondelet, and probably also of Rabelais and those other +luminaries of Montpellier, of whom I spoke in my essay on Rondelet, he +returned to Paris to study under old Sylvius, whose real name was Jacques +Dubois, alias Jock o' the Wood; and to learn less--as he complains +himself--in an anatomical theatre than a butcher might learn in his shop. + +Were it not that the whole question of dissection is one over which it is +right to draw a reverent veil, as a thing painful, however necessary and +however innocent, it would be easy to raise ghastly laughter in many a +reader by the stories which Vesalius himself tells of his struggles to +learn anatomy. How old Sylvius tried to demonstrate the human frame from +a bit of a dog, fumbling in vain for muscles which he could not find, or +which ought to have been there, according to Galen, and were not; while +young Vesalius, as soon as the old pedant's back was turned, took his +place, and, to the delight of the students, found for him--provided it +were there--what he could not find himself;--how he went body-snatching +and gibbet-robbing, often at the danger of his life, as when he and his +friend were nearly torn to pieces by the cannibal dogs who haunted the +Butte de Montfaucon, or place of public execution;--how he acquired, by a +long and dangerous process, the only perfect skeleton then in the world, +and the hideous story of the robber to whom it had belonged--all these +horrors those who list may read for themselves elsewhere. I hasten past +them with this remark--that to have gone through the toils, dangers, and +disgusts which Vesalius faced, argued in a superstitious and cruel age +like his, no common physical and moral courage, and a deep conscience +that he was doing right, and must do it at all risks in the face of a +generation which, peculiarly reckless of human life and human agony, +allowed that frame which it called the image of God to be tortured, +maimed, desecrated in every way while alive; and yet--straining at the +gnat after having swallowed the camel--forbade it to be examined when +dead, though for the purpose of alleviating the miseries of mankind. + +The breaking out of war between Francis I. and Charles V. drove Vesalius +back to his native country and Louvain; and in 1535 we hear of him as a +surgeon in Charles V.'s army. He saw, most probably, the Emperor's +invasion of Provence, and the disastrous retreat from before +Montmorency's fortified camp at Avignon, through a country in which that +crafty general had destroyed every article of human food, except the half- +ripe grapes. He saw, perhaps, the Spanish soldiers, poisoned alike by +the sour fruit and by the blazing sun, falling in hundreds along the +white roads which led back into Savoy, murdered by the peasantry whose +homesteads had been destroyed, stifled by the weight of their own armour, +or desperately putting themselves, with their own hands, out of a world +which had become intolerable. Half the army perished. Two thousand +corpses lay festering between Aix and Frejus alone. If young Vesalius +needed "subjects," the ambition and the crime of man found enough for him +in those blazing September days. + +He went to Italy, probably with the remnants of the army. Where could he +have rather wished to find himself? He was at last in the country where +the human mind seemed to be growing young once more; the country of +revived arts, revived sciences, learning, languages; and--though, alas! +only for awhile of revived free thought, such as Europe had not seen +since the palmy days of Greece. Here at least he would be appreciated; +here at least he would be allowed to think and speak: and he was +appreciated. The Italian cities, who were then, like the Athenians of +old, "spending their time in nothing else save to hear or to tell +something new," welcomed the brave young Fleming and his novelties. +Within two years he was professor of anatomy at Padua, then the first +school in the world; then at Bologna and at Pisa at the same time; last +of all at Venice, where Titian painted that portrait of him which remains +unto this day. + +These years were for him a continual triumph; everywhere, as he +demonstrated on the human body, students crowded his theatre, or hung +round him as he walked the streets; professors left their own +chairs--their scholars having deserted them already--to go and listen +humbly or enviously to the man who could give them what all brave souls +throughout half Europe were craving for, and craving in vain--facts. And +so, year after year, was realised that scene which stands engraved in the +frontispiece of his great book--where, in the little quaint Cinquecento +theatre, saucy scholars, reverend doctors, gay gentlemen, and even cowled +monks, are crowding the floor, peeping over each other's shoulders, +hanging on the balustrades; while in the centre, over his "subject"--which +one of those same cowled monks knew but too well--stands young Vesalius, +upright, proud, almost defiant, as one who knows himself safe in the +impregnable citadel of fact; and in his hand the little blade of steel, +destined--because wielded in obedience to the laws of nature, which are +the laws of God--to work more benefit for the human race than all the +swords which were drawn in those days, or perhaps in any other, at the +bidding of most Catholic Emperors and most Christian Kings. + +Those were indeed days of triumph for Vesalius; of triumph deserved, +because earned by patient and accurate toil in a good cause: but +Vesalius, being but a mortal man, may have contracted in those same days +a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such as he showed afterwards +when his pupil Fallopius dared to add fresh discoveries to those of his +master. And yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he knew! How +humbling to his pride it would have been had he known then--perhaps he +does know now--that he had actually again and again walked, as it were, +round and round the true theory of the circulation of the blood, and yet +never seen it; that that discovery which, once made, is intelligible, as +far as any phenomenon is intelligible, to the merest peasant, was +reserved for another century, and for one of those Englishmen on whom +Vesalius would have looked as semi-barbarians. + +To make a long story short: three years after the publication of his +famous book, "De Corporis Humani Fabrica," he left Venice to cure Charles +V., at Regensburg, and became one of the great Emperor's physicians. + +This was the crisis of Vesalius's life. The medicine with which he had +worked the cure was China--Sarsaparilla, as we call it now--brought home +from the then newly-discovered banks of the Paraguay and Uruguay, where +its beds of tangled vine, they say, tinge the clear waters a dark-brown +like that of peat, and convert whole streams into a healthful and +pleasant tonic. On the virtues of this China (then supposed to be a +root) Vesalius wrote a famous little book, into which he contrived to +interweave his opinions on things in general, as good Bishop Berkeley did +afterwards into his essay on the virtues of tar-water. Into this book, +however, Vesalius introduced--as Bishop Berkeley did not--much, and +perhaps too much, about himself; and much, though perhaps not too much, +about poor old Galen, and his substitution of an ape's inside for that of +a human being. The storm which had been long gathering burst upon him. +The old school, trembling for their time-honoured reign, bespattered, +with all that pedantry, ignorance, and envy could suggest, the man who +dared not only to revolutionise surgery, but to interfere with the +privileged mysteries of medicine; and, over and above, to become a +greater favourite at the court of the greatest of monarchs. While such +as Eustachius, himself an able discoverer, could join in the cry, it is +no wonder if a lower soul, like that of Sylvius, led it open-mouthed. He +was a mean, covetous, bad man, as George Bachanan well knew; and, +according to his nature, he wrote a furious book--"Ad Vesani calumnias +depulsandas." The punning change of Vesalius into Vesanus (madman) was +but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in days in which those who +could not kill their enemies with steel or powder, held themselves +justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, calumny, and every +engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which +made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the +charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It +was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so +easy to get out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his +master, Charles V., himself take fright, and actually call on the +theologians of Salamanca to decide whether it was lawful to dissect a +human body. The monks, to their honour, used their common sense, and +answered Yes. The deed was so plainly useful that it must be lawful +likewise. But Vesalius did not feel that he had triumphed. He dreaded, +possibly, lest the storm should only have blown over for a time. He +fell, possibly, into hasty disgust at the folly of mankind, and despair +of arousing them to use their common sense, and acknowledge their true +interest and their true benefactors. At all events, he threw into the +fire--so it is said--all his unpublished manuscripts, the records of long +years of observation, and renounced science thenceforth. + +We hear of him after this at Brussels, and at Basle likewise--in which +latter city, in the company of physicians, naturalists, and Grecians, he +must have breathed awhile a freer air. But he seems to have returned +thence to his old master Charles V., and to have finally settled at +Madrid as a court surgeon to Philip II., who sent him, but too late, to +extract the lance splinters from the eye of the dying Henry II. + +He was now married to a lady of rank from Brussels, Anne van Hamme by +name; and their daughter married in time Philip II.'s grand falconer, who +was doubtless a personage of no small social rank. Vesalius was well off +in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of +luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow +we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some +shock should awake him from his lethargy. + +And the awakening shock did come. After eight years of court life, he +resolved, early in the year 1564, to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. + +The reasons for so strange a determination are wrapped in mystery and +contradiction. The common story was that he had opened a corpse to +ascertain the cause of death, and that, to the horror of the bystanders, +the heart was still seen to beat; that his enemies accused him to the +Inquisition, and that he was condemned to death, a sentence which was +commuted to that of going on pilgrimage. But here, at the very outset, +accounts differ. One says that the victim was a nobleman, name not +given; another that it was a lady's maid, name not given. It is most +improbable, if not impossible, that Vesalius, of all men, should have +mistaken a living body for a dead one; while it is most probable, on the +other hand, that his medical enemies would gladly raise such a calumny +against him, when he was no longer in Spain to contradict it. Meanwhile +Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, makes no mention of Vesalius +having been brought before its tribunal, while he does mention Vesalius's +residence at Madrid. Another story is, that he went abroad to escape the +bad temper of his wife; another that he wanted to enrich himself. Another +story--and that not an unlikely one--is, that he was jealous of the +rising reputation of his pupil Fallopius, then professor of anatomy at +Venice. This distinguished surgeon, as I said before, had written a +book, in which he added to Vesalius's discoveries, and corrected certain +of his errors. Vesalius had answered him hastily and angrily, quoting +his anatomy from memory; for, as he himself complained, he could not in +Spain obtain a subject for dissection; not even, he said, a single skull. +He had sent his book to Venice to be published, and had heard, seemingly, +nothing of it. He may have felt that he was falling behind in the race +of science, and that it was impossible for him to carry on his studies in +Madrid; and so, angry with his own laziness and luxury, he may have felt +the old sacred fire flash up in him, and have determined to go to Italy +and become a student and a worker once more. + +The very day that he set out, Clusius of Arras, then probably the best +botanist in the world, arrived at Madrid; and, asking the reason of +Vesalius's departure, was told by their fellow-countryman, Charles de +Tisnacq, procurator for the affairs of the Netherlands, that Vesalius had +gone of his own free will, and with all facilities which Philip could +grant him, in performance of a vow which he had made during a dangerous +illness. Here, at least, we have a drop of information, which seems +taken from the stream sufficiently near to the fountain-head: but it must +be recollected that De Tisnacq lived in dangerous times, and may have +found it necessary to walk warily in them; that through him had been +sent, only the year before, that famous letter from William of Orange, +Horn, and Egmont, the fate whereof may be read in Mr. Motley's fourth +chapter; that the crisis of the Netherlands which sprung out of that +letter was coming fast; and that, as De Tisnacq was on friendly terms +with Egmont, he may have felt his head at times somewhat loose on his +shoulders; especially if he had heard Alva say, as he wrote, "that every +time he saw the despatches of those three senors, they moved his choler +so, that if he did not take much care to temper it, he would seem a +frenzied man." In such times, De Tisnacq may have thought good to return +a diplomatic answer to a fellow-countryman concerning a third +fellow-countryman, especially when that countryman, as a former pupil of +Melancthon at Wittemberg, might himself be under suspicion of heresy, and +therefore of possible treason. + +Be this as it may, one cannot but suspect some strain of truth in the +story about the Inquisition; for, whether or not Vesalius operated on Don +Carlos, he had seen with his own eyes that miraculous Virgin of Atocha at +the bed's foot of the prince. He had heard his recovery attributed, not +to the operation, but to the intercession of Fray, now Saint Diego; {12} +and he must have had his thoughts thereon, and may, in an unguarded +moment, have spoken them. + +For he was, be it always remembered, a Netherlander. The crisis of his +country was just at hand. Rebellion was inevitable, and, with rebellion, +horrors unutterable; and, meanwhile, Don Carlos had set his mad brain on +having the command of the Netherlands. In his rage, at not having it, as +all the world knows, he nearly killed Alva with his own hands, some two +years after. If it be true that Don Carlos felt a debt of gratitude to +Vesalius, he may (after his wont) have poured out to him some wild +confidence about the Netherlands, to have even heard which would be a +crime in Philip's eyes. And if this be but a fancy, still Vesalius was, +as I just said, a Netherlander, and one of a brain and a spirit to which +Philip's doings, and the air of the Spanish court, must have been growing +ever more and more intolerable. Hundreds of his country folk, perhaps +men and women whom he had known, were being racked, burnt alive, buried +alive, at the bidding of a jocular ruffian, Peter Titelmann, the chief +inquisitor. The "day of the _maubrulez_," and the wholesale massacre +which followed it, had happened but two years before; and, by all the +signs of the times, these murders and miseries were certain to increase. +And why were all these poor wretches suffering the extremity of horror, +but because they would not believe in miraculous images, and bones of +dead friars, and the rest of that science of unreason and unfact, against +which Vesalius had been fighting all his life, consciously or not, by +using reason and observing fact? What wonder if, in some burst of noble +indignation and just contempt, he forgot a moment that he had sold his +soul, and his love of science likewise, to be a luxurious, yet uneasy, +hanger-on at the tyrant's court; and spoke unadvisedly some word worthy +of a German man? + +As to the story of his unhappy quarrels with his wife, there may be a +grain of truth in it likewise. Vesalius's religion must have sat very +lightly on him. The man who had robbed churchyards and gibbets from his +youth was not likely to be much afraid of apparitions and demons. He had +handled too many human bones to care much for those of saints. He was +probably, like his friends of Basle, Montpellier, and Paris, somewhat of +a heretic at heart, probably somewhat of a pagan, while his lady, Anne +van Hamme, was probably a strict Catholic, as her father, being a +councillor and master of the exchequer at Brussels, was bound to be; and +freethinking in the husband, crossed by superstition in the wife, may +have caused in them that wretched _vie a part_, that want of any true +communion of soul, too common to this day in Catholic countries. + +Be these things as they may--and the exact truth of them will now be +never known--Vesalius set out to Jerusalem in the spring of 1564. On his +way he visited his old friends at Venice to see about his book against +Fallopius. The Venetian republic received the great philosopher with +open arms. Fallopius was just dead; and the senate offered their guest +the vacant chair of anatomy. He accepted it: but went on to the East. + +He never occupied that chair; wrecked upon the Isle of Zante, as he was +sailing back from Palestine, he died miserably of fever and want, as +thousands of pilgrims returning from the Holy Land had died before him. A +goldsmith recognised him; buried him in a chapel of the Virgin; and put +up over him a simple stone, which remained till late years; and may +remain, for aught I know, even now. + +So perished, in the prime of life, "a martyr to his love of science," to +quote the words of M. Burggraeve of Ghent, his able biographer and +commentator, "the prodigious man, who created a science at an epoch when +everything was still an obstacle to his progress; a man whose whole life +was a long struggle of knowledge against ignorance, of truth against +lies." + +Plaudite: Exeat: with Rondelet and Buchanan. And whensoever this poor +foolish world needs three such men, may God of His great mercy send them. + + + + +PARACELSUS {13} + + +I told you of Vesalius and Rondelet as specimens of the men who three +hundred years ago were founding the physical science of the present day, +by patient investigation of facts. But such an age as this would +naturally produce men of a very different stamp, men who could not +imitate their patience and humility; who were trying for royal roads to +knowledge, and to the fame and wealth which might be got out of +knowledge; who meddled with vain dreams about the occult sciences, +alchemy, astrology, magic, the cabala, and so forth, who were reputed +magicians, courted and feared for awhile, and then, too often, died sad +deaths. + +Such had been, in the century before, the famous Dr. Faust--Faustus, who +was said to have made a compact with Satan--actually one of the inventors +of printing--immortalised in Goethe's marvellous poem. + +Such, in the first half of the sixteenth century, was Cornelius Agrippa--a +doctor of divinity and a knight-at-arms; secret-service diplomatist to +the Emperor Maximilian in Austria; astrologer, though unwilling, to his +daughter Margaret, Regent of the Low Countries; writer on the occult +sciences and of the famous "De Vanitate Scientiarum," and what not? who +died miserably at the age of forty-nine, accused of magic by the +Dominican monks from whom he had rescued a poor girl, who they were +torturing on a charge of witchcraft; and by them hunted to death; nor to +death only, for they spread the fable--such as you may find in Delrio the +Jesuit's "Disquisitions on Magic" {14}--that his little pet black dog was +a familiar spirit, as Butler has it in "Hudibras": + + Agrippa kept a Stygian pug + I' the garb and habit of a dog-- + That was his taste; and the cur + Read to th' occult philosopher, + And taught him subtly to maintain + All other sciences are vain. + +Such also was Jerome Cardan, the Italian scholar and physician, the +father of algebraic science (you all recollect Cardan's rule,) believer +in dreams, prognostics, astrology; who died, too, miserably enough, in +old age. + +Cardan's sad life, and that of Cornelius Agrippa, you can, and ought to +read for yourselves, in two admirable biographies, as amusing as they are +learned, by Professor Morley, of the London University. I have not +chosen either of them as a subject for this lecture, because Mr. Morley +has so exhausted what is to be known about them, that I could tell you +nothing which I had not stolen from him. + +But what shall I say of the most famous of these men--Paracelsus? whose +name you surely know. He too has been immortalised in a poem which you +all ought to have read, one of Robert Browning's earliest and one of his +best creations. + +I think we must accept as true Mr. Browning's interpretation of +Paracelsus's character. We must believe that he was at first an honest +and high-minded, as he was certainly a most gifted, man; that he went +forth into the world, with an intense sense of the worthlessness of the +sham knowledge of the pedants and quacks of the schools; an intense +belief that some higher and truer science might be discovered, by which +diseases might be actually cured, and health, long life, happiness, all +but immortality, be conferred on man; an intense belief that he, +Paracelsus, was called and chosen by God to find out that great mystery, +and be a benefactor to all future ages. That fixed idea might +degenerate--did, alas! degenerate--into wild self-conceit, rash contempt +of the ancients, violent abuse of his opponents. But there was more than +this in Paracelsus. He had one idea to which, if he had kept true, his +life would have been a happier one--the firm belief that all pure science +was a revelation from God; that it was not to be obtained at second or +third hand, by blindly adhering to the words of Galen or Hippocrates or +Aristotle, and putting them (as the scholastic philosophers round him +did) in the place of God: but by going straight to nature at first hand, +and listening to what Bacon calls "the voice of God revealed in facts." +True and noble is the passage with which he begins his "Labyrinthus +Medicorum," one of his attacks on the false science of his day, + +"The first and highest book of all healing," he says, "is called wisdom, +and without that book no man will carry out anything good or useful . . . +And that book is God Himself. For in Him alone who hath created all +things, the knowledge and principle of all things dwells . . . without +Him all is folly. As the sun shines on us from above, so He must pour +into us from above all arts whatsoever. Therefore the root of all +learning and cognition is, that we should seek first the kingdom of +God--the kingdom of God in which all sciences are founded . . . If any +man think that nature is not founded on the kingdom of God, he knows +nothing about it. All gifts," he repeats again and again, confused and +clumsily (as is his wont), but with a true earnestness, "are from God." + +The true man of science, with Paracelsus, is he who seeks first the +kingdom of God in facts, investigating nature reverently, patiently, in +faith believing that God, who understands His own work best, will make +him understand it likewise. The false man of science is he who seeks the +kingdom of this world, who cares nothing about the real interpretation of +facts: but is content with such an interpretation as will earn him the +good things of this world--the red hat and gown, the ambling mule, the +silk clothes, the partridges, capons, and pheasants, the gold florins +chinking in his palm. At such pretenders Paracelsus sneered, at last +only too fiercely, not only as men whose knowledge consisted chiefly in +wearing white gloves, but as rogues, liars, villains, and every epithet +which his very racy vocabulary, quickened (it is to be feared) by wine +and laudanum, could suggest. With these he contrasts the true men of +science. It is difficult for us now to understand how a man setting out +in life with such pure and noble views should descend at last (if indeed +he did descend) to be a quack and a conjuror--and die under the +imputation that + + Bombastes kept a devil's bird + Hid in the pommel of his sword, + +and have, indeed, his very name, Bombast, used to this day as a synonym +of loud, violent, and empty talk. To understand it at all, we must go +back and think a little over these same occult sciences which were +believed in by thousands during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. + +The reverence for classic antiquity, you must understand, which sprang up +at the renaissance in the fifteenth century, was as indiscriminating as +it was earnest. Men caught the trash as well as the jewels. They put +the dreams of the Neoplatonists, Iamblicus, Porphyry, or Plotinus, or +Proclus, on the same level as the sound dialectic philosophy of Plato +himself. And these Neoplatonists were all, more or less, believers in +magic--Theurgy, as it was called--in the power of charms and spells, in +the occult virtues of herbs and gems, in the power of adepts to evoke and +command spirits, in the significance of dreams, in the influence of the +stars upon men's characters and destinies. If the great and wise +philosopher Iamblicus believed such things, why might not the men of the +sixteenth century? + +And so grew up again in Europe a passion for what were called the Occult +sciences. It had always been haunting the European imagination. Mediaeval +monks had long ago transformed the poet Virgil into a great necromancer. +And there were immense excuses for such a belief. There was a mass of +collateral evidence that the occult sciences were true, which it was +impossible then to resist. Races far more ancient, learned, civilised, +than any Frenchman, German, Englishman, or even Italian, in the fifteenth +century had believed in these things. The Moors, the best physicians of +the Middle Ages, had their heads full, as the "Arabian Nights" prove, of +enchanters, genii, peris, and what not? The Jewish rabbis had their +Cabala, which sprang up in Alexandria, a system of philosophy founded on +the mystic meaning of the words and the actual letters of the text of +Scripture, which some said was given by the angel Ragiel to Adam in +Paradise, by which Adam talked with angels, the sun and moon, summoned +spirits, interpreted dreams, healed and destroyed; and by that book of +Ragiel, as it was called, Solomon became the great magician and master of +all the spirits and their hoarded treasures. + +So strong, indeed, was the belief in the mysteries of the Cabala, that +Reuchlin, the restorer of Hebrew learning in Germany, and Pico di +Mirandola, the greatest of Italian savants, accepted them; and not only +Pope Leo X. himself, but even statesmen and warriors received with +delight Reuchlin's cabalistic treatise, "De Verbo Mirifico," on the +mystic word "Schemhamphorash"--that hidden name of God, which whosoever +can pronounce aright is, for the moment, lord of nature and of all +daemons. + +Amulets, too, and talismans; the faith in them was exceeding ancient. +Solomon had his seal, by which he commanded all daemons; and there is a +whole literature of curious nonsense, which you may read if you will, +about the Abraxas and other talismans of the Gnostics in Syria; and +another, of the secret virtues which were supposed to reside in gems: +especially in the old Roman and Greek gems, carved into intaglios with +figures of heathen gods and goddesses. Lapidaria, or lists of these gems +and their magical virtues, were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. You may +read a great deal that is interesting about them at the end of Mr. King's +book on gems. + +Astrology too; though Pico di Mirandola might set himself against the +rest of the world, few were found daring enough to deny so ancient a +science. Luther and Melancthon merely followed the regular tradition of +public opinion when they admitted its truth. It sprang probably from the +worship of the Seven Planets by the old Chaldees. It was brought back +from Babylon by the Jews after the Captivity, and spread over all +Europe--perhaps all Asia likewise. + +The rich and mighty of the earth must needs have their nativities cast, +and consult the stars; and Cornelius Agrippa gave mortal offence to the +Queen-Dowager of France (mother of Francis I.) because, when she +compelled him to consult the stars about Francis's chance of getting out +of his captivity in Spain after the battle of Pavia, he wrote and spoke +his mind honestly about such nonsense. + +Even Newton seems to have hankered after it when young. Among his MSS. +in Lord Portsmouth's library at Hurstbourne are whole folios of +astrologic calculations. It went on till the end of the seventeenth +century, and died out only when men had begun to test it, and all other +occult sciences, by experience, and induction founded thereon. + +Countless students busied themselves over the transmutation of metals. As +for magic, necromancy, pyromancy, geomancy, coscinomancy, and all the +other mancies--there was then a whole literature about them. And the +witch-burning inquisitors like Sprenger, Bodin, Delrio, and the rest, +believed as firmly in the magic powers of the poor wretches whom they +tortured to death, as did, in many cases, the poor wretches themselves. + +Everyone, almost, believed in magic. Take two cases. Read the story +which Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor, tells in his life (everyone should +read it) of the magician whom he consults in the Coliseum at Rome, and +the figure which he sees as he walks back with the magician, jumping from +roof to roof along the tiles of the houses. + +And listen to this story, which Mr. Froude has dug up in his researches. +A Church commissioner at Oxford, at the beginning of the Reformation, +being unable to track an escaped heretic, "caused a figure to be made by +an expert in astronomy;" by which it was discovered that the poor wretch +had fled in a tawny coat and was making for the sea. Conceive the +respected head of your College--or whoever he may be--in case you slept +out all night without leave, going to a witch to discover whether you had +gone to London or to Huntingdon, and then writing solemnly to inform the +Bishop of Ely of his meritorious exertions! + +In such a mad world as this was Paracelsus born. The son of a Swiss +physician, but of noble blood, Philip Aureolus Theophrastus was his +Christian name, Bombast von Hohenheim his surname, which last word he +turned, after the fashion of the times, into Paracelsus. Born in 1493 at +Einsiedeln (the hermitage), in Schweiz, which is still a famous place of +pilgrimage, he was often called Eremita--the hermit. Erasmus, in a +letter still extant, but suspected not to be genuine, addressed him by +that name. + +How he passed the first thirty-three years of his life it is hard to say. +He used to boast that he had wandered over all Europe, been in Sweden, +Italy, in Constantinople, and perhaps in the far East, with +barber-surgeons, alchemists, magicians, haunting mines, and forges of +Sweden and Bohemia, especially those which the rich merchants of that day +had in the Tyrol. + +It was from that work, he said, that he learnt what he knew: from the +study of nature and of facts. He had heard all the learned doctors and +professors; he had read all their books, and they could teach him +nothing. Medicine was his monarch, and no one else. He declared that +there was more wisdom under his bald pate than in Aristotle and Galen, +Hippocrates and Rhasis. And fact seemed to be on his side. He +reappeared in Germany about 1525, and began working wondrous cures. He +had brought back with him from the East an arcanum, a secret remedy, and +laudanum was its name. He boasted, says one of his enemies, that he +could raise the dead to life with it; and so the event all but proved. +Basle was then the university where free thought and free creeds found +their safest home; and hither OEcolampadius the reformer invited young +Paracelsus to lecture on medicine and natural science. + +It would have been well for him, perhaps, had he never opened his lips. +He might have done good enough to his fellow-creatures by his own +undoubted powers of healing. He cured John Frobenius, the printer, +Erasmus's friend, at Basle, when the doctors were going to cut his leg +off. His fame spread far and wide. Round Basle and away into Alsace he +was looked on, even an enemy says, as a new AEsculapius. + +But these were days in which in a university everyone was expected to +talk and teach, and so Paracelsus began lecturing; and then the weakness +which was mingled with his strength showed itself. He began by burning +openly the books of Galen and Avicenna, and declared that all the old +knowledge was useless. Doctors and students alike must begin over again +with him. The dons were horrified. To burn Galen and Avicenna was as +bad as burning the Bible. And more horrified still were they when +Paracelsus began lecturing, not in the time-honoured dog-Latin, but in +good racy German, which everyone could understand. They shuddered under +their red gowns and hats. If science was to be taught in German, +farewell to the Galenists' formulas, and their lucrative monopoly of +learning. Paracelsus was bold enough to say that he wished to break up +their monopoly; to spread a popular knowledge of medicine. "How much," +he wrote once, "would I endure and suffer, to see every man his own +shepherd--his own healer." He laughed to scorn their long prescriptions, +used the simplest drugs, and declared Nature, after all, to be the best +physician--as a dog, he says, licks his wound well again without our +help; or as the broken rib of the ox heals of its own accord. + +Such a man was not to be endured. They hated him, he says, for the same +reason that they hated Luther, for the same reason that the Pharisees +hated Christ. He met their attacks with scorn, rage, and language as +coarse and violent as their own. The coarseness and violence of those +days seem incredible to us now; and, indeed, Paracelsus, as he confessed +himself, was, though of gentle blood, rough and unpolished; and utterly, +as one can see from his writings, unable to give and take, to +conciliate--perhaps to pardon. He looked impatiently on these men who +were (not unreasonably) opposing novelties which they could not +understand, as enemies of God, who were balking him in his grand plan for +regenerating science and alleviating the woes of humanity, and he +outraged their prejudices instead of soothing them. + +Soon they had their revenge. Ugly stories were whispered about. +Oporinus, the printer, who had lived with him for two years, and who left +him, it is said, because he thought Paracelsus concealed from him +unfairly the secret of making laudanum, told how Paracelsus was neither +more nor less than a sot, who came drunk to his lectures, used to prime +himself with wine before going to his patients, and sat all night in +pothouses swilling with the boors. + +Men looked coldly on him--longed to be rid of him. And they soon found +an opportunity. He took in hand some Canon of the city from whom it was +settled beforehand that he was to receive a hundred florins. The priest +found himself cured so suddenly and easily that, by a strange logic, he +refused to pay the money, and went to the magistrates. They supported +him, and compelled Paracelsus to take six florins instead of the hundred. +He spoke his mind fiercely to them. I believe, according to one story, +he drew his long sword on the Canon. His best friends told him he must +leave the place; and within two years, seemingly, after his first triumph +at Basle, he fled from it a wanderer and a beggar. + +The rest of his life is a blank. He is said to have recommenced his old +wanderings about Europe, studying the diseases of every country, and +writing his books, which were none of them published till after his +death. His enemies joyfully trampled on the fallen man. He was a "dull +rustic, a monster, an atheist, a quack, a maker of gold, a magician." +When he was drunk, one Wetter, his servant, told Erastus (one of his +enemies) that he used to offer to call up legions of devils to prove his +skill, while Wetter, in abject terror of his spells, entreated him to +leave the fiends alone--that he had sent his book by a fiend to the +spirit of Galen in hell, and challenged him to say which was the better +system, his or Paracelsus', and what not? + +His books were forbidden to be printed. He himself was refused a +hearing, and it was not till after ten years of wandering that he found +rest and protection in a little village of Carinthia. + +Three years afterwards he died in the hospital of St. Sebastian at +Salzburg, in the Tyrol. His death was the signal for empirics and +visionaries to foist on the public book after book on occult philosophy, +written in his name--of which you may see ten folios--not more than a +quarter, I believe, genuine. And these foolish books, as much as +anything, have helped to keep up the popular prejudice against one who, +in spite of all his faults was a true pioneer of science. {15} I believe +(with those moderns who have tried to do him justice) that under all his +verbiage and confusion there was a vein of sound scientific, experimental +common sense. + +When he talks of astronomy as necessary to be known by a physician, it +seems to me that he laughs at astrology, properly so called; that is, +that the stars influence the character and destiny of man. Mars, he +says, did not make Nero cruel. There would have been long-lived men in +the world if Saturn had never ascended the skies; and Helen would have +been a wanton, though Venus had never been created. But he does believe +that the heavenly bodies, and the whole skies, have a physical influence +on climate, and on the health of men. + +He talks of alchemy, but he means by it, I think, only that sound science +which we call chemistry, and at which he worked, wandering, he says, +among mines and forges, as a practical metallurgist. + +He tells us--what sounds startling enough--that magic is the only +preceptor which can teach the art of healing; but he means, it seems to +me, only an understanding of the invisible processes of nature, in which +sense an electrician or a biologist, a Faraday or a Darwin, would be a +magician; and when he compares medical magic to the Cabalistic science, +of which I spoke just now (and in which he seems to have believed), he +only means, I think, that as the Cabala discovers hidden meaning and +virtues in the text of Scripture, so ought the man of science to find +them in the book of nature. But this kind of talk, wrapt up too in the +most confused style, or rather no style at all, is quite enough to +account for ignorant and envious people accusing him of magic, saying +that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, and the secret of Hermes +Trismegistus; that he must make gold, because, though he squandered all +his money, he had always money in hand; and that he kept a +"devil's-bird," a familiar spirit, in the pommel of that famous long +sword of his, which he was only too ready to lug out on provocation--the +said spirit, Agoth by name, being probably only the laudanum bottle with +which he worked so many wondrous cures, and of which, to judge from his +writings, he took only too freely himself. + +But the charm of Paracelsus is in his humour, his mother-wit. He was +blamed for consorting with boors in pot-houses; blamed for writing in +racy German, instead of bad school-Latin: but you can hardly read a +chapter, either of his German or his dog-Latin, without finding many a +good thing--witty and weighty, though often not a little coarse. He +talks in parables. He draws illustrations, like Socrates of old, from +the commonest and the oddest matters to enforce the weightiest truths. +"Fortune and misfortune," he says, for instance nobly enough, "are not +like snow and wind, they must be deduced and known from the secrets of +nature. Therefore misfortune is ignorance, fortune is knowledge. The +man who walks out in the rain is not unfortunate if he gets a ducking." + +"Nature," he says again, "makes the text, and the medical man adds the +gloss; but the two fit each other no better than a dog does a bath;" and +again, when he is arguing against the doctors who hated chemistry--"Who +hates a thing which has hurt nobody? Will you complain of a dog for +biting you, if you lay hold of his tail? Does the emperor send the thief +to the gallows, or the thing which he has stolen? The thief, I think. +Therefore science should not be despised on account of some who know +nothing about it." You will say the reasoning is not very clear, and +indeed the passage, like too many more, smacks strongly of wine and +laudanum. But such is his quaint racy style. As humorous a man, it +seems to me, as you shall meet with for many a day; and where there is +humour there is pretty sure to be imagination, tenderness, and depth of +heart. + +As for his notions of what a man of science should be, the servant of +God, and of Nature--which is the work of God--using his powers not for +money, not for ambition, but in love and charity, as he says, for the +good of his fellow-man--on that matter Paracelsus is always noble. All +that Mr. Browning has conceived on that point, all the noble speeches +which he has put into Paracelsus's mouth, are true to his writings. How +can they be otherwise, if Mr. Browning set them forth--a genius as +accurate and penetrating as he is wise and pure? + +But was Paracelsus a drunkard after all? + +Gentlemen, what concern is that of yours or mine? I have gone into the +question, as Mr. Browning did, cannot say, and don't care to say. + +Oporinus, who slandered him so cruelly, recanted when Paracelsus was +dead, and sang his praises--too late. But I do not read that he recanted +the charge of drunkenness. His defenders allow it, only saying that it +was the fault not of him alone, but of all Germans. But if so, why was +he specially blamed for what certainly others did likewise? I cannot but +fear from his writings, as well as from common report, that there was +something wrong with the man. I say only something. Against his purity +there never was a breath of suspicion. He was said to care nothing for +women; and even that was made the subject of brutal jests and lies. But +it may have been that, worn out with toil and poverty, he found comfort +in that laudanum which he believed to be the arcanum--the very elixir of +life; that he got more and more into the habit of exciting his +imagination with the narcotic, and then, it may be, when the fit of +depression followed, he strung his nerves up again by wine. It may have +been so. We have had, in the last generation, an exactly similar case in +a philosopher, now I trust in heaven, and to whose genius I owe too much +to mention his name here. + +But that Paracelsus was a sot I cannot believe. That face of his, as +painted by the great Tintoretto, is not the face of a drunkard, quack, +bully, but of such a man as Browning has conceived. The great globular +brain, the sharp delicate chin, is not that of a sot. Nor are those +eyes, which gleam out from under the deep compressed brow, wild, intense, +hungry, homeless, defiant, and yet complaining, the eyes of a sot--but +rather the eyes of a man who struggles to tell a great secret, and cannot +find words for it, and yet wonders why men cannot understand, will not +believe what seems to him as clear as day--a tragical face, as you well +can see. + +God keep us all from making our lives a tragedy by one great sin. And +now let us end this sad story with the last words which Mr. Browning puts +into the mouth of Paracelsus, dying in the hospital at Salzburg, which +have come literally true: + + Meanwhile, I have done well though not all well. + As yet men cannot do without contempt; + 'Tis for their good; and therefore fit awhile + That they reject the weak and scorn the false, + Rather than praise the strong and true in me: + But after, they will know me. If I stoop + Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, + It is but for a time. I press God's lamp + Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late, + Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day. + + + + +GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR + + +The scholar, in the sixteenth century, was a far more important personage +than now. The supply of learned men was very small, the demand for them +very great. During the whole of the fifteenth, and a great part of the +sixteenth century, the human mind turned more and more from the +scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages to that of the Romans and the +Greeks; and found more and more in old Pagan Art an element which +Monastic Art had not, and which was yet necessary for the full +satisfaction of their craving after the Beautiful. At such a crisis of +thought and taste, it was natural that the classical scholar, the man who +knew old Rome, and still more old Greece, should usurp the place of the +monk, as teacher of mankind; and that scholars should form, for a while, +a new and powerful aristocracy, limited and privileged, and all the more +redoubtable, because its power lay in intellect, and had been won by +intellect alone. + +Those who, whether poor or rich, did not fear the monk and priest, at +least feared the "scholar," who held, so the vulgar believed, the keys of +that magic lore by which the old necromancers had built cities like Rome, +and worked marvels of mechanical and chemical skill, which the degenerate +modern could never equal. + +If the "scholar" stopped in a town, his hostess probably begged of him a +charm against toothache or rheumatism. The penniless knight discoursed +with him on alchemy, and the chances of retrieving his fortune by the art +of transmuting metals into gold. The queen or bishop worried him in +private about casting their nativities, and finding their fates among the +stars. But the statesman, who dealt with more practical matters, hired +him as an advocate and rhetorician, who could fight his master's enemies +with the weapons of Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps +were turned, he might be master of others, as long as he was master of +himself. The complaints which he so often uttered concerning the cruelty +of fortune, the fickleness of princes and so forth, were probably no more +just then than such complaints are now. Then, as now, he got his +deserts; and the world bought him at his own price. If he chose to sell +himself to this patron and to that, he was used and thrown away: if he +chose to remain in honourable independence, he was courted and feared. + +Among the successful scholars of the sixteenth century, none surely is +more notable than George Buchanan. The poor Scotch widow's son, by force +of native wit, and, as I think, by force of native worth, fights his way +upward, through poverty and severest persecution, to become the +correspondent and friend of the greatest literary celebrities of the +Continent, comparable, in their opinion, to the best Latin poets of +antiquity; the preceptor of princes; the counsellor and spokesman of +Scotch statesmen in the most dangerous of times; and leaves behind him +political treatises, which have influenced not only the history of his +own country, but that of the civilised world. + +Such a success could not be attained without making enemies, perhaps +without making mistakes. But the more we study George Buchanan's +history, the less we shall be inclined to hunt out his failings, the more +inclined to admire his worth. A shrewd, sound-hearted, affectionate man, +with a strong love of right and scorn of wrong, and a humour withal which +saved him--except on really great occasions--from bitterness, and helped +him to laugh where narrower natures would have only snarled,--he is, in +many respects, a type of those Lowland Scots, who long preserved his +jokes, genuine or reputed, as a common household book. {16} A +schoolmaster by profession, and struggling for long years amid the +temptations which, in those days, degraded his class into cruel and +sordid pedants, he rose from the mere pedagogue to be, in the best sense +of the word, a courtier: "One," says Daniel Heinsius, "who seemed not +only born for a court, but born to amend it. He brought to his queen +that at which she could not wonder enough. For, by affecting a certain +liberty in censuring morals, he avoided all offence, under the cloak of +simplicity." Of him and his compeers, Turnebus, and Muretus, and their +friend Andrea Govea, Ronsard, the French court poet, said that they had +nothing of the pedagogue about them but the gown and cap. "Austere in +face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished +in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, +jesting most wittily." "Rough-hewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, +in his "Compleat Gentleman," speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in +old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a +better outside than a rugge-gown girt close about him: yet his inside and +conceipt in poesie was most rich, and his sweetness and facilitie in +verse most excellent." A typical Lowland Scot, as I said just now, he +seems to have absorbed all the best culture which France could afford +him, without losing the strength, honesty, and humour which he inherited +from his Stirlingshire kindred. + +The story of his life is easily traced. When an old man, he himself +wrote down the main events of it, at the request of his friends; and his +sketch has been filled out by commentators, if not always favourable, at +least erudite. Born in 1506, at the Moss, in Killearn--where an obelisk +to his memory, so one reads, has been erected in this century--of a +family "rather ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of +manhood, his grandfather a spendthrift, he and his seven brothers and +sisters were brought up by a widowed mother, Agnes Heriot--of whom one +wishes to know more; for the rule that great sons have great mothers +probably holds good in her case. George gave signs, while at the village +school, of future scholarship; and when he was only fourteen, his uncle +James sent him to the University of Paris. Those were hard times; and +the youths, or rather boys, who meant to become scholars, had a cruel +life of it, cast desperately out on the wide world to beg and starve, +either into self-restraint and success, or into ruin of body and soul. +And a cruel life George had. Within two years he was down in a severe +illness, his uncle dead, his supplies stopped; and the boy of sixteen got +home, he does not tell how. Then he tried soldiering; and was with +Albany's French Auxiliaries at the ineffectual attack on Wark Castle. +Marching back through deep snow, he got a fresh illness, which kept him +in bed all winter. Then he and his brother were sent to St. Andrews, +where he got his B.A. at nineteen. The next summer he went to France +once more; and "fell," he says, "into the flames of the Lutheran sect, +which was then spreading far and wide." Two years of penury followed; +and then three years of school-mastering in the College of St. Barbe, +which he has immortalised--at least, for the few who care to read modern +Latin poetry--in his elegy on "The Miseries of a Parisian Teacher of the +Humanities." The wretched regent-master, pale and suffering, sits up all +night preparing his lecture, biting his nails and thumping his desk; and +falls asleep for a few minutes, to start up at the sound of the +four-o'clock bell, and be in school by five, his Virgil in one hand, and +his rod in the other, trying to do work on his own account at old +manuscripts, and bawling all the while at his wretched boys, who cheat +him, and pay each other to answer to truants' names. The class is all +wrong. "One is barefoot, another's shoe is burst, another cries, another +writes home. Then comes the rod, the sound of blows, and howls; and the +day passes in tears." "Then mass, then another lesson, then more blows; +there is hardly time to eat." I have no space to finish the picture of +the stupid misery which, Buchanan says, was ruining his intellect, while +it starved his body. However, happier days came. Gilbert Kennedy, Earl +of Cassilis, who seems to have been a noble young gentleman, took him as +his tutor for the next five years; and with him he went back to Scotland. + +But there his plain speaking got him, as it did more than once afterward, +into trouble. He took it into his head to write, in imitation of Dunbar, +a Latin poem, in which St. Francis asks him in a dream to become a Gray +Friar, and Buchanan answered in language which had the unpleasant fault +of being too clever, and--to judge from contemporary evidence--only too +true. The friars said nothing at first; but when King James made +Buchanan tutor to one of his natural sons, they, "men professing +meekness, took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so +pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, +to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if +they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. +To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to +hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy; but not being +then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded +to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to +be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. +But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, +and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, "The Franciscans," a +long satire, compared to which the "Somnium" was bland and merciful. The +storm rose. Cardinal Beaten, Buchanan says, wanted to buy him of the +king, and then, of course, burn him, as he had just burnt five poor +souls; so, knowing James's avarice, he fled to England, through +freebooters and pestilence. + +There he found, he says, "men of both factions being burned on the same +day and in the same fire"--a pardonable exaggeration--"by Henry VIII., in +his old age more intent on his own safety than on the purity of +religion." So to his beloved France he went again, to find his enemy +Beaten ambassador at Paris. The capital was too hot to hold him; and he +fled south to Bordeaux, to Andrea Govea, the Portuguese principal of the +College of Guienne. As Professor of Latin at Bordeaux, we find him +presenting a Latin poem to Charles V.; and indulging that fancy of his +for Latin poetry which seems to us nowadays a childish pedantry, which +was then--when Latin was the vernacular tongue of all scholars--a +serious, if not altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so +famous in their day--the "Baptist," the "Medea," the "Jephtha," and the +"Alcestis"--there is neither space nor need to speak here, save to notice +the bold declamations in the "Baptist" against tyranny and priestcraft; +and to notice also that these tragedies gained for the poor Scotsman, in +the eyes of the best scholars of Europe, a credit amounting almost to +veneration. When he returned to Paris, he found occupation at once; and, +as his Scots biographers love to record, "three of the most learned men +in the world taught humanity in the same college," viz. Turnebus, +Muretus, and Buchanan. + +Then followed a strange episode in his life. A university had been +founded at Coimbra, in Portugal, and Andrea Govea had been invited to +bring thither what French savants he could collect. Buchanan went to +Portugal with his brother Patrick, two more Scotsmen, Dempster and +Ramsay, and a goodly company of French scholars, whose names and +histories may be read in the erudite pages of Dr. Irving, went likewise. +All prospered in the new Temple of the Muses for a year or so. Then its +high-priest, Govea, died; and, by a peripeteia too common in those days +and countries, Buchanan and two of his friends migrated unwillingly from +the Temple of the Muses for that of Moloch, and found themselves in the +Inquisition. + +Buchanan, it seems, had said that St. Augustine was more of a Lutheran +than a Catholic on the question of the mass. He and his friends had +eaten flesh in Lent; which, he says, almost everyone in Spain did. But +he was suspected, and with reason, as a heretic; the Gray Friars formed +but one brotherhood throughout Europe; and news among them travelled +surely if not fast, so that the story of the satire written in Scotland +had reached Portugal. The culprits were imprisoned, examined, +bullied--but not tortured--for a year and a half. At the end of that +time, the proofs of heresy, it seems, were insufficient; but lest, says +Buchanan with honest pride, "they should get the reputation of having +vainly tormented a man not altogether unknown," they sent him for some +months to a monastery, to be instructed by the monks. "The men," he +says, "were neither inhuman nor bad, but utterly ignorant of religion;" +and Buchanan solaced himself during the intervals of their instructions, +by beginning his Latin translation of the Psalms. + +At last he got free, and begged leave to return to France; but in vain. +And so, wearied out, he got on board a Candian ship at Lisbon, and +escaped to England. But England, he says, during the anarchy of Edward +VI.'s reign, was not a land which suited him; and he returned to France, +to fulfil the hopes which he had expressed in his charming "Desiderium +Lutitiae," and the still more charming, because more simple, "Adventus in +Galliam," in which he bids farewell, in most melodious verse, to "the +hungry moors of wretched Portugal, and her clods fertile in naught but +penury." + +Some seven years succeeded of schoolmastering and verse-writing: the +Latin paraphrase of the Psalms; another of the "Alcestis" of Euripides; +an Epithalamium on the marriage of poor Mary Stuart, noble and sincere, +however fantastic and pedantic, after the manner of the times; "Pomps," +too, for her wedding, and for other public ceremonies, in which all the +heathen gods and goddesses figure; epigrams, panegyrics, satires, much of +which latter productions he would have consigned to the dust-heap in his +old age, had not his too fond friends persuaded him to republish the +follies and coarsenesses of his youth. He was now one of the most famous +scholars in Europe, and the intimate friend of all the great literary +men. Was he to go on to the end, die, and no more? Was he to sink into +the mere pedant; or, if he could not do that, into the mere court +versifier? + +The wars of religion saved him, as they saved many another noble soul, +from that degradation. The events of 1560-62 forced Buchanan, as they +forced many a learned man besides, to choose whether he would be a child +of light or a child of darkness; whether he would be a dilettante +classicist, or a preacher--it might be a martyr--of the Gospel. Buchanan +may have left France in "The Troubles" merely to enjoy in his own country +elegant and learned repose. He may have fancied that he had found it, +when he saw himself, in spite of his public profession of adherence to +the Reformed Kirk, reading Livy every afternoon with his exquisite young +sovereign; master, by her favour, of the temporalities of Crossraguel +Abbey, and by the favour of Murray, Principal of St. Leonard's College in +St. Andrew's. Perhaps he fancied at times that "to-morrow was to be as +to-day, and much more abundant;" that thenceforth he might read his +folio, and write his epigram, and joke his joke, as a lazy comfortable +pluralist, taking his morning stroll out to the corner where poor Wishart +had been burned, above the blue sea and the yellow sands, and looking up +to the castle tower from whence his enemy Beaton's corpse had been hung +out; with the comfortable reflection that quieter times had come, and +that whatever evil deeds Archbishop Hamilton might dare, he would not +dare to put the Principal of St. Leonard's into the "bottle dungeon." + +If such hopes ever crossed Geordie's keen fancy, they were disappointed +suddenly and fearfully. The fire which had been kindled in France was to +reach to Scotland likewise. "Revolutions are not made with rose-water;" +and the time was at hand when all good spirits in Scotland, and George +Buchanan among them, had to choose, once and for all, amid danger, +confusion, terror, whether they would serve God or Mammon; for to serve +both would be soon impossible. + +Which side, in that war of light and darkness, George Buchanan took, is +notorious. He saw then, as others have seen since, that the two men in +Scotland who were capable of being her captains in the strife were Knox +and Murray; and to them he gave in his allegiance heart and soul. + +This is the critical epoch in Buchanan's life. By his conduct to Queen +Mary he must stand or fall. It is my belief that he will stand. It is +not my intention to enter into the details of a matter so painful, so +shocking, so prodigious; and now that that question is finally set at +rest, by the writings both of Mr. Froude and Mr. Burton, there is no need +to allude to it further, save where Buchanan's name is concerned. One +may now have every sympathy with Mary Stuart; one may regard with awe a +figure so stately, so tragic, in one sense so heroic,--for she reminds +one rather of the heroine of an old Greek tragedy, swept to her doom by +some irresistible fate, than of a being of our own flesh and blood, and +of our modern and Christian times. One may sympathise with the great +womanhood which charmed so many while she was alive; which has charmed, +in later years, so many noble spirits who have believed in her innocence, +and have doubtless been elevated and purified by their devotion to one +who seemed to them an ideal being. So far from regarding her as a +hateful personage, one may feel oneself forbidden to hate a woman whom +God may have loved, and may have pardoned, to judge from the punishment +so swift, and yet so enduring, which He inflicted. At least, he must so +believe who holds that punishment is a sign of mercy; that the most +dreadful of all dooms is impunity. Nay, more, those "Casket" letters and +sonnets may be a relief to the mind of one who believes in her guilt on +other grounds; a relief when one finds in them a tenderness, a sweetness, +a delicacy, a magnificent self-sacrifice, however hideously misplaced, +which shows what a womanly heart was there; a heart which, joined to that +queenly brain, might have made her a blessing and a glory to Scotland, +had not the whole character been warped and ruinate from childhood, by an +education so abominable, that anyone who knows what words she must have +heard, what scenes she must have beheld in France, from her youth up, +will wonder that she sinned so little: not that she sinned so much. One +may feel, in a word, that there is every excuse for those who have +asserted Mary's innocence, because their own high-mindedness shrank from +believing her guilty: but yet Buchanan, in his own place and time, may +have felt as deeply that he could do no otherwise than he did. + +The charges against him, as all readers of Scotch literature know well, +may be reduced to two heads. 1st. The letters and sonnets were +forgeries. Maitland of Lethington may have forged the letters; Buchanan, +according to some, the sonnets. Whoever forged them, Buchanan made use +of them in his Detection, knowing them to be forged. 2nd. Whether Mary +was innocent or not, Buchanan acted a base and ungrateful part in putting +himself in the forefront amongst her accusers. He had been her tutor, +her pensioner. She had heaped him with favours; and, after all, she was +his queen, and a defenceless woman: and yet he returned her kindness, in +the hour of her fall, by invectives fit only for a rancorous and reckless +advocate, determined to force a verdict by the basest arts of oratory. + +Now as to the Casket letters. I should have thought they bore in +themselves the best evidence of being genuine. I can add nothing to the +arguments of Mr. Froude and Mr. Burton, save this: that no one clever +enough to be a forger would have put together documents so incoherent, +and so incomplete. For the evidence of guilt which they contain is, +after all, slight and indirect, and, moreover, superfluous altogether; +seeing that Mary's guilt was open and palpable, before the supposed +discovery of the letters, to every person at home and abroad who had any +knowledge of the facts. As for the alleged inconsistency of the letters +with proven facts: the answer is, that whosoever wrote the letters would +be more likely to know facts which were taking place around them than any +critic could be one hundred or three hundred years afterwards. But if +these mistakes as to facts actually exist in them, they are only a fresh +argument for their authenticity. Mary, writing in agony and confusion, +might easily make a mistake: forgers would only take too good care to +make none. + +But the strongest evidence in favour of the letters and sonnets, in spite +of the arguments of good Dr. Whittaker and other apologists for Mary, is +to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would have made +Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana vein, utterly alien to the +tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious +weakness, the imploring and most feminine trust which makes the letters, +to those who--as I do--believe in them, more pathetic than any fictitious +sorrows which poets could invent. More than one touch, indeed, of utter +self-abasement, in the second letter, is so unexpected, so subtle, and +yet so true to the heart of woman, that--as has been well said--if it was +invented there must have existed in Scotland an earlier Shakespeare; who +yet has died without leaving any other sign, for good or evil, of his +dramatic genius. + +As for the theory (totally unsupported) that Buchanan forged the poem +usually called the "Sonnets;" it is paying old Geordie's genius, however +versatile it may have been, too high a compliment to believe that he +could have written both them and the Detection; while it is paying his +shrewdness too low a compliment to believe that he could have put into +them, out of mere carelessness or stupidity, the well-known line, which +seems incompatible with the theory both of the letters and of his own +Detection; and which has ere now been brought forward as a fresh proof of +Mary's innocence. + +And, as with the letters, so with the sonnets: their delicacy, their +grace, their reticence, are so many arguments against their having been +forged by any Scot of the sixteenth century, and least of all by one in +whose character--whatever his other virtues may have been--delicacy was +by no means the strongest point. + +As for the complaint that Buchanan was ungrateful to Mary, it must be +said: That even if she, and not Murray, had bestowed on him the +temporalities of Crossraguel Abbey four years before, it was merely fair +pay for services fairly rendered; and I am not aware that payment, or +even favours, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in +questions of highest morality and highest public importance. And the +importance of that question cannot be exaggerated. At a moment when +Scotland seemed struggling in death-throes of anarchy, civil and +religious, and was in danger of becoming a prey either to England or to +France, if there could not be formed out of the heart of her a people, +steadfast, trusty, united, strong politically because strong in the fear +of God and the desire of righteousness--at such a moment as this, a crime +had been committed, the like of which had not been heard in Europe since +the tragedy of Joan of Naples. All Europe stood aghast. The honour of +the Scottish nation was at stake. More than Mary or Bothwell were known +to be implicated in the deed; and--as Buchanan puts it in the opening of +his "De Jure Regni"--"The fault of some few was charged upon all; and the +common hatred of a particular person did redound to the whole nation; so +that even such as were remote from any suspicion were inflamed by the +infamy of men's crimes." {17} + +To vindicate the national honour, and to punish the guilty, as well as to +save themselves from utter anarchy, the great majority of the Scotch +nation had taken measures against Mary which required explicit +justification in the sight of Europe, as Buchanan frankly confesses in +the opening of his "De Jure Regni." The chief authors of those measures +had been summoned, perhaps unwisely and unjustly, to answer for their +conduct to the Queen of England. Queen Elizabeth--a fact which was +notorious enough then, though it has been forgotten till the last few +years--was doing her utmost to shield Mary. Buchanan was deputed, it +seems, to speak out for the people of Scotland; and certainly never +people had an abler apologist. If he spoke fiercely, savagely, it must +be remembered that he spoke of a fierce and savage matter; if he used--and +it may be abused--all the arts of oratory, it must be remembered that he +was fighting for the honour, and it may be for the national life, of his +country, and striking--as men in such cases have a right to strike--as +hard as he could. If he makes no secret of his indignation, and even +contempt, it must be remembered that indignation and contempt may well +have been real with him, while they were real with the soundest part of +his countrymen; with that reforming middle class, comparatively untainted +by French profligacy, comparatively undebauched by feudal subservience, +which has been the leaven which has leavened the whole Scottish people in +the last three centuries with the elements of their greatness. If, +finally, he heaps up against the unhappy Queen charges which Mr. Burton +thinks incredible, it must be remembered that, as he well says, these +charges give the popular feeling about Queen Mary; and it must be +remembered also, that that popular feeling need not have been altogether +unfounded. Stories which are incredible, thank God, in these milder +days, were credible enough then, because, alas! they were so often true. +Things more ugly than any related of poor Mary were possible enough--as +no one knew better than Buchanan--in that very French court in which Mary +had been brought up; things as ugly were possible in Scotland then, and +for at least a century later; and while we may hope that Buchanan has +overstated his case, we must not blame him too severely for yielding to a +temptation common to all men of genius when their creative power is +roused to its highest energy by a great cause and a great indignation. + +And that the genius was there, no man can doubt; one cannot read that +"hideously eloquent" description of Kirk o' Field, which Mr. Burton has +well chosen as a specimen of Buchanan's style, without seeing that we are +face to face with a genius of a very lofty order: not, indeed, of the +loftiest--for there is always in Buchanan's work, it seems to me, a want +of unconsciousness, and a want of tenderness--but still a genius worthy +to be placed beside those ancient writers from whom he took his manner. +Whether or not we agree with his contemporaries, who say that he equalled +Virgil in Latin poetry, we may place him fairly as a prose writer by the +side of Demosthenes, Cicero, or Tacitus. And so I pass from this painful +subject; only quoting--if I may be permitted to quote--Mr. Burton's wise +and gentle verdict on the whole. "Buchanan," he says, "though a zealous +Protestant, had a good deal of the Catholic and sceptical spirit of +Erasmus, and an admiring eye for everything that was great and beautiful. +Like the rest of his countrymen, he bowed himself in presence of the +lustre that surrounded the early career of his mistress. More than once +he expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of a genius +deemed by his contemporaries to be worthy of the theme. There is not, +perhaps, to be found elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of +shipwrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one finds in +turning the leaves of the volume which contains the beautiful epigram +'Nympha Caledoniae' in one part, the 'Detectio Mariae Reginae' in +another; and this contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the +reaction in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been general, +and not limited to the Protestant party; for the conditions under which +it became almost a part of the creed of the Church of Rome to believe in +her innocence had not arisen." + +If Buchanan, as some of his detractors have thought, raised himself by +subserviency to the intrigues of the Regent Murray, the best heads in +Scotland seem to have been of a different opinion. The murder of Murray +did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could +do it, by that "Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis," in which he showed +himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin prose. His +satire of the "Chameleon," though its publication was stopped by +Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True +Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any +Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation +against that wily turncoat's misgoings, which could not but recommend the +author to all honest men. Therefore it was, I presume, and not because +he was a rogue, and a hired literary spadassin, that to the best heads in +Scotland he seemed so useful, it may be so worthy, a man, that he be +provided with continually increasing employment. As tutor to James I.; +as director, for a short time, of the chancery; as keeper of the privy +seal, and privy councillor; as one of the commissioners for codifying the +laws, and again--for in the semi-anarchic state of Scotland, government +had to do everything in the way of organisation--in the committee for +promulgating a standard Latin grammar; in the committee for reforming the +University of St. Andrew's: in all these Buchanan's talents were again +and again called for; and always ready. The value of his work, +especially that for the reform of St. Andrew's, must be judged by +Scotsmen, rather than by an Englishman; but all that one knows of it +justifies Melville's sentence in the well-known passage in his memoirs, +wherein he describes the tutors and household of the young king. "Mr. +George was a Stoic philosopher, who looked not far before him;" in plain +words, a high-minded and right-minded man, bent on doing the duty which +lay nearest him. The worst that can be said against him during these +times is, that his name appears with the sum of 100 pounds against it, as +one of those "who were to be entertained in Scotland by pensions out of +England;" and Ruddiman, of course, comments on the fact by saying that +Buchanan "was at length to act under the threefold character of +malcontent, reformer, and pensioner:" but it gives no proof whatsoever +that Buchanan ever received any such bribe; and in the very month, +seemingly, in which that list was written--10th March, 1579--Buchanan had +given a proof to the world that he was not likely to be bribed or bought, +by publishing a book, as offensive probably to Queen Elizabeth as it was +to his own royal pupil; namely, his famous "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," +the very primer, according to many great thinkers, of constitutional +liberty. He dedicates that book to King James, "not only as his monitor, +but also as an importunate and bold exactor, which in these his tender +and flexible years may conduct him in safety past the rocks of flattery." +He has complimented James already on his abhorrence of flattery, "his +inclination far above his years for undertaking all heroical and noble +attempts, his promptitude in obeying his instructors and governors, and +all who give him sound admonition, and his judgment and diligence in +examining affairs, so that no man's authority can have much weight with +him unless it be confirmed by probable reasons." Buchanan may have +thought that nine years of his stern rule had eradicated some of James's +ill conditions; the petulance which made him kill the Master of Mar's +sparrow, in trying to wrest it out of his hand; the carelessness with +which--if the story told by Chytraeus, on the authority of Buchanan's +nephew, be true--James signed away his crown to Buchanan for fifteen +days, and only discovered his mistake by seeing Bachanan act in open +court the character of King of Scots. Buchanan had at last made him a +scholar; he may have fancied that he had made him likewise a manful man: +yet he may have dreaded that, as James grew up, the old inclinations +would return in stronger and uglier shapes, and that flattery might be, +as it was after all, the cause of James's moral ruin. He at least will +be no flatterer. He opens the dialogue which he sends to the king, with +a calm but distinct assertion of his mother's guilt, and a justification +of the conduct of men who were now most of them past helping Buchanan, +for they were laid in their graves; and then goes on to argue fairly, but +to lay down firmly, in a sort of Socratic dialogue, those very principles +by loyalty to which the House of Hanover has reigned, and will reign, +over these realms. So with his History of Scotland; later antiquarian +researches have destroyed the value of the earlier portions of it: but +they have surely increased the value of those later portions, in which +Buchanan inserted so much which he had already spoken out in his +Detection of Mary. In that book also _liberavit animam suam_; he spoke +his mind fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who he must have +known--for Buchanan was no dullard--regarded him with deep dislike, who +might in a few years be able to work his ruin. + +But those few years were not given to Buchanan. He had all but done his +work, and he hastened to get it over before the night should come wherein +no man can work. One must be excused for telling--one would not tell it +in a book intended to be read only by Scotsmen, who know or ought to know +the tale already--how the two Melvilles and Buchanan's nephew Thomas went +to see him in Edinburgh, in September, 1581, hearing that he was ill, and +his History still in the press; and how they found the old sage, true to +his schoolmaster's instincts, teaching the Hornbook to his servant-lad; +and how he told them that doing that was "better than stealing sheep, or +sitting idle, which was as bad," and showed them that dedication to James +I., in which he holds up to his imitation as a hero whose equal was +hardly to be found in history, that very King David whose liberality to +the Romish Church provoked James's witticism that "David was a sair saint +for the crown." Andrew Melville, so James Melville says, found fault +with the style. Buchanan replied that he could do no more for thinking +of another thing, which was to die. They then went to Arbuthnot's +printing-house, and inspected the history, as far as that terrible +passage concerning Rizzio's burial, where Mary is represented as "laying +the miscreant almost in the arms of Maud de Valois, the late queen." +Alarmed, and not without reason, at such plain speaking, they stopped the +press, and went back to Buchanan's house. Buchanan was in bed. "He was +going," he said, "the way of welfare." They asked him to soften the +passage; the king might prohibit the whole work. "Tell me, man," said +Buchanan, "if I have told the truth." They could not, or would not, deny +it. "Then I will abide his feud, and all his kin's; pray, pray to God +for me, and let Him direct all." "So," says Melville, "before the +printing of his chronicle was ended, this most learned, wise, and godly +man ended his mortal life." + +Camden has a hearsay story--written, it must be remembered, in James I.'s +time--that Buchanan, on his death-bed, repented of his harsh words +against Queen Mary; and an old Lady Rosyth is said to have said that when +she was young a certain David Buchanan recollected hearing some such +words from George Buchanan's own mouth. Those who will, may read what +Ruddiman and Love have said, and oversaid, on both sides of the question: +whatever conclusion they come to, it will probably not be that to which +George Chalmers comes in his life of Ruddiman: that "Buchanan, like other +liars, who, by the repetition of falsehoods are induced to consider the +fiction as truth, had so often dwelt with complacency on the forgeries of +his Detections, and the figments of his History, that he at length +regarded his fictions and his forgeries as most authentic facts." + +At all events his fictions and his forgeries had not paid him in that +coin which base men generally consider the only coin worth having, +namely, the good things of this life. He left nothing behind him--if at +least Dr. Irving has rightly construed the "Testament Dative" which he +gives in his appendix--save arrears to the sum of 100 pounds of his +Crossraguel pension. We may believe as we choose the story in +Mackenzie's "Scotch Writers" that when he felt himself dying, he asked +his servant Young about the state of his funds, and finding he had not +enough to bury himself withal, ordered what he had to be given to the +poor, and said that if they did not choose to bury him they might let him +lie where he was, or cast him in a ditch, the matter was very little to +him. He was buried, it seems, at the expense of the city of Edinburgh, +in the Greyfriars' Churchyard--one says in a plain turf grave--among the +marble monuments which covered the bones of worse or meaner men; and +whether or not the "Throughstone" which, "sunk under the ground in the +Greyfriars," was raised and cleaned by the Council of Edinburgh in 1701, +was really George Buchanan's, the reigning powers troubled themselves +little for several generations where he lay. + +For Buchanan's politics were too advanced for his age. Not only Catholic +Scotsmen, like Blackwood, Winzet, and Ninian, but Protestants, like Sir +Thomas Craig and Sir John Wemyss, could not stomach the "De Jure Regni." +They may have had some reason on their side. In the then anarchic state +of Scotland, organisation and unity under a common head may have been +more important than the assertion of popular rights. Be that as it may, +in 1584, only two years after his death, the Scots Parliament condemned +his Dialogue and History as untrue, and commanded all possessors of +copies to deliver them up, that they might be purged of "the offensive +and extraordinary matters" which they contained. The "De Jure Regni" was +again prohibited in Scotland, in 1664, even in manuscript; and in 1683, +the whole of Buchanan's political works had the honour of being burned by +the University of Oxford, in company with those of Milton, Languet, and +others, as "pernicious books, and damnable doctrines, destructive to the +sacred persons of Princes, their state and government, and of all human +society." And thus the seed which Buchanan had sown, and Milton had +watered--for the allegation that Milton borrowed from Buchanan is +probably true, and equally honourable to both--lay trampled into the +earth, and seemingly lifeless, till it tillered out, and blossomed, and +bore fruit to a good purpose, in the Revolution of 1688. + +To Buchanan's clear head and stout heart, Scotland owes, as England owes +likewise, much of her modern liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it +seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality, public and +private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes was like, in +Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there remains proof +enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay--that the +morality of the populace, which looked up to the nobles as its example +and its guide, was not a whit better. As anarchy increased, immorality +was likely to increase likewise; and Scotland was in serious danger of +falling into such a state as that into which Poland fell, to its ruin, +within a hundred and fifty years after; in which the savagery of +feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by +a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell, +the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern +freebooter. To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she +should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in +moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief +in the government and the judgments of a living God. And the tone which +Buchanan, like Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their day, +helped notably that national salvation. It gathered together, organised, +strengthened, the scattered and wavering elements of public morality. It +assured the hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the wrong; +and taught a whole nation to call acts by their just names, whoever might +be the doers of them. It appealed to the common conscience of men. It +proclaimed a universal and God-given morality, a bar at which all, from +the lowest to the highest, must alike be judged. + +The tone was stern: but there was need of sternness. Moral life and +death were in the balance. If the Scots people were to be told that the +crimes which roused their indignation were excusable, or beyond +punishment, or to be hushed up and slipped over in any way, there was an +end of morality among them. Every man, from the greatest to the least, +would go and do likewise, according to his powers of evil. That method +was being tried in France, and in Spain likewise, during those very +years. Notorious crimes were hushed up under pretence of loyalty; +excused as political necessities; smiled away as natural and pardonable +weaknesses. The result was the utter demoralisation, both of France and +Spain. Knox and Buchanan, the one from the standpoint of an old Hebrew +prophet, the other rather from that of a Juvenal or a Tacitus, tried the +other method, and called acts by their just names, appealing alike to +conscience and to God. The result was virtue and piety, and that manly +independence of soul which is thought compatible with hearty loyalty, in +a country labouring under heavy disadvantages, long divided almost into +two hostile camps, two rival races. + +And the good influence was soon manifest, not only in those who sided +with Buchanan and his friends, but in those who most opposed them. The +Roman Catholic preachers, who at first asserted Mary's right to impurity +while they allowed her guilt, grew silent for shame, and set themselves +to assert her entire innocence; while the Scots who have followed their +example have, to their honour, taken up the same ground. They have +fought Buchanan on the ground of fact, not on the ground of morality: +they have alleged--as they had a fair right to do--the probability of +intrigue and forgery in an age so profligate: the improbability that a +Queen so gifted by nature and by fortune, and confessedly for a long +while so strong and so spotless, should as it were by a sudden insanity +have proved so untrue to herself. Their noblest and purest sympathies +have been enlisted--and who can blame them?--in loyalty to a Queen, +chivalry to a woman, pity for the unfortunate and--as they conceived--the +innocent; but whether they have been right or wrong in their view of +facts, the Scotch partisans of Mary have always--as far as I know--been +right in their view of morals; they have never deigned to admit Mary's +guilt, and then to palliate it by those sentimental, or rather sensual, +theories of human nature, too common in a certain school of French +literature, too common, alas! in a certain school of modern English +novels. They have not said, "She did it; but after all, was the deed so +very inexcusable?" They have said, "The deed was inexcusable: but she +did not do it." And so the Scotch admirers of Mary, who have numbered +among them many a pure and noble, as well as many a gifted spirit, have +kept at least themselves unstained; and have shown, whether consciously +or not, that they too share in that sturdy Scotch moral sense which has +been so much strengthened--as I believe by the plain speech of good old +George Buchanan. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} This lecture was delivered in America in 1874. + +{2} Black, translator of Mallett's "Northern Antiquities," Supplementary +Chapter I., and Rafn's "Antiquitates Americanae." + +{3} On the Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz. + +{4} This lecture was given in America in 1874. + +{5} This lecture was given in America in 1874. + +{6} This lecture and the two preceding ones, being published after the +author's death, have not had the benefit of his corrections. + +{7} A Life of Rondelet, by his pupil Laurent Joubert, is to be found +appended to his works; and with an account of his illness and death, by +his cousin, Claude Formy, which is well worth the perusal of any man, +wise or foolish. Many interesting details beside, I owe to the courtesy +of Professor Planchon, of Montpellier, author of a discourse on "Rondelet +et vies Disciples," which appeared, with a learned and curious Appendix, +in the "Montpellier Medical" for 1866. + +{8} This lecture was given at Cambridge in 1869. + +{9} This lecture was given at Cambridge in 1869. + +{10} I owe this account of Bloet's--which appears to me the only one +trustworthy--to the courtesy and erudition of Professor Henry Morley, who +finds it quoted from Bloet's "Acroama," in the "Observationum Medicarum +Rariorum," lib. vii., of John Theodore Schenk. Those who wish to know +several curious passages of Vesalius's life, which I have not inserted in +this article, would do well to consult one by Professor Morley, "Anatomy +in Long Clothes," in "Fraser's Magazine" for November, 1853. May I +express a hope, which I am sure will be shared by all who have read +Professor Morley's biographies of Jerome Carden and of Cornelius Agrippa, +that he will find leisure to return to the study of Vesalius's life; and +will do for him what he has done for the two just-mentioned writers? + +{11} Olivarez's "Relacion" is to be found in the Granvelle State Papers. +For the general account of Don Carlos's illness, and of the miraculous +agencies by which his cure was said to have been effected, the general +reader should consult Miss Frere's "Biography of Elizabeth of Valois," +vol. i. pp. 307-19. + +{12} In justice to poor Doctor Olivarez, it must be said that, while he +allows all force to the intercession of the Virgin and of Fray Diego, and +of "many just persons," he cannot allow that there was any "miracle +properly so called," because the prince was cured according to "natural +order," and by "experimental remedies" of the physicians. + +{13} This lecture was given at Cambridge in 1869, and has not had the +benefit of the author's corrections for the press. + +{14} Delrio's book, a famous one in its day, was published about 1612. + +{15} For a true estimate of Paracelsus you must read "Fur Philippus +Aureolus Theophrarstus von Hohenheim," by that great German physician and +savant, Professor Marx, of Gottiingen; also a valuable article founded on +Dr. Marx's views in the "Nouveau Biographie Universelle;" and also--which +is within the reach of all--Professor Maurice's article on Paracelsus in +Vol. II. of his history of "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy." But the +best key to Paracelsus is to be found in his own works. + +{16} So says Dr. Irving, writing in 1817. I have, however, tried in +vain to get a sight of this book. I need not tell Scotch scholars how +much I am indebted throughout this article to Mr. David Irving's erudite +second edition of Buchanan's Life. + +{17} From the quaint old translation of 1721, by "A Person of Honour of +the Kingdom of Scotland." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1360.txt or 1360.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1360 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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