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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches
+of Lord Macaulay, Volume 1 [Knight's Quarterly Magazine] of 4
+
+Sue Asscher  asschers@satcom.net.au
+
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+The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay.
+
+Volume I.
+
+May, 2000 [Etext #2167]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches
+of Lord Macaulay:   Volume 1 [Knight's Quarterly Magazine] of 4
+******This file should be named 1mwsm10.txt or 1mwsm10.zip*****
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+
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
+
+OF
+
+LORD MACAULAY.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+Lord Macaulay always looked forward to a publication of his
+miscellaneous works, either by himself or by those who should
+represent him after his death.  And latterly he expressly
+reserved, whenever the arrangements as to copyright made it
+necessary, the right of such publication.
+
+The collection which is now published comprehends some of the
+earliest and some of the latest works which he composed.  He was
+born on 25th October, 1800; commenced residence at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, in October, 1818; was elected Craven
+University Scholar in 1821; graduated as B.A. in 1822; was
+elected fellow of the college in October, 1824; was called to the
+bar in February, 1826, when he joined the Northern Circuit; and
+was elected member for Calne in 1830.  After this last event, he
+did not long continue to practise at the bar.  He went to India
+in 1834, whence he returned in June, 1838.  He was elected member
+for Edinburgh, in 1839, and lost this seat in July, 1847; and
+this (though he was afterwards again elected for that city in
+July, 1852, without being a candidate) may be considered as the
+last instance of his taking an active part in the contests of
+public life.  These few dates are mentioned for the purpose
+of enabling the reader to assign the articles, now and previously
+published, to the principal periods into which the author's life
+may be divided.
+
+The admirers of his later works will probably be interested by
+watching the gradual formation of his style, and will notice in
+his earlier productions, vigorous and clear as their language
+always was, the occurrence of faults against which he afterwards
+most anxiously guarded himself.  A much greater interest will
+undoubtedly be felt in tracing the date and development of his
+opinions.
+
+The articles published in Knight's Quarterly Magazine were
+composed during the author's residence at college, as B.A.  It
+may be remarked that the first two of these exhibit the
+earnestness with which he already endeavoured to represent to
+himself and to others the scenes and persons of past times as in
+actual existence.  Of the Dialogue between Milton and Cowley he
+spoke, many years after its publication, as that one of his works
+which he remembered with most satisfaction.  The article on
+Mitford's Greece he did not himself value so highly as others
+thought it deserved.  This article, at any rate, contains the
+first distinct enunciation of his views, as to the office of an
+historian, views afterwards more fully set forth in his Essay,
+upon History, in the Edinburgh Review.  From the protest, in the
+last mentioned essay, against the conventional notions respecting
+the majesty of history might perhaps have been anticipated
+something like the third chapter of the History of England.  It
+may be amusing to notice that in the article on Mitford, appears
+the first sketch of the New Zealander, afterwards filled up in a
+passage in the review of Mrs Austin's translation of Ranke, a
+passage which at one time was the subject of allusion, two or
+three times a week, in speeches and leading articles.  In this,
+too, appear, perhaps for the first time, the author's views on
+the representative system.  These he retained to the very last;
+they are brought forward repeatedly in the articles published in
+this collection and elsewhere, and in his speeches in parliament;
+and they coincide with the opinions expressed in the letter to an
+American correspondent, which was so often cited in the late
+debate on the Reform Bill.
+
+Some explanation appears to be necessary as to the publication of
+the three articles "Mill on Government," "Westminster Reviewer's
+Defence of Mill" and "Utilitarian Theory of Government."
+
+In 1828 Mr James Mill, the author of the History of British
+India, reprinted some essays which he had contributed to the
+Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and among these was
+an Essay on Government.  The method of inquiry and reasoning
+adopted in this essay appeared to Macaulay to be essentially
+wrong.  He entertained a very strong conviction that the only
+sound foundation for a theory of Government must be laid in
+careful and copious historical induction; and he believed that Mr
+Mill's work rested upon a vicious reasoning a priori.  Upon this
+point he felt the more earnestly, owing to his own passion for
+historical research, and to his devout admiration of Bacon, whose
+works he was at that time studying with intense attention.  There
+can, however, be little doubt that he was also provoked by the
+pretensions of some members of a sect which then commonly went by
+the name of Benthamites, or Utilitarians.  This sect included
+many of his contemporaries, who had quitted Cambridge at about
+the same time with him.  It had succeeded, in some measure, to
+the sect of the Byronians, whom he has described in the review of
+Moore's Life of Lord Byron, who discarded their neckcloths, and
+fixed little models of skulls on the sand-glasses by which they
+regulated the boiling of their eggs for breakfast.  The members
+of these sects, and of many others that have succeeded, have
+probably long ago learned to smile at the temporary humours.  But
+Macaulay, himself a sincere admirer of Bentham, was irritated by
+what he considered the unwarranted tone assumed by several of the
+class of Utilitarians.  "We apprehend," he said, "that many of
+them are persons who, having read little or nothing, are
+delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority
+by some teacher who assures them that the studies which they have
+neglected are of no value, puts five or six phrases into their
+mouths, lends them an odd number of the Westminster Review, and
+in a month transforms them into philosophers;" and he spoke of
+them as "smatterers, whose attainments just suffice to elevate
+them from the insignificance of dunces to the dignity of bores,
+and to spread dismay among their pious aunts and grand mothers."
+The sect, of course, like other sects, comprehended some
+pretenders, and these the most arrogant and intolerant among its
+members.  He, however, went so far as to apply the following
+language to the majority:--"As to the greater part of the sect,
+it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or
+under whom.  It would be more amusing, to be sure, and more
+reputable, if they would take up the old republican cant and
+declaim about Brutus and Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants
+and the blessedness of dying for liberty.  But, on the whole,
+they might have chosen worse.  They may as well be Utilitarians
+as jockeys or dandies.  And, though quibbling about self-interest
+and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number, is but a poor employment for a grown man, it
+certainly hurts the health less than hard drinking and the
+fortune less than high play; it is not much more laughable than
+phrenology, and is immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting."
+
+Macaulay inserted in the Edinburgh Review of March, 1829, an
+article upon Mr Mill's Essay.  He attacked the method with much
+vehemence; and, to the end of his life, he never saw any ground
+for believing that in this he had gone too far.  But before long
+he felt that he had not spoken of the author of the Essay with
+the respect due to so eminent a man.  In 1833, he described Mr
+mill, during the debate on the India Bill of that year, as a
+"gentleman extremely well acquainted with the affairs of our
+Eastern Empire, a most valuable servant of the Company, and the
+author of a history of India, which, though certainly not free
+from faults, is, I think, on the whole, the greatest historical
+work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon."
+
+Almost immediately upon the appearance of the article in the
+Edinburgh Review, an answer was published in the Westminster
+Review.  It was untruly attributed, in the newspapers of the day,
+to Mr Bentham himself.  Macaulay's answer to this appeared in the
+Edinburgh Review, June, 1829.  He wrote the answer under the
+belief that he was answering Mr Bentham, and was undeceived in
+time only to add the postscript.  The author of the article in
+the Westminster Review had not perceived that the question raised
+was not as to the truth or falsehood of the result at which Mr
+Mill had arrived, but as to the soundness or unsoundness of the
+method which he pursued; a misunderstanding at which Macaulay,
+while he supposed the article to be the work of Mr Bentham,
+expressed much surprise.  The controversy soon became principally
+a dispute as to the theory which was commonly known by the name
+of The Greatest Happiness Principle.  Another article in the
+Westminster Review followed; and a surrejoinder by Macaulay in
+the Edinburgh Review of October, 1829.  Macaulay was irritated at
+what he conceived to be either extreme dullness or gross
+unfairness on the part of his unknown antagonist, and struck as
+hard as he could; and he struck very hard indeed.
+
+The ethical question thus raised was afterwards discussed by Sir
+James Mackintosh, in the Dissertation contributed by him to the
+seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, page 284-313
+(Whewell's Edition).  Sir James Mackintosh notices the part taken
+in the controversy by Macaulay, in the following words:  "A
+writer of consummate ability, who has failed in little but the
+respect due to the abilities and character of his opponents, has
+given too much countenance to the abuse and confusion of language
+exemplified in the well-known verse of Pope,
+
+'Modes of self-love the Passions we may call.'
+
+'We know,' says he, 'no universal proposition respecting human
+nature which is true but one--that men always act from self-
+interest.'"  "It is manifest from the sequel, that the writer is
+not the dupe of the confusion; but many of his readers may be so.
+If, indeed, the word "self-interest" could with propriety be used
+for the gratification of every prevalent desire, he has clearly
+shown that this change in the signification of terms would be of
+no advantage to the doctrine which he controverts.  It would make
+as many sorts of self-interest as there are appetites, and it is
+irreconcilably at variance with the system of association
+proposed by Mr Mill."  "The admirable writer whose language has
+occasioned this illustration, who at an early age has mastered
+every species of composition, will doubtless hold fast to
+simplicity, which survives all the fashions of deviation from it,
+and which a man of genius so fertile has few temptations to for
+sake."
+
+When Macaulay selected for publication certain articles of the
+Edinburgh Review, he resolved not to publish any of the three
+essays in question; for which he assigned the following reason:--
+
+"The author has been strongly urged to insert three papers on the
+Utilitarian Philosophy, which, when they first appeared,
+attracted some notice, but which are not in the American
+editions.  He has however determined to omit these papers, not
+because he is disposed to retract a single doctrine which they
+contain, but because he is unwilling to offer what might be
+regarded as an affront to the memory of one from whose opinions
+he still widely dissents, but to whose talents and virtues he
+admits that he formerly did not do justice.  Serious as are the
+faults of the Essay on Government, a critic, while noticing those
+faults, should have abstained from using contemptuous language
+respecting the historian of British India.  It ought to be known
+that Mr Mill had the generosity, not only to forgive, but to
+forget the unbecoming acrimony with which he had been assailed,
+and was, when his valuable life closed, on terms of cordial
+friendship with his assailant."
+
+Under these circumstances, considerable doubt has been felt as to
+the propriety of republishing the three Essays in the present
+collection.  But it has been determined, not without much
+hesitation, that they should appear.  It is felt that no
+disrespect is shown to the memory of Mr Mill, when the
+publication is accompanied by so full an apology for the tone
+adopted towards him; and Mr Mill himself would have been the last
+to wish for the suppression of opinions on the ground that they
+were in express antagonism to his own.  The grave has now closed
+upon the assailant as well as the assailed.  On the other hand,
+it cannot but be desirable that opinions which the author
+retained to the last, on important questions in politics and
+morals, should be before the public.
+
+Some of the poems now collected have already appeared in print;
+others are supplied by the recollection of friends.  The first
+two are published on account of their having been composed in the
+author's childhood.  In the poems, as well as in the prose works,
+will be occasionally found thoughts and expressions which have
+afterwards been adopted in later productions.
+
+No alteration whatever has been made from the form in which the
+author left the several articles, with the exception of some
+changes in punctuation, and the correction of one or two obvious
+misprints.
+
+T.F.E.
+London, June 1860.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.
+
+Fragments of a Roman Tale.  (June 1823.)
+
+On the Royal Society of Literature.  (June 1823.)
+
+Scenes from "Athenian Revels."  (January 1824.)
+
+Criticisms on the Principal Italian Writers.  No. I. Dante.
+(January 1824.)
+
+Criticisms on the Principal Italian Writers.  No. II. Petrarch.
+(April 1824.)
+
+Some account of the Great Lawsuit between the Parishes of St
+Dennis and St George in the Water.  (April 1824.)
+
+A Conversation between Mr Abraham Cowley and Mr John Milton,
+touching the Great Civil War.  (August 1824.)
+
+On the Athenian Orators.  (August 1824.)
+
+A Prophetic Account of a Grand National Epic Poem, to be entitled
+"The Wellingtoniad," and to be Published A.D. 2824.  (November
+1824.)
+
+On Mitford's History of Greece.  (November 1824.)
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF LORD MACAULAY.
+
+
+CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.
+
+
+FRAGMENTS OF A ROMAN TALE.
+
+(June 1823.)
+
+
+It was an hour after noon.  Ligarius was returning from the
+Campus Martius.  He strolled through one of the streets which led
+to the Forum, settling his gown, and calculating the odds on the
+gladiators who were to fence at the approaching Saturnalia.
+While thus occupied, he overtook Flaminius, who, with a heavy
+step and a melancholy face, was sauntering in the same direction.
+The light-hearted young man plucked him by the sleeve.
+
+"Good-day, Flaminius.  Are you to be of Catiline's party this
+evening?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Why so?  Your little Tarentine girl will break her heart."
+
+"No matter.  Catiline has the best cooks and the finest wine in
+Rome.  There are charming women at his parties.  But the twelve-
+line board and the dice-box pay for all.  The Gods confound me if
+I did not lose two millions of sesterces last night.  My villa at
+Tibur, and all the statues that my father the praetor brought
+from Ephesus, must go to the auctioneer.  That is a high price,
+you will acknowledge, even for Phoenicopters, Chian, and
+Callinice."
+
+"High indeed, by Pollux."
+
+"And that is not the worst.  I saw several of the leading
+senators this morning.  Strange things are whispered in the
+higher political circles."
+
+"The Gods confound the political circles.  I have hated the name
+of politician ever since Sylla's proscription, when I was within
+a moment of having my throat cut by a politician, who took me for
+another politician.  While there is a cask of Falernian in
+Campania, or a girl in the Suburra, I shall be too well employed
+to think on the subject."
+
+"You will do well," said Flaminius gravely, "to bestow some
+little consideration upon it at present.  Otherwise, I fear, you
+will soon renew your acquaintance with politicians, in a manner
+quite as unpleasant as that to which you allude."
+
+"Averting Gods! what do you mean?"
+
+"I will tell you.  There are rumours of conspiracy.  The order of
+things established by Lucius Sylla has excited the disgust of the
+people, and of a large party of the nobles.  Some violent
+convulsion is expected."
+
+"What is that to me?  I suppose that they will hardly proscribe
+the vintners and gladiators, or pass a law compelling every
+citizen to take a wife."
+
+"You do not understand.  Catiline is supposed to be the author of
+the revolutionary schemes.  You must have heard bold opinions at
+his table repeatedly."
+
+"I never listen to any opinions upon such subjects, bold or
+timid."
+
+"Look to it. Your name has been mentioned."
+
+"Mine! good Gods!  I call Heaven to witness that I never so much
+as mentioned Senate, Consul, or Comitia, in Catiline's house."
+
+"Nobody suspects you of any participation in the inmost counsels
+of the party.  But our great men surmise that you are among those
+whom he has bribed so high with beauty, or entangled so deeply in
+distress, that they are no longer their own masters.  I shall
+never set foot within his threshold again.  I have been solemnly
+warned by men who understand public affairs; and I advise you to
+be cautious."
+
+The friends had now turned into the Forum, which was thronged
+with the gay and elegant youth of Rome.  "I can tell you more,"
+continued Flaminius; "somebody was remarking to the Consul
+yesterday how loosely a certain acquaintance of ours tied his
+girdle.  'Let him look to himself;' said Cicero, 'or the state
+may find a tighter girdle for his neck.'"
+
+"Good Gods! who is it?  You cannot surely mean"--
+
+"There he is."
+
+Flaminius pointed to a man who was pacing up and down the Forum
+at a little distance from them.  He was in the prime of manhood.
+His personal advantages were extremely striking, and were
+displayed with an extravagant but not ungraceful foppery.  His
+gown waved in loose folds; his long dark curls were dressed with
+exquisite art, and shone and steamed with odours; his step and
+gesture exhibited an elegant and commanding figure in every
+posture of polite languor.  But his countenance formed a singular
+contrast to the general appearance of his person.  The high and
+imperial brow, the keen aquiline features, the compressed mouth;
+the penetrating eye, indicated the highest degree of ability and
+decision.  He seemed absorbed in intense meditation.  With eyes
+fixed on the ground, and lips working in thought, he sauntered
+round the area, apparently unconscious how many of the young
+gallants of Rome were envying the taste of his dress, and the
+ease of his fashionable stagger.
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Ligarius, "Caius Caesar is as unlikely to be
+in a plot as I am."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"He does nothing but game; feast, intrigue, read Greek, and write
+verses."
+
+"You know nothing of Caesar.  Though he rarely addresses the
+Senate, he is considered as the finest speaker there, after the
+Consul.  His influence with the multitude is immense.  He will
+serve his rivals in public life as he served me last night at
+Catiline's.  We were playing at the twelve lines.  (Duodecim
+scripta, a game of mixed chance and skill, which seems to have
+been very fashionable in the higher circles of Rome.  The famous
+lawyer Mucius was renowned for his skill in it.--("Cic. Orat." i.
+50.)--Immense stakes.  He laughed all the time, chatted with
+Valeria over his shoulder, kissed her hand between every two
+moves, and scarcely looked at the board.  I thought that I had
+him.  All at once I found my counters driven into the corner.
+Not a piece to move, by Hercules.  It cost me two millions of
+sesterces.  All the Gods and Goddesses confound him for it!"
+
+"As to Valeria," said Ligarius, "I forgot to ask whether you have
+heard the news."
+
+"Not a word.  What?"
+
+"I was told at the baths to-day that Caesar escorted the lady
+home.  Unfortunately old Quintus Lutatius had come back from his
+villa in Campania, in a whim of jealousy.  He was not expected
+for three days.  There was a fine tumult.  The old fool called
+for his sword and his slaves, cursed his wife, and swore that he
+would cut Caesar's throat."
+
+"And Caesar?"
+
+"He laughed, quoted Anacreon, trussed his gown round his left
+arm, closed with Quintus, flung him down, twisted his sword out
+of his hand, burst through the attendants, ran a freed-man
+through the shoulder, and was in the street in an instant."
+
+"Well done!  Here he comes.  Good-day, Caius."
+
+Caesar lifted his head at the salutation.  His air of deep
+abstraction vanished; and he extended a hand to each of the
+friends.
+
+"How are you after your last night's exploit?"
+
+"As well as possible," said Caesar, laughing.
+
+"In truth we should rather ask how Quintus Lutatius is."
+
+"He, I understand, is as well as can be expected of a man with a
+faithless spouse and a broken head.  His freed-man is most
+seriously hurt.  Poor fellow! he shall have half of whatever I
+win to-night.  Flaminius, you shall have your revenge at
+Catiline's."
+
+"You are very kind.  I do not intend to be at Catiline's till I
+wish to part with my town-house.  My villa is gone already."
+
+"Not at Catiline's, base spirit!  You are not of his mind, my
+gallant Ligarius.  Dice, Chian, and the loveliest Greek singing
+girl that was ever seen.  Think of that, Ligarius.  By Venus, she
+almost made me adore her, by telling me that I talked Greek with
+the most Attic accent that she had heard in Italy."
+
+"I doubt she will not say the same of me," replied Ligarius.  "I
+am just as able to decipher an obelisk as to read a line of
+Homer."
+
+"You barbarous Scythian, who had the care of your education?"
+
+"An old fool,--a Greek pedant,--a Stoic.  He told me that pain
+was no evil, and flogged me as if he thought so.  At last one
+day, in the middle of a lecture, I set fire to his enormous
+filthy beard, singed his face, and sent him roaring out of the
+house.  There ended my studies.  From that time to this I have
+had as little to do with Greece as the wine that your poor old
+friend Lutatius calls his delicious Samian."
+
+"Well done, Ligarius.  I hate a Stoic.  I wish Marcus Cato had a
+beard that you might singe it for him.  The fool talked his two
+hours in the Senate yesterday, without changing a muscle of his
+face.  He looked as savage and as motionless as the mask in which
+Roscius acted Alecto.  I detest everything connected with him."
+
+"Except his sister, Servilia."
+
+"True.  She is a lovely woman."
+
+"They say that you have told her so, Caius"
+
+"So I have."
+
+"And that she was not angry."
+
+"What woman is?"
+
+"Aye--but they say"--
+
+"No matter what they say.  Common fame lies like a Greek
+rhetorician.  You might know so much, Ligarius, without reading
+the philosophers.  But come, I will introduce you to little dark-
+eyed Zoe."
+
+"I tell you I can speak no Greek."
+
+"More shame for you.  It is high time that you should begin.  You
+will never have such a charming instructress.  Of what was your
+father thinking when he sent for an old Stoic with a long beard
+to teach you?  There is no language-mistress like a handsome
+woman.  When I was at Athens, I learnt more Greek from a pretty
+flower-girl in the Peiraeus than from all the Portico and the
+Academy.  She was no Stoic, Heaven knows.  But come along to Zoe.
+I will be your interpreter.  Woo her in honest Latin, and I will
+turn it into elegant Greek between the throws of dice.  I can
+make love and mind my game at once, as Flaminius can
+tell you.
+
+"Well, then, to be plain, Caesar, Flaminius has been talking to
+me about plots, and suspicions, and politicians.  I never plagued
+myself with such things since Sylla's and Marius's days; and then
+I never could see much difference between the parties.  All that
+I am sure of is, that those who meddle with such affairs are
+generally stabbed or strangled.  And, though I like Greek wine
+and handsome women, I do not wish to risk my neck for them.  Now,
+tell me as a friend, Caius--is there no danger?"
+
+"Danger!" repeated Caesar, with a short, fierce, disdainful
+laugh: "what danger do you apprehend?"
+
+"That you should best know," said Flaminius; "you are far more
+intimate with Catiline than I.  But I advise you to be cautious.
+The leading men entertain strong suspicions."
+
+Caesar drew up his figure from its ordinary state of graceful
+relaxation into an attitude of commanding dignity, and replied in
+a voice of which the deep and impassioned melody formed a strange
+contrast to the humorous and affected tone of his ordinary
+conversation.  "Let them suspect.  They suspect because they know
+what they have deserved.  What have they done for Rome?--What for
+mankind?  Ask the citizens--ask the provinces.  Have they had any
+other object than to perpetuate their own exclusive power, and to
+keep us under the yoke of an oligarchical tyranny, which unites
+in itself the worst evils of every other system, and combines
+more than Athenian turbulence with more than Persian despotism?"
+
+"Good Gods! Caesar.  It is not safe for you to speak, or for us
+to listen to, such things, at such a crisis."
+
+"Judge for yourselves what you will hear.  I will judge for
+myself what I will speak.  I was not twenty years old when I
+defied Lucius Sylla, surrounded by the spears of legionaries and
+the daggers of assassins.  Do you suppose that I stand in awe of
+his paltry successors, who have inherited a power which they
+never could have acquired; who would imitate his proscriptions,
+though they have never equalled his conquests?"
+
+"Pompey is almost as little to be trifled with as Sylla.  I heard
+a consular senator say that, in consequence of the present
+alarming state of affairs, he would probably be recalled from the
+command assigned to him by the Manilian law."
+
+"Let him come,--the pupil of Sylla's butcheries,--the gleaner of
+Lucullus's trophies,--the thief-taker of the Senate."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Caius!--if you knew what the Consul said"--
+
+"Something about himself, no doubt.  Pity that such talents
+should be coupled with such cowardice and coxcombry.  He is the
+finest speaker living,--infinitely superior to what Hortensius
+was, in his best days;-- a charming companion, except when he
+tells over for the twentieth time all the jokes that he made at
+Verres's trial.  But he is the despicable tool of a despicable
+party."
+
+"Your language, Caius, convinces me that the reports which have
+been circulated are not without foundation.  I will venture to
+prophesy that within a few months the republic will pass through
+a whole Odyssey of strange adventures."
+
+"I believe so; an Odyssey, of which Pompey will be the
+Polyphemus, and Cicero the Siren.  I would have the state imitate
+Ulysses: show no mercy to the former; but contrive, if it can be
+done, to listen to the enchanting voice of the other, without
+being seduced by it to destruction."
+
+"But whom can your party produce as rivals to these two famous
+leaders?"
+
+"Time will show.  I would hope that there may arise a man, whose
+genius to conquer, to conciliate, and to govern, may unite in one
+cause an oppressed and divided people;--may do all that Sylla
+should have done, and exhibit the magnificent spectacle of a
+great nation directed by a great mind."
+
+"And where is such a man to be found?"
+
+"Perhaps where you would least expect to find him.  Perhaps he
+may be one whose powers have hitherto been concealed in domestic
+or literary retirement.  Perhaps he may be one, who, while
+waiting for some adequate excitement, for some worthy
+opportunity, squanders on trifles a genius before which may yet
+be humbled the sword of Pompey and the gown of Cicero.  Perhaps
+he may now be disputing with a sophist; perhaps prattling with a
+mistress; perhaps" and, as he spoke, he turned away, and resumed
+his lounge, "strolling in the Forum."
+
+...
+
+It was almost midnight.  The party had separated.  Catiline and
+Cethegus were still conferring in the supper-room, which was, as
+usual, the highest apartment of the house.  It formed a cupola,
+from which windows opened on the flat roof that surrounded it.
+To this terrace Zoe had retired.  With eyes dimmed with fond and
+melancholy tears, she leaned over the balustrade, to catch the
+last glimpse of the departing form of Caesar, as it grew more and
+more indistinct in the moonlight.  Had he any thought of her?
+Any love for her?  He, the favourite of the high-born beauties of
+Rome, the most splendid, the most graceful, the most eloquent of
+its nobles?  It could not be.  His voice had, indeed, been
+touchingly soft whenever he addressed her.  There had been a
+fascinating tenderness even in the vivacity of his look and
+conversation.  But such were always the manners of Caesar towards
+women.  He had wreathed a sprig of myrtle in her hair as she was
+singing.  She took it from her dark ringlets, and kissed it, and
+wept over it, and thought of the sweet legends of her own dear
+Greece,--of youths and girls, who, pining away in hopeless love,
+had been transformed into flowers by the compassion of the Gods;
+and she wished to become a flower, which Caesar might sometimes
+touch, though he should touch it only to weave a crown for some
+prouder and happier mistress.
+
+She was roused from her musings by the loud step and voice of
+Cethegus, who was pacing furiously up and down the supper-room.
+
+"May all the Gods confound me, if Caesar be not the deepest
+traitor, or the most miserable idiot, that ever intermeddled with
+a plot!"
+
+Zoe shuddered.  She drew nearer to the window.  She stood
+concealed from observation by the curtain of fine network which
+hung over the aperture, to exclude the annoying insects of the
+climate.
+
+"And you too!" continued Cethegus, turning fiercely on his
+accomplice; "you to take his part against me!--you, who proposed
+the scheme yourself!"
+
+"My dear Caius Cethegus, you will not understand me.  I proposed
+the scheme; and I will join in executing it.  But policy is as
+necessary to our plans as boldness.  I did not wish to startle
+Caesar--to lose his co-operation--perhaps to send him off with an
+information against us to Cicero and Catulus.  He was so
+indignant at your suggestion that all my dissimulation was
+scarcely sufficient to prevent a total rupture."
+
+"Indignant!  The Gods confound him!--He prated about humanity,
+and generosity, and moderation.  By Hercules, I have not heard
+such a lecture since I was with Xenochares at Rhodes."
+
+"Caesar is made up of inconsistencies.  He has boundless
+ambition, unquestioned courage, admirable sagacity.  Yet I have
+frequently observed in him a womanish weakness at the sight of
+pain.  I remember that once one of his slaves was taken ill while
+carrying his litter.  He alighted, put the fellow in his place
+and walked home in a fall of snow.  I wonder that you could be so
+ill-advised as to talk to him of massacre, and pillage, and
+conflagration.  You might have foreseen that such propositions
+would disgust a man of his temper."
+
+"I do not know.  I have not your self-command, Lucius.  I hate
+such conspirators.  What is the use of them?  We must have blood
+--blood,-- hacking and tearing work--bloody work!"
+
+"Do not grind your teeth, my dear Caius; and lay down the
+carving-knife.  By Hercules, you have cut up all the stuffing of
+the couch."
+
+"No matter; we shall have couches enough soon,--and down to stuff
+them with,--and purple to cover them,--and pretty women to loll
+on them,--unless this fool, and such as he, spoil our plans.  I
+had something else to say.  The essenced fop wishes to seduce Zoe
+from me."
+
+"Impossible!  You misconstrue the ordinary gallantries which he
+is in the habit of paying to every handsome face."
+
+"Curse on his ordinary gallantries, and his verses, and his
+compliments, and his sprigs of myrtle!  If Caesar should dare--by
+Hercules, I will tear him to pieces in the middle of the Forum."
+
+"Trust his destruction to me.  We must use his talents and
+influence--thrust him upon every danger--make him our instrument
+while we are contending--our peace-offering to the Senate if we
+fail--our first victim if we succeed."
+
+"Hark! what noise was that?"
+
+"Somebody in the terrace --lend me your dagger."
+
+Catiline rushed to the window.  Zoe was standing in the shade.
+He stepped out.  She darted into the room--passed like a flash of
+lightning by the startled Cethegus--flew down the stairs--through
+the court--through the vestibule--through the street.  Steps,
+voices, lights, came fast and confusedly behind her; but with the
+speed of love and terror she gained upon her pursuers.  She fled
+through the wilderness of unknown and dusky streets, till she
+found herself, breathless and exhausted, in the midst of a crowd
+of gallants, who, with chaplets on their heads and torches in
+their hands, were reeling from the portico of a stately mansion.
+
+The foremost of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and
+beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex.  But
+the feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the
+mingled sensuality and ferocity of their expression.  The
+libertine audacity of his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his
+apparel, seemed to indicate at least a partial insanity.
+Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing away her veil with the
+other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging companions the
+regular features and large dark eyes which characterise Athenian
+beauty.
+
+"Clodius has all the luck to-night," cried Ligarius.
+
+"Not so, by Hercules," said Marcus Coelius; "the girl is fairly
+our common prize: we will fling dice for her.  The Venus (Venus
+was the Roman term for the highest throw of the dice.) throw, as
+it ought to do, shall decide."
+
+"Let me go--let me go, for Heaven's sake," cried Zoe, struggling
+with Clodius.
+
+"What a charming Greek accent she has!  Come into the house, my
+little Athenian nightingale."
+
+"Oh! what will become of me?  If you have mothers--if you have
+sisters"--
+
+"Clodius has a sister," muttered Ligarius, "or he is much
+belied."
+
+"By Heaven, she is weeping," said Clodius.
+
+"If she were not evidently a Greek," said Coelius, "I should take
+her for a vestal virgin."
+
+"And if she were a vestal virgin," cried Clodius fiercely, "it
+should not deter me.  This way;--no struggling--no screaming."
+
+"Struggling! screaming!" exclaimed a gay and commanding voice;
+"You are making very ungentle love, Clodius."
+
+The whole party started.  Caesar had mingled with them
+unperceived.
+
+The sound of his voice thrilled through the very heart of Zoe.
+With a convulsive effort she burst from the grasp of her insolent
+admirer, flung herself at the feet of Caesar, and clasped his
+knees.  The moon shone full on her agitated and imploring face:
+her lips moved; but she uttered no sound.  He gazed at her for an
+instant--raised her--clasped her to his bosom.  "Fear nothing, my
+sweet Zoe."  Then, with folded arms, and a smile of placid
+defiance, he placed himself between her and Clodius.
+
+Clodius staggered forward, flushed with wine and rage, and
+uttering alternately a curse and a hiccup.
+
+"By Pollux, this passes a jest.  Caesar, how dare you insult me
+thus?"
+
+"A jest!  I am as serious as a Jew on the Sabbath.  Insult you;
+for such a pair of eyes I would insult the whole consular bench,
+or I should be as insensible as King Psammis's mummy."
+
+"Good Gods, Caesar!" said Marcus Coelius, interposing; "you
+cannot think it worth while to get into a brawl for a little
+Greek girl!"
+
+"Why not?  The Greek girls have used me as well as those of Rome.
+Besides, the whole reputation of my gallantry is at stake.  Give
+up such a lovely woman to that drunken boy!  My character would
+be gone for ever.  No more perfumed tablets, full of vows and
+raptures.  No more toying with fingers at the circus.  No more
+evening walks along the Tiber.  No more hiding in chests or
+jumping from windows.  I, the favoured suitor of half the white
+stoles in Rome, could never again aspire above a freed-woman.
+You a man of gallantry, and think of such a thing!  For shame, my
+dear Coelius!  Do not let Clodia hear of it."
+
+While Caesar spoke he had been engaged in keeping Clodius at
+arm's-length.  The rage of the frantic libertine increased as the
+struggle continued.  "Stand back, as you value your life," he
+cried; "I will pass."
+
+"Not this way, sweet Clodius.  I have too much regard for you to
+suffer you to make love at such disadvantage.  You smell too much
+of Falernian at present.  Would you stifle your mistress?  By
+Hercules, you are fit to kiss nobody now, except old Piso, when
+he is tumbling home in the morning from the vintners."
+
+Clodius plunged his hand into his bosom and drew a little dagger,
+the faithful companion of many desperate adventures.
+
+"Oh, Gods! he will be murdered!" cried Zoe.
+
+The whole throng of revellers was in agitation.  The street
+fluctuated with torches and lifted hands.  It was but for a
+moment.  Caesar watched with a steady eye the descending hand of
+Clodius, arrested the blow, seized his antagonist by the throat,
+and flung him against one of the pillars of the portico with such
+violence, that he rolled, stunned and senseless, on the ground.
+
+"He is killed," cried several voices.
+
+"Fair self-defence, by Hercules!" said Marcus Coelius.  "Bear
+witness, you all saw him draw his dagger."
+
+He is not dead--he breathes," said Ligarius.  " Carry him into
+the house; he is dreadfully bruised."
+
+The rest of the party retired with Clodius.  Coelius turned to
+Caesar.
+
+"By all the Gods, Caius! you have won your lady fairly.  A
+splendid victory!  You deserve a triumph."
+
+"What a madman Clodius has become!"
+
+"Intolerable.  But come and sup with me on the Nones.  You have
+no objection to meet the Consul?"
+
+Cicero? None at all.  We need not talk politics.  Our old dispute
+about Plato and Epicurus will furnish us with plenty of
+conversation.  So reckon upon me, my dear Marcus, and farewell."
+
+Caesar and Zoe turned away.  As soon as they were beyond hearing,
+she began in great agitation:--
+
+"Caesar, you are in danger.  I know all.  I overheard Catiline
+and Cethegus.  You are engaged in a project which must lead to
+certain destruction."
+
+"My beautiful Zoe, I live only for glory and pleasure.  For these
+I have never hesitated to hazard an existence which they alone
+render valuable to me.  In the present case, I can assure you
+that our scheme presents the fairest hopes of success."
+
+"So much the worse.  You do not know--you do not understand me.
+I speak not of open peril, but of secret treachery.  Catiline
+hates you;--Cethegus hates you;--your destruction is resolved.
+If you survive the contest, you perish in the first hour of
+victory.  They detest you for your moderation; they are eager for
+blood and plunder.  I have risked my life to bring you this
+warning; but that is of little moment.  Farewell!--Be happy."
+
+Caesar stopped her.  "Do you fly from my thanks, dear Zoe?"
+
+"I wish not for your thanks, but for your safety;--I desire not
+to defraud Valeria or Servilia of one caress, extorted from
+gratitude or pity.  Be my feelings what they may, I have learnt
+in a fearful school to endure and to suppress them.  I have been
+taught to abase a proud spirit to the claps and hisses of the
+vulgar;--to smile on suitors who united the insults of a
+despicable pride to the endearments of a loathsome fondness;-- to
+affect sprightliness with an aching head, and eyes from which
+tears were ready to gush;--to feign love with curses on my lips,
+and madness in my brain.  Who feels for me any esteem,--any
+tenderness?  Who will shed a tear over the nameless grave which
+will soon shelter from cruelty and scorn the broken heart of the
+poor Athenian girl?  But you, who alone have addressed her in her
+degradation with a voice of kindness and respect, farewell.
+Sometimes think of me,--not with sorrow;--no; I could bear your
+ingratitude, but not your distress.  Yet, if it will not pain you
+too much, in distant days, when your lofty hopes and destinies
+are accomplished,--on the evening of some mighty victory,
+--in the chariot of some magnificent triumph,--think on one who
+loved you with that exceeding love which only the miserable can
+feel.  Think that, wherever her exhausted frame may have sunk
+beneath the sensibilities of a tortured spirit,--in whatever
+hovel or whatever vault she may have closed her eyes,--whatever
+strange scenes of horror and pollution may have surrounded her
+dying bed, your shape was the last that swam before her sight--
+your voice the last sound that was ringing in her ears.  Yet turn
+your face to me, Caesar.  Let me carry away one last look of
+those features, and then "--He turned round.  He looked at her.
+He hid his face on her bosom, and burst into tears.  With sobs
+long and loud, and convulsive as those of a terrified child, he
+poured forth on her bosom the tribute of impetuous and
+uncontrollable emotion.  He raised his head; but he in vain
+struggled to restore composure to the brow which had confronted
+the frown of Sylla, and the lips which had rivalled the eloquence
+of Cicero.  He several times attempted to speak, but in vain; and
+his voice still faltered with tenderness, when, after a pause of
+several minutes, he thus addressed her:
+
+"My own dear Zoe, your love has been bestowed on one who, if he
+cannot merit, can at least appreciate and adore you.  Beings of
+similar loveliness, and similar devotedness of affection,
+mingled, in all my boyish dreams of greatness, with visions of
+curule chairs and ivory cars, marshalled legions and laurelled
+fasces.  Such I have endeavoured to find in the world; and, in
+their stead, I have met with selfishness, with vanity, with
+frivolity, with falsehood.  The life which you have preserved is
+a boon less valuable than the affection "--
+
+"Oh! Caesar," interrupted the blushing Zoe, "think only on your
+own security at present.  If you feel as you speak,--but you are
+only mocking me,--or perhaps your compassion "--
+
+"By Heaven!--by every oath that is binding "--
+
+"Alas! alas! Caesar, were not all the same oaths sworn yesterday
+to Valeria?  But I will trust you, at least so far as to partake
+your present dangers.  Flight may he necessary:--form your plans.
+Be they what they may, there is one who, in exile, in poverty, in
+peril, asks only to wander, to beg, to die with you."
+
+"My Zoe, I do not anticipate any such necessity.  To renounce the
+conspiracy without renouncing the principles on which it was
+originally undertaken,--to elude the vengeance of the Senate
+without losing the confidence of the people,--is, indeed, an
+arduous, but not an impossible, task.  I owe it to myself and to
+my country to make the attempt.  There is still ample time for
+consideration.  At present I am too happy in love to think of
+ambition or danger."
+
+They had reached the door of a stately palace.  Caesar struck it.
+It was instantly opened by a slave.  Zoe found herself in a
+magnificent hall, surrounded by pillars of green marble, between
+which were ranged the statues of the long line of Julian nobles.
+
+"Call Endymion," said Caesar.
+
+The confidential freed-man made his appearance, not without a
+slight smile, which his patron's good nature emboldened him to
+hazard, at perceiving the beautiful Athenian.
+
+"Arm my slaves, Endymion; there are reasons for precaution.  Let
+them relieve each other on guard during the night.  Zoe, my love,
+my preserver, why are your cheeks so pale?  Let me kiss some
+bloom into them.  How you tremble!  Endymion, a flask of Samian
+and some fruit.  Bring them to my apartments.  This way, my sweet
+Zoe."
+
+...
+
+
+ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE.
+
+(June 1823.)
+
+This is the age of societies.  There is scarcely one Englishman
+in ten who has not belonged to some association for distributing
+books, or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the
+hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the
+rich, or blankets to the poor.  To be the most absurd institution
+among so many institutions is no small distinction; it seems,
+however, to belong indisputably to the Royal Society of
+Literature.  At the first establishment of that ridiculous
+academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal
+patronage and episcopal management, it would do nothing, or do
+harm.  And it will scarcely be denied that those expectations
+have hitherto been fulfilled.
+
+I do not attack the founders of the association.  Their
+characters are respectable; their motives, I am willing to
+believe, were laudable.  But I feel, and it is the duty of every
+literary man to feel, a strong jealousy of their proceedings.
+Their society can be innocent only while it continues to be
+despicable.  Should they ever possess the power to encourage
+merit, they must also possess the power to depress it.  Which
+power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has
+studied literary history, let every one who has studied human
+nature, declare.
+
+Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities.  They
+often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent
+and scientific associations.  But it is in literary academies
+that they exert the most extensive and pernicious influence.  In
+the first place, the principles of literary criticism, though
+equally fixed with those on which the chemist and the surgeon
+proceed, are by no means equally recognised.  Men are rarely able
+to assign a reason for their approbation or dislike on questions
+of taste; and therefore they willingly submit to any guide who
+boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment.  It is more
+difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than
+the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy.  Hence
+it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and
+excellence most easily decried.
+
+In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine
+arts; and it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of
+that institution which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset
+House with an acre of spoiled canvas.  But a literary tribunal is
+incomparably more dangerous.  Other societies, at least, have no
+tendency to call forth any opinions on those subjects which most
+agitate and inflame the minds of men.  The sceptic and the
+zealot, the revolutionist and the placeman, meet on common ground
+in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science.  They can
+praise or censure without reference to the differences which
+exist between them.  In a literary body this can never be the
+case.  Literature is, and always must be, inseparably blended
+with politics and theology; it is the great engine which moves
+the feelings of a people on the most momentous questions.  It is,
+therefore, impossible that any society can be formed so impartial
+as to consider the literary character of an individual abstracted
+from the opinions which his writings inculcate.  It is not to be
+hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings of the
+man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the
+academician.  The consequences are evident.  The honours and
+censures of this Star Chamber of the Muses will be awarded
+according to the prejudices of the particular sect or faction
+which may at the time predominate.  Whigs would canvass against a
+Southey, Tories against a Byron.  Those who might at first
+protest against such conduct as unjust would soon adopt it on the
+plea of retaliation; and the general good of literature, for
+which the society was professedly instituted, would be forgotten
+in the stronger claims of political and religious partiality.
+
+Yet even this is not the worst.  Should the institution ever
+acquire any influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities
+to every malignant coward who may desire to blast a reputation
+which he envies.  It will furnish a secure ambuscade, behind
+which the Maroons of literature may take a certain and deadly
+aim.  The editorial WE has often been fatal to rising genius;
+though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very
+often employed by a single needy blockhead.  The academic WE
+would have a far greater and more ruinous influence.  Numbers,
+while they increase the effect, would diminish the shame, of
+injustice.  The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous
+attack would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be
+united to the security of concealment.  The serpents in Virgil,
+after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the
+vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue
+of Minerva.  And, in the same manner, everything that is
+grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything
+that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this new
+temple of wisdom.
+
+The French academy was, of all such associations, the most widely
+and the most justly celebrated.  It was founded by the greatest
+of ministers:  it was patronised by successive kings; it numbered
+in its lists most of the eminent French writers.  Yet what
+benefit has literature derived from its labours?  What is its
+history but an uninterrupted record of servile compliances--of
+paltry artifices--of deadly quarrels--of perfidious friendships?
+Whether governed by the Court, by the Sorbonne, or by the
+Philosophers, it was always equally powerful for evil, and
+equally impotent for good.  I might speak of the attacks by which
+it attempted to depress the rising fame of Corneille; I might
+speak of the reluctance with which it gave its tardy confirmation
+to the applauses which the whole civilised world had bestowed on
+the genius of Voltaire.  I might prove by overwhelming evidence
+that, to the latest period of its existence, even under the
+superintendence of the all-accomplished D'Alembert, it continued
+to be a scene of the fiercest animosities and the basest
+intrigues.  I might cite Piron's epigrams, and Marmontel's
+memoirs, and Montesquieu's letters.  But I hasten on to another
+topic.
+
+One of the modes by which our Society proposes to encourage merit
+is the distribution of prizes.  The munificence of the king has
+enabled it to offer an annual premium of a hundred guineas for
+the best essay in prose, and another of fifty guineas for the
+best poem, which may be transmitted to it.  This is very
+laughable.  In the first place the judges may err.  Those
+imperfections of human intellect to which, as the articles of the
+Church tell us, even general councils are subject, may possibly
+be found even in the Royal Society of Literature.  The French
+academy, as I have already said, was the most illustrious
+assembly of the kind, and numbered among its associates men much
+more distinguished than ever will assemble at Mr Hatchard's to
+rummage the box of the English Society.  Yet this famous body
+gave a poetical prize, for which Voltaire was a candidate, to a
+fellow who wrote some verses about THE FROZEN AND THE BURNING
+POLE.
+
+Yet, granting that the prizes were always awarded to the best
+composition, that composition, I say without hesitation, will
+always be bad.  A prize poem is like a prize sheep.  The object
+of the competitor for the agricultural premium is to produce an
+animal fit, not to be eaten, but to be weighed.  Accordingly he
+pampers his victim into morbid and unnatural fatness; and, when
+it is in such a state that it would be sent away in disgust from
+any table, he offers it to the judges.  The object of the
+poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a good
+poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast
+which may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime.
+Compositions thus constructed will always be worthless.  The few
+excellences which they may contain will have an exotic aspect and
+flavour.  In general, prize sheep are good for nothing but to
+make tallow candles, and prize poems are good for nothing but to
+light them.
+
+The first subject proposed by the Society to the poets of England
+was Dartmoor.  I thought that they intended a covert sarcasm at
+their own projects.  Their institution was a literary Dartmoor
+scheme;--a plan for forcing into cultivation the waste lands of
+intellect,--for raising poetical produce, by means of bounties,
+from soil too meagre to have yielded any returns in the natural
+course of things.  The plan for the cultivation of Dartmoor has,
+I hear, been abandoned.  I hope that this may be an omen of the
+fate of the Society.
+
+In truth, this seems by no means improbable.  They have been
+offering for several years the rewards which the king placed at
+their disposal, and have not, as far as I can learn, been able to
+find in their box one composition which they have deemed worthy
+of publication.  At least no publication has taken place.  The
+associates may perhaps be astonished at this.  But I will attempt
+to explain it, after the manner of ancient times, by means of an
+apologue.
+
+About four hundred years after the Deluge, King Gomer Chephoraod
+reigned in Babylon.  He united all the characteristics of an
+excellent sovereign.  He made good laws, won great battles, and
+white-washed long streets.  He was, in consequence, idolised by
+his people, and panegyrised by many poets and orators.  A book
+was then a sermons undertaking.  Neither paper nor any similar
+material had been invented.  Authors were therefore under the
+necessity of inscribing their compositions on massive bricks.
+Some of these Babylonian records are still preserved in European
+museums; but the language in which they are written has never
+been deciphered.  Gomer Chephoraod was so popular that the clay
+of all the plains round the Euphrates could scarcely furnish
+brick-kilns enough for his eulogists.  It is recorded in
+particular that Pharonezzar, the Assyrian Pindar, published a
+bridge and four walls in his praise.
+
+One day the king was going in state from his palace to the temple
+of Belus.  During this procession it was lawful for any
+Babylonian to offer any petition or suggestion to his sovereign.
+As the chariot passed before a vintner's shop, a large company,
+apparently half-drunk, sallied forth into the street, and one of
+them thus addressed the king:
+
+"Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever!  It appears to thy servants
+that of all the productions of the earth good wine is the best,
+and bad wine is the worst.  Good wine makes the heart cheerful,
+the eyes bright, the speech ready.  Bad wine confuses the head,
+disorders the stomach, makes us quarrelsome at night, and sick
+the next morning.  Now therefore let my lord the king take order
+that thy servants may drink good wine.
+
+"And how is this to be done?" said the good-natured prince.
+
+"O King," said his monitor, "this is most easy.  Let the king
+make a decree, and seal it with his royal signet: and let it be
+proclaimed that the king will give ten she-asses, and ten slaves,
+and ten changes of raiment, every year, unto the man who shall
+make ten measures of the best wine.  And whosoever wishes for the
+she-asses, and the slaves, and the raiment, let him send the ten
+measures of wine to thy servants, and we will drink thereof and
+judge.  So shall there be much good wine in Assyria."
+
+The project pleased Gomer Chephoraod.  "Be it so," said he.  The
+people shouted.  The petitioners prostrated themselves in
+gratitude.  The same night heralds were despatched to bear the
+intelligence to the remotest districts of Assyria.
+
+After a due interval the wines began to come in; and the
+examiners assembled to adjudge the prize.  The first vessel was
+unsealed.  Its odour was such that the judges, without tasting
+it, pronounced unanimous condemnation.  The next was opened: it
+had a villainous taste of clay.  The third was sour and vapid.
+They proceeded from one cask of execrable liquor to another, till
+at length, in absolute nausea, they gave up the investigation.
+
+The next morning they all assembled at the gate of the king, with
+pale faces and aching heads.  They owned that they could not
+recommend any competitor as worthy of the rewards.  They swore
+that the wine was little better than poison, and entreated
+permission to resign the office of deciding between such
+detestable potions.
+
+"In the name of Belus, how can this have happened?" said the
+king.
+
+Merolchazzar, the high-priest, muttered something about the anger
+of the Gods at the toleration shown to a sect of impious heretics
+who ate pigeons broiled, "whereas," said he, "our religion
+commands us to eat them roasted.  Now therefore, O King,"
+continued this respectable divine, "give command to thy men of
+war, and let them smite the disobedient people with the sword,
+them, and their wives, and their children, and let their houses,
+and their flocks, and their herds, be given to thy servants the
+priests.  Then shall the land yield its increase, and the fruits
+of the earth shall be no more blasted by the vengeance of
+Heaven."
+
+"Nay," said the king, "the ground lies under no general curse
+from Heaven.  The season has been singularly good.  The wine
+which thou didst thyself drink at the banquet a few nights ago, O
+venerable Merolchazzar, was of this year's vintage.  Dost thou
+not remember how thou didst praise it?  It was the same night
+that thou wast inspired by Belus and didst reel to and fro, and
+discourse sacred mysteries.  These things are too hard for me.  I
+comprehend them not.  The only wine which is bad is that which is
+sent to my judges.  Who can expound this to us?"
+
+The king scratched his head.  Upon which all the courtiers
+scratched their heads.
+
+He then ordered proclamation to be made that a purple robe and a
+golden chain should be given to the man who could solve this
+difficulty.
+
+An old philosopher, who had been observed to smile rather
+disdainfully when the prize had first been instituted, came
+forward and spoke thus:--
+
+"Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever!  Marvel not at that which has
+happened.  It was no miracle, but a natural event.  How could it
+be otherwise?  It is true that much good wine has been made this
+year.  But who would send it in for thy rewards?  Thou knowest
+Ascobaruch who hath the great vineyards in the north, and
+Cohahiroth who sendeth wine every year from the south over the
+Persian Golf.  Their wines are so delicious that ten measures
+thereof are sold for an hundred talents of silver.  Thinkest thou
+that they will exchange them for thy slaves and thine asses?
+What would thy prize profit any who have vineyards in rich
+soils?"
+
+"Who then," said one of the judges, "are the wretches who sent us
+this poison?"
+
+"Blame them not," said the sage, "seeing that you have been the
+authors of the evil.  They are men whose lands are poor, and have
+never yielded them any returns equal to the prizes which the king
+proposed.  Wherefore, knowing that the lords of the fruitful
+vineyards would not enter into competition with them they planted
+vines, some on rocks, and some in light sandy soil, and some in
+deep clay.  Hence their wines are bad.  For no culture or reward
+will make barren land bear good vines.  Know therefore,
+assuredly, that your prizes have increased the quantity of bad
+but not of good wine."
+
+There was a long silence.  At length the king spoke.  "Give him
+the purple robe and the chain of gold.  Throw the wines into the
+Euphrates; and proclaim that the Royal Society of Wines is
+dissolved."
+
+...
+
+
+SCENES FROM "ATHENIAN REVELS."
+
+(January 1824.)
+
+A DRAMA.
+
+I.
+
+SCENE--A Street in Athens.
+
+Enter CALLIDEMUS and SPEUSIPPUS;
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+So, you young reprobate!  You must be a man of wit, forsooth, and
+a man of quality!  You must spend as if you were as rich as
+Nicias, and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles!  You must
+dangle after sophists and pretty women!  And I must pay for all!
+I must sup on thyme and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes
+and hares!  I must drink water, that you may play the cottabus
+(This game consisted in projecting wine out of cups; it was a
+diversion extremely fashionable at Athenian entertainments.) with
+Chian wine!  I must wander about as ragged as Pauson (Pauson was
+an Athenian painter, whose name was synonymous with beggary.  See
+Aristophanes; Plutus, 602.  From his poverty, I am inclined to
+suppose that he painted historical pictures.), that you may be as
+fine as Alcibiades!  I must lie on bare boards, with a stone (See
+Aristophanes; Plutus, 542.) for my pillow, and a rotten mat for
+my coverlid, by the light of a wretched winking lamp, while you
+are marching in state, with as many torches as one sees at the
+feast of Ceres, to thunder with your hatchet (See Theocritus;
+Idyll ii. 128.) at the doors of half the Ionian ladies in
+Peiraeus.  (This was the most disreputable part of Athens.  See
+Aristophanes: Pax, 165.)
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Why, thou unreasonable old man!  Thou most shameless of fathers!-
+-
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Ungrateful wretch; dare you talk so?  Are you not afraid of the
+thunders of Jupiter?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Jupiter thunder! nonsense!  Anaxagoras says, that thunder is only
+an explosion produced by--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+He does!  Would that it had fallen on his head for his pains!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Nay:  talk rationally.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Rationally!  You audacious young sophist!  I will talk
+rationally.  Do you know that I am your father?  What quibble can
+you make upon that?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Do I know that you are my father?  Let us take the question to
+pieces, as Melesigenes would say.  First, then, we must inquire
+what is knowledge?  Secondly, what is a father?  Now, knowledge,
+as Socrates said the other day to Theaetetus (See Plato's
+Theaetetus.)--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Socrates! what! the ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who walks about
+all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats, and
+shoes (See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150.) fleas with wax?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+All fiction!  All trumped up by Aristophanes!
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+By Pallas, if he is in the habit of putting shoes on his fleas,
+he is kinder to them than to himself.  But listen to me, boy; if
+you go on in this way, you will be ruined.  There is an argument
+for you.  Go to your Socrates and your Melesigenes, and tell them
+to refute that.  Ruined!  Do you hear?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Ruined!
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Ay, by Jupiter!  Is such a show as you make to be supported on
+nothing?  During all the last war, I made not an obol from my
+farm; the Peloponnesian locusts came almost as regularly as the
+Pleiades;--corn burnt;--olives stripped;--fruit trees cut down;--
+wells stopped up;--and, just when peace came, and I hoped that
+all would turn out well, you must begin to spend as if you had
+all the mines of Thasus at command.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Now, by Neptune, who delights in horses--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+If Neptune delights in horses, he does not resemble me.  You must
+ride at the Panathenaea on a horse fit for the great king: four
+acres of my best vines went for that folly.  You must retrench,
+or you will have nothing to eat.  Does not Anaxagoras mention,
+among his other discoveries, that when a man has nothing to eat
+he dies?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+You are deceived.  My friends--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Oh, yes! your friends will notice you, doubtless, when you are
+squeezing through the crowd, on a winter's day, to warm yourself
+at the fire of the baths;--or when you are fighting with beggars
+and beggars' dogs for the scraps of a sacrifice;--or when you are
+glad to earn three wretched obols (The stipend of an Athenian
+juryman.) by listening all day to lying speeches and crying
+children.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+There are other means of support.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+What!  I suppose you will wander from house to house, like that
+wretched buffoon Philippus (Xenophon; Convivium.), and beg
+everybody who has asked a supper-party to be so kind as to feed
+you and laugh at you; or you will turn sycophant; you will get a
+bunch of grapes, or a pair of shoes, now and then, by frightening
+some rich coward with a mock prosecution.  Well! that is a task
+for which your studies under the sophists may have fitted you.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+You are wide of the mark.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme?  Do you intend to
+join Orestes (A celebrated highwayman of Attica.  See
+Aristophanes; Aves, 711; and in several other passages.), and rob
+on the highway?  Take care; beware of the eleven (The police
+officers of Athens.); beware of the hemlock.  It may be very
+pleasant to live at other people's expense; but not very
+pleasant, I should think, to hear the pestle give its last bang
+against the mortar, when the cold dose is ready.  Pah!--
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Hemlock? Orestes! folly!--I aim at nobler objects.  What say you
+to politics,--the general assembly?
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+You an orator!--oh no! no!  Cleon was worth twenty such fools as
+you.  You have succeeded, I grant, to his impudence, for which,
+if there be justice in Tartarus, he is now soaking up to the eyes
+in his own tanpickle.  But the Paphlagonian had parts.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+And you mean to imply--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Not I. You are a Pericles in embryo, doubtless.  Well: and when
+are you to make your first speech?  O Pallas!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+I thought of speaking, the other day, on the Sicilian expedition;
+but Nicias (See Thucydides, vi. 8.) got up before me.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Nicias, poor honest man, might just as well have sate still; his
+speaking did but little good.  The loss of your oration is,
+doubtless, an irreparable public calamity.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Why, not so; I intend to introduce it at the next assembly; it
+will suit any subject.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+That is to say, it will suit none.  But pray, if it be not too
+presumptuous a request, indulge me with a specimen.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Well; suppose the agora crowded;--an important subject under
+discussion;--an ambassador from Argos, or from the great king;--
+the tributes from the islands;--an impeachment;--in short,
+anything you please.  The crier makes proclamation.--"Any citizen
+above fifty years old may speak--any citizen not disqualified may
+speak."  Then I rise:--a great murmur of curiosity while I am
+mounting the stand.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Of curiosity! yes, and of something else too.  You will
+infallibly be dragged down by main force, like poor Glaucon (See
+Xenophon Memorabilia, iii.) last year.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Never fear.  I shall begin in this style:
+"When I consider, Athenians, the importance of our city;--when I
+consider the extent of its power, the wisdom of its laws, the
+elegance of its decorations;--when I consider by what names and
+by what exploits its annals are adorned; when I think on
+Harmodius and Aristogiton, on Themistocles and Miltiades, on
+Cimon and Pericles;--when I contemplate our pre-eminence in arts
+and letters;--when I observe so many flourishing states and
+islands compelled to own the dominion, and purchase the
+protection of the City of the Violet Crown" (A favourite epithet
+of Athens.  See Aristophanes; Acharn. 637.)--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+I shall choke with rage.  Oh, all ye gods and goddesses, what
+sacrilege, what perjury have I ever committed, that I should be
+singled out from among all the citizens of Athens to be the
+father of this fool?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+What now?  By Bacchus, old man, I would not advise you to give
+way to such fits of passion in the streets.  If Aristophanes were
+to see you, you would infallibly be in a comedy next spring.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+You have more reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool living.
+Oh, that he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of
+Straton (See Aristophanes; Equites, 1375.) and the lisp of
+Alcibiades!  (See Aristophanes; Vespae, 44.)  You would be an
+inexhaustible subject.  You would console him for the loss of
+Cleon.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+No, no.  I may perhaps figure at the dramatic representations
+before long; but in a very different way.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+What do you mean?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+What say you to a tragedy?
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+A tragedy of yours?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Even so.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Oh Hercules!  Oh Bacchus!  This is too much.  Here is an
+universal genius; sophist,--orator,--poet.  To what a three-
+headed monster have I given birth! a perfect Cerberus of
+intellect!  And pray what may your piece be about?  Or will your
+tragedy, like your speech, serve equally for any subject?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+I thought of several plots;--Oedipus,--Eteocles and Polynices,--
+the war of Troy,--the murder of Agamemnon.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+And what have you chosen?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+You know there is a law which permits any modern poet to retouch
+a play of Aeschylus, and bring it forward as his own composition.
+And, as there is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar, in favour
+of his extravagant pieces, I have selected one of them, and
+altered it.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Which of them?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Oh! that mass of barbarous absurdities, the Prometheus.  But I
+have framed it anew upon the model of Euripides.  By Bacchus, I
+shall make Sophocles and Agathon look about them.  You would not
+know the play again.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+By Jupiter, I believe not.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+I have omitted the whole of the absurd dialogue between Vulcan
+and Strength, at the beginning.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+That may be, on the whole, an improvement.  The play will then
+open with that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained
+to the rock.
+
+"Oh! ye eternal heavens! ye rushing winds!
+Ye fountains of great streams!  Ye ocean waves,
+That in ten thousand sparkling dimples wreathe
+Your azure smiles!  All-generating earth!
+All-seeing sun!  On you, on you, I call."  (See Aeschylus;
+Prometheus, 88.)
+
+Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable
+of that idea.  Why do you laugh?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Do you seriously suppose that one who has studied the plays of
+that great man, Euripides, would ever begin a tragedy in such a
+ranting style?
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+What, does not your play open with the speech of Prometheus?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+No doubt.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of Euripides,
+call me a fool.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it be or
+no.  But go on.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Prometheus begins thus:--
+
+"Coelus begat Saturn and Briareus
+Cottus and Creius and Iapetus,
+Gyges and Hyperion, Phoebe, Tethys,
+Thea and Rhea and Mnemosyne.
+Then Saturn wedded Rhea, and begat
+Pluto and Neptune, Jupiter and Juno."
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Very beautiful, and very natural; and, as you say, very like
+Euripides.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+You are sneering.  Really, father, you do not understand these
+things.  You had not those advantages in your youth--
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Which I have been fool enough to let you have.  No; in my early
+days, lying had not been dignified into a science, nor politics
+degraded into a trade.  I wrestled, and read Homer's battles,
+instead of dressing my hair, and reciting lectures in verse out
+of Euripides.  But I have some notion of what a play should be; I
+have seen Phrynichus, and lived with Aeschylus.  I saw the
+representation of the Persians.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+A wretched play; it may amuse the fools who row the triremes; but
+it is utterly unworthy to be read by any man of taste.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+If you had seen it acted;--the whole theatre frantic with joy,
+stamping, shouting, laughing, crying.  There was Cynaegeirus, the
+brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating
+the stumps against his sides with rapture.  When the crowd
+remarked him--But where are you going?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+To sup with Alcibiades; he sails with the expedition for Sicily
+in a few days; this is his farewell entertainment.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+So much the better; I should say, so much the worse.  That cursed
+Sicilian expedition!  And you were one of the young fools (See
+Thucydides, vi. 13.) who stood clapping and shouting while he was
+gulling the rabble, and who drowned poor Nicias's voice with your
+uproar.  Look to it; a day of reckoning will come.  As to
+Alcibiades himself--
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+What can you say against him?  His enemies themselves acknowledge
+his merit.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+They acknowledge that he is clever, and handsome, and that he was
+crowned at the Olympic games.  And what other merits do his
+friends claim for him?  A precious assembly you will meet at his
+house, no doubt.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+The first men in Athens, probably.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+Whom do you mean by the first men in Athens?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Callicles.  (Callicles plays a conspicuous part in the Gorgias of
+Plato.)
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+A sacrilegious, impious, unfeeling ruffian!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Hippomachus.
+
+CALLIDEMUS.
+A fool, who can talk of nothing but his travels through Persia
+and Egypt.  Go, go.  The gods forbid that I should detain you
+from such choice society!
+
+[Exeunt severally.]
+
+
+II.
+
+SCENE--A Hall in the house of ALCIBIADES.
+
+ALCIBIADES, SPEUSIPPUS, CALLICLES, HIPPOMACHUS, CHARICLEA,
+and others, seated round a table feasting.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Bring larger cups.  This shall be our gayest revel.  It is
+probably the last--for some of us at least.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+At all events, it will be long before you taste such wine again,
+Alcibiades.
+
+CALLICLES.
+Nay, there is excellent wine in Sicily.  When I was there with
+Eurymedon's squadron, I had many a long carouse.  You never saw
+finer grapes than those of Aetna.
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+The Greeks do not understand the art of making wine.  Your
+Persian is the man.  So rich, so fragrant, so sparkling!  I will
+tell you what the Satrap of Caria said to me about that when I
+supped with him.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Nay, sweet Hippomachus; not a word to-night about satraps, or the
+great king, or the walls of Babylon, or the Pyramids, or the
+mummies.  Chariclea, why do you look so sad?
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Can I be cheerful when you are going to leave me, Alcibiades?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+My life, my sweet soul, it is but for a short time.  In a year we
+conquer Sicily.  In another, we humble Carthage.  (See
+Thucydides, vi. 90.)  I will bring back such robes, such
+necklaces, elephants' teeth by thousands, ay, and the elephants
+themselves, if you wish to see them.  Nay, smile, my Chariclea,
+or I shall talk nonsense to no purpose.
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+The largest elephant that I ever saw was in the grounds of
+Teribazus, near Susa.  I wish that I had measured him.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+I wish that he had trod upon you.  Come, come, Chariclea, we
+shall soon return, and then--
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Yes; then indeed.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Yes, then--
+Then for revels; then for dances,
+Tender whispers, melting glances.
+Peasants, pluck your richest fruits:
+Minstrels, sound your sweetest flutes:
+Come in laughing crowds to greet us,
+Dark-eyed daughters of Miletus;
+Bring the myrtles, bring the dice,
+Floods of Chian, hills of spice.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Whose lines are those, Alcibiades?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+My own.  Think you, because I do not shut myself up to meditate,
+and drink water, and eat herbs, that I cannot write verses?  By
+Apollo, if I did not spend my days in politics, and my nights in
+revelry, I should have made Sophocles tremble.  But now I never
+go beyond a little song like this, and never invoke any Muse but
+Chariclea.  But come, Speusippus, sing.  You are a professed
+poet.  Let us have some of your verses.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+My verses!  How can you talk so?  I a professed poet!
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Oh, content you, sweet Speusippus.  We all know your designs upon
+the tragic honours.  Come, sing.  A chorus of your new play.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Nay, nay--
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+When a guest who is asked to sing at a Persian banquet refuses--
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+In the name of Bacchus--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+I am absolute.  Sing.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Well, then, I will sing you a chorus, which, I think, is a
+tolerable imitation of Euripides.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Of Euripides?--Not a word.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Why so, sweet Chariclea?
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Would you have me betray my sex?  Would you have me forget his
+Phaedras and Sthenoboeas?  No if I ever suffer any lines of that
+woman-hater, or his imitators, to be sung in my presence, may I
+sell herbs (The mother of Euripides was a herb-woman.  This was a
+favourite topic of Aristophanes.) like his mother, and wear rags
+like his Telephus.  (The hero of one of the lost plays of
+Euripides, who appears to have been brought upon the stage in the
+garb of a beggar.  See Aristophanes; Acharn. 430; and in other
+places.)
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Then, sweet Chariclea, since you have silenced Speusippus, you
+shall sing yourself.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+What shall I sing?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Nay, choose for yourself.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Then I will sing an old Ionian hymn, which is chanted every
+spring at the feast of Venus, near Miletus.  I used to sing it in
+my own country when I was a child; and--ah, Alcibiades!
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Dear Chariclea, you shall sing something else.  This distresses
+you.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+No hand me the lyre:--no matter.  You will hear the song to
+disadvantage.  But if it were sung as I have heard it sung:--if
+this were a beautiful morning in spring, and if we were standing
+on a woody promontory, with the sea, and the white sails, and the
+blue Cyclades beneath us,--and the portico of a temple peeping
+through the trees on a huge peak above our heads,--and thousands
+of people, with myrtles in their hands, thronging up the winding
+path, their gay dresses and garlands disappearing and emerging by
+turns as they passed round the angles of the rock,--then perhaps-
+-
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Now, by Venus herself, sweet lady, where you are we shall lack
+neither sun, nor flowers, nor spring, nor temple, nor goddess.
+
+CHARICLEA.  (Sings.)
+Let this sunny hour be given,
+Venus, unto love and mirth:
+Smiles like thine are in the heaven;
+Bloom like thine is on the earth;
+And the tinkling of the fountains,
+And the murmurs of the sea,
+And the echoes from the mountains,
+Speak of youth, and hope, and thee.
+
+By whate'er of soft expression
+Thou hast taught to lovers' eyes,
+Faint denial, slow confession,
+Glowing cheeks and stifled sighs;
+By the pleasure and the pain,
+By the follies and the wiles,
+Pouting fondness, sweet disdain,
+Happy tears and mournful smiles;
+
+Come with music floating o'er thee;
+Come with violets springing round:
+Let the Graces dance before thee,
+All their golden zones unbound;
+Now in sport their faces hiding,
+Now, with slender fingers fair,
+From their laughing eyes dividing
+The long curls of rose-crowned hair.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Sweetly sung; but mournfully, Chariclea; for which I would chide
+you, but that I am sad myself.  More wine there.  I wish to all
+the gods that I had fairly sailed from Athens.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+And from me, Alcibiades?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Yes, from you, dear lady.  The days which immediately precede
+separation are the most melancholy of our lives.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Except those which immediately follow it.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+No; when I cease to see you, other objects may compel my
+attention; but can I be near you without thinking how lovely you
+are, and how soon I must leave you?
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+Ay; travelling soon puts such thoughts out of men's heads.
+
+CALLICLES.
+A battle is the best remedy for them.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+A battle, I should think, might supply their place with others as
+unpleasant.
+
+CALLICLES.
+No.  The preparations are rather disagreeable to a novice.  But
+as soon as the fighting begins, by Jupiter, it is a noble time;--
+men trampling,--shields clashing,--spears breaking,--and the
+poean roaring louder than all.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+But what if you are killed?
+
+CALLICLES.
+What indeed?  You must ask Speusippus that question.  He is a
+philosopher.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Yes, and the greatest of philosophers, if he can answer it.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Pythagoras is of opinion--
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+Pythagoras stole that and all his other opinions from Asia and
+Egypt.  The transmigration of the soul and the vegetable diet are
+derived from India.  I met a Brachman in Sogdiana--
+
+CALLICLES.
+All nonsense!
+
+CHARICLEA.
+What think you, Alcibiades?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+I think that, if the doctrine be true, your spirit will be
+transfused into one of the doves who carry (Homer's Odyssey, xii.
+63.) ambrosia to the gods or verses to the mistresses of poets.
+Do you remember Anacreon's lines?  How should you like such an
+office?
+
+CHARICLEA.
+If I were to be your dove, Alcibiades, and you would treat me as
+Anacreon treated his, and let me nestle in your breast and drink
+from your cup, I would submit even to carry your love-letters to
+other ladies.
+
+CALLICLES.
+What, in the name of Jupiter, is the use of all these
+speculations about death?  Socrates once (See the close of
+Plato's Gorgias.) lectured me upon it the best part of a day.  I
+have hated the sight of him ever since.  Such things may suit an
+old sophist when he is fasting; but in the midst of wine and
+music--
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+I differ from you.  The enlightened Egyptians bring skeletons
+into their banquets, in order to remind their guests to make the
+most of their life while they have it.
+
+CALLICLES.
+I want neither skeleton nor sophist to teach me that lesson.
+More wine, I pray you, and less wisdom.  If you must believe
+something which you never can know, why not be contented with the
+long stories about the other world which are told us when we are
+initiated at the Eleusinian mysteries?  (The scene which follows
+is founded upon history.  Thucydides tells us, in his sixth book,
+that about this time Alcibiades was suspected of having assisted
+at a mock celebration of these famous mysteries.  It was the
+opinion of the vulgar among the Athenians that extraordinary
+privileges were granted in the other world to alt who had been
+initiated.)
+
+CHARICLEA.
+And what are those stories?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Are not you initiated, Chariclea?
+
+CHARICLEA.
+No; my mother was a Lydian, a barbarian; and therefore--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+I understand.  Now the curse of Venus on the fools who made so
+hateful a law!  Speusippus, does not your friend Euripides (The
+right of Euripides to this line is somewhat disputable.  See
+Aristophanes; Plutus, 1152.) say
+
+"The land where thou art prosperous is thy country?"
+
+Surely we ought to say to every lady
+
+"The land where thou art pretty is thy country."
+
+Besides, to exclude foreign beauties from the chorus of the
+initiated in the Elysian fields is less cruel to them than to
+ourselves.  Chariclea, you shall be initiated.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+When?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Now.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Where?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Here.
+
+CHARICLEA.
+Delightful!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+But there must be an interval of a year between the purification
+and the initiation.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+We will suppose all that.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+And nine days of rigid mortification of the senses.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+We will suppose that too.  I am sure it was supposed, with as
+little reason, when I was initiated.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+But you are sworn to secrecy.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+You a sophist, and talk of oaths!  You a pupil of Euripides, and
+forget his maxims!
+
+"My lips have sworn it; but my mind is free."  (See Euripides:
+Hippolytus, 608.  For the jesuitical morality of this line
+Euripides is bitterly attacked by the comic poet.)
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+But Alcibiades--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+What!  Are you afraid of Ceres and Proserpine?
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+No--but--but--I--that is I--but it is best to be safe--I mean--
+Suppose there should be something in it.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Now, by Mercury, I shall die with laughing.  O Speusippus.
+Speusippus!  Go back to your old father.  Dig vineyards, and
+judge causes, and be a respectable citizen.  But never, while you
+live; again dream of being a philosopher.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Nay, I was only--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+A pupil of Gorgias and Melesigenes afraid of Tartarus!  In what
+region of the infernal world do you expect your domicile to be
+fixed?  Shall you roll a stone like Sisyphus?  Hard exercise,
+Speusippus!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+In the name of all the gods--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Or shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit and
+wine like Tantalus?  Poor fellow?  I think I see your face as you
+are springing up to the branches and missing your aim.  Oh
+Bacchus!  Oh Mercury!
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Alcibiades!
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Or perhaps you will be food for a vulture, like the huge fellow
+who was rude to Latona.
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+Alcibiades!
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Never fear.  Minos will not be so cruel.  Your eloquence will
+triumph over all accusations.  The Furies will skulk away like
+disappointed sycophants.  Only address the judges of hell in the
+speech which you were prevented from speaking last assembly.
+"When I consider"--is not that the beginning of it?  Come, man,
+do not be angry.  Why do you pace up and down with such long
+steps?  You are not in Tartarus yet.  You seem to think that you
+are already stalking like poor Achilles,
+
+"With stride
+Majestic through the plain of Asphodel."  (See Homer's Odyssey,
+xi. 538.)
+
+SPEUSIPPUS.
+How can you talk so, when you know that I believe all that
+foolery as little as you do?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Then march.  You shall be the crier.  Callicles, you shall carry
+the torch.  Why do you stare?  (The crier and torchbearer were
+important functionaries at the celebration of the Eleusinian
+mysteries.)
+
+CALLICLES.
+I do not much like the frolic.
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Nay, surely you are not taken with a fit of piety.  If all be
+true that is told of you, you have as little reason to think the
+gods vindictive as any man breathing.  If you be not belied, a
+certain golden goblet which I have seen at your house was once in
+the temple of Juno at Corcyra.  And men say that there was a
+priestess at Tarentum--
+
+CALLICLES.
+A fig for the gods!  I was thinking about the Archons.  You will
+have an accusation laid against you to-morrow.  It is not very
+pleasant to be tried before the king.  (The name of king was
+given in the Athenian democracy to the magistrate who exercised
+those spiritual functions which in the monarchical times had
+belonged to the sovereign.  His court took cognisance of offences
+against the religion of the state.)
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Never fear: there is not a sycophant in Attica who would dare to
+breathe a word against me, for the golden plane-tree of the great
+king.  (See Herodotus, viii. 28.)
+
+HIPPOMACHUS.
+That plane-tree--
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+Never mind the plane-tree.  Come, Callicles, you were not so
+timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea.  Take up
+the torch and move.  Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring
+a sow.  (A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the
+greater mysteries.)
+
+CALLICLES.
+And what part are you to play?
+
+ALCIBIADES.
+I shall be hierophant.  Herald, to your office.  Torchbearer,
+advance with the lights.  Come forward, fair novice.  We will
+celebrate the rite within.
+
+[Exeunt.]
+
+...
+
+
+CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.
+
+No. I.  DANTE.
+
+(January 1824.)
+
+"Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
+If better thou belong not to the dawn,
+Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
+With thy bright circlet."   Milton.
+
+In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to
+precedency.  He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his
+country.  He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited
+the powers of his native dialect.  The Latin tongue, which, under
+the most favourable circumstances, and in the hands of the
+greatest masters, had still been poor, feeble, and singularly
+unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, been debased by
+the admixture of innumerable barbarous words and idioms, was
+still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and received, in
+the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had deserved
+in the period of its life and vigour.  It was the language of the
+cabinet, of the university, of the church.  It was employed by
+all who aspired to distinction in the higher walks of poetry.  In
+compassion to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now
+and then proclaim his passion in Tuscan or Proven‡al rhymes.  The
+vulgar might occasionally be edified by a pious allegory in the
+popular jargon.  But no writer had conceived it possible that the
+dialect of peasants and market-women should possess sufficient
+energy and precision for a majestic and durable work.  Dante
+adventured first.  He detected the rich treasures of thought and
+diction which still lay latent in their ore.  He refined them
+into purity.  He burnished them into splendour.  He fitted them
+for every purpose of use and magnificence.  And he has thus
+acquired the glory, not only of producing the finest narrative
+poem of modern times but also of creating a language,
+distinguished by unrivalled melody, and peculiarly capable of
+furnishing to lofty and passionate thoughts their appropriate
+garb of severe and concise expression.
+
+To many this may appear a singular panegyric on the Italian
+tongue.  Indeed the great majority of the young gentlemen and
+young ladies, who, when they are asked whether they read Italian,
+answer "yes," never go beyond the stories at the end of their
+grammar,--The Pastor Fido,--or an act of Artaserse.  They could
+as soon read a Babylonian brick as a canto of Dante.  Hence it is
+a general opinion, among those who know little or nothing of the
+subject, that this admirable language is adapted only to the
+effeminate cant of sonnetteers, musicians, and connoisseurs.
+
+The fact is that Dante and Petrarch have been the Oromasdes and
+Arimanes of Italian literature.  I wish not to detract from the
+merits of Petrarch.  No one can doubt that his poems exhibit,
+amidst some imbecility and more affectation, much elegance,
+ingenuity, and tenderness.  They present us with a mixture which
+can only be compared to the whimsical concert described by the
+humorous poet of Modena:
+
+"S'udian gli usignuoli, al primo albore,
+Egli asini cantar versi d'amore."
+(Tassoni; Secchia Rapita, canto i. stanza 6.)
+
+I am not, however, at present speaking of the intrinsic
+excellencies of his writings, which I shall take another
+opportunity to examine, but of the effect which they produced on
+the literature of Italy.  The florid and luxurious charms of his
+style enticed the poets and the public from the contemplation of
+nobler and sterner models.  In truth, though a rude state of
+society is that in which great original works are most frequently
+produced, it is also that in which they are worst appreciated.
+This may appear paradoxical; but it is proved by experience, and
+is consistent with reason.  To be without any received canons of
+taste is good for the few who can create, but bad for the many
+who can only imitate and judge.  Great and active minds cannot
+remain at rest.  In a cultivated age they are too often contented
+to move on in the beaten path.  But where no path exists they
+will make one.  Thus the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Divine Comedy,
+appeared in dark and half barbarous times:  and thus of the few
+original works which have been produced in more polished ages we
+owe a large proportion to men in low stations and of uninformed
+minds.  I will instance, in our own language, the Pilgrim's
+Progress and Robinson Crusoe.  Of all the prose works of fiction
+which we possess, these are, I will not say the best, but the
+most peculiar, the most unprecedented, the most inimitable.  Had
+Bunyan and Defoe been educated gentlemen, they would probably
+have published translations and imitations of French romances "by
+a person of quality."  I am not sure that we should have had Lear
+if Shakspeare had been able to read Sophocles.
+
+But these circumstances, while they foster genius, are
+unfavourable to the science of criticism.  Men judge by
+comparison.  They are unable to estimate the grandeur of an
+object when there is no standard by which they can measure it.
+One of the French philosophers (I beg Gerard's pardon), who
+accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, tells us that, when he first
+visited the great Pyramid, he was surprised to see it so
+diminutive.  It stood alone in a boundless plain.  There was
+nothing near it from which he could calculate its magnitude.  But
+when the camp was pitched beside it, and the tents appeared like
+diminutive specks around its base, he then perceived the
+immensity of this mightiest work of man.  In the same manner, it
+is not till a crowd of petty writers has sprung up that the merit
+of the great masterspirits of literature is understood.
+
+We have indeed ample proof that Dante was highly admired in his
+own and the following age.  I wish that we had equal proof that
+he was admired for his excellencies.  But it is a remarkable
+corroboration of what has been said, that this great man seems to
+have been utterly unable to appreciate himself.  In his treatise
+"De Vulgari Eloquentia" he talks with satisfaction of what he has
+done for Italian literature, of the purity and correctness of his
+style.  "Cependant," says a favourite writer of mine,(Sismondi,
+Literature du Midi de l'Europe.) "il n'est ni pur, ni correct,
+mais il est createur."  Considering the difficulties with which
+Dante had to struggle, we may perhaps be more inclined than the
+French critic to allow him this praise.  Still it is by no means
+his highest or most peculiar title to applause.  It is scarcely
+necessary to say that those qualities which escaped the notice of
+the poet himself were not likely to attract the attention of the
+commentators.  The fact is, that, while the public homage was
+paid to some absurdities with which his works may be justly
+charged, and to many more which were falsely imputed to them,--
+while lecturers were paid to expound and eulogise his physics,
+his metaphysics, his theology, all bad of their kind--while
+annotators laboured to detect allegorical meanings of which the
+author never dreamed, the great powers of his imagination, and
+the incomparable force of his style, were neither admired nor
+imitated.  Arimanes had prevailed.  The Divine Comedy was to that
+age what St. Paul's Cathedral was to Omai.  The poor Otaheitean
+stared listlessly for a moment at the huge cupola, and ran into a
+toyshop to play with beads.  Italy, too, was charmed with
+literary trinkets, and played with them for four centuries.
+
+From the time of Petrarch to the appearance of Alfieri's
+tragedies, we may trace in almost every page of Italian
+literature the influence of those celebrated sonnets which, from
+the nature both of their beauties and their faults, were
+peculiarly unfit to be models for general imitation.  Almost all
+the poets of that period, however different in the degree and
+quality of their talents, are characterised by great
+exaggeration, and as a necessary consequence, great coldness of
+sentiment; by a passion for frivolous and tawdry ornament; and,
+above all, by an extreme feebleness and diffuseness of style.
+Tasso, Marino, Guarini, Metastasio, and a crowd of writers of
+inferior merit and celebrity, were spell-bound in the enchanted
+gardens of a gaudy and meretricious Alcina, who concealed
+debility and deformity beneath the deceitful semblance of
+loveliness and health.  Ariosto, the great Ariosto himself, like
+his own Ruggiero, stooped for a time to linger amidst the magic
+flowers and fountains, and to caress the gay and painted
+sorceress.  But to him, as to his own Ruggiero, had been given
+the omnipotent ring and the winged courser, which bore him from
+the paradise of deception to the regions of light and nature.
+
+The evil of which I speak was not confined to the graver poets.
+It infected satire, comedy, burlesque.  No person can admire more
+than I do the great masterpieces of wit and humour which Italy
+has produced.  Still I cannot but discern and lament a great
+deficiency, which is common to them all.  I find in them
+abundance of ingenuity, of droll naivete, of profound and just
+reflection, of happy expression.  Manners, characters, opinions,
+are treated with "a most learned spirit of human dealing."  But
+something is still wanting.  We read, and we admire, and we yawn.
+We look in vain for the bacchanalian fury which inspired the
+comedy of Athens, for the fierce and withering scorn which
+animates the invectives of Juvenal and Dryden, or even for the
+compact and pointed diction which adds zest to the verses of Pope
+and Boileau.  There is no enthusiasm, no energy, no condensation,
+nothing which springs from strong feeling, nothing which tends to
+excite it.  Many fine thoughts and fine expressions reward the
+toil of reading.  Still it is a toil.  The Secchia Rapita, in
+some points the best poem of its kind, is painfully diffuse and
+languid.  The Animali Parlanti of Casti is perfectly intolerable.
+I admire the dexterity of the plot, and the liberality of the
+opinions.  I admit that it is impossible to turn to a page which
+does not contain something that deserves to be remembered; but it
+is at least six times as long as it ought to be.  And the
+garrulous feebleness of the style is a still greater fault than
+the length of the work.
+
+It may be thought that I have gone too far in attributing these
+evils to the influence of the works and the fame of Petrarch.  It
+cannot, however, be doubted that they have arisen, in a great
+measure, from a neglect of the style of Dante.  This is not more
+proved by the decline of Italian poetry than by its
+resuscitation.  After the lapse of four hundred and fifty years,
+there appeared a man capable of appreciating and imitating the
+father of Tuscan literature--Vittorio Alfieri.  Like the prince
+in the nursery tale, he sought and found the sleeping beauty
+within the recesses which had so long concealed her from mankind.
+The portal was indeed rusted by time;--the dust of ages had
+accumulated on the hangings;--the furniture was of antique
+fashion;--and the gorgeous colour of the embroidery had faded.
+But the living charms which were well worth all the rest remained
+in the bloom of eternal youth, and well rewarded the bold
+adventurer who roused them from their long slumber.  In every
+line of the Philip and the Saul, the greatest poems, I think, of
+the eighteenth century, we may trace the influence of that mighty
+genius which has immortalised the ill-starred love of Francesca,
+and the paternal agonies of Ugolino.  Alfieri bequeathed the
+sovereignty of Italian literature to the author of the
+Aristodemus--a man of genius scarcely inferior to his own, and a
+still more devoted disciple of the great Florentine.  It must be
+acknowledged that this eminent writer has sometimes pushed too
+far his idolatry of Dante.  To borrow a sprightly illustration
+from Sir John Denham, he has not only imitated his garb, but
+borrowed his clothes.  He often quotes his phrases; and he has,
+not very judiciously as it appears to me, imitated his
+versification.  Nevertheless, he has displayed many of the higher
+excellencies of his master; and his works may justly inspire us
+with a hope that the Italian language will long flourish under a
+new literary dynasty, or rather under the legitimate line, which
+has at length been restored to a throne long occupied by specious
+usurpers.
+
+The man to whom the literature of his country owes its origin and
+its revival was born in times singularly adapted to call forth
+his extraordinary powers.  Religious zeal, chivalrous love and
+honour, democratic liberty, are the three most powerful
+principles that have ever influenced the character of large
+masses of men.  Each of them singly has often excited the
+greatest enthusiasm, and produced the most important changes.  In
+the time of Dante all the three, often in amalgamation, generally
+in conflict, agitated the public mind.  The preceding generation
+had witnessed the wrongs and the revenge of the brave, the
+accomplished, the unfortunate Emperor Frederic the Second,--a
+poet in an age of schoolmen,--a philosopher in an age of monks,--
+a statesman in an age of crusaders.  During the whole life of the
+poet, Italy was experiencing the consequences of the memorable
+struggle which he had maintained against the Church.  The finest
+works of imagination have always been produced in times of
+political convulsion, as the richest vineyards and the sweetest
+flowers always grow on the soil which has been fertilised by the
+fiery deluge of a volcano.  To look no further than the literary
+history of our own country, can we doubt that Shakspeare was in a
+great measure produced by the Reformation, and Wordsworth by the
+French Revolution?  Poets often avoid political transactions;
+they often affect to despise them.  But, whether they perceive it
+or not, they must be influenced by them.  As long as their minds
+have any point of contact with those of their fellow-men, the
+electric impulse, at whatever distance it may originate, will be
+circuitously communicated to them.
+
+This will be the case even in large societies, where the division
+of labour enables many speculative men to observe the face of
+nature, or to analyse their own minds, at a distance from the
+seat of political transactions.  In the little republic of which
+Dante was a member the state of things was very different.  These
+small communities are most unmercifully abused by most of our
+modern professors of the science of government.  In such states,
+they tell us, factions are always most violent:  where both
+parties are cooped up within a narrow space, political difference
+necessarily produces personal malignity.  Every man must be a
+soldier; every moment may produce a war.  No citizen can lie down
+secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel
+or avenge an injury.  In such petty quarrels Greece squandered
+the blood which might have purchased for her the permanent empire
+of the world, and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which
+would have enabled her to defend her independence against the
+Pontiffs and the Caesars.
+
+All this is true: yet there is still a compensation.  Mankind has
+not derived so much benefit from the empire of Rome as from the
+city of Athens, nor from the kingdom of France as from the city
+of Florence.  The violence of party feeling may be an evil; but
+it calls forth that activity of mind which in some states of
+society it is desirable to produce at any expense.  Universal
+soldiership may be an evil; but where every man is a soldier
+there will be no standing army.  And is it no evil that one man
+in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter; should
+live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed;
+should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be
+sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old?
+Such, over more than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of
+soldiers.  It was something that the citizen of Milan or Florence
+fought, not merely in the vague and rhetorical sense in which the
+words are often used, but in sober truth, for his parents, his
+children, his lands, his house, his altars.  It was something
+that he marched forth to battle beneath the Carroccio, which had
+been the object of his childish veneration:  that his aged father
+looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that his
+friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory.  If he
+fell, he was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians.  The
+same day saw him conveyed within the walls which he had defended.
+His wounds were dressed by his mother; his confession was
+whispered to the friendly priest who had heard and absolved the
+follies of his youth; his last sigh was breathed upon the lips of
+the lady of his love.  Surely there is no sword like that which
+is beaten out of a ploughshare.  Surely this state of things was
+not unmixedly bad; its evils were alleviated by enthusiasm and by
+tenderness; and it will at least be acknowledged that it was well
+fitted to nurse poetical genius in an imaginative and observant
+mind.
+
+Nor did the religious spirit of the age tend less to this result
+than its political circumstances.  Fanaticism is an evil, but it
+is not the greatest of evils.  It is good that a people should be
+roused by any means from a state of utter torpor;--that their
+minds should be diverted from objects merely sensual, to
+meditations, however erroneous, on the mysteries of the
+moral and intellectual world; and from interests which are
+immediately selfish to those which relate to the past, the
+future, and the remote.  These effects have sometimes been
+produced by the worst superstitions that ever existed; but the
+Catholic religion, even in the time of its utmost extravagance
+and atrocity, never wholly lost the spirit of the Great Teacher,
+whose precepts form the noblest code, as His conduct furnished
+the purest example, of moral excellence.  It is of all religions
+the most poetical.  The ancient superstitions furnished the fancy
+with beautiful images, but took no hold on the heart.  The
+doctrines of the Reformed Churches have most powerfully
+influenced the feelings and the conduct of men, but have not
+presented them with visions of sensible beauty and grandeur.  The
+Roman Catholic Church has united to the awful doctrines
+of the one that Mr Coleridge calls the "fair humanities" of the
+other.  It has enriched sculpture and painting with the loveliest
+and most majestic forms.  To the Phidian Jupiter it can oppose
+the Moses of Michael Angelo; and to the voluptuous beauty of the
+Queen of Cyprus, the serene and pensive loveliness of the Virgin
+Mother.  The legends of its martyrs and its saints may vie in
+ingenuity and interest with the mythological fables of Greece;
+its ceremonies and processions were the delight of the vulgar;
+the huge fabric of secular power with which it was connected
+attracted the admiration of the statesman.  At the same time, it
+never lost sight of the most solemn and tremendous doctrines of
+Christianity,--the incarnate God,--the judgment,--the
+retribution,--the eternity of happiness or torment.  Thus, while,
+like the ancient religions, it received incalculable support from
+policy and ceremony, it never wholly became, like those
+religions, a merely political and ceremonial institution.
+
+The beginning of the thirteenth century was, as Machiavelli has
+remarked, the era of a great revival of this extraordinary
+system.  The policy of Innocent,--the growth of the Inquisition
+and the mendicant orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the
+Pagans of the East, and the unfortunate princes of the house of
+Swabia, agitated Italy during the two following generations.  In
+this point Dante was completely under the influence of his age.
+He was a man of a turbid and melancholy spirit.  In early youth
+he had entertained a strong and unfortunate passion, which, long
+after the death of her whom he loved, continued to haunt him.
+Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes had not effaced it.  He was
+not only a sincere, but a passionate, believer.  The crimes and
+abuses of the Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him; but to
+all its doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic
+fondness and veneration; and, at length, driven from his native
+country, reduced to a situation the most painful to a man of his
+disposition, condemned to learn by experience that no food is so
+bitter as the bread of dependence
+("Tu proverai si come sa di sale
+Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle
+Lo scendere e'l sa'ir per l'altrui scale."
+Paradiso, canto xvii.),
+
+and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his
+wounded spirit took refuge in visionary devotion.  Beatrice, the
+unforgotten object of his early tenderness, was invested by his
+imagination with glorious and mysterious attributes; she was
+enthroned among the highest of the celestial hierarchy:  Almighty
+Wisdom had assigned to her the care of the sinful and unhappy
+wanderer who had loved her with such a perfect love.  ("L'amico
+mio, e non della ventura."  Inferno, canto ii.)  By a confusion,
+like that which often takes place in dreams, he has sometimes
+lost sight of her human nature, and even of her personal
+existence, and seems to consider her as one of the attributes of
+the Deity.
+
+But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the
+sublime enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his
+speculations on human life more cheerful.  This is an
+inconsistency which may often be observed in men of a similar
+temperament.  He hoped for happiness beyond the grave:  but he
+felt none on earth.  It is from this cause, more than from any
+other, that his description of Heaven is so far inferior to the
+Hell or the Purgatory.  With the passions and miseries of the
+suffering spirits he feels a strong sympathy.  But among the
+beatified he appears as one who has nothing in common with them,-
+-as one who is incapable of comprehending, not only the degree,
+but the nature of their enjoyment.  We think that we see him
+standing amidst those smiling and radiant spirits with that scowl
+of unutterable misery on his brow, and that curl of bitter
+disdain on his lips, which all his portraits have preserved, and
+which might furnish Chantrey with hints for the head of his
+projected Satan.
+
+There is no poet whose intellectual and moral character are so
+closely connected.  The great source, as it appears to me, of the
+power of the Divine Comedy is the strong belief with which the
+story seems to be told.  In this respect, the only books which
+approach to its excellence are Gulliver's Travels and Robinson
+Crusoe.  The solemnity of his asseverations, the consistency and
+minuteness of his details, the earnestness with which he labours
+to make the reader understand the exact shape and size of
+everything that he describes, give an air of reality to his
+wildest fictions.  I should only weaken this statement by quoting
+instances of a feeling which pervades the whole work, and to
+which it owes much of its fascination.  This is the real
+justification of the many passages in his poem which bad critics
+have condemned as grotesque.  I am concerned to see that Mr Cary,
+to whom Dante owes more than ever poet owed to translator, has
+sanctioned an accusation utterly unworthy of his abilities.  "His
+solicitude," says that gentleman, "to define all his images in
+such a manner as to bring them within the circle of our vision,
+and to subject them to the power of the pencil, renders him
+little better than grotesque, where Milton has since taught us to
+expect sublimity."  It is true that Dante has never shrunk from
+embodying his conceptions in determinate words, that he has even
+given measures and numbers, where Milton would have left his
+images to float undefined in a gorgeous haze of language.  Both
+were right.  Milton did not profess to have been in heaven or
+hell.  He might therefore reasonably confine himself to
+magnificent generalities.  Far different was the office of the
+lonely traveller, who had wandered through the nations of the
+dead.  Had he described the abode of the rejected spirits in
+language resembling the splendid lines of the English Poet,--had
+he told us of--
+
+"An universe of death, which God by curse
+Created evil, for evil only good,
+Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
+Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things,
+Abominable, unutterable, and worse
+Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
+Gorgons, and hydras, and chimaeras dire"--
+
+this would doubtless have been noble writing.  But where would
+have been that strong impression of reality, which, in accordance
+with his plan, it should have been his great object to produce?
+It was absolutely necessary for him to delineate accurately "all
+monstrous, all prodigious things,"--to utter what might to others
+appear "unutterable,"--to relate with the air of truth what
+fables had never feigned,--to embody what fear had never
+conceived. And I will frankly confess that the vague sublimity of
+Milton affects me less than these reviled details of Dante.  We
+read Milton; and we know that we are reading a great poet.  When
+we read Dante, the poet vanishes.  We are listening to the man
+who has returned from "the valley of the dolorous abyss;"
+("Lavalle d'abisso doloroso."--Inferno, cantoiv.)--we seem to see
+the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shuddering accents with
+which he tells his fearful tale.  Considered in this light, the
+narratives are exactly what they should be,--definite in
+themselves, but suggesting to the mind ideas of awful and
+indefinite wonder.  They are made up of the images of the earth:-
+-they are told in the language of the earth.--Yet the whole
+effect is, beyond expression, wild and unearthly.  The fact is,
+that supernatural beings, as long as they are considered merely
+with reference to their own nature, excite our feelings very
+feebly.  It is when the great gulf which separates them from us
+is passed, when we suspect some strange and undefinable relation
+between the laws of the visible and the invisible world, that
+they rouse, perhaps, the strongest emotions of which our nature
+is capable.  How many children, and how many men, are afraid of
+ghosts, who are not afraid of God!  And this, because, though
+they entertain a much stronger conviction of the existence of a
+Deity than of the reality of apparitions, they have no
+apprehension that he will manifest himself to them in any
+sensible manner.  While this is the case, to describe superhuman
+beings in the language, and to attribute to them the actions, of
+humanity may be grotesque, unphilosophical, inconsistent; but it
+will be the only mode of working upon the feelings of men, and,
+therefore, the only mode suited for poetry.  Shakspeare
+understood this well, as he understood everything that belonged
+to his art.  Who does not sympathise with the rapture of Ariel,
+flying after sunset on the wings of the bat, or sucking in the
+cups of flowers with the bee?  Who does not shudder at the
+caldron of Macbeth?  Where is the philosopher who is not moved
+when he thinks of the strange connection between the infernal
+spirits and "the sow's blood that hath eaten her nine farrow?"
+But this difficult task of representing supernatural beings to
+our minds, in a manner which shall be neither unintelligible to
+our intellects nor wholly inconsistent with our ideas of their
+nature, has never been so well performed as by Dante.  I will
+refer to three instances, which are, perhaps, the most striking:-
+-the description of the transformations of the serpents and the
+robbers, in the twenty-fifth canto of the Inferno,--the passage
+concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first canto of the same part,--
+and the magnificent procession in the twenty-ninth canto of the
+Purgatorio.
+
+The metaphors and comparisons of Dante harmonise admirably with
+that air of strong reality of which I have spoken.  They have a
+very peculiar character.  He is perhaps the only poet whose
+writings would become much less intelligible if all illustrations
+of this sort were expunged.  His similes are frequently rather
+those of a traveller than of a poet.  He employs them not to
+display his ingenuity by fanciful analogies,--not to delight the
+reader by affording him a distant and passing glimpse of
+beautiful images remote from the path in which he is proceeding,
+but to give an exact idea of the objects which he is describing,
+by comparing them with others generally known.  The boiling pitch
+in Malebolge was like that in the Venetian arsenal:--the mound on
+which he travelled along the banks of Phlegethon was like that
+between Ghent and Bruges, but not so large:--the cavities where
+the Simoniacal prelates are confined resemble the Fonts in the
+Church of John at Florence.  Every reader of Dante will recall
+many other illustrations of this description, which add to the
+appearance of sincerity and earnestness from which the narrative
+derives so much of its interest.
+
+Many of his comparisons, again, are intended to give an exact
+idea of his feelings under particular circumstances.  The
+delicate shades of grief, of fear, of anger, are rarely
+discriminated with sufficient accuracy in the language of the
+most refined nations.  A rude dialect never abounds in nice
+distinctions of this kind.  Dante therefore employs the most
+accurate and infinitely the most poetical mode of marking the
+precise state of his mind.  Every person who has experienced the
+bewildering effect of sudden bad tidings,--the stupefaction,--the
+vague doubt of the truth of our own perceptions which they
+produce,--will understand the following simile:--"I was as he is
+who dreameth his own harm,--who, dreaming, wishes that it may be
+all a dream, so that he desires that which is as though it were
+not."  This is only one out of a hundred equally striking and
+expressive similitudes.  The comparisons of Homer and Milton are
+magnificent digressions.  It scarcely injures their effect to
+detach them from the work.  Those of Dante are very different.
+They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect beauty
+upon it.  His embroidery cannot be taken out without spoiling the
+whole web.  I cannot dismiss this part of the subject without
+advising every person who can muster sufficient Italian to read
+the simile of the sheep, in the third canto of the Purgatorio.  I
+think it the most perfect passage of the kind in the world, the
+most imaginative, the most picturesque, and the most sweetly
+expressed.
+
+No person can have attended to the Divine Comedy without
+observing how little impression the forms of the external world
+appear to have made on the mind of Dante.  His temper and his
+situation had led him to fix his observation almost exclusively
+on human nature.  The exquisite opening of the eighth* canto of
+the Purgatorio affords a strong instance of this.  (I cannot help
+observing that Gray's imitation of that noble line
+
+"Che paia 'lgiorna pianger che si muore,"--
+
+is one of the most striking instances of injudicious plagiarism
+with which I am acquainted.  Dante did not put this strong
+personification at the beginning of his description.  The
+imagination of the reader is so well prepared for it by the
+previous lines, that it appears perfectly natural and pathetic.
+Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded nor followed by
+anything that harmonises with it, it becomes a frigid conceit.
+Woe to the unskilful rider who ventures on the horses of
+Achilles!)
+
+He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky.  His
+business is with man.  To other writers, evening may be the
+season of dews and stars and radiant clouds.  To Dante it is the
+hour of fond recollection and passionate devotion,--the hour
+which melts the heart of the mariner and kindles the love of the
+pilgrim,--the hour when the toll of the bell seems to mourn for
+another day which is gone and will return no more.
+
+The feeling of the present age has taken a direction
+diametrically opposite.  The magnificence of the physical world,
+and its influence upon the human mind, have been the favourite
+themes of our most eminent poets.  The herd of bluestocking
+ladies and sonneteering gentlemen seem to consider a strong
+sensibility to the "splendour of the grass, the glory of the
+flower," as an ingredient absolutely indispensable in the
+formation of a poetical mind.  They treat with contempt all
+writers who are unfortunately
+
+nec ponere lucum
+Artifices, nec rus saturum laudare.
+
+The orthodox poetical creed is more Catholic.  The noblest
+earthly object of the contemplation of man is man himself.  The
+universe, and all its fair and glorious forms, are indeed
+included in the wide empire of the imagination; but she has
+placed her home and her sanctuary amidst the inexhaustible
+varieties and the impenetrable mysteries of the mind.
+
+In tutte parti impera, e quivi regge;
+Quivi e la sua cittade, e l'alto seggio.
+(Inferno, canto i.)
+
+Othello is perhaps the greatest work in the world.  From what
+does it derive its power?  From the clouds?  From the ocean?
+From the mountains?  Or from love strong as death, and jealousy
+cruel as the grave?  What is it that we go forth to see in
+Hamlet?  Is it a reed shaken with the wind?  A small celandine?
+A bed of daffodils?  Or is it to contemplate a mighty and wayward
+mind laid bare before us to the inmost recesses?  It may perhaps
+be doubted whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for
+the education of a poet than the dusky streets of a huge capital.
+Indeed who is not tired to death with pure description of
+scenery?  Is it not the fact, that external objects never
+strongly excite our feelings but when they are contemplated in
+reference to man, as illustrating his destiny, or as influencing
+his character?  The most beautiful object in the world, it will
+be allowed, is a beautiful woman.  But who that can analyse his
+feelings is not sensible that she owes her fascination less to
+grace of outline and delicacy of colour, than to a thousand
+associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect those
+qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment
+of our infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of
+our age--with elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the
+strongest of natural instincts, with the dearest of social ties?
+
+To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet
+to the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable
+deficiency.  On mankind no writer, with the exception of
+Shakspeare, has looked with a more penetrating eye.  I have said
+that his poetical character had derived a tinge from his peculiar
+temper.  It is on the sterner and darker passions that he
+delights to dwell.  All love excepting the half-mystic passion
+which he still felt for his buried Beatrice, had palled on the
+fierce and restless exile.  The sad story of Rimini is almost a
+single exception.  I know not whether it has been remarked, that,
+in one point, misanthropy seems to have affected his mind, as it
+did that of Swift.  Nauseous and revolting images seem to have
+had a fascination for his mind; and he repeatedly places before
+his readers, with all the energy of his incomparable style, the
+most loathsome objects of the sewer and the dissecting-room.
+
+There is another peculiarity in the poem of Dante, which, I
+think, deserves notice.  Ancient mythology has hardly ever been
+successfully interwoven with modern poetry.  One class of writers
+have introduced the fabulous deities merely as allegorical
+representatives of love, wine, or wisdom.  This necessarily
+renders their works tame and cold.  We may sometimes admire their
+ingenuity; but with what interest can we read of beings of whose
+personal existence the writer does not suffer us to entertain,
+for a moment, even a conventional belief?  Even Spenser's
+allegory is scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that
+Una signifies innocence, and consider her merely as an oppressed
+lady under the protection of a generous knight.
+
+Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempted to preserve
+the personality of the classical divinities have failed from a
+different cause.  They have been imitators, and imitators at a
+disadvantage.  Euripides and Catullus believed in Bacchus and
+Cybele as little as we do.  But they lived among men who did.
+Their imaginations, if not their opinions, took the colour of the
+age.  Hence the glorious inspiration of the Bacchae and the Atys.
+Our minds are formed by circumstances:  and I do not believe that
+it would be in the power of the greatest modern poet to lash
+himself up to a degree of enthusiasm adequate to the production
+of such works.
+
+Dante, alone among the poets of later times, has been, in this
+respect, neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and,
+consequently, he alone has introduced the ancient fictions with
+effect.  His Minos, his Charon, his Pluto, are absolutely
+terrific.  Nothing can be more beautiful or original
+than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe.  He has
+never assigned to his mythological characters any functions
+inconsistent with the creed of the Catholic Church.  He has
+related nothing concerning them which a good Christian of that
+age might not believe possible.  On this account there is nothing
+in these passages that appears puerile or pedantic.  On the
+contrary, this singular use of classical names suggests
+to the mind a vague and awful idea of some mysterious revelation,
+anterior to all recorded history, of which the dispersed
+fragments might have been retained amidst the impostures and
+superstitions of later religions.  Indeed the mythology of the
+Divine Comedy is of the elder and more colossal mould.  It
+breathes the spirit of Homer and Aeschylus, not of Ovid and
+Claudian.
+
+This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been
+utterly ignorant of the Greek language; and his favourite Latin
+models could only have served to mislead him.  Indeed, it is
+impossible not to remark his admiration of writers far inferior
+to himself; and, in particular, his idolatry of Virgil, who,
+elegant and splendid as he is, has no pretensions to the depth
+and originality of mind which characterise his Tuscan worshipper,
+In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that
+good poets are bad critics.  Their minds are under the tyranny of
+ten thousand associations imperceptible to others.  The worst
+writer may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in
+their minds with a long succession of beautiful images.  They are
+like the gigantic slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power,
+but bound by spells so mighty that when a child whom they could
+have crushed touched a talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant,
+they immediately became his vassals.  It has more than once
+happened to me to see minds, graceful and majestic as the Titania
+of Shakspeare, bewitched by the charms of an ass's head,
+bestowing on it the fondest caresses, and crowning it with the
+sweetest flowers.  I need only mention the poems attributed to
+Ossian.  They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying
+instance of the success of a story without evidence, and of a
+book without merit.  They are a chaos of words which present no
+image, of images which have no archetype:--they are without form
+and void; and darkness is upon the face of them.  Yet how many
+men of genius have panegyrised and imitated them!
+
+The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most
+peculiar excellence.  I know nothing with which it can be
+compared.  The noblest models of Greek composition must yield to
+it.  His words are the fewest and the best which it is possible
+to use.  The first expression in which he clothes his thoughts is
+always so energetic and comprehensive that amplification would
+only injure the effect.  There is probably no writer in any
+language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind.
+Yet there is probably no writer equally concise.  This perfection
+of style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have
+already remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the
+two preceding parts of the poem.  The force and felicity of the
+diction, however, irresistibly attract the reader through the
+theological lectures and the sketches of ecclesiastical
+biography, with which this division of the work too much abounds.
+It may seem almost absurd to quote particular specimens of an
+excellence which is diffused over all his hundred cantos.  I
+will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the
+sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind.
+The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than
+poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian
+speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of
+sarcasm.  I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age
+remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought
+to be most attentively studied by every man who desires to attain
+oratorical eminence.
+
+But it is time to close this feeble and rambling critique.  I
+cannot refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the
+translations of the Divine Comedy.  Boyd's is as tedious and
+languid as the original is rapid and forcible.  The strange
+measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I know, invented, is
+most unfit for such a work.  Translations ought never to be
+written in a verse which requires much command of rhyme.  The
+stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes; and the thoughts of the
+unfortunate author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit
+their new receptacle.  The abrupt and yet consecutive style of
+Dante suffers more than that of any other poet by a version
+diffuse in style, and divided into paragraphs, for they deserve
+no other name, of equal length.
+
+Nothing can be said in favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is
+better than Boyd's.  His mind was a tolerable specimen of
+filigree work,--rather elegant, and very feeble.  All that can be
+said for his best works is that they are neat.  All that can be
+said against his worst is that they are stupid.  He might have
+translated Metastasio tolerably.  But he was utterly unable to do
+justice to the
+
+"rime e aspre e chiocce,
+"Come si converrebbe al tristo buco."
+(Inferno, canto xxxii.)
+
+I turn with pleasure from these wretched performances to Mr
+Cary's translation.  It is a work which well deserves a separate
+discussion, and on which, if this article were not already too
+long, I could dwell with great pleasure.  At present I will only
+say that there is no other version in the world, as far as I
+know, so faithful, yet that there is no other version which so
+fully proves that the translator is himself a man of poetical
+genius.  Those who are ignorant of the Italian language should
+read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy.  Those who
+are most intimate with Italian literature should read it for its
+original merits:  and I believe that they will find it difficult
+to determine whether the author deserves most praise for his
+intimacy with the language of Dante, or for his extraordinary
+mastery over his own.
+
+...
+
+
+CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.
+
+No. II.  PETRARCH.
+
+(April 1824.)
+
+Et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te, proxima myrte,
+Sic positae quoniam suaves miscetis odores.  Virgil.
+
+It would not be easy to name a writer whose celebrity, when both
+its extent and its duration are taken into the account, can be
+considered as equal to that of Petrarch.  Four centuries and a
+half have elapsed since his death.  Yet still the inhabitants of
+every nation throughout the western world are as familiar with
+his character and his adventures as with the most illustrious
+names, and the most recent anecdotes, of their own literary
+history.  This is indeed a rare distinction.  His detractors must
+acknowledge that it could not have been acquired by a poet
+destitute of merit.  His admirers will scarcely maintain that the
+unassisted merit of Petrarch could have raised him to that
+eminence which has not yet been attained by Shakspeare, Milton,
+or Dante,--that eminence, of which perhaps no modern writer,
+excepting himself and Cervantes, has long retained possession,--
+an European reputation.
+
+It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this
+great man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think
+disproportioned to his real claims on the admiration of mankind.
+In the first place, he is an egotist.  Egotism in conversation is
+universally abhorred.  Lovers, and, I believe, lovers alone,
+pardon it in each other.  No services, no talents, no powers of
+pleasing, render it endurable.  Gratitude, admiration, interest,
+fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it
+from indicating their disgust and fatigue.  The childless uncle,
+the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance.  We
+leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box,
+rather than hear the history of our companion.  The chaplain
+bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop.  The midshipman
+yawns at the table of the First Lord.  Yet, from whatever cause,
+this practice, the pest of conversation, gives to writing a zest
+which nothing else can impart.  Rousseau made the boldest
+experiment of this kind; and it fully succeeded.  In our own time
+Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the same nature, made
+himself the object of general interest and admiration.
+Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and
+he has been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively
+small in number, but far more enthusiastic in their devotion.  It
+is needless to multiply instances.  Even now all the walks of
+literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to
+excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their
+intellects, and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores
+of their feelings.  Nor are there wanting many who push their
+imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further, and
+who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by
+simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt,
+than by such honest labour as their health and strength enable
+them to perform.  In the meantime the credulous public pities and
+pampers a nuisance which requires only the treadmill and the
+whip.  This art, often successful when employed by dunces, gives
+irresistible fascination to works which possess intrinsic merit.
+We are always desirous to know something of the character and
+situation of those whose writings we have perused with pleasure.
+The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances
+are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than
+any other lines in his poems.  It is amusing to observe with what
+labour critics have attempted to glean from the poems of Homer,
+some hints as to his situation and feelings.  According to one
+hypothesis, he intended to describe himself under the name of
+Demodocus.  Others maintain that he was the identical Phemius
+whose life Ulysses spared.  This propensity of the human mind
+explains, I think, in a great degree, the extensive popularity of
+a poet whose works are little else than the expression of his
+personal feelings.
+
+In the second place, Petrarch was not only an egotist, but an
+amatory egotist.  The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows,
+which he described, were derived from the passion which of all
+passions exerts the widest influence, and which of all passions
+borrows most from the imagination.  He had also another immense
+advantage.  He was the first eminent amatory poet who appeared
+after the great convulsion which had changed, not only the
+political, but the moral, state of the world.  The Greeks, who,
+in their public institutions and their literary tastes, were
+diametrically opposed to the oriental nations, bore a
+considerable resemblance to those nations in their domestic
+habits.  Like them, they despised the intellects and immured the
+persons of their women; and it was among the least of the
+frightful evils to which this pernicious system gave birth, that
+all the accomplishments of mind, and all the fascinations of
+manner, which, in a highly cultivated age, will generally be
+necessary to attach men to their female associates, were
+monopolised by the Phrynes and the Lamais.  The indispensable
+ingredients of honourable and chivalrous love were nowhere to be
+found united.  The matrons and their daughters confined in the
+harem,--insipid, uneducated, ignorant of all but the mechanical
+arts, scarcely seen till they were married,--could rarely excite
+interest; afterwards their brilliant rivals, half Graces, half
+Harpies, elegant and informed, but fickle and rapacious, could
+never inspire respect.
+
+The state of society in Rome was, in this point, far happier; and
+the Latin literature partook of the superiority.  The Roman poets
+have decidedly surpassed those of Greece in the delineation of
+the passion of love.  There is no subject which they have treated
+with so much success.  Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and
+Propertius, in spite of all their faults, must be allowed to rank
+high in this department of the art.  To these I would add my
+favourite Plautus; who, though he took his plots from Greece,
+found, I suspect, the originals of his enchanting female
+characters at Rome.
+
+Still many evils remained:  and, in the decline of the great
+empire, all that was pernicious in its domestic institutions
+appeared more strongly.  Under the influence of governments at
+once dependent and tyrannical, which purchased, by cringing to
+their enemies, the power of trampling on their subjects, the
+Romans sunk into the lowest state of effeminacy and debasement.
+Falsehood, cowardice, sloth, conscious and unrepining
+degradation, formed the national character.  Such a character is
+totally incompatible with the stronger passions.  Love, in
+particular, which, in the modern sense of the word, implies
+protection and devotion on the one side, confidence on the other,
+respect and fidelity on both, could not exist among the sluggish
+and heartless slaves who cringed around the thrones of Honorius
+and Augustulus.  At this period the great renovation commenced.
+The warriors of the north, destitute as they were of knowledge
+and humanity, brought with them, from their forests and marshes,
+those qualities without which humanity is a weakness and
+knowledge a curse,--energy--independence--the dread of shame--the
+contempt of danger.  It would be most interesting to examine the
+manner in which the admixture of the savage conquerors and the
+effeminate slaves, after many generations of darkness and
+agitation, produced the modern European character;--to trace
+back, from the first conflict to the final amalgamation, the
+operation of that mysterious alchemy which, from hostile and
+worthless elements, has extracted the pure gold of human nature--
+to analyse the mass, and to determine the proportion in which the
+ingredients are mingled.  But I will confine myself to the
+subject to which I have more particularly referred.  The nature
+of the passion of love had undergone a complete change.  It still
+retained, indeed, the fanciful and voluptuous character which it
+had possessed among the southern nations of antiquity.  But it
+was tinged with the superstitious veneration with which the
+northern warriors had been accustomed to regard women.  Devotion
+and war had imparted to it their most solemn and animating
+feelings.  It was sanctified by the blessings of the Church, and
+decorated with the wreaths of the tournament.  Venus, as in the
+ancient fable, was again rising above the dark and tempestuous
+waves which had so long covered her beauty.  But she rose not
+now, as of old, in exposed and luxurious loveliness.  She still
+wore the cestus of her ancient witchcraft; but the diadem of Juno
+was on her brow, and the aegis of Pallas in her hand.  Love
+might, in fact, be called a new passion; and it is not
+astonishing that the first poet of eminence who wholly devoted
+his genius to this theme should have excited an extraordinary
+sensation.  He may be compared to an adventurer who accidentally
+lands in a rich and unknown island; and who, though he may only
+set up an ill-shaped cross upon the shore, acquires possession of
+its treasures, and gives it his name.  The claim of Petrarch was
+indeed somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent
+which should have derived its appellation from Columbus.  The
+Provencal poets were unquestionably the masters of the
+Florentine.  But they wrote in an age which could not appreciate
+their merits; and their imitator lived at the very period when
+composition in the vernacular language began to attract general
+attention.  Petrarch was in literature what a Valentine is in
+love.  The public preferred him, not because his merits were of a
+transcendent order, but because he was the first person whom they
+saw after they awoke from their long sleep.
+
+Nor did Petrarch gain less by comparison with his immediate
+successors than with those who had preceded him.  Till more than
+a century after his death Italy produced no poet who could be
+compared to him.  This decay of genius is doubtless to be
+ascribed, in a great measure, to the influence which his own
+works had exercised upon the literature of his country.  Yet it
+has conduced much to his fame.  Nothing is more favourable to the
+reputation of a writer than to be succeeded by a race inferior to
+himself; and it is an advantage, from obvious causes, much more
+frequently enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than
+by those who improve it.
+
+Another cause has co-operated with those which I have mentioned
+to spread the renown of Petrarch.  I mean the interest which is
+inspired by the events of his life--an interest which must have
+been strongly felt by his contemporaries, since, after an
+interval of five hundred years, no critic can be wholly exempt
+from its influence.  Among the great men to whom we owe the
+resuscitation of science he deserves the foremost place; and his
+enthusiastic attachment to this great cause constitutes his most
+just and splendid title to the gratitude of posterity.  He was
+the votary of literature.  He loved it with a perfect love.  He
+worshipped it with an almost fanatical devotion.  He was the
+missionary, who proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries--
+the pilgrim, who travelled far and wide to collect its reliques--
+the hermit, who retired to seclusion to meditate on its beauties-
+-the champion, who fought its battles--the conqueror, who, in
+more than a metaphorical sense, led barbarism and ignorance in
+triumph, and received in the Capitol the laurel which his
+magnificent victory had earned.
+
+Nothing can be conceived more noble or affecting than that
+ceremony.  The superb palaces and porticoes, by which had rolled
+the ivory chariots of Marius and Caesar, had long mouldered into
+dust.  The laurelled fasces--the golden eagles--the shouting
+legions--the captives and the pictured cities--were indeed
+wanting to his victorious procession.  The sceptre had passed
+away from Rome.  But she still retained the mightier influence of
+an intellectual empire, and was now to confer the prouder reward
+of an intellectual triumph.  To the man who had extended the
+dominion of her ancient language--who had erected the trophies of
+philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and
+ferocity--whose captives were the hearts of admiring nations
+enchained by the influence of his song--whose spoils were the
+treasures of ancient genius rescued from obscurity and decay--the
+Eternal City offered the just and glorious tribute of her
+gratitude.  Amidst the ruined monuments of ancient and the infant
+erections of modern art, he who had restored the broken link
+between the two ages of human civilisation was crowned with the
+wreath which he had deserved from the moderns who owed to him
+their refinement--from the ancients who owed to him their fame.
+Never was a coronation so august witnessed by Westminster or by
+Rheims.
+
+When we turn from this glorious spectacle to the private chamber
+of the poet,--when we contemplate the struggle of passion and
+virtue,--the eye dimmed, the cheek furrowed, by the tears of
+sinful and hopeless desire,--when we reflect on the whole history
+of his attachment, from the gay fantasy of his youth to the
+lingering despair of his age, pity and affection mingle with our
+admiration.  Even after death had placed the last seal on his
+misery, we see him devoting to the cause of the human mind all
+the strength and energy which love and sorrow had spared.  He
+lived the apostle of literature;--he fell its martyr:--he was
+found dead with his head reclined on a book.
+
+Those who have studied the life and writings of Petrarch with
+attention, will perhaps be inclined to make some deductions from
+this panegyric.  It cannot be denied that his merits were
+disfigured by a most unpleasant affectation.  His zeal for
+literature communicated a tinge of pedantry to all his feelings
+and opinions.  His love was the love of a sonnetteer:--his
+patriotism was the patriotism of an antiquarian.  The interest
+with which we contemplate the works, and study the history, of
+those who, in former ages, have occupied our country, arises from
+the associations which connect them with the community in which
+are comprised all the objects of our affection and our hope.  In
+the mind of Petrarch these feelings were reversed.  He loved
+Italy, because it abounded with the monuments of the ancient
+masters of the world.  His native city--the fair and glorious
+Florence--the modern Athens, then in all the bloom and strength
+of its youth, could not obtain, from the most distinguished of
+its citizens, any portion of that passionate homage which he paid
+to the decrepitude of Rome.  These and many other blemishes,
+though they must in candour be acknowledged, can but in a very
+slight degree diminish the glory of his career.  For my own part,
+I look upon it with so much fondness and pleasure that I feel
+reluctant to turn from it to the consideration of his works,
+which I by no means contemplate with equal admiration.
+
+Nevertheless, I think highly of the poetical powers of Petrarch.
+He did not possess, indeed, the art of strongly presenting
+sensible objects to the imagination;--and this is the more
+remarkable, because the talent of which I speak is that which
+peculiarly distinguishes the Italian poets.  In the Divine Comedy
+it is displayed in its highest perfection.  It characterises
+almost every celebrated poem in the language.  Perhaps this is to
+be attributed to the circumstance, that painting and sculpture
+had attained a high degree of excellence in Italy before poetry
+had been extensively cultivated.  Men were debarred from books,
+but accustomed from childhood to contemplate the admirable works
+of art, which, even in the thirteenth century, Italy began to
+produce.  Hence their imaginations received so strong a bias
+that, even in their writings, a taste for graphic delineation is
+discernible.  The progress of things in England has been in all
+respects different.  The consequence is, that English historical
+pictures are poems on canvas; while Italian poems are pictures
+painted to the mind by means of words.  Of this national
+characteristic the writings of Petrarch are almost totally
+destitute.  His sonnets indeed, from their subject and nature,
+and his Latin Poems, from the restraints which always shackle one
+who writes in a dead language, cannot fairly be received in
+evidence.  But his Triumphs absolutely required the exercise of
+this talent, and exhibit no indications of it.
+
+Genius, however, he certainly possessed, and genius of a high
+order.  His ardent, tender, and magnificent turn of thought, his
+brilliant fancy, his command of expression, at once forcible and
+elegant, must be acknowledged.  Nature meant him for the prince
+of lyric writers.  But by one fatal present she deprived her
+other gifts of half their value.  He would have been a much
+greater poet had he been a less clever man.  His ingenuity was
+the bane of his mind.  He abandoned the noble and natural style,
+in which he might have excelled, for the conceits which he
+produced with a facility at once admirable and disgusting.  His
+muse, like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy ornaments
+to betray the fastnesses of her strength, and, like her, was
+crushed beneath the glittering bribes which had seduced her.
+
+The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable.  It is impossible
+to look without amazement on a mind so fertile in combinations,
+yet so barren of images.  His amatory poetry is wholly made up of
+a very few topics, disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in
+so many lights, that it reminds us of those arithmetical problems
+about permutations, which so much astonish the unlearned.  The
+French cook, who boasted that he could make fifteen different
+dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater master of his art.
+The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope.  At every turn it
+presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally
+beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties
+have been produced by the same worthless fragments of glass.  The
+sameness of his images is, indeed, in some degree, to be
+attributed to the sameness of his subject.  It would be
+unreasonable to expect perpetual variety from so many hundred
+compositions, all of the same length, all in the same measure,
+and all addressed to the same insipid and heartless coquette.  I
+cannot but suspect also that the perverted taste, which is the
+blemish of his amatory verses, was to be attributed to the
+influence of Laura, who, probably, like most critics of her sex,
+preferred a gaudy to a majestic style.  Be this as it may, he no
+sooner changes his subject than he changes his manner.  When he
+speaks of the wrongs and degradation of Italy, devastated by
+foreign invaders, and but feebly defended by her pusillanimous
+children, the effeminate lisp of the sonnetteer is exchanged for
+a cry, wild, and solemn, and piercing as that which proclaimed
+"Sleep no more" to the bloody house of Cawdor.  "Italy seems not
+to feel her sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet;
+"decrepit, sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever?  Will
+there be none to awake her?  Oh that I had my hands twisted in
+her hair!"
+
+("Che suoi guai non par che senta;
+Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta.
+Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli?
+Le man l' avess' io avvolte entro e capegli."
+Canzone xi.)
+
+Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against the
+Mahometan Babylon the vengeance of Europe and of Christ.  His
+magnificent enumeration of the ancient exploits of the Greeks
+must always excite admiration, and cannot be perused without the
+deepest interest, at a time when the wise and good, bitterly
+disappointed in so many other countries, are looking with
+breathless anxiety towards the natal land of liberty,--the field
+of Marathon,--and the deadly pass where the Lion of Lacedaemon
+turned to bay.
+("Maratona, e le mortali strette
+Che difese il LEON con poca gente."
+Canzone v.)
+
+His poems on religious subjects also deserve the highest
+commendation.  At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the
+Virgin.  It is, perhaps, the finest hymn in the world.  His
+devout veneration receives an exquisitely poetical character from
+the delicate perception of the sex and the loveliness of his
+idol, which we may easily trace throughout the whole composition.
+
+I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar parts of the
+writings of Petrarch; but I must return to his amatory poetry:
+to that he entrusted his fame; and to that he has principally
+owed it.
+
+The prevailing defect of his best compositions on this subject is
+the universal brilliancy with which they are lighted up.  The
+natural language of the passions is, indeed, often figurative and
+fantastic; and with none is this more the case than with that of
+love.  Still there is a limit.  The feelings should, indeed, have
+their ornamental garb; but, like an elegant woman, they should be
+neither muffled nor exposed.  The drapery should be so arranged,
+as at once to answer the purposes of modest concealment and
+judicious display.  The decorations should sometimes be employed
+to hide a defect, and sometimes to heighten a beauty; but never
+to conceal, much less to distort, the charms to which they are
+subsidiary.  The love of Petrarch, on the contrary, arrays itself
+like a foppish savage, whose nose is bored with a golden ring,
+whose skin is painted with grotesque forms and dazzling colours,
+and whose ears are drawn down his shoulders by the weight of
+jewels.  It is a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of
+composition, that the principal idea, the predominant feeling,
+should never be confounded with the accompanying decorations.  It
+should generally be distinguished from them by greater simplicity
+of expression; as we recognise Napoleon in the pictures of his
+battles, amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and plumes, by his
+grey cloak and his hat without a feather.  In the verses of
+Petrarch it is generally impossible to say what thought is meant
+to be prominent.  All is equally elaborate.  The chief wears the
+same gorgeous and degrading livery with his retinue, and obtains
+only his share of the indifferent stare which we bestow upon them
+in common.  The poems have no strong lights and shades, no
+background, no foreground;--they are like the illuminated figures
+in an oriental manuscript,--plenty of rich tints and no
+perspective.  Such are the faults of the most celebrated of these
+compositions.  Of those which are universally acknowledged to be
+bad it is scarcely possible to speak with patience.  Yet they
+have much in common with their splendid companions.  They differ
+from them, as a Mayday procession of chimneysweepers differs from
+the Field of Cloth of Gold.  They have the gaudiness but not the
+wealth.  His muse belongs to that numerous class of females who
+have no objection to be dirty, while they can be tawdry.  When
+his brilliant conceits are exhausted, he supplies their place
+with metaphysical quibbles, forced antitheses, bad puns, and
+execrable charades.  In his fifth sonnet he may, I think, be said
+to have sounded the lowest chasm of the Bathos.  Upon the whole,
+that piece may be safely pronounced to be the worst attempt at
+poetry, and the worst attempt at wit, in the world.
+
+A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, that almost
+all the sonnets produce exactly the same effect on the mind of
+the reader.  They relate to all the various moods of a lover,
+from joy to despair:--yet they are perused, as far as my
+experience and observation have gone, with exactly the same
+feeling.  The fact is, that in none of them are the passion and
+the ingenuity mixed in just proportions.  There is not enough
+sentiment to dilute the condiments which are employed to season
+it.  The repast which he sets before us resembles the Spanish
+entertainment in Dryden's "Mock Astrologer", at which the relish
+of all the dishes and sauces was overpowered by the common
+flavour of spice.  Fish,--flesh,--fowl,--everything at table
+tasted of nothing but red pepper.
+
+The writings of Petrarch may indeed suffer undeservedly from one
+cause to which I must allude.  His imitators have so much
+familiarised the ear of Italy and of Europe to the favourite
+topics of amorous flattery and lamentation, that we can scarcely
+think them original when we find them in the first author; and,
+even when our understandings have convinced us that they were new
+to him, they are still old to us.  This has been the fate of many
+of the finest passages of the most eminent writers.  It is
+melancholy to trace a noble thought from stage to stage of its
+profanation; to see it transferred from the first illustrious
+wearer to his lacqueys, turned, and turned again, and at last
+hung on a scarecrow.  Petrarch has really suffered much from this
+cause.  Yet that he should have so suffered is a sufficient proof
+that his excellences were not of the highest order.  A line may
+be stolen; but the pervading spirit of a great poet is not to be
+surreptitiously obtained by a plagiarist.  The continued
+imitation of twenty-five centuries has left Homer as it found
+him.  If every simile and every turn of Dante had been copied ten
+thousand times, the Divine Comedy would have retained all its
+freshness.  It was easy for the porter in Farquhar to pass for
+Beau Clincher, by borrowing his lace and his pulvilio.  It would
+have been more difficult to enact Sir Harry Wildair.
+
+Before I quit this subject I must defend Petrarch from one
+accusation which is in the present day frequently brought against
+him.  His sonnets are pronounced by a large sect of critics not
+to possess certain qualities which they maintain to be
+indispensable to sonnets, with as much confidence, and as much
+reason, as their prototypes of old insisted on the unities of the
+drama.  I am an exoteric--utterly unable to explain the mysteries
+of this new poetical faith.  I only know that it is a faith,
+which except a man do keep pure and undefiled, without doubt he
+shall be called a blockhead.  I cannot, however, refrain from
+asking what is the particular virtue which belongs to fourteen as
+distinguished from all other numbers.  Does it arise from its
+being a multiple of seven?  Has this principle any reference to
+the sabbatical ordinance?  Or is it to the order of rhymes that
+these singular properties are attached?  Unhappily the sonnets of
+Shakspeare differ as much in this respect from those of Petrarch,
+as from a Spenserian or an octave stanza.  Away with this
+unmeaning jargon!  We have pulled down the old regime of
+criticism.  I trust that we shall never tolerate the equally
+pedantic and irrational despotism, which some of the
+revolutionary leaders would erect upon its ruins.  We have not
+dethroned Aristotle and Bossu for this.
+
+These sonnet-fanciers would do well to reflect that, though the
+style of Petrarch may not suit the standard of perfection which
+they have chosen, they lie under great obligations to these very
+poems,--that, but for Petrarch the measure, concerning which they
+legislate so judiciously, would probably never have attracted
+notice; and that to him they owe the pleasure of admiring, and
+the glory of composing, pieces, which seem to have been produced
+by Master Slender, with the assistance of his man Simple.
+
+I cannot conclude these remarks without making a few observations
+on the Latin writings of Petrarch.  It appears that, both by
+himself and by his contemporaries, these were far more highly
+valued than his compositions in the vernacular language.
+Posterity, the supreme court of literary appeal, has not only
+reversed the judgment, but, according to its general practice,
+reversed it with costs, and condemned the unfortunate works to
+pay, not only for their own inferiority, but also for the
+injustice of those who had given them an unmerited preference.
+And it must be owned that, without making large allowances for
+the circumstances under which they were produced, we cannot
+pronounce a very favourable judgment.  They must be considered as
+exotics, transplanted to a foreign climate, and reared in an
+unfavourable situation; and it would be unreasonable to expect
+from them the health and the vigour which we find in the
+indigenous plants around them, or which they might themselves
+have possessed in their native soil.  He has but very imperfectly
+imitated the style of the Latin authors, and has not compensated
+for the deficiency by enriching the ancient language with the
+graces of modern poetry.  The splendour and ingenuity, which we
+admire, even when we condemn it, in his Italian works, is almost
+totally wanting, and only illuminates with rare and occasional
+glimpses the dreary obscurity of the African.  The eclogues have
+more animation; but they can only be called poems by courtesy.
+They have nothing in common with his writings in his native
+language, except the eternal pun about Laura and Daphne.  None of
+these works would have placed him on a level with Vida or
+Buchanan.  Yet, when we compare him with those who preceded him,
+when we consider that he went on the forlorn hope of literature,
+that he was the first who perceived, and the first who attempted
+to revive, the finer elegancies of the ancient language of the
+world, we shall perhaps think more highly of him than of those
+who could never have surpassed his beauties if they had not
+inherited them.
+
+He has aspired to emulate the philosophical eloquence of Cicero,
+as well as the poetical majesty of Virgil.  His essay on the
+Remedies of Good and Evil Fortune is a singular work in a
+colloquial form, and a most scholastic style.  It seems to be
+framed upon the model of the Tusculan Questions,--with what
+success those who have read it may easily determine.  It consists
+of a series of dialogues:  in each of these a person is
+introduced who has experienced some happy or some adverse event:
+he gravely states his case; and a reasoner, or rather Reason
+personified, confutes him; a task not very difficult, since the
+disciple defends his position only by pertinaciously repeating
+it, in almost the same words at the end of every argument of his
+antagonist.  In this manner Petrarch solves an immense variety of
+cases.  Indeed, I doubt whether it would be possible to name any
+pleasure or any calamity which does not find a place in this
+dissertation.  He gives excellent advice to a man who is in
+expectation of discovering the philosopher's stone;--to another,
+who has formed a fine aviary;--to a third, who is delighted with
+the tricks of a favourite monkey.  His lectures to the
+unfortunate are equally singular.  He seems to imagine that a
+precedent in point is a sufficient consolation for every form of
+suffering.  "Our town is taken," says one complainant; "So was
+Troy," replies his comforter.  "My wife has eloped," says
+another; "If it has happened to you once, it happened to Menelaus
+twice."  One poor fellow is in great distress at having
+discovered that his wife's son is none of his.  "It is hard,"
+says he, "that I should have had the expense of bringing up one
+who is indifferent to me."  "You are a man," returns his monitor,
+quoting the famous line of Terence; "and nothing that belongs to
+any other man ought to be indifferent to you."  The physical
+calamities of life are not omitted; and there is in particular a
+disquisition on the advantages of having the itch, which, if not
+convincing, is certainly very amusing.
+
+The invectives on an unfortunate physician, or rather upon the
+medical science, have more spirit.  Petrarch was thoroughly in
+earnest on this subject.  And the bitterness of his feelings
+occasionally produces, in the midst of his classical and
+scholastic pedantry, a sentence worthy of the second Philippic.
+Swift himself might have envied the chapter on the causes of the
+paleness of physicians.
+
+Of his Latin works the Epistles are the most generally known and
+admired.  As compositions they are certainly superior to his
+essays.  But their excellence is only comparative.  From so large
+a collection of letters, written by so eminent a man, during so
+varied and eventful a life, we should have expected a complete
+and spirited view of the literature, the manners, and the
+politics of the age.  A traveller--a poet--a scholar--a lover--a
+courtier--a recluse--he might have perpetuated, in an
+imperishable record, the form and pressure of the age and body of
+the time.  Those who read his correspondence, in the hope of
+finding such information as this, will be utterly disappointed.
+It contains nothing characteristic of the period or of the
+individual.  It is a series, not of letters, but of themes; and,
+as it is not generally known, might be very safely employed at
+public schools as a magazine of commonplaces.  Whether he write
+on politics to the Emperor and the Doge, or send advice and
+consolation to a private friend, every line is crowded with
+examples and quotations, and sounds big with Anaxagoras and
+Scipio.  Such was the interest excited by the character of
+Petrarch, and such the admiration which was felt for his
+epistolary style, that it was with difficulty that his letters
+reached the place of their destination.  The poet describes, with
+pretended regret and real complacency, the importunity of the
+curious, who often opened, and sometimes stole, these favourite
+compositions.  It is a remarkable fact that, of all his epistles,
+the least affected are those which are addressed to the dead and
+the unborn.  Nothing can be more absurd than his whim of
+composing grave letters of expostulation and commendation to
+Cicero and Seneca; yet these strange performances are written in
+a far more natural manner than his communications to his living
+correspondents.  But of all his Latin works the preference must
+be given to the Epistle to Posterity; a simple, noble, and
+pathetic composition, most honourable both to his taste and his
+heart.  If we can make allowance for some of the affected
+humility of an author, we shall perhaps think that no literary
+man has left a more pleasing memorial of himself.
+
+In conclusion, we may pronounce that the works of Petrarch were
+below both his genius and his celebrity; and that the
+circumstances under which he wrote were as adverse to the
+development of his powers as they were favourable to the
+extension of his fame.
+
+...
+
+
+SOME ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT LAWSUIT BETWEEN THE PARISHES OF ST
+DENNIS AND ST GEORGE IN THE WATER.
+
+(April 1824.)
+
+PART I.
+
+The parish of St Dennis is one of the most pleasant parts of the
+county in which it is situated.  It is fertile, well wooded, well
+watered, and of an excellent air.  For many generations the manor
+had been holden in tail-male by a worshipful family, who have
+always taken precedence of their neighbours at the races and the
+sessions.
+
+In ancient times the affairs of this parish were administered by
+a Court-Baron, in which the freeholders were judges; and the
+rates were levied by select vestries of the inhabitant
+householders.  But at length these good customs fell into disuse.
+The Lords of the Manor, indeed, still held courts for form's
+sake; but they or their stewards had the whole management of
+affairs.  They demanded services, duties, and customs to which
+they had no just title.  Nay, they would often bring actions
+against their neighbours for their own private advantage, and
+then send in the bill to the parish.  No objection was made,
+during many years, to these proceedings, so that the rates became
+heavier and heavier:  nor was any person exempted from these
+demands, except the footmen and gamekeepers of the squire and the
+rector of the parish.  They indeed were never checked in any
+excess.  They would come to an honest labourer's cottage, eat his
+pancakes, tuck his fowls into their pockets, and cane the poor
+man himself.  If he went up to the great house to complain, it
+was hard to get the speech of Sir Lewis; and, indeed, his only
+chance of being righted was to coax the squire's pretty
+housekeeper, who could do what she pleased with her master.  If
+he ventured to intrude upon the Lord of the Manor without this
+precaution, he gained nothing by his pains.  Sir Lewis, indeed,
+would at first receive him with a civil face; for, to give him
+his due, he could be a fine gentleman when he pleased.  "Good
+day, my friend," he would say, "what situation have you in my
+family?"  "Bless your honour!" says the poor fellow, "I am not
+one of your honour's servants; I rent a small piece of ground,
+your honour."  "Then, you dog," quoth the squire, "what do you
+mean by coming here?  Has a gentleman nothing to do but to hear
+the complaints of clowns?  Here! Philip, James, Dick, toss this
+fellow in a blanket; or duck him, and set him in the stocks to
+dry."
+
+One of these precious Lords of the Manor enclosed a deer-park;
+and, in order to stock it, he seized all the pretty pet fawns
+that his tenants had brought up, without paying them a farthing,
+or asking their leave.  It was a sad day for the parish of St
+Dennis.  Indeed, I do not believe that all his oppressive
+exactions and long bills enraged the poor tenants so much as this
+cruel measure.
+
+Yet for a long time, in spite of all these inconveniences, St
+Dennis's was a very pleasant place.  The people could not refrain
+from capering if they heard the sound of a fiddle.  And, if they
+were inclined to be riotous, Sir Lewis had only to send for
+Punch, or the dancing dogs, and all was quiet again.  But this
+could not last forever; they began to think more and more of
+their condition; and, at last, a club of foul-mouthed, good-for-
+nothing rascals was held at the sign of the Devil, for the
+purpose of abusing the squire and the parson.  The doctor, to own
+the truth, was old and indolent, extremely fat and greedy.  He
+had not preached a tolerable sermon for a long time.  The squire
+was still worse; so that, partly by truth and partly by
+falsehood, the club set the whole parish against their superiors.
+The boys scrawled caricatures of the clergyman upon the church-
+door, and shot at the landlord with pop-guns as he rode a-
+hunting.  It was even whispered about that the Lord of the Manor
+had no right to his estate, and that, if he were compelled to
+produce the original title-deeds, it would be found that he only
+held the estate in trust for the inhabitants of the parish.
+
+In the meantime the squire was pressed more and more for money.
+The parish could pay no more.  The rector refused to lend a
+farthing.  The Jews were clamorous for their money; and the
+landlord had no other resource than to call together the
+inhabitants of the parish, and to request their assistance.  They
+now attacked him furiously about their grievances, and insisted
+that he should relinquish his oppressive powers.  They insisted
+that his footmen should be kept in order, that the parson should
+pay his share of the rates, that the children of the parish
+should be allowed to fish in the trout-stream, and to gather
+blackberries in the hedges.  They at last went so far as to
+demand that he should acknowledge that he held his estate only in
+trust for them.  His distress compelled him to submit.  They, in
+return, agreed to set him free from his pecuniary difficulties,
+and to suffer him to inhabit the manor-house; and only annoyed
+him from time to time by singing impudent ballads under his
+window.
+
+The neighbouring gentlefolks did not look on these proceedings
+with much complacency.  It is true that Sir Lewis and his
+ancestors had plagued them with law-suits, and affronted them at
+county meetings.  Still they preferred the insolence of a
+gentleman to that of the rabble, and felt some uneasiness lest
+the example should infect their own tenants.
+
+A large party of them met at the house of Lord Caesar Germain.
+Lord Caesar was the proudest man in the county.  His family was
+very ancient and illustrious, though not particularly opulent.
+He had invited most of his wealthy neighbours.  There was Mrs
+Kitty North, the relict of poor Squire Peter, respecting whom the
+coroner's jury had found a verdict of accidental death, but whose
+fate had nevertheless excited strange whispers in the
+neighbourhood.  There was Squire Don, the owner of the great West
+Indian property, who was not so rich as he had formerly been, but
+still retained his pride, and kept up his customary pomp; so that
+he had plenty of plate but no breeches.  There was Squire Von
+Blunderbussen, who had succeeded to the estates of his uncle, old
+Colonel Frederic Von Blunderbussen, of the hussars.  The colonel
+was a very singular old fellow; he used to learn a page of
+Chambaud's grammar, and to translate Telemaque, every morning,
+and he kept six French masters to teach him to parleyvoo.
+Nevertheless he was a shrewd clever man, and improved his estate
+with so much care, sometimes by honest and sometimes by dishonest
+means, that he left a very pretty property to his nephew.
+
+Lord Caesar poured out a glass of Tokay for Mrs Kitty.  "Your
+health, my dear madam, I never saw you look more charming.  Pray,
+what think you of these doings at St Dennis's?"
+
+"Fine doings, indeed!" interrupted Von Blunderbussen; "I wish
+that we had my old uncle alive, he would have had some of them up
+to the halberts.  He knew how to usa cat-o'-nine-tails.  If
+things go on in this way, a gentleman will not be able to
+horsewhip an impudent farmer, or to say a civil word to a milk-
+maid."
+
+"Indeed, it's very true, Sir," said Mrs Kitty; "their insolence
+is intolerable.  Look at me, for instance:--a poor lone woman!--
+My dear Peter dead!  I loved him:--so I did; and, when he died, I
+was so hysterical you cannot think.  And now I cannot lean on the
+arm of a decent footman, or take a walk with a tall grenadier
+behind me, just to protect me from audacious vagabonds, but they
+must have their nauseous suspicions;--odious creatures!"
+
+"This must be stopped," replied Lord Caesar.  "We ought to
+contribute to support my poor brother-in-law against these
+rascals.  I will write to Squire Guelf on this subject by this
+night's post.  His name is always at the head of our county
+subscriptions."
+
+If the people of St Dennis's had been angry before, they were
+well-nigh mad when they heard of this conversation.  The whole
+parish ran to the manor-house.  Sir Lewis's Swiss porter shut the
+door against them; but they broke in and knocked him on the head
+for his impudence.  They then seized the Squire, hooted at him,
+pelted him, ducked him, and carried him to the watch-house.  They
+turned the rector into the street, burnt his wig and band, and
+sold the church-plate by auction.  They put up a painted Jezebel
+in the pulpit to preach.  They scratched out the texts which were
+written round the church, and scribbled profane scraps of songs
+and plays in their place.  They set the organ playing to pot-
+house tunes.  Instead of being decently asked in church, they
+were married over a broomstick.  But, of all their whims, the use
+of the new patent steel-traps was the most remarkable.
+
+This trap was constructed on a completely new principle.  It
+consisted of a cleaver hung in a frame like a window; when any
+poor wretch got in, down it came with a tremendous din, and took
+off his head in a twinkling.  They got the squire into one of
+these machines.  In order to prevent any of his partisans from
+getting footing in the parish, they placed traps at every corner.
+It was impossible to walk through the highway at broad noon
+without tumbling into one or other of them.  No man could go
+about his business in security.  Yet so great was the hatred
+which the inhabitants entertained for the old family, that a few
+decent, honest people, who begged them to take down the steel-
+traps, and to put up humane man-traps in their room, were very
+roughly handled for their good nature.
+
+In the meantime the neighbouring gentry undertook a suit against
+the parish on the behalf of Sir Lewis's heir, and applied to
+Squire Guelf for his assistance.
+
+Everybody knows that Squire Guelf is more closely tied up than
+any gentleman in the shire.  He could, therefore, lend them no
+help; but he referred them to the Vestry of the Parish of St
+George in the Water.  These good people had long borne a grudge
+against their neighbours on the other side of the stream; and
+some mutual trespasses had lately occurred which increased their
+hostility.
+
+There was an honest Irishman, a great favourite among them, who
+used to entertain them with raree-shows, and to exhibit a magic
+lantern to the children on winter evenings.  He had gone quite
+mad upon this subject.  Sometimes he would call out in the middle
+of the street--"Take care of that corner, neighbours; for the
+love of Heaven, keep clear of that post, there is a patent steel-
+trap concealed thereabouts."  Sometimes he would be disturbed by
+frightful dreams; then he would get up at dead of night, open his
+window and cry "fire," till the parish was roused, and the
+engines sent for.  The pulpit of the Parish of St George seemed
+likely to fall; I believe that the only reason was that the
+parson had grown too fat and heavy; but nothing would persuade
+this honest man but that it was a scheme of the people at St
+Dennis's, and that they had sawed through the pillars in order to
+break the rector's neck.  Once he went about with a knife in his
+pocket, and told all the persons whom he met that it had been
+sharpened by the knife-grinder of the next parish to cut their
+throats.  These extravagancies had a great effect on the people;
+and the more so because they were espoused by Squire Guelf's
+steward, who was the most influential person in the parish.  He
+was a very fair-spoken man, very attentive to the main chance,
+and the idol of the old women, because he never played at
+skittles or danced with the girls; and, indeed, never took any
+recreation but that of drinking on Saturday nights with his
+friend Harry, the Scotch pedlar.  His supporters called him Sweet
+William; his enemies the Bottomless Pit.
+
+The people of St Dennis's, however, had their advocates.  There
+was Frank, the richest farmer in the parish, whose great
+grandfather had been knocked on the head many years before, in a
+squabble between the parish and a former landlord.  There was
+Dick, the merry-andrew, rather light-fingered and riotous, but a
+clever droll fellow.  Above all, there was Charley, the publican,
+a jolly, fat, honest lad, a great favourite with the women, who,
+if he had not been rather too fond of ale and chuck-farthing,
+would have been the best fellow in the neighbourhood.
+
+"My boys," said Charley, "this is exceedingly well for Madam
+North;--not that I would speak uncivilly of her; she put up my
+picture in her best room, bless her for it!  But, I say, this is
+very well for her, and for Lord Caesar, and Squire Don, and
+Colonel Von;--but what affair is it of yours or mine?  It is not
+to be wondered at, that gentlemen should wish to keep poor people
+out of their own.  But it is strange indeed that they should
+expect the poor themselves to combine against their own
+interests.  If the folks at St Dennis's should attack us we have
+the law and our cudgels to protect us.  But why, in the name of
+wonder, are we to attack them?  When old Sir Charles, who was
+Lord of the Manor formerly, and the parson, who was presented by
+him to the living, tried to bully the vestry, did not we knock
+their heads together, and go to meeting to hear Jeremiah
+Ringletub preach?  And did the Squire Don, or the great Sir
+Lewis, that lived at that time, or the Germains, say a word
+against us for it?  Mind your own business, my lads:  law is not
+to be had for nothing; and we, you may be sure, shall have to pay
+the whole bill."
+
+Nevertheless the people of St George's were resolved on law.
+They cried out most lustily, "Squire Guelf for ever!  Sweet
+William for ever!  No steel traps!"  Squire Guelf took all the
+rascally footmen who had worn old Sir Lewis's livery into his
+service.  They were fed in the kitchen on the very best of
+everything, though they had no settlement.  Many people, and the
+paupers in particular, grumbled at these proceedings.  The
+steward, however, devised a way to keep them quiet.
+
+There had lived in this parish for many years an old gentleman,
+named Sir Habeas Corpus.  He was said by some to be of Saxon, by
+some of Norman, extraction.  Some maintain that he was not born
+till after the time of Sir Charles, to whom we have before
+alluded.  Others are of opinion that he was a legitimate son of
+old Lady Magna Charta, although he was long concealed and kept
+out of his birthright.  Certain it is that he was a very
+benevolent person.  Whenever any poor fellow was taken up on
+grounds which he thought insufficient, he used to attend on his
+behalf and bail him; and thus he had become so popular, that to
+take direct measures against him was out of the question.
+
+The steward, accordingly, brought a dozen physicians to examine
+Sir Habeas.  After consultation, they reported that he was in a
+very bad way, and ought not, on any account, to be allowed to
+stir out for several months.  Fortified with this authority, the
+parish officers put him to bed, closed his windows, and barred
+his doors.  They paid him every attention, and from time to time
+issued bulletins of his health.  The steward never spoke of him
+without declaring that he was the best gentleman in the world;
+but excellent care was taken that he should never stir out of
+doors.
+
+When this obstacle was removed, the Squire and the steward kept
+the parish in excellent order; flogged this man, sent that man to
+the stocks, and pushed forward the law-suit with a noble
+disregard of expense.  They were, however, wanting either in
+skill or in fortune.  And everything went against them after
+their antagonists had begun to employ Solicitor Nap.
+
+Who does not know the name of Solicitor Nap?  At what alehouse is
+not his behaviour discussed?  In what print-shop is not his
+picture seen?  Yet how little truth has been said about him!
+Some people hold that he used to give laudanum by pints to his
+six clerks for his amusement.  Others, whose number has very much
+increased since he was killed by the gaol distemper, conceive
+that he was the very model of honour and good-nature.  I shall
+try to tell the truth about him.
+
+He was assuredly an excellent solicitor.  In his way he never was
+surpassed.  As soon as the parish began to employ him, their
+cause took a turn.  In a very little time they were successful;
+and Nap became rich.  He now set up for a gentleman; took
+possession of the old manor-house; got into the commission of the
+peace, and affected to be on a par with the best of the county.
+He governed the vestries as absolutely as the old family had
+done.  Yet, to give him his due, he managed things with far more
+discretion than either Sir Lewis or the rioters who had pulled
+the Lords of the Manor down.  He kept his servants in tolerable
+order.  He removed the steel traps from the highways and the
+corners of the streets.  He still left a few indeed in the more
+exposed parts of his premises; and set up a board announcing that
+traps and spring guns were set in his grounds.  He brought the
+poor parson back to the parish; and, though he did not enable him
+to keep a fine house and a coach as formerly, he settled him in a
+snug little cottage, and allowed him a pleasant pad-nag.  He
+whitewashed the church again; and put the stocks, which had been
+much wanted of late, into good repair.
+
+With the neighbouring gentry, however, he was no favourite.  He
+was crafty and litigious.  He cared nothing for right, if he
+could raise a point of law against them.  He pounded their
+cattle, broke their hedges, and seduced their tenants from them.
+He almost ruined Lord Caesar with actions, in every one of which
+he was successful.  Von Blunderbussen went to law with him for an
+alleged trespass, but was cast, and almost ruined by the costs of
+suit.  He next took a fancy to the seat of Squire Don, who was,
+to say the truth, little better than an idiot.  He asked the poor
+dupe to dinner, and then threatened to have him tossed in a
+blanket unless he would make over his estates to him.  The poor
+Squire signed and sealed a deed by which the property was
+assigned to Joe, a brother of Nap's, in trust for and to the use
+of Nap himself.  The tenants, however, stood out.  They
+maintained that the estate was entailed, and refused to pay rents
+to the new landlord; and in this refusal they were stoutly
+supported by the people in St George's.
+
+About the same time Nap took it into his head to match with
+quality, and nothing would serve him but one of the Miss
+Germains.  Lord Caesar swore like a trooper; but there was no
+help for it.  Nap had twice put executions in his principal
+residence, and had refused to discharge the latter of the two
+till he had extorted a bond from his Lordship which compelled him
+to comply.
+
+THE END OF THE FIRST PART.
+
+...
+
+
+A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MR ABRAHAM COWLEY AND MR JOHN MILTON,
+TOUCHING THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.
+
+SET DOWN BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE.
+
+(August 1824.)
+
+"Referre sermones Deorum et
+Magna modis tenuare parvis."--Horace.
+
+I have thought it good to set down in writing a memorable debate,
+wherein I was a listener, and two men of pregnant parts and great
+reputation discoursers; hoping that my friends will not be
+displeased to have a record both of the strange times through
+which I have lived, and of the famous men with whom I have
+conversed.  It chanced in the warm and beautiful spring of the
+year 1665, a little before the saddest summer that ever London
+saw, that I went to the Bowling Green at Piccadilly, whither, at
+that time, the best gentry made continual resorts.  There I met
+Mr Cowley, who had lately left Barnelms.  There was then a house
+preparing for him at Chertsey; and till it should be finished, he
+had come up for a short time to London, that he might urge a suit
+to his Grace of Buckingham touching certain lands of her
+Majesty's, whereof he requested a lease.  I had the honour to be
+familiarly acquainted with that worthy gentleman and most
+excellent poet, whose death hath been deplored with as general a
+consent of all Powers that delight in the woods, or in verse, or
+in love, as was of old that of Daphnis or of Callus.
+
+After some talk, which it is not material to set down at large,
+concerning his suit and his vexations at the court, where indeed
+his honesty did him more harm than his parts could do him good, I
+entreated him to dine with me at my lodging in the Temple, which
+he most courteously promised.  And, that so eminent a guest might
+not lack a better entertainment than cooks or vintners can
+provide, I sent to the house of Mr John Milton, in the Artillery
+Walk, to beg that he would also be my guest. For, though he had
+been secretary, first to the Council of State, and, after that,
+to the Protector, and Mr Cowley had held the same post under the
+Lord St Albans in his banishment, I hoped, notwithstanding that
+they would think themselves rather united by their common art
+than divided by their different factions.  And so indeed it
+proved.  For, while we sat at table, they talked freely of many
+men and things, as well ancient as modern, with much civility.
+Nay, Mr Milton, who seldom tasted wine, both because of his
+singular temperance and because of his gout, did more than once
+pledge Mr Cowley, who was indeed no hermit in diet.  At last,
+being heated, Mr Milton begged that I would open the windows.
+"Nay," said I, "if you desire fresh air and coolness, what should
+hinder us, as the evening is fair, from sailing for an hour on
+the river?"  To this they both cheerfully consented; and forth we
+walked, Mr Cowley and I leading Mr Milton between us, to the
+Temple Stairs.  There we took a boat; and thence we were rowed up
+the river.
+
+The wind was pleasant; the evening fine; the sky, the earth, and
+the water beautiful to look upon.  But Mr Cowley and I held our
+peace, and said nothing of the gay sights around us, lest we
+should too feelingly remind Mr Milton of his calamity; whereof,
+however, he needed no monitor:  for soon he said, sadly, "Ah, Mr
+Cowley, you are a happy man.  What would I now give but for one
+more look at the sun, and the waters, and the gardens of this
+fair city!"
+
+"I know not," said Mr Cowley, "whether we ought not rather to
+envy you for that which makes you to envy others:  and that
+specially in this place, where all eyes which are not closed in
+blindness ought to become fountains of tears.  What can we look
+upon which is not a memorial of change and sorrow, of fair things
+vanished, and evil things done?  When I see the gate of
+Whitehall, and the stately pillars of the Banqueting House, I
+cannot choose but think of what I have there seen in former days,
+masques, and pageants, and dances, and smiles, and the waving of
+graceful heads, and the bounding of delicate feet.  And then I
+turn to thoughts of other things, which even to remember makes me
+to blush and weep;--of the great black scaffold, and the axe and
+block, which were placed before those very windows; and the voice
+seems to sound in mine ears, the lawless and terrible voice,
+which cried out that the head of a king was the head of a
+traitor.  There stands Westminster Hall, which who can look upon,
+and not tremble to think how time, and change, and death confound
+the councils of the wise, and beat down the weapons of the
+mighty?  How have I seen it surrounded with tens of thousands of
+petitioners crying for justice and privilege!  How have I heard
+it shake with fierce and proud words, which made the hearts of
+the people burn within them!  Then it is blockaded by dragoons,
+and cleared by pikemen.  And they who have conquered their master
+go forth trembling at the word of their servant.  And yet a
+little while, and the usurper comes forth from it, in his robe of
+ermine, with the golden staff in one hand and the Bible in the
+other, amidst the roaring of the guns and the shouting of the
+people.  And yet again a little while, and the doors are thronged
+with multitudes in black, and the hearse and the plumes come
+forth; and the tyrant is borne, in more than royal pomp, to a
+royal sepulchre.  A few days more, and his head is fixed to rot
+on the pinnacles of that very hall where he sat on a throne in
+his life, and lay in state after his death.  When I think on all
+these things, to look round me makes me sad at heart.  True it is
+that God hath restored to us our old laws, and the rightful line
+of our kings.  Yet, how I know not, but it seems to me that
+something is wanting--that our court hath not the old gravity,
+nor our people the old loyalty.  These evil times, like the great
+deluge, have overwhelmed and confused all earthly things.  And,
+even as those waters, though at last they abated, yet, as the
+learned write, destroyed all trace of the garden of Eden, so that
+its place hath never since been found, so hath this opening of
+all the flood-gates of political evil effaced all marks of the
+ancient political paradise."
+
+"Sir, by your favour," said Mr Milton, "though, from many
+circumstances both of body and of fortune, I might plead fairer
+excuses for despondency than yourself, I yet look not so sadly
+either on the past or on the future.  That a deluge hath passed
+over this our nation, I deny not.  But I hold it not to be such a
+deluge as that of which you speak; but rather a blessed flood,
+like those of the Nile, which in its overflow doth indeed wash
+away ancient landmarks, and confound boundaries, and sweep away
+dwellings, yea, doth give birth to many foul and dangerous
+reptiles.  Yet hence is the fulness of the granary, the beauty of
+the garden, the nurture of all living things.
+
+"I remember well, Mr Cowley, what you have said concerning these
+things in your Discourse of the Government of Oliver Cromwell,
+which my friend Elwood read to me last year.  Truly, for elegance
+and rhetoric, that essay is to be compared with the finest
+tractates of Isocrates and Cicero.  But neither that nor any
+other book, nor any events, which with most men have, more than
+any book, weight and authority, have altered my opinion, that, of
+all assemblies that ever were in this world, the best and the
+most useful was our Long Parliament.  I speak not this as wishing
+to provoke debate; which neither yet do I decline."
+
+Mr Cowley was, as I could see, a little nettled.  Yet, as he was
+a man of a kind disposition and a most refined courtesy, he put a
+force upon himself, and answered with more vehemence and
+quickness indeed than was his wont, yet not uncivilly.  "Surely,
+Mr Milton, you speak not as you think.  I am indeed one of those
+who believe that God hath reserved to himself the censure of
+kings, and that their crimes and oppressions are not to be
+resisted by the hands of their subjects.  Yet can I easily find
+excuse for the violence of such as are stung to madness by
+grievous tyranny.  But what shall we say for these men?  Which of
+their just demands was not granted?  Which even of their cruel
+and unreasonable requisitions, so as it were not inconsistent
+with all law and order, was refused?  Had they not sent Strafford
+to the block and Laud to the Tower?  Had they not destroyed the
+Courts of the High Commission and the Star Chamber?  Had they not
+reversed the proceedings confirmed by the voices of the judges of
+England, in the matter of ship-money?  Had they not taken from
+the king his ancient and most lawful power touching the order of
+knighthood?  Had they not provided that, after their dissolution,
+triennial parliaments should be holden, and that their own power
+should continue till of their great condescension they should be
+pleased to resign it themselves?  What more could they ask?  Was
+it not enough that they had taken from their king all his
+oppressive powers, and many that were most salutary?  Was it not
+enough that they had filled his council-board with his enemies,
+and his prisons with his adherents?  Was it not enough that they
+had raised a furious multitude, to shout and swagger daily under
+the very windows of his royal palace?  Was it not enough that
+they had taken from him the most blessed prerogative of princely
+mercy; that, complaining of intolerance themselves, they had
+denied all toleration to others; that they had urged, against
+forms, scruples childish as those of any formalist; that they had
+persecuted the least remnant of the popish rites with the
+fiercest bitterness of the popish spirit?  Must they besides all
+this have full power to command his armies, and to massacre his
+friends?
+
+"For military command, it was never known in any monarchy, nay,
+in any well ordered republic, that it was committed to the
+debates of a large and unsettled assembly.  For their other
+requisition, that he should give up to their vengeance all who
+had defended the rights of his crown, his honour must have been
+ruined if he had complied.  Is it not therefore plain that they
+desired these things only in order that, by refusing, his
+Majesty might give them a pretence for war?
+
+"Men have often risen up against fraud, against cruelty, against
+rapine.  But when before was it known that concessions were met
+with importunities, graciousness with insults, the open palm of
+bounty with the clenched fist of malice?  Was it like trusty
+delegates of the Commons of England, and faithful stewards of
+their liberty and their wealth, to engage them for such causes in
+civil war, which both to liberty and to wealth is of all things
+the most hostile.  Evil indeed must be the disease which is not
+more tolerable than such a medicine.  Those who, even to save a
+nation from tyrants, excite it to civil war do in general but
+minister to it the same miserable kind of relief wherewith the
+wizards of Pharaoh mocked the Egyptian.  We read that, when Moses
+had turned their waters into blood, those impious magicians,
+intending, not benefit to the thirsting people, but vain and
+emulous ostentation of their own art, did themselves also change
+into blood the water which the plague had spared.  Such sad
+comfort do those who stir up war minister to the oppressed.  But
+here where was the oppression?  What was the favour which had not
+been granted?  What was the evil which had not been removed?
+What further could they desire?"
+
+"These questions," said Mr Milton, austerely, "have indeed often
+deceived the ignorant; but that Mr Cowley should have been so
+beguiled, I marvel.  You ask what more the Parliament could
+desire?  I will answer you in one word, security.  What are
+votes, and statutes, and resolutions?  They have no eyes to see,
+no hands to strike and avenge.  They must have some safeguard
+from without.  Many things, therefore, which in themselves were
+peradventure hurtful, was this Parliament constrained to ask,
+lest otherwise good laws and precious rights should be without
+defence.  Nor did they want a great and signal example of this
+danger.  I need not remind you that, many years before, the two
+Houses had presented to the king the Petition of Right, wherein
+were set down all the most valuable privileges of the people of
+this realm.  Did not Charles accept it?  Did he not declare it to
+be law?  Was it not as fully enacted as ever were any of those
+bills of the Long Parliament concerning which you spoke?  And
+were those privileges therefore enjoyed more fully by the people?
+No:  the king did from that time redouble his oppressions as if
+to avenge himself for the shame of having been compelled to
+renounce them.  Then were our estates laid under shameful
+impositions, our houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned.
+Then was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears
+of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron
+entered into our souls.  Then we were compelled to hide our
+hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at
+the mummery of Laud, to curse under our breath the tyranny of
+Wentworth.  Of old time it was well and nobly said, by one of our
+kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his thoughts.
+Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts as
+much slaves as ourselves.  To sneer at a Romish pageant, to
+miscall a lord's crest, were crimes for which there was no mercy.
+These were all the fruits which we gathered from those excellent
+laws of the former Parliament, from these solemn promises of the
+king.  Were we to be deceived again?  Were we again to give
+subsidies, and receive nothing but promises?  Were we again to
+make wholesome statutes, and then leave them to be broken daily
+and hourly, until the oppressor should have squandered another
+supply, and should be ready for another perjury?  You ask what
+they could desire which he had not already granted.  Let me ask
+of you another question.  What pledge could he give which he had
+not already violated?  From the first year of his reign, whenever
+he had need of the purses of his Commons to support the revels of
+Buckingham or the processions of Laud, he had assured them that,
+as he was a gentleman and a king, he would sacredly preserve
+their rights.  He had pawned those solemn pledges, and pawned
+them again and again; but when had he redeemed them?  'Upon my
+faith,'--'Upon my sacred word,'--'Upon the honour of a prince,'--
+came so easily from his lips, and dwelt so short a time on his
+mind that they were as little to be trusted as the 'By the hilts'
+of an Alsatian dicer.
+
+"Therefore it is that I praise this Parliament for what else I
+might have condemned.  If what he had granted had been granted
+graciously and readily, if what he had before promised had been
+faithfully observed, they could not be defended.  It was because
+he had never yielded the worst abuse without a long struggle, and
+seldom without a large bribe; it was because he had no sooner
+disentangled himself from his troubles than he forgot his
+promises; and, more like a villainous huckster than a great king,
+kept both the prerogative and the large price which had been paid
+to him to forego it; it was because of these things that it was
+necessary and just to bind with forcible restraints one who could
+be bound neither by law nor honour.  Nay, even while he was
+making those very concessions of which you speak, he betrayed his
+deadly hatred against the people and their friends.  Not only did
+he, contrary to all that ever was deemed lawful in England, order
+that members of the Commons House of Parliament should be
+impeached of high treason at the bar of the Lords; thereby
+violating both the trial by jury and the privileges of the House;
+but, not content with breaking the law by his ministers, he went
+himself armed to assail it.  In the birth-place and sanctuary of
+freedom, in the House itself; nay in the very chair of the
+speaker, placed for the protection of free speech and privilege,
+he sat, rolling his eyes round the benches, searching for those
+whose blood he desired, and singling out his opposers to the
+slaughter.  This most foul outrage fails.  Then again for the old
+arts.  Then come gracious messages.  Then come courteous
+speeches.  Then is again mortgaged his often forfeited honour.
+He will never again violate the laws.  He will respect their
+rights as if they were his own.  He pledges the dignity of his
+crown; that crown which had been committed to him for the weal of
+his people, and which he never named, but that he might the more
+easily delude and oppress them.
+
+"The power of the sword, I grant you, was not one to be
+permanently possessed by Parliament.  Neither did that Parliament
+demand it as a permanent possession.  They asked it only for
+temporary security.  Nor can I see on what conditions they could
+safely make peace with that false and wicked king, save such as
+would deprive him of all power to injure.
+
+"For civil war, that it is an evil I dispute not.  But that it is
+the greatest of evils, that I stoutly deny.  It doth indeed
+appear to the misjudging to be a worse calamity than bad
+government, because its miseries are collected together within a
+short space and time, and may easily at one view be taken in and
+perceived.  But the misfortunes of nations ruled by tyrants,
+being distributed over many centuries and many places, as they
+are of greater weight and number, so are they of less display.
+When the Devil of tyranny hath gone into the body politic he
+departs not but with struggles, and foaming, and great
+convulsions.  Shall he, therefore, vex it for ever, lest, in
+going out, he for a moment tear and rend it?  Truly this argument
+touching the evils of war would better become my friend Elwood,
+or some other of the people called Quakers, than a courtier and a
+cavalier.  It applies no more to this war than to all others, as
+well foreign as domestic, and, in this war, no more to the Houses
+than to the king; nay, not so much, since he by a little
+sincerity and moderation might have rendered that needless which
+their duty to God and man then enforced them to do."
+
+"Pardon me, Mr Milton," said Mr Cowley; "I grieve to hear you
+speak thus of that good king.  Most unhappy indeed he was, in
+that he reigned at a time when the spirit of the then living
+generation was for freedom, and the precedents of former ages for
+prerogative.  His case was like to that of Christopher Columbus,
+when he sailed forth on an unknown ocean, and found that the
+compass, whereby he shaped his course, had shifted from the north
+pole whereto before it had constantly pointed.  So it was with
+Charles.  His compass varied; and therefore he could not tack
+aright.  If he had been an absolute king he would doubtless, like
+Titus Vespasian, have been called the delight of the human race.
+If he had been a Doge of Venice, or a Stadtholder of Holland, he
+would never have outstepped the laws.  But he lived when our
+government had neither clear definitions nor strong sanctions.
+Let, therefore, his faults be ascribed to the time.  Of his
+virtues the praise is his own.
+
+"Never was there a more gracious prince, or a more proper
+gentleman.  In every pleasure he was temperate, in conversation
+mild and grave, in friendship constant, to his servants liberal,
+to his queen faithful and loving, in battle grave, in sorrow and
+captivity resolved, in death most Christian and forgiving.
+
+"For his oppressions, let us look at the former history of this
+realm.  James was never accounted a tyrant.  Elizabeth is
+esteemed to have been the mother of her people.  Were they less
+arbitrary?  Did they never lay hands on the purses of their
+subjects but by Act of Parliament?  Did they never confine
+insolent and disobedient men but in due course of law?  Was the
+court of Star Chamber less active?  Were the ears of libellers
+more safe?  I pray you, let not king Charles be thus dealt with.
+It was enough that in his life he was tried for an alleged breach
+of laws which none ever heard named till they were discovered for
+his destruction.  Let not his fame be treated as was his sacred
+and anointed body.  Let not his memory be tried by principles
+found out ex post facto.  Let us not judge by the spirit of one
+generation a man whose disposition had been formed by the temper
+and fashion of another."
+
+"Nay, but conceive me, Mr Cowley," said Mr Milton; "inasmuch as,
+at the beginning of his reign, he imitated those who had governed
+before him, I blame him not.  To expect that kings will, of their
+own free choice, abridge their prerogative, were argument of but
+slender wisdom.  Whatever, therefore, lawless, unjust, or cruel,
+he either did or permitted during the first years of his reign, I
+pass by.  But for what was done after that he had solemnly given
+his consent to the Petition of Right, where shall we find
+defence?  Let it be supposed, which yet I concede not, that the
+tyranny of his father and of Queen Elizabeth had been no less
+rigorous than was his.  But had his father, had that queen, sworn
+like him, to abstain from those rigours?  Had they, like him, for
+good and valuable consideration, aliened their hurtful
+prerogatives?  Surely not:  from whatever excuse you can plead
+for him he had wholly excluded himself.  The borders of
+countries, we know, are mostly the seats of perpetual wars and
+tumults.  It was the same with the undefined frontiers, which of
+old separated privilege and prerogative.  They were the debatable
+land of our polity.  It was no marvel if, both on the one side
+and on the other, inroads were often made.  But, when treaties
+have been concluded, spaces measured, lines drawn, landmarks set
+up, that which before might pass for innocent error or just
+reprisal becomes robbery, perjury, deadly sin.  He knew not, you
+say, which of his powers were founded on ancient law, and which
+only on vicious example.  But had he not read the Petition of
+Right?  Had not proclamation been made from his throne, Soit fait
+comme il est desire?
+
+"For his private virtues they are beside the question.  Remember
+you not," and Mr Milton smiled, but somewhat sternly, "what Dr
+Cauis saith in the Merry Wives of Shakspeare?  'What shall the
+honest man do in my closet?  There is no honest man that shall
+come in my closet.'  Even so say I.  There is no good man who
+shall make us his slaves.  If he break his word to his people, is
+it a sufficient defence that he keeps it to his companions?  If
+he oppress and extort all day, shall he be held blameless because
+he prayeth at night and morning?  If he be insatiable in plunder
+and revenge, shall we pass it by because in meat and drink he is
+temperate?  If he have lived like a tyrant, shall all be
+forgotten because he hath died like a martyr?
+
+"He was a man, as I think, who had so much semblance of virtues
+as might make his vices most dangerous.  He was not a tyrant
+after our wonted English model.  The second Richard, the second
+and fourth Edwards, and the eighth Harry, were men profuse, gay,
+boisterous; lovers of women and of wine, of no outward sanctity
+or gravity.  Charles was a ruler after the Italian fashion;
+grave, demure, of a solemn carriage, and a sober diet; as
+constant at prayers as a priest, as heedless of oaths as an
+atheist."
+
+Mr Cowley answered somewhat sharply:  "I am sorry, Sir, to hear
+you speak thus.  I had hoped that the vehemence of spirit which
+was caused by these violent times had now abated.  Yet, sure, Mr
+Milton, whatever you may think of the character of King Charles,
+you will not still justify his murder?"
+
+"Sir," said Mr Milton, "I must have been of a hard and strange
+nature, if the vehemence which was imputed to me in my younger
+days had not been diminished by the afflictions wherewith it hath
+pleased Almighty God to chasten my age.  I will not now defend
+all that I may heretofore have written.  But this I say, that I
+perceive not wherefore a king should be exempted from all
+punishment.  Is it just that where most is given least should be
+required?  Or politic that where there is the greatest power to
+injure there should be no danger to restrain?  But, you will say,
+there is no such law.  Such a law there is.  There is the law of
+selfpreservation written by God himself on our hearts.  There is
+the primal compact and bond of society, not graven on stone, or
+sealed with wax, nor put down on parchment, nor set forth in any
+express form of words by men when of old they came together; but
+implied in the very act that they so came together, pre-supposed
+in all subsequent law, not to be repealed by any authority, nor
+invalidated by being omitted in any code; inasmuch as from thence
+are all codes and all authority.
+
+"Neither do I well see wherefore you cavaliers, and, indeed, many
+of us whom you merrily call Roundheads, distinguish between those
+who fought against King Charles, and specially after the second
+commission given to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and those who condemned
+him to death.  Sure, if his person were inviolable, it was as
+wicked to lift the sword against it at Naseby as the axe at
+Whitehall.  If his life might justly be taken, why not in course
+of trial as well as by right of war?
+
+"Thus much in general as touching the right.  But, for the
+execution of King Charles in particular, I will not now undertake
+to defend it.  Death is inflicted, not that the culprit may die,
+but that the state may be thereby advantaged.  And, from all that
+I know, I think that the death of King Charles hath more hindered
+than advanced the liberties of England.
+
+"First, he left an heir.  He was in captivity.  The heir was in
+freedom.  He was odious to the Scots.  The heir was favoured by
+them.  To kill the captive therefore, whereby the heir, in the
+apprehension of all royalists, became forthwith king--what was
+it, in truth, but to set their captive free, and to give him
+besides other great advantages?
+
+"Next, it was a deed most odious to the people, and not only to
+your party, but to many among ourselves; and, as it is perilous
+for any government to outrage the public opinion, so most was it
+perilous for a government which had from that opinion alone its
+birth, its nurture, and its defence.
+
+"Yet doth not this properly belong to our dispute; nor can these
+faults be justly charged upon that most renowned Parliament.
+For, as you know, the high court of justice was not established
+until the House had been purged of such members as were adverse
+to the army, and brought wholly under the control of the chief
+officers."
+
+"And who," said Mr Cowley, "levied that army?  Who commissioned
+those officers?  Was not the fate of the Commons as justly
+deserved as was that of Diomedes, who was devoured by those
+horses whom he had himself taught to feed on the flesh and blood
+of men?  How could they hope that others would respect laws which
+they had themselves insulted; that swords which had been drawn
+against the prerogatives of the king would be put up at an
+ordinance of the Commons?  It was believed, of old, that there
+were some devils easily raised but never to be laid; insomuch
+that, if a magician called them up, he should be forced to find
+them always some employment; for, though they would do all his
+bidding, yet, if he left them but for one moment without some
+work of evil to perform, they would turn their claws against
+himself.  Such a fiend is an army.  They who evoke it cannot
+dismiss it.  They are at once its masters and its slaves.  Let
+them not fail to find for it task after task of blood and rapine.
+Let them not leave it for a moment in repose, lest it tear them
+in pieces.
+
+"Thus was it with that famous assembly.  They formed a force
+which they could neither govern nor resist.  They made it
+powerful.  They made it fanatical.  As if military insolence were
+not of itself sufficiently dangerous, they heightened it with
+spiritual pride,--they encouraged their soldiers to rave from the
+tops of tubs against the men of Belial, till every trooper
+thought himself a prophet.  They taught them to abuse popery,
+till every drummer fancied that he was as infallible as a pope.
+
+"Then it was that religion changed her nature.  She was no longer
+the parent of arts and letters, of wholesome knowledge, of
+innocent pleasures, of blessed household smiles.  In their place
+came sour faces, whining voices, the chattering of fools, the
+yells of madmen.  Then men fasted from meat and drink, who fasted
+not from bribes and blood.  Then men frowned at stage-plays, who
+smiled at massacres.  Then men preached against painted faces,
+who felt no remorse for their own most painted lives.  Religion
+had been a pole-star to light and to guide.  It was now more like
+to that ominous star in the book of the Apocalypse, which fell
+from heaven upon the fountains and rivers and changed them into
+wormwood; for even so did it descend from its high and celestial
+dwelling-place to plague this earth, and to turn into bitterness
+all that was sweet, and into poison all that was nourishing.
+
+"Therefore it was not strange that such things should follow.
+They who had closed the barriers of London against the king could
+not defend them against their own creatures.  They who had so
+stoutly cried for privilege, when that prince, most unadvisedly
+no doubt, came among them to demand their members, durst not wag
+their fingers when Oliver filled their hall with soldiers, gave
+their mace to a corporal, put their keys in his pocket, and drove
+them forth with base terms, borrowed half from the conventicle
+and half from the ale-house.  Then were we, like the trees of the
+forest in holy writ, given over to the rule of the bramble; then
+from the basest of the shrubs came forth the fire which devoured
+the cedars of Lebanon.  We bowed down before a man of mean birth,
+of ungraceful demeanour, of stammering and most vulgar utterance,
+of scandalous and notorious hypocrisy.  Our laws were made and
+unmade at his pleasure; the constitution of our Parliaments
+changed by his writ and proclamation; our persons imprisoned; our
+property plundered; our lands and houses overrun with soldiers;
+and the great charter itself was but argument for a scurrilous
+jest; and for all this we may thank that Parliament; for never,
+unless they had so violently shaken the vessel, could such foul
+dregs have risen to the top."
+
+Then answered Mr Milton:  "What you have now said comprehends so
+great a number of subjects, that it would require, not an
+evening's sail on the Thames, but rather a voyage to the Indies,
+accurately to treat of all:  yet, in as few words as I may, I
+will explain my sense of these matters.
+
+"First, as to the army.  An army, as you have well set forth, is
+always a weapon dangerous to those who use it; yet he who falls
+among thieves spares not to fire his musquetoon, because he may
+be slain if it burst in his hand.  Nor must states refrain from
+defending themselves, lest their defenders should at last turn
+against them.  Nevertheless, against this danger statesmen should
+carefully provide; and, that they may do so, they should take
+especial care that neither the officers nor the soldiers do
+forget that they are also citizens.  I do believe that the
+English army would have continued to obey the parliament with all
+duty, but for one act, which, as it was in intention, in seeming,
+and in immediate effect, worthy to be compared with the most
+famous in history, so was it, in its final consequence, most
+injurious.  I speak of that ordinance called the "self-denying",
+and of the new model of the army.  By those measures the Commons
+gave up the command of their forces into the hands of men who
+were not of themselves.  Hence, doubtless, derived no small
+honour to that noble assembly, which sacrificed to the hope of
+public good the assurance of private advantage.  And, as to the
+conduct of the war, the scheme prospered.  Witness the battle of
+Naseby, and the memorable exploits of Fairfax in the west.  But
+thereby the Parliament lost that hold on the soldiers and that
+power to control them, which they retained while every regiment
+was commanded by their own members.  Politicians there be, who
+would wholly divide the legislative from the executive power.  In
+the golden age this may have succeeded; in the millennium it may
+succeed again.  But, where great armies and great taxes are
+required, there the executive government must always hold a great
+authority, which authority, that it may not oppress and destroy
+the legislature, must be in some manner blended with it.  The
+leaders of foreign mercenaries have always been most dangerous to
+a country.  The officers of native armies, deprived of the civil
+privileges of other men, are as much to be feared.  This was the
+great error of that Parliament:  and, though an error it were, it
+was an error generous, virtuous, and more to be deplored than
+censured.
+
+"Hence came the power of the army and its leaders, and especially
+of that most famous leader, whom both in our conversation to-day,
+and in that discourse whereon I before touched, you have, in my
+poor opinion, far too roughly handled.  Wherefore you speak
+contemptibly of his parts I know not; but I suspect that you are
+not free from the error common to studious and speculative men.
+Because Oliver was an ungraceful orator, and never said, either
+in public or private, anything memorable, you will have it that
+he was of a mean capacity.  Sure this is unjust.  Many men have
+there been ignorant of letters, without wit, without eloquence,
+who yet had the wisdom to devise, and the courage to perform,
+that which they lacked language to explain.  Such men often, in
+troubled times, have worked out the deliverance of nations and
+their own greatness, not by logic, not by rhetoric, but by
+wariness in success, by calmness in danger, by fierce and
+stubborn resolution in all adversity.  The hearts of men are
+their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their
+eloquence: and such an one, in my judgment, was his late
+Highness, who, if none were to treat his name scornfully now
+shook not at the sound of it while he lived, would, by very few,
+be mentioned otherwise than with reverence.  His own deeds shall
+avouch him for a great statesman, a great soldier, a true lover
+of his country, a merciful and generous conqueror.
+
+"For his faults, let us reflect that they who seem to lead are
+oftentimes most constrained to follow.  They who will mix with
+men, and especially they who will govern them, must in many
+things obey them.  They who will yield to no such conditions may
+be hermits, but cannot be generals and statesmen.  If a man will
+walk straight forward without turning to the right or the left,
+he must walk in a desert, and not in Cheapside.  Thus was he
+enforced to do many things which jumped not with his inclination
+nor made for his honour; because the army, on which alone he
+could depend for power and life, might not otherwise be
+contented.  And I, for mine own part, marvel less that he
+sometimes was fain to indulge their violence than that he could
+so often restrain it.
+
+"In that he dissolved the Parliament, I praise him.  It then was
+so diminished in numbers, as well by the death as by the
+exclusion of members, that it was no longer the same assembly;
+and, if at that time it had made itself perpetual, we should have
+been governed, not by an English House of Commons, but by a
+Venetian Council.
+
+"If in his following rule he overstepped the laws, I pity rather
+than condemn him.  He may be compared to that Maeandrius of
+Samos, of whom Herodotus saith, in his Thalia, that, wishing to
+be of all men the most just, he was not able; for after the death
+of Polycrates he offered freedom to the people; and not till
+certain of them threatened to call him to a reckoning for what he
+had formerly done, did he change his purpose, and make himself a
+tyrant, lest he should be treated as a criminal.
+
+"Such was the case of Oliver.  He gave to his country a form of
+government so free and admirable that, in near six thousand
+years, human wisdom hath never devised any more excellent
+contrivance for human happiness.  To himself he reserved so
+little power that it would scarcely have sufficed for his safety,
+and it is a marvel that it could suffice for his ambition.  When,
+after that, he found that the members of his Parliament disputed
+his right even to that small authority which he had kept, when he
+might have kept all, then indeed I own that he began to govern by
+the sword those who would not suffer him to govern by the law.
+
+"But, for the rest, what sovereign was ever more princely in
+pardoning injuries, in conquering enemies, in extending the
+dominions and the renown of his people?  What sea, what shore did
+he not mark with imperishable memorials of his friendship or his
+vengeance?  The gold of Spain, the steel of Sweden, the ten
+thousand sails of Holland, availed nothing against him.  While
+every foreign state trembled at our arms, we sat secure from all
+assault.  War, which often so strangely troubles both husbandry
+and commerce, never silenced the song of our reapers, or the
+sound of our looms.  Justice was equally administered; God was
+freely worshipped.
+
+"Now look at that which we have taken in exchange.  With the
+restored king have come over to us vices of every sort, and most
+the basest and most shameful,--lust without love--servitude
+without loyalty--foulness of speech--dishonesty of dealing--
+grinning contempt of all things good and generous.  The throne is
+surrounded by men whom the former Charles would have spurned from
+his footstool.  The altar is served by slaves whose knees are
+supple to every being but God.  Rhymers, whose books the hangman
+should burn, pandars, actors, and buffoons, these drink a health
+and throw a main with the King; these have stars on their breasts
+and gold sticks in their hands; these shut out from his presence
+the best and bravest of those who bled for his house.  Even so
+doth God visit those who know not how to value freedom.  He gives
+them over to the tyranny which they have desired, Ina pantes
+epaurontai basileos."
+
+"I will not," said Mr Cowley, "dispute with you on this argument.
+But, if it be as you say, how can you maintain that England hath
+been so greatly advantaged by the rebellion?"
+
+"Understand me rightly, Sir," said Mr Milton.  "This nation is
+not given over to slavery and vice.  We tasted indeed the fruits
+of liberty before they had well ripened.  Their flavour was harsh
+and bitter; and we turned from them with loathing to the sweeter
+poisons of servitude.  This is but for a time.  England is
+sleeping on the lap of Dalilah, traitorously chained, but not yet
+shorn of strength.  Let the cry be once heard--the Philistines be
+upon thee; and at once that sleep will be broken, and those
+chains will be as flax in the fire.  The great Parliament hath
+left behind it in our hearts and minds a hatred of tyrants, a
+just knowledge of our rights, a scorn of vain and deluding names;
+and that the revellers of Whitehall shall surely find.  The sun
+is darkened; but it is only for a moment:  it is but an eclipse;
+though all birds of evil omen have begun to scream, and all
+ravenous beasts have gone forth to prey, thinking it to be
+midnight.  Woe to them if they be abroad when the rays again
+shine forth!
+
+"The king hath judged ill.  Had he been wise he would have
+remembered that he owed his restoration only to confusions which
+had wearied us out, and made us eager for repose.  He would have
+known that the folly and perfidy of a prince would restore to the
+good old cause many hearts which had been alienated thence by the
+turbulence of factions; for, if I know aught of history, or of
+the heart of man, he will soon learn that the last champion of
+the people was not destroyed when he murdered Vane, nor seduced
+when he beguiled Fairfax."
+
+Mr Cowley seemed to me not to take much amiss what Mr Milton had
+said touching that thankless court, which had indeed but poorly
+requited his own good service.  He only said, therefore, "Another
+rebellion!  Alas! alas! Mr Milton!  If there be no choice but
+between despotism and anarchy, I prefer despotism."
+
+"Many men," said Mr Milton, "have floridly and ingeniously
+compared anarchy and despotism; but they who so amuse themselves
+do but look at separate parts of that which is truly one great
+whole.  Each is the cause and the effect of the other; the evils
+of either are the evils of both.  Thus do states move on in the
+same eternal cycle, which, from the remotest point, brings them
+back again to the same sad starting-post:  and, till both those
+who govern and those who obey shall learn and mark this great
+truth, men can expect little through the future, as they have
+known little through the past, save vicissitudes of extreme
+evils, alternately producing and produced.
+
+"When will rulers learn that, where liberty is not, security end
+order can never be?  We talk of absolute power; but all power
+hath limits, which, if not fixed by the moderation of the
+governors, will be fixed by the force of the governed.
+Sovereigns may send their opposers to dungeons; they may clear
+out a senate-house with soldiers; they may enlist armies of
+spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected in chains at every
+cross road; but what power shall stand in that frightful time
+when rebellion hath become a less evil than endurance?  Who shall
+dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the hearts of the
+oppressed, denounces against the oppressor the doom of its wild
+justice?  Who shall repeal the law of selfdefence?  What arms or
+discipline shall resist the strength of famine and despair?  How
+often were the ancient Caesars dragged from their golden palaces,
+stripped of their purple robes, mangled, stoned, defiled with
+filth, pierced with hooks, hurled into Tiber?  How often have the
+Eastern Sultans perished by the sabres of their own janissaries,
+or the bow-strings of their own mutes!  For no power which is not
+limited by laws can ever be protected by them.  Small, therefore,
+is the wisdom of those who would fly to servitude as if it were a
+refuge from commotion; for anarchy is the sure consequence of
+tyranny.  That governments may be safe, nations must be free.
+Their passions must have an outlet provided, lest they make one.
+
+"When I was at Naples, I went with Signor Manso, a gentleman of
+excellent parts and breeding, who had been the familiar friend of
+that famous poet Torquato Tasso, to see the burning mountain
+Vesuvius.  I wondered how the peasants could venture to dwell so
+fearlessly and cheerfully on its sides, when the lava was flowing
+from its summit; but Manso smiled, and told me that when the fire
+descends freely they retreat before it without haste or fear.
+They can tell how fast it will move, and how far; and they know,
+moreover, that, though it may work some little damage, it will
+soon cover the fields over which it hath passed with rich
+vineyards and sweet flowers.  But, when the flames are pent up in
+the mountain, then it is that they have reason to fear; then it
+is that the earth sinks and the sea swells; then cities are
+swallowed up; and their place knoweth them no more.  So it is in
+politics:  where the people is most closely restrained, there it
+gives the greatest shocks to peace and order; therefore would I
+say to all kings, let your demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead
+armies; let them bluster, lest they massacre; a little turbulence
+is, as it were, the rainbow of the state; it shows indeed that
+there is a passing shower; but it is a pledge that there shall be
+no deluge."
+
+"This is true," said Mr Cowley; "yet these admonitions are not
+less needful to subjects than to sovereigns."
+
+"Surely," said Mr Milton; "and, that I may end this long debate
+with a few words in which we shall both agree, I hold that, as
+freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and
+moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.  Even the
+vainest opinions of men are not to be outraged by those who
+propose to themselves the happiness of men for their end, and who
+must work with the passions of men for their means.  The blind
+reverence for things ancient is indeed so foolish that it might
+make a wise man laugh, if it were not also sometimes so
+mischievous that it would rather make a good man weep.  Yet,
+since it may not be wholly cured it must be discreetly indulged;
+and therefore those who would amend evil laws should consider
+rather how much it may be safe to spare, than how much it may be
+possible to change.  Have you not heard that men who have been
+shut up for many years in dungeons shrink if they see the light,
+and fall down if their irons be struck off?  And so, when nations
+have long been in the house of bondage, the chains which have
+crippled them are necessary to support them, the darkness which
+hath weakened their sight is necessary to preserve it.  Therefore
+release them not too rashly, lest they curse their freedom and
+pine for their prison.
+
+"I think indeed that the renowned Parliament, of which we have
+talked so much, did show, until it became subject to the
+soldiers, a singular and admirable moderation, in such times
+scarcely to be hoped, and most worthy to be an example to all
+that shall come after.  But on this argument I have said enough:
+and I will therefore only pray to Almighty God that those who
+shall, in future times stand forth in defence of our liberties,
+as well civil as religious, may adorn the good cause by mercy,
+prudence, and soberness, to the glory of his name and the
+happiness and honour of the English people."
+
+And so ended that discourse; and not long after we were set on
+shore again at the Temple Gardens, and there parted company:  and
+the same evening I took notes of what had been said, which I have
+here more fully set down, from regard both to the fame of the
+men, and the importance of the subject-matter.
+
+...
+
+
+ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS.
+
+(August 1824.)
+
+"To the famous orators repair,
+Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
+Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
+Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
+To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne."--Milton.
+
+The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within
+no limits, except those which separate civilised from savage man.
+Their works are the common property of every polished nation.
+They have furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the
+poet.  In the minds of the educated classes throughout Europe,
+their names are indissolubly associated with the endearing
+recollections of childhood,--the old school-room,--the dog-eared
+grammar,--the first prize,--the tears so often shed and so
+quickly dried.  So great is the veneration with which they are
+regarded, that even the editors and commentators who perform the
+lowest menial offices to their memory, are considered, like the
+equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a
+high rank in the table of literary precedence.  It is, therefore,
+somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have
+been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.
+
+The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance.
+When they particularise, they are commonly trivial:  when they
+would generalise, they become indistinct.  An exception must,
+indeed, be made in favour of Aristotle.  Both in analysis and in
+combination, that great man was without a rival.  No philosopher
+has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of
+separating established systems into their primary elements, or of
+connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems.  He was the
+great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its
+darkness into light, and its discord into order.  He brought to
+literary researches the same vigour and amplitude of mind to
+which both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly
+indebted.  His fundamental principles of criticism are excellent.
+To cite only a single instance:--the doctrine which he
+established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly
+understood, is to the critic what the compass is to the
+navigator.  With it he may venture upon the most extensive
+excursions.  Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast,
+or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to
+the guidance of an occasional star.  It is a discovery which
+changes a caprice into a science.
+
+The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable.  But the
+merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the
+foundation.  This is partly to be ascribed to the character of
+the philosopher, who, though qualified to do all that could be
+done by the resolving and combining powers of the understanding,
+seems not to have possessed much of sensibility or imagination.
+Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency of
+materials.  The great works of genius which then existed were not
+either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to enable any
+man to form a perfect code of literature.  To require that a
+critic should conceive classes of composition which had never
+existed, and then investigate their principles, would be as
+unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his
+magicians first to tell him his dream and then to interpret it.
+
+With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and
+profound critic of antiquity.  Dionysius was far from possessing
+the same exquisite subtilty, or the same vast comprehension.  But
+he had access to a much greater number of specimens; and he had
+devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of
+elegant literature.  His peculiar judgments are of more value
+than his general principles.  He is only the historian of
+literature.  Aristotle is its philosopher.
+
+Quintilian applied to general literature the same principles by
+which he had been accustomed to judge of the declamations of his
+pupils.  He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of
+the highest order.  He speaks coldly of the incomparable works of
+Aeschylus.  He admires, beyond expression, those inexhaustible
+mines of common-places, the plays of Euripides.  He bestows a few
+vague words on the poetical character of Homer.  He then proceeds
+to consider him merely as an orator.  An orator Homer doubtless
+was, and a great orator.  But surely nothing is more remarkable,
+in his admirable works, than the art with which his oratorical
+powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry.  Nor can I
+think Quintilian a great critic in his own province.  Just as are
+many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations,
+we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour which the
+soil of despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of
+genius.  Eloquence was, in his time, little more than a condiment
+which served to stimulate in a despot the jaded appetite for
+panegyric, an amusement for the travelled nobles and the blue-
+stocking matrons of Rome.  It is, therefore, with him, rather a
+sport than a war; it is a contest of foils, not of swords.  He
+appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of the
+direction and vigour of the thrust.  It must be acknowledged, in
+justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which Cicero has
+too often given the sanction, both of his precept and of his
+example.
+
+Longinus seems to have had great sensibility, but little
+discrimination.  He gives us eloquent sentences, but no
+principles.  It was happily said that Montesquieu ought to have
+changed the name of his book from "L'Esprit des Lois" to
+"L'Esprit sur les Lois".  In the same manner the philosopher of
+Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not "Longinus on
+the Sublime," but "The Sublimities of Longinus."  The origin of
+the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects
+of inquiry that can occupy the attention of a critic.  In our own
+country it has been discussed, with great ability, and, I think,
+with very little success, by Burke and Dugald Stuart.  Longinus
+dispenses himself from all investigations of this nature, by
+telling his friend Terentianus that he already knows everything
+that can be said upon the question.  It is to be regretted that
+Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to his
+instructor:  for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means
+height--or elevation.  (Akrotes kai exoche tis logon esti ta
+uoe.)  This name, so commodiously vague, is applied indifferently
+to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a passage of
+Plato about the human body, as full of conceits as an ode of
+Cowley.  Having no fixed standard, Longinus is right only by
+accident.  He is rather a fancier than a critic.
+
+Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying
+the deficiencies of their classical predecessors.  At the time of
+the revival of literature, no man could, without great and
+painful labour, acquire an accurate and elegant knowledge of the
+ancient languages.  And, unfortunately, those grammatical and
+philological studies, without which it was impossible to
+understand the great works of Athenian and Roman genius, have a
+tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility of
+those who follow them with extreme assiduity.  A powerful mind,
+which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to
+the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to
+contract himself to small dimensions in order to enter within the
+enchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him,
+found himself unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the
+measure of which he had reduced his stature.  When the means have
+long been the objects of application, they are naturally
+substituted for the end.  It was said, by Eugene of Savoy, that
+the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at
+once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of
+war, without being employed in the petty calculations and
+manoeuvres which employ the time of an inferior officer.  In
+literature the principle is equally sound.  The great tactics of
+criticism will, in general, be best understood by those who have
+not had much practice in drilling syllables and particles.
+
+I remember to have observed among the French Anas a ludicrous
+instance of this.  A scholar, doubtless of great learning,
+recommends the study of some long Latin treatise, of which I now
+forget the name, on the religion, manners, government, and
+language of the early Greeks.  "For there," says he, "you will
+learn everything of importance that is contained in the Iliad and
+Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two such tedious books."
+Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman that all the
+knowledge to which he attached so much value was useful only as
+it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be as
+worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria, or
+the vocabulary of Otaheite.
+
+Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to
+verbal criticism few have been successful.  The ancient languages
+have, generally, a magical influence on their faculties.  They
+were "fools called into a circle by Greek invocations."  The
+Iliad and Aeneid were to them not books but curiosities, or
+rather reliques.  They no more admired those works for their
+merits than a good Catholic venerates the house of the Virgin at
+Loretto for its architecture.  Whatever was classical was good.
+Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus.  The epistles of
+Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris.  Even with
+respect to questions of evidence they fell into the same error.
+The authority of all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was
+the same with them.  It never crossed their minds that the lapse
+of five hundred years, or the distance of five hundred leagues,
+could affect the accuracy of a narration;--that Livy could be a
+less veracious historian than Polybius;--or that Plutarch could
+know less about the friends of Xenophon than Xenophon himself.
+Deceived by the distance of time, they seem to consider all the
+Classics as contemporaries; just as I have known people in
+England, deceived by the distance of place, take it for granted
+that all persons who live in India are neighbours, and ask an
+inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at
+Calcutta.  It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever
+again pass over Europe.  But should such a calamity happen, it
+seems not improbable that some future Rollin or Gillies will
+compile a history of England from Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs,
+Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's Memoirs.
+
+It is surely time that ancient literature should be examined in a
+different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a
+just allowance, at the same time, for the difference of
+circumstances and manners.  I am far from pretending to the
+knowledge or ability which such a task would require.  All that I
+mean to offer is a collection of desultory remarks upon a most
+interesting portion of Greek literature.
+
+It may be doubted whether any compositions which have ever been
+produced in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the
+great Athenian orations.  Genius is subject to the same laws
+which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.  The supply
+adjusts itself to the demand.  The quantity may be diminished by
+restrictions, and multiplied by bounties.  The singular
+excellence to which eloquence attained at Athens is to be mainly
+attributed to the influence which it exerted there.  In turbulent
+times, under a constitution purely democratic, among a people
+educated exactly to that point at which men are most susceptible
+of strong and sudden impressions, acute, but not sound reasoners,
+warm in their feelings, unfixed in their principles, and
+passionate admirers of fine composition, oratory received such
+encouragement as it has never since obtained.
+
+The taste and knowledge of the Athenian people was a favourite
+object of the contemptuous derision of Samuel Johnson; a man who
+knew nothing of Greek literature beyond the common school-books,
+and who seems to have brought to what he had read scarcely more
+than the discernment of a common school-boy.  He used to assert,
+with that arrogant absurdity which, in spite of his great
+abilities and virtues, renders him, perhaps the most ridiculous
+character in literary history, that Demosthenes spoke to a people
+of brutes;--to a barbarous people;--that there could have been no
+civilisation before the invention of printing.  Johnson was a
+keen but a very narrow-minded observer of mankind.  He
+perpetually confounded their general nature with their particular
+circumstances.  He knew London intimately.  The sagacity of his
+remarks on its society is perfectly astonishing.  But Fleet
+Street was the world to him.  He saw that Londoners who did not
+read were profoundly ignorant; and he inferred that a Greek, who
+had few or no books, must have been as uninformed as one of Mr
+Thrale's draymen.
+
+There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe,
+that, in general intelligence, the Athenian populace far
+surpassed the lower orders of any community that has ever
+existed.  It must be considered, that to be a citizen was to be a
+legislator,--a soldier,--a judge,--one upon whose voice might
+depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most
+eminent public man.  The lowest offices, both of agriculture and
+of trade, were, in common, performed by slaves.  The commonwealth
+supplied its meanest members with the support of life, the
+opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement.  Books were
+indeed few:  but they were excellent; and they were accurately
+known.  It is not by turning over libraries, but by repeatedly
+perusing and intently contemplating a few great models, that the
+mind is best disciplined.  A man of letters must now read much
+that he soon forgets, and much from which he learns nothing
+worthy to be remembered.  The best works employ, in general, but
+a small portion of his time.  Demosthenes is said to have
+transcribed six times the history of Thucydides.  If he had been
+a young politician of the present age, he might in the same space
+of time have skimmed innumerable newspapers and pamphlets.  I do
+not condemn that desultory mode of study which the state of
+things, in our day, renders a matter of necessity.  But I may be
+allowed to doubt whether the changes on which the admirers of
+modern institutions delight to dwell have improved our condition
+so much in reality as in appearance.  Rumford, it is said,
+proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his
+soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly.  His plan was
+simply to compel them to masticate their food thoroughly.  A
+small quantity, thus eaten, would, according to that famous
+projector, afford more sustenance than a large meal hastily
+devoured.  I do not know how Rumford's proposition was received;
+but to the mind, I believe, it will be found more nutritious to
+digest a page than to devour a volume.
+
+Books, however, were the least part of the education of an
+Athenian citizen.  Let us, for a moment, transport ourselves in
+thought, to that glorious city.  Let us imagine that we are
+entering its gates, in the time of its power and glory.  A crowd
+is assembled round a portico.  All are gazing with delight at the
+entablature; for Phidias is putting up the frieze.  We turn into
+another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there:  men, women,
+children are thronging round him:  the tears are running down
+their cheeks:  their eyes are fixed:  their very breath is still;
+for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and
+kissed those hands,--the terrible--the murderous,--which had
+slain so many of his sons.
+(--kai kuse cheiras,
+deinas, anorophonous, ai oi poleas ktanon uias.)
+
+We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning
+forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation.
+Socrates is pitted against the famous atheist, from Ionia, and
+has just brought him to a contradiction in terms.  But we are
+interrupted.  The herald is crying--"Room for the Prytanes."  The
+general assembly is to meet.  The people are swarming in on every
+side.  Proclamation is made--"Who wishes to speak?"  There is a
+shout, and a clapping of hands:  Pericles is mounting the stand.
+Then for a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia.  I
+know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of
+education.
+
+Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus formed were, indeed,
+likely to be, in some respects, defective.  Propositions which
+are advanced in discourse generally result from a partial view of
+the question, and cannot be kept under examination long enough to
+be corrected.  Men of great conversational powers almost
+universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration,
+which deceives, for the moment, both themselves and their
+auditors.  Thus we see doctrines, which cannot bear a close
+inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in debating
+societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies.  To
+the conversational education of the Athenians I am inclined to
+attribute the great looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in
+most of their scientific writings.  Even the most illogical of
+modern writers would stand perfectly aghast at the puerile
+fallacies which seem to have deluded some of the greatest men of
+antiquity.  Sir Thomas Lethbridge would stare at the political
+economy of Xenophon; and the author of "Soirees de Petersbourg"
+would be ashamed of some of the metaphysical arguments of Plato.
+But the very circumstances which retarded the growth of science
+were peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of eloquence.  From
+the early habit of taking a share in animated discussion the
+intelligent student would derive that readiness of resource, that
+copiousness of language, and that knowledge of the temper and
+understanding of an audience, which are far more valuable to an
+orator than the greatest logical powers.
+
+Horace has prettily compared poems to those paintings of which
+the effect varies as the spectator changes his stand.  The same
+remark applies with at least equal justice to speeches.  They
+must be read with the temper of those to whom they were
+addressed, or they must necessarily appear to offend against the
+laws of taste and reason; as the finest picture, seen in a light
+different from that for which it was designed, will appear fit
+only for a sign.  This is perpetually forgotten by those who
+criticise oratory.  Because they are reading at leisure, pausing
+at every line, reconsidering every argument, they forget that the
+hearers were hurried from point to point too rapidly to detect
+the fallacies through which they were conducted; that they had no
+time to disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight inaccuracies of
+expression; that elaborate excellence, either of reasoning or of
+language, would have been absolutely thrown away.  To recur to
+the analogy of the sister art, these connoisseurs examine a
+panorama through a microscope, and quarrel with a scene-painter
+because he does not give to his work the exquisite finish of
+Gerard Dow.
+
+Oratory is to be estimated on principles different from those
+which are applied to other productions.  Truth is the object of
+philosophy and history.  Truth is the object even of those works
+which are peculiarly called works of fiction, but which, in fact,
+bear the same relation to history which algebra bears to
+arithmetic.  The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still
+consists in its truth,--truth conveyed to the understanding, not
+directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative
+associations, which serve as its conductors.  The object of
+oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.  The admiration of
+the multitude does not make Moore a greater poet than Coleridge,
+or Beattie a greater philosopher than Berkeley.  But the
+criterion of eloquence is different.  A speaker who exhausts the
+whole philosophy of a question, who displays every grace of
+style, yet produces no effect on his audience, may be a great
+essayist, a great statesman, a great master of composition; but
+he is not an orator.  If he miss the mark, it makes no difference
+whether he have taken aim too high or too low.
+
+The effect of the great freedom of the press in England has been,
+in a great measure, to destroy this distinction, and to leave
+among us little of what I call Oratory Proper.  Our legislators,
+our candidates, on great occasions even our advocates, address
+themselves less to the audience than to the reporters.  They
+think less of the few hearers than of the innumerable readers.
+At Athens the case was different; there the only object of the
+speaker was immediate conviction and persuasion.  He, therefore,
+who would justly appreciate the merit of the Grecian orators
+should place himself, as nearly as possible, in the situation of
+their auditors:  he should divest himself of his modern feelings
+and acquirements, and make the prejudices and interests of the
+Athenian citizen his own.  He who studies their works in this
+spirit will find that many of those things which, to an English
+reader, appear to be blemishes,--the frequent violation of those
+excellent rules of evidence by which our courts of law are
+regulated,--the introduction of extraneous matter,--the reference
+to considerations of political expediency in judicial
+investigations,--the assertions, without proof,--the passionate
+entreaties,--the furious invectives,--are really proofs of the
+prudence and address of the speakers.  He must not dwell
+maliciously on arguments or phrases, but acquiesce in his first
+impressions.  It requires repeated perusal and reflection to
+decide rightly on any other portion of literature.  But with
+respect to works of which the merit depends on their
+instantaneous effect the most hasty judgment is likely to be
+best.
+
+The history of eloquence at Athens is remarkable.  From a very
+early period great speakers had flourished there.  Pisistratus
+and Themistocles are said to have owed much of their influence to
+their talents for debate.  We learn, with more certainty, that
+Pericles was distinguished by extraordinary oratorical powers.
+The substance of some of his speeches is transmitted to us by
+Thucydides; and that excellent writer has doubtless faithfully
+reported the general line of his arguments.  But the manner,
+which in oratory is of at least as much consequence as the
+matter, was of no importance to his narration.  It is evident
+that he has not attempted to preserve it.  Throughout his work,
+every speech on every subject, whatever may have been the
+character of the dialect of the speaker, is in exactly the same
+form.  The grave king of Sparta, the furious demagogue of Athens,
+the general encouraging his army, the captive supplicating for
+his life, all are represented as speakers in one unvaried style,-
+-a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical purposes.  His mode
+of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality most
+consecutive,--yet in appearance often incoherent.  His meaning,
+in itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest
+possible words.  His great fondness for antithetical expression
+has not a little conduced to this effect.  Every one must have
+observed how much more the sense is condensed in the verses of
+Pope and his imitators, who never ventured to continue the same
+clause from couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who allow
+themselves that license.  Every artificial division, which is
+strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has the same
+tendency.  The natural and perspicuous expression which
+spontaneously rises to the mind will often refuse to accommodate
+itself to such a form.  It is necessary either to expand it into
+weakness, or to compress it into almost impenetrable density.
+The latter is generally the choice of an able man, and was
+assuredly the choice of Thucydides.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never
+have been delivered.  They are perhaps among the most difficult
+passages in the Greek language, and would probably have been
+scarcely more intelligible to an Athenian auditor than to a
+modern reader.  Their obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, who
+was as intimate with the literature and language of Greece as the
+most accomplished of its natives, and who seems to have held a
+respectable rank among the Greek authors.  Their difficulty to a
+modern reader lies, not in the words, but in the reasoning.  A
+dictionary is of far less use in studying them than a clear head
+and a close attention to the context.  They are valuable to the
+scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the
+powers of the finest of languages:  they are valuable to the
+philosopher as illustrating the morals and manners of a most
+interesting age:  they abound in just thought and energetic
+expression.  But they do not enable us to form any accurate
+opinion on the merits of the early Greek orators.
+
+Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens
+had produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which
+eloquence most flourished among her citizens was by no means that
+of her greatest power and glory.  It commenced at the close of
+the Peloponnesian war.  In fact, the steps by which Athenian
+oratory approached to its finished excellence seem to have been
+almost contemporaneous with those by which the Athenian character
+and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation.  At the time when
+the little commonwealth achieved those victories which twenty-
+five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was in
+its infancy.  The deliverers of Greece became its plunderers and
+oppressors.  Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the
+madness of the multitude, the tyranny of the great, filled the
+Cyclades with tears, and blood, and mourning.  The sword
+unpeopled whole islands in a day.  The plough passed over the
+ruins of famous cities.  The imperial republic sent forth her
+children by thousands to pine in the quarries of Syracuse, or to
+feed the vultures of Aegospotami.  She was at length reduced by
+famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies, and to
+purchase existence by the sacrifice of her empire and her laws.
+During these disastrous and gloomy years, oratory was advancing
+towards its highest excellence.  And it was when the moral, the
+political, and the military character of the people was most
+utterly degraded, it was when the viceroy of a Macedonian
+sovereign gave law to Greece, that the courts of Athens witnessed
+the most splendid contest of eloquence that the world has ever
+known.
+
+The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to
+assign.  The division of labour operates on the productions of
+the orator as it does on those of the mechanic.  It was remarked
+by the ancients that the Pentathlete, who divided his attention
+between several exercises, though he could not vie with a boxer
+in the use of the cestus, or with one who had confined his
+attention to running in the contest of the stadium, yet enjoyed
+far greater general vigour and health than either.  It is the
+same with the mind.  The superiority in technical skill is often
+more than compensated by the inferiority in general intelligence.
+And this is peculiarly the case in politics.  States have always
+been best governed by men who have taken a wide view of public
+affairs, and who have rather a general acquaintance with many
+sciences than a perfect mastery of one.  The union of the
+political and military departments in Greece contributed not a
+little to the splendour of its early history.  After their
+separation more skilful generals and greater speakers appeared;
+but the breed of statesmen dwindled and became almost extinct.
+Themistocles or Pericles would have been no match for Demosthenes
+in the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field.  But surely they
+were incomparably better fitted than either for the supreme
+direction of affairs.
+
+There is indeed a remarkable coincidence between the progress of
+the art of war, and that of the art of oratory, among the Greeks.
+They both advanced to perfection by contemporaneous steps, and
+from similar causes.  The early speakers, like the early warriors
+of Greece, were merely a militia.  It was found that in both
+employments practice and discipline gave superiority.  (It has
+often occurred to me, that to the circumstances mentioned in the
+text is to be referred one of the most remarkable events in
+Grecian history; I mean the silent but rapid downfall of the
+Lacedaemonian power.  Soon after the termination of the
+Peloponnesian war, the strength of Lacedaemon began to decline.
+Its military discipline, its social institutions, were the same.
+Agesilaus, during whose reign the change took place, was the
+ablest of its kings.  Yet the Spartan armies were frequently
+defeated in pitched battles,--an occurrence considered impossible
+in the earlier ages of Greece.  They are allowed to have fought
+most bravely; yet they were no longer attended by the success to
+which they had formerly been accustomed.  No solution of these
+circumstances is offered, as far as I know, by any ancient
+author.  The real cause, I conceive, was this.  The
+Lacedaemonians, alone among the Greeks, formed a permanent
+standing army.  While the citizens of other commonwealths were
+engaged in agriculture and trade, they had no employment whatever
+but the study of military discipline.  Hence, during the Persian
+and Peloponnesian wars, they had that advantage over their
+neighbours which regular troops always possess over militia.
+This advantage they lost, when other states began, at a later
+period, to employ mercenary forces, who were probably as superior
+to them in the art of war as they had hitherto been to their
+antagonists.)  Each pursuit therefore became first an art, and
+then a trade.  In proportion as the professors of each became
+more expert in their particular craft, they became less
+respectable in their general character.  Their skill had been
+obtained at too great expense to be employed only from
+disinterested views.  Thus, the soldiers forgot that they were
+citizens, and the orators that they were statesmen.  I know not
+to what Demosthenes and his famous contemporaries can be so
+justly compared as to those mercenary troops who, in their time,
+overran Greece; or those who, from similar causes, were some
+centuries ago the scourge of the Italian republics,--perfectly
+acquainted with every part of their profession, irresistible in
+the field, powerful to defend or to destroy, but defending
+without love, and destroying without hatred.  We may despise the
+characters of these political Condottieri; but is impossible to
+examine the system of their tactics without being amazed at its
+perfection.
+
+I had intended to proceed to this examination, and to consider
+separately the remains of Lysias, of Aeschines, of Demosthenes,
+and of Isocrates, who, though strictly speaking he was rather a
+pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place
+in such a disquisition.  The length of my prolegomena and
+digressions compels me to postpone this part of the subject to
+another occasion.  A Magazine is certainly a delightful invention
+for a very idle or a very busy man.  He is not compelled to
+complete his plan or to adhere to his subject.  He may ramble as
+far as he is inclined, and stop as soon as he is tired.  No one
+takes the trouble to recollect his contradictory opinions or his
+unredeemed pledges.  He may be as superficial, as inconsistent,
+and as careless as he chooses.  Magazines resemble those little
+angels, who, according to the pretty Rabbinical tradition, are
+generated every morning by the brook which rolls over the flowers
+of Paradise,--whose life is a song,--who warble till sunset, and
+then sink back without regret into nothingness.  Such spirits
+have nothing to do with the detecting spear of Ithuriel or the
+victorious sword of Michael.  It is enough for them to please and
+be forgotten.
+
+...
+
+
+A PROPHETIC ACCOUNT OF A GRAND NATIONAL EPIC POEM, TO BE ENTITLED
+"THE WELLINGTONIAD," AND TO BE PUBLISHED A.D. 2824.
+
+(November 1824.)
+
+How I became a prophet it is not very important to the reader to
+know.  Nevertheless I feel all the anxiety which, under similar
+circumstances, troubled the sensitive mind of Sidrophel; and,
+like him, am eager to vindicate myself from the suspicion of
+having practised forbidden arts, or held intercourse with beings
+of another world.  I solemnly declare, therefore, that I never
+saw a ghost, like Lord Lyttleton; consulted a gipsy, like
+Josephine; or heard my name pronounced by an absent person, like
+Dr Johnson.  Though it is now almost as usual for gentlemen to
+appear at the moment of their death to their friends as to call
+on them during their life, none of my acquaintance have been so
+polite as to pay me that customary attention.  I have derived my
+knowledge neither from the dead nor from the living; neither from
+the lines of a hand, nor from the grounds of a tea-cup; neither
+from the stars of the firmament, nor from the fiends of the
+abyss.  I have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that mighty
+leading angel," who "drew after him the third part of heaven's
+sons," scratching in my cupboard. I have never been enticed to
+sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so
+many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horse
+man, I have been careful not to venture myself on a broomstick.
+
+My insight into futurity, like that of George Fox the quaker, and
+that of our great and philosophic poet, Lord Byron, is derived
+from simple presentiment.  This is a far less artificial process
+than those which are employed by some others.  Yet my predictions
+will, I believe, be found more correct than theirs, or, at all
+events, as Sir Benjamin Back bite says in the play, "more
+circumstantial."
+
+I prophesy then, that, in the year 2824, according to our present
+reckoning, a grand national Epic Poem, worthy to be compared with
+the Iliad, the Aeneid, or the Jerusalem, will be published in
+London.
+
+Men naturally take an interest in the adventures of every eminent
+writer.  I will, therefore, gratify the laudable curiosity,
+which, on this occasion, will doubtless be universal, by pre
+fixing to my account of the poem a concise memoir of the poet.
+
+Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on the 1st of July,
+2786.  He will be the younger son of the younger branch of one of
+the most respectable families in England.  He will be linearly
+descended from Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after
+the failure of the heroic attempt of his party to obtain a
+constitution from the Emperor Fim Fam, will take refuge in
+England, in the twenty-third century.  Here his descendants will
+obtain considerable note; and one branch of the family will be
+raised to the peerage.
+
+Richard, however, though destined to exalt his family to
+distinction far nobler than any which wealth or titles can
+bestow, will be born to a very scanty fortune.  He will display
+in his early youth such striking talents as will attract the
+notice of Viscount Quongti, his third cousin, then secretary of
+state for the Steam Department.  At the expense of this eminent
+nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at the
+university of Tombuctoo.  To that illustrious seat of the muses
+all the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted
+by the high scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the
+eminent literary attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey.  In
+spite of this formidable competition, however, Quongti will
+acquire the highest honours in every department of knowledge, and
+will obtain the esteem of his associates by his amiable and
+unaffected manners.  The guardians of the young Duke of
+Carrington, premier peer of England, and the last remaining scion
+of the ancient and illustrious house of Smith, will be desirous
+to secure so able an instructor for their ward.  With the Duke,
+Quongti will perform the grand tour, and visit the polished
+courts of Sydney and Capetown.  After prevailing on his pupil,
+with great difficulty, to subdue a violent and imprudent passion
+which he had conceived for a Hottentot lady, of great beauty and
+accomplishments indeed, but of dubious character, he will travel
+with him to the United States of America.  But that tremendous
+war which will be fatal to American liberty will, at that time,
+be raging through the whole federation.  At New York the
+travellers will hear of the final defeat and death of the
+illustrious champion of freedom, Jonathon Higginbottom, and of
+the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh to the perpetual Presidency.
+They will not choose to proceed in a journey which would expose
+them to the insults of that brutal soldiery, whose cruelty and
+rapacity will have devastated Mexico and Colombia, and now, at
+length, enslaved their own country.
+
+On their return to England, A.D. 2810, the death of the Duke will
+compel his preceptor to seek for a subsistence by literary
+labours.  His fame will be raised by many small productions of
+considerable merit; and he will at last obtain a permanent place
+in the highest class of writers by his great epic poem.
+
+The celebrated work will become, with unexampled rapidity, a
+popular favourite.  The sale will be so beneficial to the author
+that, instead of going about the dirty streets on his velocipede,
+he will be enabled to set up his balloon.
+
+The character of this noble poem will be so finely and justly
+given in the Tombuctoo Review for April 2825, that I cannot
+refrain from translating the passage.  The author will be our
+poet's old preceptor, Professor Kissey Kickey.
+
+"In pathos, in splendour of language, in sweetness of
+versification, Mr Quongti has long been considered as unrivalled.
+In his exquisite poem on the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus all these
+qualities are displayed in their greatest perfection.  How
+exquisitely does that work arrest and embody the undefined and
+vague shadows which flit over an imaginative mind.  The cold
+worldling may not comprehend it; but it will find a response in
+the bosom of every youthful poet, of every enthusiastic lover,
+who has seen an Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus by moonlight.  But we
+were yet to learn that he possessed the comprehension, the
+judgment, and the fertility of mind indispensable to the epic
+poet.
+
+"It is difficult to conceive a plot more perfect than that of the
+'Wellingtoniad.'  It is most faithful to the manners of the age
+to which it relates.  It preserves exactly all the historical
+circumstances, and interweaves them most artfully with all the
+speciosa miracula of supernatural agency."
+
+Thus far the learned Professor of Humanity in the university of
+Tombuctoo.  I fear that the critics of our time will form an
+opinion diametrically opposite as to these every points.  Some
+will, I fear, be disgusted by the machinery, which is derived
+from the mythology of ancient Greece.  I can only say that, in
+the twenty-ninth century, that machinery will be universally in
+use among poets; and that Quongti will use it, partly in
+conformity with the general practice, and partly from a
+veneration, perhaps excessive, for the great remains of classical
+antiquity, which will then, as now, be assiduously read by every
+man of education; though Tom Moore's songs will be forgotten, and
+only three copies of Lord Byron's works will exist:  one in the
+possession of King George the Nineteenth, one in the Duke of
+Carrington's collection, and one in the library of the British
+Museum.  Finally, should any good people be concerned to hear
+that Pagan fictions will so long retain their influence over
+literature, let them reflect that, as the Bishop of St David's
+says, in his "Proofs of the Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses,"
+read at the last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, "at
+all events, a Pagan is not a Papist."
+
+Some readers of the present day may think that Quongti is by no
+means entitled to the compliments which his Negro critic pays him
+on his adherence to the historical circumstances of the time in
+which he has chosen his subject; that, where he introduces any
+trait of our manners, it is in the wrong place, and that he
+confounds the customs of our age with those of much more remote
+periods.  I can only say that the charge is infinitely more
+applicable to Homer, Virgil, and Tasso.  If, therefore, the
+reader should detect, in the following abstract of the plot, any
+little deviation from strict historical accuracy, let him
+reflect, for a moment, whether Agamemnon would not have found as
+much to censure in the Iliad,--Dido in the Aeneid,--or Godfrey in
+the Jerusalem.  Let him not suffer his opinions to depend on
+circumstances which cannot possibly affect the truth or falsehood
+of the representation.  If it be impossible for a single man to
+kill hundreds in battle, the impossibility is not diminished by
+distance of time.  If it be as certain that Rinaldo never
+disenchanted a forest in Palestine as it is that the Duke of
+Wellington never disenchanted the forest of Soignies, can we, as
+rational men, tolerate the one story and ridicule the other?  Of
+this, at least, I am certain, that whatever excuse we have for
+admiring the plots of those famous poems our children will have
+for extolling that of the "Wellingtoniad."
+
+I shall proceed to give a sketch of the narrative.  The subject
+is "The Reign of the Hundred Days."
+
+BOOK I.
+
+The poem commences, in form, with a solemn proposition of the
+subject.  Then the muse is invoked to give the poet accurate
+information as to the causes of so terrible a commotion.  The
+answer to this question, being, it is to be supposed, the joint
+production of the poet and the muse, ascribes the event to
+circumstances which have hitherto eluded all the research of
+political writers, namely, the influence of the god Mars, who, we
+are told, had some forty years before usurped the conjugal rights
+of old Carlo Buonaparte, and given birth to Napoleon.  By his
+incitement it was that the emperor with his devoted companions
+was now on the sea, returning to his ancient dominions.  The gods
+were at present, fortunately for the adventurer, feasting with
+the Ethiopians, whose entertainments, according to the ancient
+custom described by Homer, they annually attended, with the same
+sort of condescending gluttony which now carries the cabinet to
+Guildhall on the 9th of November.  Neptune was, in consequence,
+absent, and unable to prevent the enemy of his favourite island
+from crossing his element.  Boreas, however, who had his abode on
+the banks of the Russian ocean, and who, like Thetis in the
+Iliad, was not of sufficient quality to have an invitation to
+Ethiopia, resolves to destroy the armament which brings war and
+danger to his beloved Alexander.  He accordingly raises a storm
+which is most powerfully described.  Napoleon bewails the
+inglorious fate for which he seems to be reserved.  "Oh! thrice
+happy," says he, "those who were frozen to death at Krasnoi, or
+slaughtered at Leipsic.  Oh, Kutusoff, bravest of the Russians,
+wherefore was I not permitted to fall by thy victorious sword?"
+He then offers a prayer to Aeolus, and vows to him a sacrifice of
+a black ram.  In consequence, the god recalls his turbulent
+subject; the sea is calmed; and the ship anchors in the port of
+Frejus.  Napoleon and Bertrand, who is always called the faithful
+Bertrand, land to explore the country; Mars meets them disguised
+as a lancer of the guard, wearing the cross of the legion of
+honour.  He advises them to apply for necessaries of all kinds to
+the governor, shows them the way, and disappears with a strong
+smell of gunpowder.  Napoleon makes a pathetic speech, and enters
+the governor's house.  Here he sees hanging up a fine print of
+the battle of Austerlitz, himself in the foreground giving his
+orders.  This puts him in high spirits; he advances and salutes
+the governor, who receives him most loyally, gives him an
+entertainment, and, according to the usage of all epic hosts,
+insists after dinner on a full narration of all that has happened
+to him since the battle of Leipsic.
+
+BOOK II.
+
+Napoleon carries his narrative from the battle of Leipsic to his
+abdication.  But, as we shall have a great quantity of fighting
+on our hands, I think it best to omit the details.
+
+BOOK III.
+
+Napoleon describes his sojourn at Elba, and his return; how he
+was driven by stress of weather to Sardinia, and fought with the
+harpies there; how he was then carried southward to Sicily, where
+he generously took on board an English sailor, whom a man-of-war
+had unhappily left there, and who was in imminent danger of being
+devoured by the Cyclops; how he landed in the bay of Naples, saw
+the Sibyl, and descended to Tartarus; how he held a long and
+pathetic conversation with Poniatowski, whom he found wandering
+unburied on the banks of Styx; how he swore to give him a
+splendid funeral; how he had also an affectionate interview with
+Desaix; how Moreau and Sir Ralph Abercrombie fled at the sight of
+him.  He relates that he then re-embarked, and met with nothing
+of importance till the commencement of the storm with which the
+poem opens.
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+The scene changes to Paris.  Fame, in the garb of an express,
+brings intelligence of the landing of Napoleon.  The king
+performs a sacrifice:  but the entrails are unfavourable; and the
+victim is without a heart.  He prepares to encounter the invader.
+A young captain of the guard,--the son of Maria Antoinette by
+Apollo,--in the shape of a fiddler, rushes in to tell him that
+Napoleon is approaching with a vast army.  The royal forces are
+drawn out for battle.  Full catalogues are given of the regiments
+on both sides; their colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and uniform.
+
+BOOK V.
+
+The king comes forward and defies Napoleon to single combat.
+Napoleon accepts it.  Sacrifices are offered.  The ground is
+measured by Ney and Macdonald.  The combatants advance.  Louis
+snaps his pistol in vain.  The bullet of Napoleon, on the
+contrary, carries off the tip of the king's ear.  Napoleon then
+rushes on him sword in hand.  But Louis snatches up a stone, such
+as ten men of those degenerate days will be unable to move, and
+hurls it at his antagonist.  Mars averts it.  Napoleon then
+seizes Louis, and is about to strike a fatal blow, when Bacchus
+intervenes, like Venus in the third book of the Iliad, bears off
+the king in a thick cloud, and seats him in an hotel at Lille,
+with a bottle of Maraschino and a basin of soup before him.  Both
+armies instantly proclaim Napoleon emperor.
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+Neptune, returned from his Ethiopian revels, sees with rage the
+events which have taken place in Europe.  He flies to the cave of
+Alecto, and drags out the fiend, commanding her to excite
+universal hostility against Napoleon.  The Fury repairs to Lord
+Castlereagh; and, as, when she visited Turnus, she assumed the
+form of an old woman, she here appears in the kindred shape of Mr
+Vansittart, and in an impassioned address exhorts his lordship to
+war.  His lordship, like Turnus, treats this unwonted monitor
+with great disrespect, tells him that he is an old doting fool,
+and advises him to look after the ways and means, and leave
+questions of peace and war to his betters.  The Fury then
+displays all her terrors.  The neat powdered hair bristles up
+into snakes; the black stockings appear clotted with blood; and,
+brandishing a torch, she announces her name and mission.  Lord
+Castlereagh, seized with fury, flies instantly to the Parliament,
+and recommends war with a torrent of eloquent invective.  All the
+members instantly clamour for vengeance, seize their arms which
+are hanging round the walls of the house, and rush forth to
+prepare for instant hostilities.
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+In this book intelligence arrives at London of the flight of the
+Duchess d'Angouleme from France.  It is stated that this heroine,
+armed from head to foot, defended Bordeaux against the adherents
+of Napoleon, and that she fought hand to hand with Clausel, and
+beat him down with an enormous stone.  Deserted by her followers,
+she at last, like Turnus, plunged, armed as she was, into the
+Garonne, and swam to an English ship which lay off the coast.
+This intelligence yet more inflames the English to war.
+
+A yet bolder flight than any which has been mentioned follows.
+The Duke of Wellington goes to take leave of the duchess; and a
+scene passes quite equal to the famous interview of Hector and
+Andromache.  Lord Douro is frightened at his father's feather,
+but begs for his epaulette.
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+Neptune, trembling for the event of the war, implores Venus, who,
+as the offspring of his element, naturally venerates him, to
+procure from Vulcan a deadly sword and a pair of unerring pistols
+for the Duke.  They are accordingly made, and superbly decorated.
+The sheath of the sword, like the shield of Achilles, is carved,
+in exquisitely fine miniature, with scenes from the common life
+of the period; a dance at Almack's a boxing match at the Fives-
+court, a lord mayor's procession, and a man hanging.  All these
+are fully and elegantly described.  The Duke thus armed hastens
+to Brussels.
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+The Duke is received at Brussels by the King of the Netherlands
+with great magnificence.  He is informed of the approach of the
+armies of all the confederate kings.  The poet, however, with a
+laudable zeal for the glory of his country, completely passes
+over the exploits of the Austrians in Italy, and the discussions
+of the congress.  England and France, Wellington and Napoleon,
+almost exclusively occupy his attention.  Several days are spent
+at Brussels in revelry.  The English heroes astonish their allies
+by exhibiting splendid games, similar to those which draw the
+flower of the British aristocracy to Newmarket and Moulsey Hurst,
+and which will be considered by our descendants with as much
+veneration as the Olympian and Isthmian contests by classical
+students of the present time.  In the combat of the cestus, Shaw,
+the lifeguardsman, vanquishes the Prince of Orange, and obtains a
+bull as a prize.  In the horse-race, the Duke of Wellington and
+Lord Uxbridge ride against each other; the Duke is victorious,
+and is rewarded with twelve opera-girls.  On the last day of the
+festivities, a splendid dance takes place, at which all the
+heroes attend.
+
+BOOK X.
+
+Mars, seeing the English army thus inactive, hastens to rouse
+Napoleon, who, conducted by Night and Silence, unexpectedly
+attacks the Prussians.  The slaughter is immense.  Napoleon kills
+many whose histories and families are happily particularised.  He
+slays Herman, the craniologist, who dwelt by the linden-shadowed
+Elbe, and measured with his eye the skulls of all who walked
+through the streets of Berlin.  Alas! his own skull is now cleft
+by the Corsican sword.  Four pupils of the University of Jena
+advance together to encounter the Emperor; at four blows he
+destroys them all.  Blucher rushes to arrest the devastation;
+Napoleon strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of
+killing him, but Gneisenau, Ziethen, Bulow, and all the other
+heroes of the Prussian army, gather round him, and bear the
+venerable chief to a distance from the field.  The slaughter is
+continued till night.  In the meantime Neptune has despatched
+Fame to bear the intelligence to the Duke, who is dancing at
+Brussels.  The whole army is put in motion.  The Duke of
+Brunswick's horse speaks to admonish him of his danger, but in
+vain.
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+Picton, the Duke of Brunswick, and the Prince of Orange, engage
+Ney at Quatre Bras.  Ney kills the Duke of Brunswick, and strips
+him, sending his belt to Napoleon.  The English fall back on
+Waterloo.  Jupiter calls a council of the gods, and commands that
+none shall interfere on either side.  Mars and Neptune make very
+eloquent speeches.  The battle of Waterloo commences.  Napoleon
+kills Picton and Delancy.  Ney engages Ponsonby and kills him.
+The Prince of Orange is wounded by Soult.  Lord Uxbridge flies to
+check the carnage.  He is severely wounded by Napoleon, and only
+saved by the assistance of Lord Hill.  In the meantime the Duke
+makes a tremendous carnage among the French.  He encounters
+General Duhesme and vanquishes him, but spares his life.  He
+kills Toubert, who kept the gaming-house in the Palais Royal, and
+Maronet, who loved to spend whole nights in drinking champagne.
+Clerval, who had been hooted from the stage, and had then become
+a captain in the Imperial Guard, wished that he had still
+continued to face the more harmless enmity of the Parisian pit.
+But Larrey, the son of Esculapius, whom his father had instructed
+in all the secrets of his art, and who was surgeon-general of the
+French army, embraced the knees of the destroyer, and conjured
+him not to give death to one whose office it was to give life.
+The Duke raised him, and bade him live.
+
+But we must hasten to the close.  Napoleon rushes to encounter
+Wellington.  Both armies stand in mute amaze.  The heroes fire
+their pistols; that of Napoleon misses, but that of Wellington,
+formed by the hand of Vulcan, and primed by the Cyclops, wounds
+the Emperor in the thigh.  He flies, and takes refuge among his
+troops.  The flight becomes promiscuous.  The arrival of the
+Prussians, from a motive of patriotism, the poet completely
+passes over.
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+Things are now hastening to the catastrophe.  Napoleon flies to
+London, and, seating himself on the hearth of the Regent,
+embraces the household gods and conjures him, by the venerable
+age of George III., and by the opening perfections of the
+Princess Charlotte, to spare him.  The Prince is inclined to do
+so; when, looking on his breast, he sees there the belt of the
+Duke of Brunswick.  He instantly draws his sword, and is about to
+stab the destroyer of his kinsman.  Piety and hospitality,
+however, restrain his hand.  He takes a middle course, and
+condemns Napoleon to be exposed on a desert island.  The King of
+France re-enters Paris; and the poem concludes.
+
+...
+
+
+ON MITFORD'S HISTORY OF GREECE.
+
+(November 1824.)
+
+This is a book which enjoys a great and increasing popularity:
+but, while it has attracted a considerable share of the public
+attention, it has been little noticed by the critics.  Mr Mitford
+has almost succeeded in mounting, unperceived by those whose
+office it is to watch such aspirants, to a high place among
+historians.  He has taken a seat on the dais without being
+challenged by a single seneschal.  To oppose the progress of his
+fame is now almost a hopeless enterprise.  Had he been reviewed
+with candid severity, when he had published only his first
+volume, his work would either have deserved its reputation, or
+would never have obtained it.  "Then," as Indra says of Kehama,
+"then was the time to strike."  The time was neglected; and the
+consequence is that Mr Mitford like Kehama, has laid his
+victorious hand on the literary Amreeta, and seems about to taste
+the precious elixir of immortality.  I shall venture to emulate
+the courage of the honest Glendoveer--
+"When now
+He saw the Amreeta in Kehama's hand,
+An impulse that defied all self-command,
+In that extremity,
+Stung him, and he resolved to seize the cup,
+And dare the Rajah's force in Seeva's sight,
+Forward he sprung to tempt the unequal fray."
+
+In plain words, I shall offer a few considerations, which may
+tend to reduce an overpraised writer to his proper level.
+
+The principal characteristic of this historian, the origin of his
+excellencies and his defects, is a love of singularity.  He has
+no notion of going with a multitude to do either good or evil.
+An exploded opinion, or an unpopular person, has an irresistible
+charm for him.  The same perverseness may be traced in his
+diction.  His style would never have been elegant; but it might
+at least have been manly and perspicuous; and nothing but the
+most elaborate care could possibly have made it so bad as it is.
+It is distinguished by harsh phrases, strange collocations,
+occasional solecisms, frequent obscurity, and, above all, by a
+peculiar oddity, which can no more be described than it can be
+overlooked.  Nor is this all.  Mr Mitford piques himself on
+spelling better than any of his neighbours; and this not only in
+ancient names, which he mangles in defiance both of custom and of
+reason, but in the most ordinary words of the English language.
+It is, in itself, a matter perfectly indifferent whether we call
+a foreigner by the name which he bears in his own language, or by
+that which corresponds to it in ours; whether we say Lorenzo de
+Medici, or Lawrence de Medici, Jean Chauvin, or John Calvin.  In
+such cases established usage is considered as law by all writers
+except Mr Mitford.  If he were always consistent with himself, he
+might be excused for sometimes disagreeing with his neighbours;
+but he proceeds on no principle but that of being unlike the rest
+of the world.  Every child has heard of Linnaeus; therefore Mr
+Mitford calls him Linne:  Rousseau is known all over Europe as
+Jean Jacques; therefore Mr Mitford bestows on him the strange
+appellation of John James.
+
+Had Mr Mitford undertaken a History of any other country than
+Greece, this propensity would have rendered his work useless and
+absurd.  His occasional remarks on the affairs of ancient Rome
+and of modern Europe are full of errors:  but he writes of times
+with respect to which almost every other writer has been in the
+wrong; and, therefore, by resolutely deviating from his
+predecessors, he is often in the right.
+
+Almost all the modern historians of Greece have shown the
+grossest ignorance of the most obvious phenomena of human nature.
+In their representations the generals and statesmen of antiquity
+are absolutely divested of all individuality.  They are
+personifications; they are passions, talents, opinions, virtues,
+vices, but not men.  Inconsistency is a thing of which these
+writers have no notion.  That a man may have been liberal in his
+youth and avaricious in his age, cruel to one enemy and merciful
+to another, is to them utterly inconceivable.  If the facts be
+undeniable, they suppose some strange and deep design, in order
+to explain what, as every one who has observed his own mind
+knows, needs no explanation at all.  This is a mode of writing
+very acceptable to the multitude who have always been accustomed
+to make gods and daemons out of men very little better or worse
+than themselves; but it appears contemptible to all who have
+watched the changes of human character--to all who have observed
+the influence of time, of circumstances, and of associates, on
+mankind--to all who have seen a hero in the gout, a democrat in
+the church, a pedant in love, or a philosopher in liquor.  This
+practice of painting in nothing but black and white is
+unpardonable even in the drama.  It is the great fault of
+Alfieri; and how much it injures the effect of his compositions
+will be obvious to every one who will compare his Rosmunda with
+the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare.  The one is a wicked woman; the
+other is a fiend.  Her only feeling is hatred; all her words are
+curses.  We are at once shocked and fatigued by the spectacle of
+such raving cruelty, excited by no provocation, repeatedly
+changing its object, and constant in nothing but in its in-
+extinguishable thirst for blood.
+
+In history this error is far more disgraceful.  Indeed, there is
+no fault which so completely ruins a narrative in the opinion of
+a judicious reader.  We know that the line of demarcation between
+good and bad men is so faintly marked as often to elude the most
+careful investigation of those who have the best opportunities
+for judging.  Public men, above all, are surrounded with so many
+temptations and difficulties that some doubt must almost always
+hang over their real dispositions and intentions.  The lives of
+Pym, Cromwell, Monk, Clarendon, Marlborough, Burnet, Walpole, are
+well known to us.  We are acquainted with their actions, their
+speeches, their writings; we have abundance of letters and well-
+authenticated anecdotes relating to them: yet what candid man
+will venture very positively to say which of them were honest and
+which of them were dishonest men?  It appears easier to pronounce
+decidedly upon the great characters of antiquity, not because we
+have greater means of discovering truth, but simply because we
+have less means of detecting error.  The modern historians of
+Greece have forgotten this.  Their heroes and villains are as
+consistent in all their sayings and doings as the cardinal
+virtues and the deadly sins in an allegory.  We should as soon
+expect a good action from giant Slay-good in Bunyan as from
+Dionysius; and a crime of Epaminondas would seem as incongruous
+as a faux-pas of the grave and comely damsel called Discretion,
+who answered the bell at the door of the house Beautiful.
+
+This error was partly the cause and partly the effect of the high
+estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held by
+modern scholars.  Those French and English authors who have
+treated of the affairs of Greece have generally turned with
+contempt from the simple and natural narrations of Thucydides and
+Xenophon to the extravagant representations of Plutarch,
+Diodorus, Curtius, and other romancers of the same class,--men
+who described military operations without ever having handled a
+sword, and applied to the seditions of little republics
+speculations formed by observation on an empire which covered
+half the known world.  Of liberty they knew nothing.  It was to
+them a great mystery--a superhuman enjoyment.  They ranted about
+liberty and patriotism, from the same cause which leads monks to
+talk more ardently than other men about love and women.  A wise
+man values political liberty, because it secures the persons and
+the possessions of citizens; because it tends to prevent the
+extravagance of rulers, and the corruption of judges; because it
+gives birth to useful sciences and elegant arts; because it
+excites the industry and increases the comforts of all classes of
+society.  These theorists imagined that it possessed something
+eternally and intrinsically good, distinct from the blessings
+which it generally produced.  They considered it not as a means
+but as an end; an end to be attained at any cost.  Their
+favourite heroes are those who have sacrificed, for the mere name
+of freedom, the prosperity--the security--the justice--from which
+freedom derives its value.
+
+There is another remarkable characteristic of these writers, in
+which their modern worshippers have carefully imitated them--a
+great fondness for good stories.  The most established facts,
+dates, and characters are never suffered to come into competition
+with a splendid saying, or a romantic exploit.  The early
+historians have left us natural and simple descriptions of the
+great events which they witnessed, and the great men with whom
+they associated.  When we read the account which Plutarch
+and Rollin have given of the same period, we scarcely know our
+old acquaintance again; we are utterly confounded by the melo-
+dramatic effect of the narration, and the sublime coxcombry of
+the characters.
+
+These are the principal errors into which the predecessors of Mr
+Mitford have fallen; and from most of these he is free.  His
+faults are of a completely different description.  It is to be
+hoped that the students of history may now be saved, like Dorax
+in Dryden's play, by swallowing two conflicting poisons, each of
+which may serve as an antidote to the other.
+
+The first and most important difference between Mr Mitford and
+those who have preceded him is in his narration.  Here the
+advantage lies, for the most part, on his side.  His principle is
+to follow the contemporary historians, to look with doubt on all
+statements which are not in some degree confirmed by them, and
+absolutely to reject all which are contradicted by them.  While
+he retains the guidance of some writer in whom he can place
+confidence, he goes on excellently.  When he loses it, he falls
+to the level, or perhaps below the level, of the writers whom he
+so much despises: he is as absurd as they, and very much duller.
+It is really amusing to observe how he proceeds with his
+narration when he has no better authority than poor Diodorus.  He
+is compelled to relate something; yet he believes nothing.  He
+accompanies every fact with a long statement of objections.  His
+account of the administration of Dionysius is in no sense a
+history.  It ought to be entitled--"Historic doubts as to certain
+events, alleged to have taken place in Sicily."
+
+This scepticism, however, like that of some great legal
+characters almost as sceptical as himself; vanishes whenever his
+political partialities interfere.  He is a vehement admirer of
+tyranny and oligarchy, and considers no evidence as feeble which
+can be brought forward in favour of those forms of government.
+Democracy he hates with a perfect hatred, a hatred which, in the
+first volume of his history, appears only in his episodes and
+reflections, but which, in those parts where he has less
+reverence for his guides, and can venture to take his own way,
+completely distorts even his narration.
+
+In taking up these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr Mitford was
+influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell
+"island" without an "s," and to place two dots over the last
+letter of "idea."  In truth, preceding historians have erred so
+monstrously on the other side that even the worst parts of Mr
+Mitford's book may be useful as a corrective.  For a young
+gentleman who talks much about his country, tyrannicide, and
+Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a sufficient quantity of
+Rollin and Berthelemi, may be a very useful remedy.
+
+The errors of both parties arise from an ignorance or a neglect
+of the fundamental principles of political science.  The writers
+on one side imagine popular government to be always a blessing;
+Mr Mitford omits no opportunity of assuring us that it is always
+a curse.  The fact is, that a good government, like a good coat,
+is that which fits the body for which it is designed.  A man who,
+upon abstract principles, pronounces a constitution to be good,
+without an exact knowledge of the people who are to be governed
+by it, judges as absurdly as a tailor who should measure the
+Belvidere Apollo for the clothes of all his customers.  The
+demagogues who wished to see Portugal a republic, and the wise
+critics who revile the Virginians for not having instituted a
+peerage, appear equally ridiculous to all men of sense and
+candour.
+
+That is the best government which desires to make the people
+happy, and knows how to make them happy.  Neither the inclination
+nor the knowledge will suffice alone; and it is difficult to find
+them together.
+
+Pure democracy, and pure democracy alone, satisfies the former
+condition of this great problem.  That the governors may be
+solicitous only for the interests of the governed, it is
+necessary that the interests of the governors and the governed
+should be the same.  This cannot be often the case where power is
+intrusted to one or to a few.  The privileged part of the
+community will doubtless derive a certain degree of advantage
+from the general prosperity of the state; but they will derive a
+greater from oppression and exaction.  The king will desire an
+useless war for his glory, or a parc-aux-cerfs for his pleasure.
+The nobles will demand monopolies and lettres-de-cachet.  In
+proportion as the number of governors is increased the evil is
+diminished.  There are fewer to contribute, and more to receive.
+The dividend which each can obtain of the public plunder becomes
+less and less tempting.  But the interests of the subjects and
+the rulers never absolutely coincide till the subjects themselves
+become the rulers, that is, till the government be either
+immediately or mediately democratical.
+
+But this is not enough.  "Will without power," said the sagacious
+Casimir to Milor Beefington, "is like children playing at
+soldiers."  The people will always be desirous to promote their
+own interests; but it may be doubted, whether, in any community,
+they were ever sufficiently educated to understand them.  Even in
+this island, where the multitude have long been better informed
+than in any other part of Europe, the rights of the many have
+generally been asserted against themselves by the patriotism of
+the few.  Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a
+government can confer on a people, is in almost every country
+unpopular.  It may be well doubted, whether a liberal policy with
+regard to our commercial relations would find any support from a
+parliament elected by universal suffrage.  The republicans on the
+other side of the Atlantic have recently adopted regulations of
+which the consequences will, before long, show us,
+
+"How nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed,
+When vengeance listens to the fool's request."
+
+The people are to be governed for their own good; and, that they
+may be governed for their own good, they must not be governed by
+their own ignorance.  There are countries in which it would be as
+absurd to establish popular government as to abolish all the
+restraints in a school, or to untie all the strait-waistcoats in
+a madhouse.
+
+Hence it may be concluded that the happiest state of society is
+that in which supreme power resides in the whole body of a well-
+informed people.  This is an imaginary, perhaps an unattainable,
+state of things.  Yet, in some measure, we may approximate to it;
+and he alone deserves the name of a great statesman, whose
+principle it is to extend the power of the people in proportion
+to the extent of their knowledge, and to give them every facility
+for obtaining such a degree of knowledge as may render it safe to
+trust them with absolute power.  In the mean time, it is
+dangerous to praise or condemn constitutions in the abstract;
+since, from the despotism of St Petersburg to the democracy of
+Washington, there is scarcely a form of government which might
+not, at least in some hypothetical case, be the best possible.
+
+If, however, there be any form of government which in all ages
+and all nations has always been, and must always be, pernicious,
+it is certainly that which Mr Mitford, on his usual principle of
+being wiser than all the rest of the world, has taken under his
+especial patronage--pure oligarchy.  This is closely, and indeed
+inseparably, connected with another of his eccentric tastes, a
+marked partiality for Lacedaemon, and a dislike of Athens.  Mr
+Mitford's book has, I suspect, rendered these sentiments in some
+degree popular; and I shall, therefore, examine them at some
+length.
+
+The shades in the Athenian character strike the eye more rapidly
+than those in the Lacedaemonian:  not because they are darker,
+but because they are on a brighter ground.  The law of ostracism
+is an instance of this.  Nothing can be conceived more odious
+than the practice of punishing a citizen, simply and professedly,
+for his eminence;--and nothing in the institutions of Athens is
+more frequently or more justly censured.  Lacedaemon was free
+from this.  And why? Lacedaemon did not need it.  Oligarchy is an
+ostracism of itself,--an ostracism not occasional, but permanent,
+--not dubious, but certain.  Her laws prevented the development
+of merit instead of attacking its maturity.  They did not cut
+down the plant in its high and palmy state, but cursed the soil
+with eternal sterility.  In spite of the law of ostracism, Athens
+produced, within a hundred and fifty years, the greatest public
+men that ever existed.  Whom had Sparta to ostracise?  She
+produced, at most, four eminent men, Brasidas, Gylippus,
+Lysander, and Agesilaus.  Of these, not one rose to distinction
+within her jurisdiction.  It was only when they escaped from the
+region within which the influence of aristocracy withered
+everything good and noble, it was only when they ceased to be
+Lacedaemonians, that they became great men.  Brasidas, among the
+cities of Thrace, was strictly a democratical leader, the
+favourite minister and general of the people.  The same may be
+said of Gylippus, at Syracuse.  Lysander, in the Hellespont, and
+Agesilaus, in Asia, were liberated for a time from the hateful
+restraints imposed by the constitution of Lycurgus.  Both
+acquired fame abroad; and both returned to be watched and
+depressed at home.  This is not peculiar to Sparta.  Oligarchy,
+wherever it has existed, has always stunted the growth of genius.
+Thus it was at Rome, till about a century before the Christian
+era:  we read of abundance of consuls and dictators who won
+battles, and enjoyed triumphs; but we look in vain for a single
+man of the first order of intellect,--for a Pericles, a
+Demosthenes, or a Hannibal.  The Gracchi formed a strong
+democratical party; Marius revived it; the foundations of the old
+aristocracy were shaken; and two generations fertile in really
+great men appeared.
+
+Venice is a still more remarkable instance:  in her history we
+see nothing but the state; aristocracy had destroyed every seed
+of genius and virtue.  Her dominion was like herself, lofty and
+magnificent, but founded on filth and weeds.  God forbid that
+there should ever again exist a powerful and civilised state,
+which, after existing through thirteen hundred eventful years,
+should not bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or
+one generous action.
+
+Many writers, and Mr Mitford among the number, have admired the
+stability of the Spartan institutions; in fact, there is little
+to admire, and less to approve.  Oligarchy is the weakest and the
+most stable of governments; and it is stable because it is weak.
+It has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the
+balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to
+no accident; it is seized with an hypochondriac alarm at every
+new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for
+every inflammation: and thus, without ever enjoying a day of
+health or pleasure, drags on its existence to a doting and
+debilitated old age.
+
+The Spartans purchased for their government a prolongation of its
+existence by the sacrifice of happiness at home and dignity
+abroad.  They cringed to the powerful; they trampled on the weak;
+they massacred their helots; they betrayed their allies; they
+contrived to be a day too late for the battle of Marathon; they
+attempted to avoid the battle of Salamis; they suffered the
+Athenians, to whom they owed their lives and liberties, to be a
+second time driven from their country by the Persians, that they
+might finish their own fortifications on the Isthmus; they
+attempted to take advantage of the distress to which exertions in
+their cause had reduced their preservers, in order to make them
+their slaves; they strove to prevent those who had abandoned
+their walls to defend them, from rebuilding them to defend
+themselves; they commenced the Peloponnesian war in violation of
+their engagements with Athens; they abandoned it in violation of
+their engagements with their allies; they gave up to the sword
+whole cities which had placed themselves under their protection;
+they bartered, for advantages confined to themselves, the
+interest, the freedom, and the lives of those who had served them
+most faithfully; they took with equal complacency, and equal
+infamy, the stripes of Elis and the bribes of Persia; they never
+showed either resentment or gratitude; they abstained from no
+injury, and they revenged none.  Above all, they looked on a
+citizen who served them well as their deadliest enemy.  These are
+the arts which protract the existence of government.
+
+Nor were the domestic institutions of Lacedaemon less hateful or
+less contemptible than her foreign policy.  A perpetual
+interference with every part of the system of human life, a
+constant struggle against nature and reason, characterised all
+her laws.  To violate even prejudices which have taken deep root
+in the minds of a people is scarcely expedient; to think of
+extirpating natural appetites and passions is frantic:  the
+external symptoms may be occasionally repressed; but the feeling
+still exists, and, debarred from its natural objects, preys on
+the disordered mind and body of its victim.  Thus it is in
+convents---thus it is among ascetic sects--thus it was among the
+Lacedaemonians.  Hence arose that madness, or violence
+approaching to madness, which, in spite of every external
+restraint, often appeared among the most distinguished citizens
+of Sparta.  Cleomenes terminated his career of raving cruelty by
+cutting himself to pieces.  Pausanias seems to have been
+absolutely insane; he formed a hopeless and profligate scheme; he
+betrayed it by the ostentation of his behaviour, and the
+imprudence of his measures; and he alienated, by his insolence,
+all who might have served or protected him.  Xenophon, a warm
+admirer of Lacedaemon, furnishes us with the strongest evidence
+to this effect.  It is impossible not to observe the brutal and
+senseless fury which characterises almost every Spartan with whom
+he was connected.  Clearchus nearly lost his life by his cruelty.
+Chirisophus deprived his army of the services of a faithful guide
+by his unreasonable and ferocious severity.  But it is needless
+to multiply instances.  Lycurgus, Mr Mitford's favourite
+legislator, founded his whole system on a mistaken principle.  He
+never considered that governments were made for men, and not men
+for governments.  Instead of adapting the constitution to the
+people, he distorted the minds of the people to suit the
+constitution, a scheme worthy of the Laputan Academy of
+Projectors.  And this appears to Mr Mitford to constitute his
+peculiar title to admiration.  Hear himself:  "What to modern
+eyes most strikingly sets that extraordinary man above all other
+legislators is, that in so many circumstances, apparently out of
+the reach of law, he controlled and formed to his own mind the
+wills and habits of his people."  I should suppose that this
+gentleman had the advantage of receiving his education under the
+ferula of Dr Pangloss; for his metaphysics are clearly those of
+the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh:  "Remarquez bien que les nez
+ont ete faits pour porter des lunettes, aussi avons nous des
+lunettes.  Les jambes sont visiblement institues pour etre
+chaussees, et nous avons des chausses.  Les cochons etant faits
+pour etre manges, nous mangeons du porc toute l'annee."
+
+At Athens the laws did not constantly interfere with the tastes
+of the people.  The children were not taken from their parents by
+that universal step-mother, the state.  They were not starved
+into thieves, or tortured into bullies; there was no established
+table at which every one must dine, no established style in which
+every one must converse.  An Athenian might eat whatever he could
+afford to buy, and talk as long as he could find people to
+listen.  The government did not tell the people what opinions
+they were to hold, or what songs they were to sing.  Freedom
+produced excellence.  Thus philosophy took its origin.  Thus were
+produced those models of poetry, of oratory, and of the arts,
+which scarcely fall short of the standard of ideal excellence.
+Nothing is more conducive to happiness than the free exercise of
+the mind in pursuits congenial to it.  This happiness, assuredly,
+was enjoyed far more at Athens than at Sparta.  The Athenians are
+acknowledged even by their enemies to have been distinguished, in
+private life, by their courteous and amiable demeanour.  Their
+levity, at least, was better than Spartan sullenness and their
+impertinence than Spartan insolence.  Even in courage it may be
+questioned whether they were inferior to the Lacedaemonians.  The
+great Athenian historian has reported a remarkable observation of
+the great Athenian minister.  Pericles maintained that his
+countrymen, without submitting to the hardships of a Spartan
+education, rivalled all the achievements of Spartan valour, and
+that therefore the pleasures and amusements which they enjoyed
+were to be considered as so much clear gain.  The infantry of
+Athens was certainly not equal to that of Lacedaemon; but this
+seems to have been caused merely by want of practice:  the
+attention of the Athenians was diverted from the discipline of
+the phalanx to that of the trireme.  The Lacedaemonians, in spite
+of all their boasted valour, were, from the same cause, timid and
+disorderly in naval action.
+
+But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by
+the Athenian government, and the democracies under its
+protection.  It is true that Athens too often acted up to the
+full extent of the laws of war in an age when those laws had not
+been mitigated by causes which have operated in later times.
+This accusation is, in fact, common to Athens, to Lacedaemon, to
+all the states of Greece, and to all states similarly situated.
+Where communities are very large, the heavier evils of war are
+felt but by few.  The ploughboy sings, the spinning-wheel turns
+round, the wedding-day is fixed, whether the last battle were
+lost or won.  In little states it cannot be thus; every man feels
+in his own property and person the effect of a war.  Every man is
+a soldier, and a soldier fighting for his nearest interests.  His
+own trees have been cut down--his own corn has been burnt--his
+own house has been pillaged--his own relations have been killed.
+How can he entertain towards the enemies of his country the same
+feelings with one who has suffered nothing from them, except
+perhaps the addition of a small sum to the taxes which he pays?
+Men in such circumstances cannot be generous.  They have too much
+at stake.  It is when they are, if I may so express myself,
+playing for love, it is when war is a mere game at chess, it is
+when they are contending for a remote colony, a frontier town,
+the honours of a flag, a salute, or a title, that they can make
+fine speeches, and do good offices to their enemies.  The Black
+Prince waited behind the chair of his captive; Villars
+interchanged repartees with Eugene; George II. sent
+congratulations to Louis XV., during a war, upon occasion of his
+escape from the attempt of Damien:  and these things are fine and
+generous, and very gratifying to the author of the Broad Stone of
+Honour, and all the other wise men who think, like him, that God
+made the world only for the use of gentlemen.  But they spring in
+general from utter heartlessness.  No war ought ever to be
+undertaken but under circumstances which render all interchange
+of courtesy between the combatants impossible.  It is a bad thing
+that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they
+should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats
+without hatred.  War is never lenient, but where it is wanton;
+when men are compelled to fight in selfdefence, they must hate
+and avenge:  this may be bad; but it is human nature; it is the
+clay as it came from the hand of the potter.
+
+It is true that among the dependencies of Athens seditions
+assumed a character more ferocious than even in France, during
+the reign of terror--the accursed Saturnalia of an accursed
+bondage.  It is true that in Athens itself, where such
+convulsions were scarcely known, the condition of the higher
+orders was disagreeable; that they were compelled to contribute
+large sums for the service or the amusement of the public; and
+that they were sometimes harassed by vexatious informers.
+Whenever such cases occur, Mr Mitford's scepticism vanishes.  The
+"if," the "but," the "it is said," the "if we may believe," with
+which he qualifies every charge against a tyrant or an
+aristocracy, are at once abandoned.  The blacker the story, the
+firmer is his belief, and he never fails to inveigh with hearty
+bitterness against democracy as the source of every species of
+crime.
+
+The Athenians, I believe, possessed more liberty than was good
+for them.  Yet I will venture to assert that, while the
+splendour, the intelligence, and the energy of that great people
+were peculiar to themselves, the crimes with which they are
+charged arose from causes which were common to them with every
+other state which then existed.  The violence of faction in that
+age sprung from a cause which has always been fertile in every
+political and moral evil, domestic slavery.
+
+The effect of slavery is completely to dissolve the connection
+which naturally exists between the higher and lower classes of
+free citizens.  The rich spend their wealth in purchasing and
+maintaining slaves.  There is no demand for the labour of the
+poor; the fable of Menenius ceases to be applicable; the belly
+communicates no nutriment to the members; there is an atrophy in
+the body politic.  The two parties, therefore, proceed to
+extremities utterly unknown in countries where they have mutually
+need of each other.  In Rome the oligarchy was too powerful to be
+subverted by force; and neither the tribunes nor the popular
+assemblies, though constitutionally omnipotent, could maintain a
+successful contest against men who possessed the whole property
+of the state.  Hence the necessity for measures tending to
+unsettle the whole frame of society, and to take away every
+motive of industry; the abolition of debts, and the agrarian
+laws--propositions absurdly condemned by men who do not consider
+the circumstances from which they sprung.  They were the
+desperate remedies of a desperate disease.  In Greece the
+oligarchical interest was not in general so deeply rooted as at
+Rome.  The multitude, therefore, often redressed by force
+grievances which, at Rome, were commonly attacked under the forms
+of the constitution.  They drove out or massacred the rich, and
+divided their property.  If the superior union or military skill
+of the rich rendered them victorious, they took measures equally
+violent, disarmed all in whom they could not confide, often
+slaughtered great numbers, and occasionally expelled the whole
+commonalty from the city, and remained, with their slaves, the
+sole inhabitants.
+
+From such calamities Athens and Lacedaemon alone were almost
+completely free.  At Athens the purses of the rich were laid
+under regular contribution for the support of the poor; and this,
+rightly considered, was as much a favour to the givers as to the
+receivers, since no other measure could possibly have saved their
+houses from pillage and their persons from violence.  It is
+singular that Mr Mitford should perpetually reprobate a policy
+which was the best that could be pursued in such a state of
+things, and which alone saved Athens from the frightful outrages
+which were perpetrated at Corcyra.
+
+Lacedaemon, cursed with a system of slavery more odious than has
+ever existed in any other country, avoided this evil by almost
+totally annihilating private property.  Lycurgus began by an
+agrarian law.  He abolished all professions except that of arms;
+he made the whole of his community a standing army, every member
+of which had a common right to the services of a crowd of
+miserable bondmen; he secured the state from sedition at the
+expense of the Helots.  Of all the parts of his system this is
+the most creditable to his head, and the most disgraceful to his
+heart.
+
+These considerations, and many others of equal importance, Mr
+Mitford has neglected; but he has yet a heavier charge to answer.
+He has made not only illogical inferences, but false statements.
+While he never states, without qualifications and objections, the
+charges which the earliest and best historians have brought
+against his favourite tyrants, Pisistratus, Hippias, and Gelon,
+he transcribes, without any hesitation, the grossest abuse of the
+least authoritative writers against every democracy and every
+demagogue.  Such an accusation should not be made without being
+supported; and I will therefore select one out of many passages
+which will fully substantiate the charge, and convict Mr Mitford
+of wilful misrepresentation, or of negligence scarcely less
+culpable.  Mr Mitford is speaking of one of the greatest men that
+ever lived, Demosthenes, and comparing him with his rival,
+Aeschines.  Let him speak for himself.
+
+"In earliest youth Demosthenes earned an opprobrious nickname by
+the effeminacy of his dress and manner."  Does Mr Mitford know
+that Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname
+in a perfectly different manner?  (See the speech of Aeschines
+against Timarchus.)  And, if he knew it, should he not have
+stated it?  He proceeds thus:  "On emerging from minority, by the
+Athenian law, at five-and-twenty, he earned another opprobrious
+nickname by a prosecution of his guardians, which was considered
+as a dishonourable attempt to extort money from them."  In the
+first place Demosthenes was not five-and-twenty years of age.  Mr
+Mitford might have learned, from so common a book as the
+Archaeologia of Archbishop Potter, that at twenty Athenian
+citizens were freed from the control of their guardians, and
+began to manage their own property.  The very speech of
+Demosthenes against his guardians proves most satisfactorily that
+he was under twenty.  In his speech against Midias, he says that
+when he undertook that prosecution he was quite a boy.
+(Meirakullion on komide.)  His youth might, therefore, excuse the
+step, even if it had been considered, as Mr Mitford says, a
+dishonourable attempt to extort money.  But who considered it as
+such?  Not the judges who condemned the guardians.  The Athenian
+courts of justice were not the purest in the world; but their
+decisions were at least as likely to be just as the abuse of a
+deadly enemy.  Mr Mitford refers for confirmation of his
+statement to Aeschines and Plutarch.  Aeschines by no means bears
+him out; and Plutarch directly contradicts him.  "Not long
+after," says Mr Mitford, "he took blows publicly in the theater"
+(I preserve the orthography, if it can be so called, of this
+historian) "from a petulant youth of rank, named Meidias."  Here
+are two disgraceful mistakes.  In the first place, it was long
+after; eight years at the very least, probably much more.  In the
+next place the petulant youth, of whom Mr Mitford speaks, was
+fifty years old.  (Whoever will read the speech of Demosthenes
+against Midias will find the statements in the text confirmed,
+and will have, moreover, the pleasure of becoming acquainted with
+one of the finest compositions in the world.)  Really Mr Mitford
+has less reason to censure the carelessness of his predecessors
+than to reform his own.  After this monstrous inaccuracy, with
+regard to facts, we may be able to judge what degree of credit
+ought to be given to the vague abuse of such a writer.  "The
+cowardice of Demosthenes in the field afterwards became
+notorious."  Demosthenes was a civil character; war was not his
+business.  In his time the division between military and
+political offices was beginning to be strongly marked; yet the
+recollection of the days when every citizen was a soldier was
+still recent.  In such states of society a certain degree of
+disrepute always attaches to sedentary men; but that any leader
+of the Athenian democracy could have been, as Mr Mitford says of
+Demosthenes, a few lines before, remarkable for "an extraordinary
+deficiency of personal courage," is absolutely impossible.  What
+mercenary warrior of the time exposed his life to greater or more
+constant perils?  Was there a single soldier at Chaeronea who had
+more cause to tremble for his safety than the orator, who, in
+case of defeat, could scarcely hope for mercy from the people
+whom he had misled or the prince whom he had opposed?  Were not
+the ordinary fluctuations of popular feeling enough to deter any
+coward from engaging in political conflicts?  Isocrates, whom Mr
+Mitford extols, because he constantly employed all the flowers of
+his school-boy rhetoric to decorate oligarchy and tyranny,
+avoided the judicial and political meetings of Athens from mere
+timidity, and seems to have hated democracy only because he durst
+not look a popular assembly in the face.  Demosthenes was a man
+of a feeble constitution:  his nerves were weak, but his spirit
+was high; and the energy and enthusiasm of his feelings supported
+him through life and in death.
+
+So much for Demosthenes.  Now for the orator of aristocracy.  I
+do not wish to abuse Aeschines.  He may have been an honest man.
+He was certainly a great man; and I feel a reverence, of which Mr
+Mitford seems to have no notion, for great men of every party.
+But, when Mr Mitford says that the private character of Aeschines
+was without stain, does he remember what Aeschines has himself
+confessed in his speech against Timarchus?  I can make
+allowances, as well as Mr Mitford, for persons who lived under a
+different system of laws and morals; but let them be made
+impartially.  If Demosthenes is to be attacked on account of some
+childish improprieties, proved only by the assertion of an
+antagonist, what shall we say of those maturer vices which that
+antagonist has himself acknowledged?  "Against the private
+character of Aeschines," says Mr Mitford, "Demosthenes seems not
+to have had an insinuation to oppose."  Has Mr Mitford ever read
+the speech of Demosthenes on the Embassy?  Or can he have
+forgotten, what was never forgotten by anyone else who ever read
+it, the story which Demosthenes relates with such terrible energy
+of language concerning the drunken brutality of his rival?  True
+or false, here is something more than an insinuation; and nothing
+can vindicate the historian, who has overlooked it, from the
+charge of negligence or of partiality.  But Aeschines denied the
+story.  And did not Demosthenes also deny the story respecting
+his childish nickname, which Mr Mitford has nevertheless told
+without any qualification?  But the judges, or some part of them,
+showed, by their clamour, their disbelief of the relation of
+Demosthenes.  And did not the judges, who tried the cause between
+Demosthenes and his guardians, indicate, in a much clearer
+manner, their approbation of the prosecution?  But Demosthenes
+was a demagogue, and is to be slandered.  Aeschines was an
+aristocrat, and is to be panegyrised.  Is this a history, or a
+party-pamphlet?
+
+These passages, all selected from a single page of Mr Mitford's
+work, may give some notion to those readers, who have not the
+means of comparing his statements with the original authorities,
+of his extreme partiality and carelessness.  Indeed, whenever
+this historian mentions Demosthenes, he violates all the laws of
+candour and even of decency; he weighs no authorities; he makes
+no allowances; he forgets the best authenticated facts in the
+history of the times, and the most generally recognised
+principles of human nature.  The opposition of the great orator
+to the policy of Philip he represents as neither more nor less
+than deliberate villany.  I hold almost the same opinion with Mr
+Mitford respecting the character and the views of that great and
+accomplished prince.  But am I, therefore, to pronounce
+Demosthenes profligate and insincere?  Surely not.  Do we not
+perpetually see men of the greatest talents and the purest
+intentions misled by national or factious prejudices?  The most
+respectable people in England were, little more than forty years
+ago, in the habit of uttering the bitterest abuse against
+Washington and Franklin.  It is certainly to be regretted that
+men should err so grossly in their estimate of character.  But no
+person who knows anything of human nature will impute such errors
+to depravity.
+
+Mr Mitford is not more consistent with himself than with reason.
+Though he is the advocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm
+admirer of all kings, and of all citizens who raised themselves
+to that species of sovereignty which the Greeks denominated
+tyranny.  If monarchy, as Mr Mitford holds, be in itself a
+blessing, democracy must be a better form of government than
+aristocracy, which is always opposed to the supremacy, and even
+to the eminence, of individuals.  On the other hand, it is but
+one step that separates the demagogue and the sovereign.
+
+If this article had not extended itself to so great a length, I
+should offer a few observations on some other peculiarities of
+this writer,--his general preference of the Barbarians to the
+Greeks,--his predilection for Persians, Carthaginians, Thracians,
+for all nations, in short, except that great and enlightened
+nation of which he is the historian.  But I will confine myself
+to a single topic.
+
+Mr Mitford has remarked, with truth and spirit, that "any history
+perfectly written, but especially a Grecian history perfectly
+written should be a political institute for all nations."  It has
+not occurred to him that a Grecian history, perfectly written,
+should also be a complete record of the rise and progress of
+poetry, philosophy, and the arts.  Here his work is extremely
+deficient.  Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of
+a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr Mitford seems
+to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and
+speculative pursuits.  The talents of action almost exclusively
+attract his notice; and he talks with very complacent disdain of
+"the idle learned."  Homer, indeed, he admires; but principally,
+I am afraid, because he is convinced that Homer could neither
+read nor write.  He could not avoid speaking of Socrates; but he
+has been far more solicitous to trace his death to political
+causes, and to deduce from it consequences unfavourable to
+Athens, and to popular governments, than to throw light on the
+character and doctrines of the wonderful man,
+
+"From whose mouth issued forth
+Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools
+Of Academics, old and new, with those
+Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
+Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."
+
+He does not seem to be aware that Demosthenes was a great orator;
+he represents him sometimes as an aspirant demagogue, sometimes
+as an adroit negotiator, and always as a great rogue.  But that
+in which the Athenian excelled all men of all ages, that
+irresistible eloquence, which at the distance of more than two
+thousand years stirs our blood, and brings tears into our eyes,
+he passes by with a few phrases of commonplace commendation.  The
+origin of the drama, the doctrines of the sophists, the course of
+Athenian education, the state of the arts and sciences, the whole
+domestic system of the Greeks, he has almost completely
+neglected.  Yet these things will appear, to a reflecting man,
+scarcely less worthy of attention than the taking of Sphacteria
+or the discipline of the targeteers of Iphicrates.
+
+This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr Mitford.
+Most people seem to imagine that a detail of public occurrences--
+the operations of sieges---the changes of administrations--the
+treaties--the conspiracies--the rebellions--is a complete
+history.  Differences of definition are logically unimportant;
+but practically they sometimes produce the most momentous
+effects.  Thus it has been in the present case.  Historians have,
+almost without exception, confined themselves to the public
+transactions of states, and have left to the negligent
+administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally
+extensive and valuable.
+
+All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or
+adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of
+individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public
+interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the
+component parts.  It is therefore strange that those whose office
+it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings should omit,
+as too mean for the dignity of history, circumstances which exert
+the most extensive influence on the state of society.  In
+general, the under current of human life flows steadily on,
+unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface.  The happiness
+of the many commonly depends on causes independent of victories
+or defeats, of revolutions or restorations,--causes which can be
+regulated by no laws, and which are recorded in no archives.
+These causes are the things which it is of main importance to us
+to know, not how the Lacedaemonian phalanx was broken at
+Leuctra,--not whether Alexander died of poison or by disease.
+History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and such is
+almost all the history which is extant in the world.  Paltry
+skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd and useless
+minuteness; but improvements the most essential to the comfort of
+human life extend themselves over the world, and introduce
+themselves into every cottage, before any annalist can
+condescend, from the dignity of writing about generals and
+ambassadors, to take the least notice of them.  Thus the progress
+of the most salutary inventions and discoveries is buried in
+impenetrable mystery; mankind are deprived of a most useful
+species of knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame.
+In the meantime every child knows by heart the dates and
+adventures of a long line of barbarian kings.  The history of
+nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best
+studied in works not professedly historical.  Thucydides, as far
+as he goes, is an excellent writer; yet he affords us far less
+knowledge of the most important particulars relating to Athens
+than Plato or Aristophanes.  The little treatise of Xenophon on
+Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all
+the seven books of his Hellenics.  The same may be said of the
+Satires of Horace, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le
+Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel.  Many others might be
+mentioned; but these sufficiently illustrate my meaning.
+
+I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise
+the present narrow limits, and assert the rights of history over
+every part of her natural domain.  Should such a writer engage in
+that enterprise, in which I cannot but consider Mr Mitford as
+having failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting
+and important in military and political transactions; but he will
+not think anything too trivial for the gravity of history which
+is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man.
+He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the
+manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks.  He will
+not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the
+mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life.  The progress
+of painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will form an
+important part of his plan.  But, above all, his attention will
+be given to the history of that splendid literature from which
+has sprung all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the
+glory, of the western world.
+
+Of the indifference which Mr Mitford shows on this subject I will
+not speak; for I cannot speak with fairness.  It is a subject on
+which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the veneration
+of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child.  If we consider
+merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination,
+the perfect energy and elegance of expression which characterise
+the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them
+intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we
+reflect that from hence have sprung directly or indirectly, all
+the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence
+were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero;
+the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante;
+the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of
+Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare?  All
+the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in
+every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens.
+Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and
+fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her
+spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;--
+by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in
+the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold
+of Sidney.  But who shall estimate her influence on private
+happiness?  Who shall say how many thousands have been made
+wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has
+taught mankind to engage:  to how many the studies which took
+their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,--liberty in
+bondage,--health in sickness,--society in solitude?  Her power is
+indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of
+battle, in the schools of philosophy.  But these are not her
+glory.  Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,--
+wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness
+and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there
+is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of
+Athens.
+
+The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to
+his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while
+he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him
+to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe.
+Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is
+to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye
+which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental
+world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all
+the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines.  This is the gift
+of Athens to man.  Her freedom and her power have for more than
+twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated
+into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her
+temples have been given up to the successive depredations of
+Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is
+imperishable.  And when those who have rivalled her greatness
+shall have shared her fate; when civilisation and knowledge shall
+have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre
+shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers
+from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some
+mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear
+savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome
+of our proudest temple; and shall see a single naked fisherman
+wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts;--her
+influence and her glory will still survive,--fresh in eternal
+youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the
+intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and
+over which they exercise their control.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Miscellaneous Writings
+and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Volume I.
+
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