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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +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 e 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 +Voluspe. + + +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 e 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 Etext of Historical Lecturers and Essays + diff --git a/old/hstle10.zip b/old/hstle10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f473152 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/hstle10.zip |