ROMAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY PARTICULARLY AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BY ANDREW FLEMING WEST PA6093 .W5I Of ?>'.7i:>> !iirt«:i,; ^\^>>^■^m ROMAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY PARTICULARLY AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS BY ANDREW FLEMING WEST THE DE VINNE PRESS 1901 NOTE This lecture was delivered at Yale University and repeated at Princeton in February, 1 90 1. For the references to John Stuart Mill and to Jean Paul I am indebted to my colleagues Professors Daniels and Humphreys. Andrew F. West Princeton University February, 1 90 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://www.archive.org/details/romanautobiograpOOwest ROMAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY PARTICULARLY AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS ^ I As no book perfectly conceals the traits of its writer, there is an indefinite sense in which all literature may be said to be autobio- graphical. Diaries, journals and letters at once occur as strongly marked examples. It is a short step from these to tales of ad- venture and travel, to histories of campaigns written by generals who led them, to biographies revealing the describer quite as clearly as the person he describes, and only another step to medi- tations and lyric verse, while a last step may bring us to books in general, inasmuch as in some degree, no matter how faint, they all mirror the traits of their composers. Yet all literature, though in this general sense autobiograph- ical, is not autobiography, which is but a small part of literature. While we may not be able to frame a perfect definition that shall include autobiographies only, we are none the less assured that autobiography is a distinct thing. Some books, indeed, conform so closely to the character of self-written lives that it is not easy 1 In this lecture I desire to bring out autobiography, the objective and the in- collaterally three facts which have not trospective, originated in Latin litera- received recognition in histories of lit- ture. A fourth fact, little noticed, is erature: first, that autobiography is un- that 'autobiography' is evidently a known in classical Greek literature; word of recent coinage, and probably second, that it is a native form of Latin not yet a century old. literature; and third, that both types of to decide whether they fall just inside or just outside our class. Others, like Caesar's Commentaries and Cicero's Letters ^xhoxx^ packed with autobiographical material, stand a little farther re- moved, and at a still greater distance we may place such a book as the /Inabasis of Xenophon, for while it contains much per- sonal history, it is personal history inwoven in a larger narrative. But neither collections of letters, nor narratives of campaigns related by those who conducted them, nor even diaries and journals, though abounding in the stuff of which autobiographies are made, are themselves autobiographies. For in its normal sense an autobiography implies two things, — first, with respect to substance, that the writer's own life is the sole or principal theme, and second, with respect to literary form, that the book is a fairly continuous unified history. The Life of Franklin, the ^Memoirs of Gibbon, the Confessions of Rousseau, the Life of Benvenuto Cellini, — these and such as these are well-under- stood examples of autobiography. II It is a form of writing which seems to have been utterly unknown in the classical period of Greek literature, and even in later Greek until about the time of the Christian era.' It is, however, an old native form of Latin literature.^ Tacitus tells us the writing of ^ Suidas mentions the book of Nicho- - On Roman autobiographies gener- las of Damascus ( who lived 37-4 B, C. ally consult the old but valuable mono- in the palace of the Jewish king Herod) ; graph of Suringar : De Romanis Auto- r=pi TOO Io'Vjo ,3'>jo v.al xr^c saoTO'j 7.7007?^ r, biographis, Leyden 1846. For the and the book of Libanius of Antioch period of the Empire consult Peter, (314-393 A. D.) ; X070C Tuspl Tf^? iaoro'j Geschichtliche Litteratur iiber die fV/r^r. romische Kaiserzeit, i 372-377. See Bergk, Griech. Litteraturge- schichte, i 291, Berlin 1872. 2 autobiographies was antiquitus usitatum,^ common in the time of the Republic, and that 'many thought the writing of their own lives was a mark of conscious rectitude rather than of arro- gance/ " These earliest books are lost, though some mention of them remains. Aemilius Scaurus, twice consul (113 and 107 B. C.) and subsequently censor and princeps senatus, wrote the story of his stormy life in three books as a justification of his po- litical conduct. Cicero speaks well,^ even too well, of the re- liability and personal dignity of the writer, but hints that his style lacked finish.'^ As for his three books, they are sane utiles; quos nemo legit.^ His younger contemporary Rutilius Rufus was more accomplished. He was a Stoic philosopher, a jurist, a respectable orator and the writer of a history of Rome in Greek. His honesty as a public officer brought on him the hatred of the venal publicans whose extortions he had exposed. Unjustly banished in 92 B. C, he retired to Smyrna where he wrote an ac- count of his public life.*^ It is a pity his book is lost, for although it was probably little else than a vindication of his acts, he de- served such vindication. It was doubtless better written than the memoirs of Scaurus and was carefully truthful in spirit, as Plutarch's characterization (rpLXa/.r^Or^j; avr^p)" may well lead us to believe. There is a third autobiography belonging to this time, written by Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 102 B. C. He commanded one army and Marius the other in the campaign against the Cimbri, and soon after fell a victim to the Marian proscription. His style, as Cicero testifies in one of those un- 1 Tacitus: Agricola I ''Cicero: Brutus II2,trcs ad L. Fu- - Tacitus : Agricola I fidium libri scripti de vita ipsius sane •'Cicero: Brutus III and 112 utiles; quos nemo legit. ■^Cicero: De Oratore i 49» pruden- ''Charisius: Gramm. Lat. p. 139 tia tamen rerum magnarum magis quam ' Plutarch: Marius 28, co? '^^ I'oot'!- arte dicendi nititur. Xtoc '.axopsf xa [j.£v 7.XXa rciXaXifir^c a.Yf^[j. 3 translatable phrases that attach moral goodness to fine diction, embodied the incorrupta Latini sermonis integritas and, in the judgment of the same critic, was fit to be compared with the pleasant manner of Xenophon.^ Passing to the time of the civil wars, we encounter the me- moirs of the dictator Sulla (138-78 B. C.) written at Naples after his retirement from public life."' His ambitious account had already filled twenty-two books, when it was suddenly broken off by his death. It was completed by his freedman, Cornelius Epicadus. The object of these commentaries, as they were styled later, "^ was to exhibit the whole of Sulla's career. Roman superbia, selfish and cruel, and glorification of the author as a favorite of the gods compose the tone of the narrative. Scraps of the memoirs remain, but otherwise the work is lost, save as Plutarch has drawn on it for his lives of Marius and Sulla. It is a great loss, in spite of its distorted presentations, inasmuch as we so often get at the truth through a writer's very perversions. Still it is not so much as auto- biography, but as material for history we regret its destruction. We can more easily spare the author's self-painted idealized portrait than those vigorous sketches of the dreadful scenes in which he figured. ^Cicero: Brutus 132 wrote his book in Greek? It should -Plutarch: Lucullus I, Sulla4 and 37 be remembered that Plutarch also calls "^ The original name is res gestae or the memoirs ra? aoroo Trpd^sii; (Lucul- rerum gcstarum libri. Niese (p. 127 lus I), which points plainly to an origi- in iii 5 of Iwan von Miiller's Hand- nal res gestae. There is no reason to buch) says of Sulla: * Er hat Auf- doubt Sulla wrote in Latin. Whether zeichnungen in griechischer Sprache there was a Greek version, is another {')7:o[XYf]6g 'A YfxTCTtav y.al MatXTj- vav oTTOjJ.vYj'j.ao'.v. Agrippa wrote an au- tobiography. See Philarg. ad Verg. georg. ii 1 62, Agrippa in secundo vitae suae dicit. ^Suetonius: Tiberius 67, commen- tario quern de vita sua summatim bre- viterque composuit. See Teuffel- Schwabe, 275- -'Suetonius: Domitianus 20, praeter commentarios et acta Tiberii Caesaris nihil lectitabat. dance of manner, wrote eight insipid books on his own life.- His Empress, the infamous Agrippina (15-59 A.D.), mother of Nero, also wrote memoirs which, unluckily for her, fell into the hands of Tacitus."- In the next generation we meet with memoirs by Vespasian.^ Passing down the imperial line we can hardly help pausing before the grand figure of Trajan. What a boon to his- tory would the Life of such a ruler have been! Perhaps he dic- tated the account of his Dacian campaigns, as Priscian seems to indicate by a citation,"^ but, apart from this, even the memory of anything resembling memoirs of Trajan has perished. His majestic Column in Rome and more majestic Arch at Bene- ventum, each containing his portrait, remain to remind us of him and to remind us further, in words adapted from Mommsen, that for his beneficent reign we possess little more than * chis- eled picture-books, from which too often the text is missing.'^ Trajan's immediate successor, the versatile Hadrian, wrote his own life in a spirit of genial vanity. We learn from Spartianus that he was careful to remind his readers of the antiquity of his family, tracing it from the time of the Scipios, and to explain that his free use of wine was in consequence of the example of Tra- jan. "" To avoid the appearance of self-esteem and thus gain greater credence for the story of his life, he commanded his ^Suetonius: Claudius 41, composuit ''Josephus: Vita 65, p. 340, 18 bk., de vita sua viii volumina magis inepte sv zolq O^jBQizc/.a'.avob toO aotoxpdiofyot; quam ineleganter. The statement in oTiopf^'iaa'.v ootco YSYpaTTxa'.. the third edition of Christ's Griechische ^^ Priscianus : Gramm. Lat. ii 205, Litteraturgeschichte (p. 617) that Ca- 6, Traianus in I Dacicorum : inde Ber- ligula wrote an autobiography is erro- zobim, deinde Aizi processimus. neous. It is a slip for Claudius. See ^ Mommsen: Romische Geschichte, Peter, Hist. Rom. Frag. p. 294, and v 204, Ed. 1885. * Bin gemeisseltes Teuffel-Schwabe, 286. Bilderbuch der dakischen Kriege, zu -Tacitus: Ann. iv 53, id ego . . . welchem uns fast iiberall der Text repperi in commentariis Agrippinae fehlt.' filiae. '^Spartianus: Hadrianus i I and iii 3 7 learned freedmen to publish it under their names, and the book passed for a short time as the work of Phle^on.^ About 170 Marcus Aurelius wrote his calmly complacent Meditations^ which, though Roman in origin, belong to Greek literature. They spring from autobiographical suggestions, but do not compose an autobiography. Amid the general literary decline with which the third century opens, Septimius Severus ( 193-2 II)* wrote the history of his public and private life with fidelity to truth,' as Spartianus judges, adding naively that Sev- erus * excused only his vice of cruelty ' and *kept quiet about his wife.'" The contemporary historian Dio Cassius, or Cassius Dio (as I believe we are now to call him), did not take so favor- able a view. * I relate things,' he quietly observes, *not as Sev- erus wrote them, but as they really happened.'^ One more long step and we are at the opening of the fourth century, where with passing mention of the supposed memoirs of Constantine^ (323- 337), first Christian Emperor, this hurried recital of ancient Roman autobiographies may fitly close. Some fragments of them remain, some mention by historians and some portions worked over and incorporated in other writers. Otherwise they have perished, unless the Commentaries of Julius Caesar are an exception. They are all of one type, objective narratives dealing with the scenes and events in which their au- thors mingled. They are composed with one purpose, avowed or concealed, the commendation of the writer to others. They are natural utterances of Roman pride, ranging all the way from ^ Spartianus: Hadrianus xvi I ^ Dio : 75, 7, Ki'(o> '{o.fj 00/ oaa 6 Xsof^- - Spartianus : Severus xviii 6, vi- po? i'Ypa'l^sv, aXX' oaa aXrjOwc s'csvsto. tarn suam privatam publicamque ipse ^ Lydus : De Magistr. ii 30, taic composuit ad fidem, solum tantum vi- otaXs^sat KojyaTavTivoD. 7.? 7.016^ olx.£'lo[. tium crudelitatis excusans. iii 2, uxo- 'f wv-(j 7pa']^ac a:roXsXo'.7r3v. rem . . . de qua tacuit in historia vitae privatae. 8 dignified self-vindication to vanity. Autobiography, as well as satire, should be credited to the Romans as their own indepen- dent invention. IV The appearance of Augustine's Confessions in 399 or 400^ dates the entrance of a new kind of autobiography into Latin literature, — the autobiography of introspection, the self-regis- tered record of the development of a human soul. It is lit- erally a 'confession' of all that was in his mind and heart, an acknowledgment which does not omit the vile in conduct, the erroneous in thinking or the base in motive. Without reserve and yet not without shame, it is above all free from vanity, excuse or pride. It is, moreover, the history of a great spirit written with the mastery of genius. It is a book without an an- cestor, and with no successor for almost a thousand years. From beginning to end it quivers with life, passion and power. There is a look of intense reality on every page, even at the times when Augustine is turning aside to view the abstract world-questions which so often thrust themselves into his life. As Adolf Har- nack has acutely observed, the Confessions never degenerate into * psychological discussions on the human understanding, will and emotions, or abstract researches on the soul, or superficial reasoning and moralizing self-conternplation as in the Medita- tions of Marcus Aurelius,' but steadily present *a definite por- trait of one man.'- As we watch the workings of his spirit, 1 This date is generally accepted, for - Augustin's Confessionen, ein Vor- the Confessions were almost certainly trag von Dr. Adolf Harnack, p. 8, published within the year preceding Giessen 1888. Harnack's penetrating Augustine's treatise Contra Faustum critique should be read by all who Manichaeum. would understand the place of the Con- 9 even in its tumults of rhetoric, we are constantly at a loss to decide what it is enchants us most, — the sweep of his restless observation, the convincing eloquence, or the vivid displays of reflection and imagination. How many of its phrases are memorable! much as they lose by translation. How many have entered into the commonplace of letters and philosophy! ^ None can be compelled against his will,'^ ^The things that are, are good,'^ *The unlearned rise and seize the Kingdom of Heaven,'"' 'What is enough for safety is too little for delight,'^ ^To rise is one thing, not to fall another,'' *God alone rules without pride, "" ' Happy he who loves Thee, his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee,'" — these are instances from the Con- fessions. From his lesser touches of description we may pick out 'the troubled flow of time,'^ 'the great hall of memory,'^ Uhe rule of perfection,' ^^ 'the flood of custom,'" 'a dead life,'^- and his styling temperance in meats 'the bridle of the throat,' ^^ ignorance 'the mother of amazement,'^* mortal man as 'time devouring and by time devoured,'^' his body 'this earth I carry about,' ^- and light 'the queen of colors.'^' And these are but fcssions as a literary art work and classic of philosophy, though his sym- pathy with its meaning as a book of personal religion, while generous, is not complete. ^ non cogeris invitus ad aliquid, vii 4 -quamdiu sunt, bona sunt, vii 12 '' surgunt indocti et caelum rapiunt, viii 8 ^ quod saluti satis est, delectationi parum est, x 31 ^ aliud est cito surgere, aliud est non cadere, x 35 '' solus sine typho dominaris, x 36 ' beatus qui amat te, et amicum in te, et inimicum propter te, iv 9 "^ fluxum saeculorum turbulentum, ix 8 '■' aula ingenti memoriae, x 8 ^" regula perfectionis, iii 9 ^^ flumen moris humani, i I6 ^~ vitam mortuam, v 8 ^^ freni gutturis, x 31 ^^ ignorantia mater admirationis, xiii 21 ' ' devorans tempora et devoratus temporibus, ix 4 ^'' haec terra quam porto, xii 2 '' regina colorum lux est, x 34 10 a few out of hundreds more^ to be found in the little book that has been the favorite of all his writings from his own day until now.^ Is it not natural to suppose such a book would be interesting? Interesting indeed it has been in its influence on human thought and its fascination for a long series of readers, not the least of whom was Petrarch. * Small in size ! ' he exclaims of his copy, 'but of infinite charm/ ^ Still to read it in English is not so very interesting. The unchecked rhetoric, the reiterated calls on God, varied and wearisome, the shrewd curiosity in hunting down subtleties to their last hiding places, the streaks of inane allegorizing, and sometimes the violent bursts of feeling, — these are the things that frighten away readers and prevent them from reaching the real delights of the book. Then he is so exuber- ant. For if Cicero's pen was full, Augustine's is fuller. But read what he wrote, free from the disenchantment of trans- lation, and the effect is different. The ineptitudes and infelici- ^ It may not be superfluous to cite in a note these additional examples: ve- pres libidinum, 'the brambles of lust' ii 3; eamus faciamus, et pudet non esse impudentem, the formula of eager boyish mischief in ii9 ; non va- cant tempora, * time is never empty iv 8 ; arborum volatica folia, 'the fluttering leaves of trees' vii 6 ; the mov- ing plea medicus es, aeger sum; misericors es, miser sum x 28; the surprised recognition in et ecce intus eras, et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam x 27; the frequent and ev<;r-memorable da quod iubes et iube quod vis x 29; pedissequa periculosa iocunditas, 'pleasure is a dangerous waiting-maid' X 31 ; con- suetudinis sarcina, 'the pack of habit' X 40; caro mihi valent stil- lae te mporum, ' precious to me are the drops of time ' xi 2 ; the settled peace after the storm in the inimitable and untranslatable evitando vivit anima quae adpetendo moritur xiii 21 ; the somewhat gross but graphic elinxi stillam dulcedinis ex tua veritate, 'I licked a drop of sweet- ness from thy truth ' xiii 30, and the poetically tender lunam et Stellas consolari noctem xiii 32. 2 Quid meorum opusculorum fre- quentius et delectabilius innotescere potuit, quam libri confessionum mea- rum? Augustine, De Dono Persever- antiae, cap. xx. ■' Epp. Fam. iv I II ties soon shrink and the central power of the book appears. What writer, and particularly what old writer, is ever heard to the best advantage except in his own words ? But thus read, even the less attractive things assume a place and propriety of their own, though they figure, in Shakspeare's phrase, merely as ' furrow weeds, Darnel and many an idle flower that grows Mid the sustaining corn.'^ Augustine was born in 354. His Confessions recount the ear- lier part of his life, ending with his conversion to Christianity and the death of his mother Monnica in his thirty-third year. They consist of thirteen books, the first ten being his autobiog- raphy and the other three an appendix on the biblical account of Creation. The first book deals with his infancy and boyhood through his fifteenth year, the next five with his youth to his thirtieth year, the next three with his young manhood to his thirty-third year, and the tenth is a closing meditation in retro- spect. Unlike some of the older Roman autobiographies and many of his own writings, this work is not addressed or dedicated to any of bis fellow men. His Confessions are not addressed or dedicated in the literary sense at all, but are made in simplicity to God. ' What have I to do with men,' he asks, * that they should hear my confessions, as though they could heal my infirm- ities? Man is curious about the life of his fellow; careless about correcting his own. Why should they wish to hear from me what I am, when they are unwilling to hear from Thee what they are ? And when they hear from me about myself, from what source can they learn whether I speak the truth? . . . But if they will only hear Thee about themselves, they will never be able to say. The Lord lies.'"- So his sole concern is to learn what ^ King Lear, iv 4 -'Confessions x 3 12 he is in the eyes of his Maker, who alone understands him. It would be a misrepresentation to say this was the unvarying atti- tude of Augustine. It is his final attitude, attained through a fierce struggle, a battle to blood. Through that battle his moral and intellectual natures marched together, step by step, all the way. His story is so full of variety I despair of relating it. It is so tempestuous in feeling, lively in fancy, affluent in thought, — ingenuous when most subtle, childlike when most mature, — and so swift in its changes of light and shadow, that the author's own account must ever remain the only satisfying one. The son of a hot-blooded, vulgar and somewhat intemperate pagan father, Patricius, and of a Christian mother, Monnica, the angel of his life, he embodies the most conflicting impulses. His story records them with unsparing frankness. Of his in- fancy he remembered nothing,^ though he speculates much about it. He is a little puzzled to explain how, though his infancy died long ago, he is still alive." Then he came from infancy to boyhood. • Or did boyhood rather come to him ? he inquires. Which came to the other ? And what became of his infancy ? Did it cease to be ? He cannot solve his curious riddle.^^ With- out getting into a * divine despair' about it, like Tennyson, his thought of the vanished past is not unlike that poet's line: 'O Death in Life! the days that are no more!''* His boyhood he remembers well. The first prayers he framed for himself were that he might not be whipped at school. He would not read and write as much as his teachers prescribed, ^ Conf. i 6, ista mea non memini. ipsa in me venit, et successit infantiae? - Conf, i 6, et ecce infantia mea olim nee discessit ilia; quo enim abiit? et mortua est, et ego vivo. tamen iam non erat. ■' Conf. i 8, nonne ab infantia hue ^ Princess, iv. pergens, veni in pueritiam ; vel potius 13 as he preferred to play ball.' It seemed to him unjust his elders should call their chosen pursuits ^business,' and not be pun- ished, if he was to be whipped for following his favorite occu- pation. Still he admits that for tantillus puer he was et tantus peccatorr He does not know why he hated Greek and loved Latin, unless it was because Greek was a foreign language. He used to weep over the story of Dido, but seems to have been bored by the character of Aeneas and to have doubted whether he ever came to Carthage anyway, though he is afraid to put this question to his teacher.^' Ages later, was it not the historian Gibbon, so deeply read in the classics, who wrote in like spirit in his Memoirs, * I know not how, from some fault in the author, the translator, or the reader, the pious Aeneas did not so forci- bly seize on my imagination.''^ How Augustine hated the ad- dition table! learned in a singsong way; unam et unum duo^ duo et duo quattuor^ odiosa cantio.^ Studying Homer was bitter, though he grants the poet is dulcissime vanusS' But the mor- als of the gods in Homer, and in Terence too, disgusted him." His declamations from Virgil in school won him great applause^ but 'was it not all wind and smoke?'' In his sixteenth year his studies were interrupted by a long vacation. It was at this time, as he says, ' the brambles of lust'^ first struck root in his life. His mother's distress and warnings he set down as womanish nonsense.'* So he began to 'walk the way of the streets of Babylon and to roll m its ^ Conf. i 9r ludebam pila puer, et eo ''Conf. i 13 ludo impediebar, quo minus celeriter '' Conf. i 14 discerem litteras. '' Conf. i 17 -Conf. i 12 "^Conf. ii 3r veprcs libidinum. •' Conf. i 13 ''Conf. ii 3? monitus muliebres. ^ Gibbon: Memoirs of My Life and Writings, ch. v 14 mire as in spices and precious ointments/^ without let and without shame. He indulged in petty thieving, not from want, but from mere mischief.^ The story of his plundering a neigh- bor's pear tree one stormy night and throwing the pears to the pigs is vividly told.^ At seventeen he went to Carthage to at- tend the schools of rhetoric and philosophy. There he advanced swiftly in a career of sensuality,^ revelling especially in the grosser indecencies of the theatres, theatres among the vilest the world has known.'^ One day he happened to pick up a copy of Cicero's Hortensius and read its eloquent exhortation to the study of philosophy. It startled him to think of his own con- duct, when a pagan could thus speak to him of the love of truth and wisdom. ' I started to rise,' he cries out, * that I might return to Thee.''' In spite of many starts to rise, fifteen years were yet to pass before he forsook his immoral habits. Would Cicero satisfy him? Perhaps so, for of his mother's teachings he had kept nothing in practice and little in thought, as he writes, beyond the memory of the name of Christ.^ Still he was roused, and so he plunged into the big books of the philosophers.*^ From his nineteenth to twenty-eighth year he was engrossed with the prevalent philosophy known as Mani- chaeanism, a Persian dualism somewhat grossly imposed on Christian ideas,^ teaching that good and evil are coordinately necessary and eternal. We need not follow him through its mazes. ^"^ He mastered it but remained unsatisfied, notwith- ^ Conf. ii 3? iter agebam platcarum '' Conf. iii 4, surgere coeperam, ut ad Babyloniae, et volutabar in caeno eius te redirem. tamquam in cinnamis et unguentis pre- ' Conf. iii 4 tiosis. i^ Conf. iii 6 - Conf. ii 4 and 9 ^ Conf, v 6 3 Conf, ii 4 1'^ The writings of John Stuart Mill * Conf, iii I are not free from a Manichaean tinge, ■'Conf. iii 2 In his Essays on Religion (Essay I, 15 standing the gorgeous rhetoric of Faustus, its chief expounder, who was unable to answer Augustine's searching questions. ' Of what avail for my thirst was the most graceful profferer of the fairest goblet T^ Seeking a greater career he left Carthage for Rome,^ against the anguished entreaty of his mother. * And I lied to my mother, and such a mother! and stole away. That night I secretly set forth, while she remained praying in tears. The breeze blew and filled our sails, and drew the shore from our sight ' — what a Virgilian touch ! In the early morning hours, as she watched the receding ship, Monnica insaniehat dolore.^ At Rome he fell ill with a severe fever.^ On recovering he followed for a while the skepticism of the later Academics, * who taught me,* he writes, ' that we ought to doubt everything and that nothing true can be known.' '^ He started lecturing on rhet- oric in his house, but soon found, in one respect at least, things were done otherwise in Rome than at Carthage. His pupils, as the time for paying their fees approached, suddenly withdrew and attached themselves to a rival school in rhetoric. He ad- mits he hated them for doing it, * though not with a perfect hatred.'^ In disappointment he withdrew to Milan and obtained license from the prefect of that city to lecture on rhetoric there." Am- * Nature') he argues: 'The only ad- reasoning. Manichaeanism is speci- missible moral theory of creation is fically named in connection with his that the Principle of Good cannot at father's religious opinions (Autobiog- once and altogether subdue the powers raphy, p. 40, New York 1874). of evil, either physical or moral; could ^ Conf. v 6 not place mankind in a world free from ^ Conf. v 8 the necessity of an incessant struggle ^ Conf. v 9 with the maleficent powers, or make ■^ Conf. v 10 them always victorious in that struggle.' ^ Conf. v 12 Essay III ('Theism') contains similar "Conf. v 13 16 brose, bishop of Milan, later to exert so much influence on his life, received him kindly, and Augustine was at once impressed by his marked benignity.^ By this time Monnica, travelling alone from Carthage, succeeded in joining her son, and was strangely comforted by Augustine's assurance that he was now neither a Manichaean nor a Christian.- He was still unsatis- fied and bent on attaining certitude. * I wished to be as certain of things unseen,' he writes, * as I was certain that seven and three make ten.'^"^ But the necessity for some sort of belief for the affairs of life, even if demonstrated knowledge were out of reach, urged him on. He reasons that he believes he is the son of certain parents, a thing he could never know of himself, but must learn from others. The arrest of his intimate friend Aly- pius on an apparently well-founded but false charge of theft, coupled with the trial and subsequent proof that another was the thief, impressed these thoughts on Augustine still more. Alypius, whom he believed, was in his eyes just as worthy of confidence while under accusation, with the evidence seemingly against him, as afterward when he was proved to be innocent."^ Again he plunged into philosophy, studying the riddle of the world and life, and why evil should arise if all is the work of a good creator. He adopted Neoplatonism,^ the last outcome of Greek philosophy. It was old Platonism tinged with Hindu pantheism. The doctrine of the Divine Reason, the Word or AoYG;; whereby the Absolute One created the world, and all the consequences of this doctrine, fascinated him.'' Here was a bet- ter answer to his riddle, but not enough of an answer to satisfy his heart. He read on and on in the books of Plotinus and Porphyry. How much he found, and how much he always failed 1 Conf. V 13 ^ Conf. vi 9 and 10 - Conf. vi I •'• Conf. vii 9 '^ Conf. vi 4 " Conf. vii 9 17 to find! * There I read of the Adyoc that springs from God/ he writes, ' but that he was made man and dwelt among us, I did not read there/^ It was philosophy, after all, and not religion. The crisis was fast approaching. Speculating on the helpful- ness and yet the insufficiency of what he found, he was driven on, as he says, to think *in the region of unlikeness'" on the vast difference between the ever- existing, all-sufficient Absolute One and himself. It is here he first breaks down, when the vision of God, as the only ground and reason for all other being, dawns upon him. 'And thou didst call to me from afar, ''Most surely I am that I am." And I heard as one hears in the heart, and straightway could doubt no more.''' He began reading St. Paul. A struggle to break with his past and give up the mis- tress, who had borne him a son, soon follows, and the ensuing misery of his ' two wills ' distracts him.^ His habits were not to be so easily abandoned. They kept muttering behind his back, he tells us, and twitching him by the sleeve, to make him look at them again. ^ Torn by the conflict of will and feeling, he shunned his friends and sought retirement. Going into the garden one day, he flung himself on the ground beneath a fig-tree and called out in his distress, 'How long, how long? To-morrow and to-morrow! Why not now? Why not at this hour make an end of my vileness? ' ' And lo ! I hear a voice in a house near by, like the voice of a boy, or perhaps a girl, singing and say- ing over and over. Take it, read it; take it, read it. At once ' Conf. vii 9 audivi sicut auditur in corde, et non - Conf. vii 10, in regione dissimilitu- erat prorsus unde dubitarem. dinis. " ■* Conf. viii 6- 10 •'Conf. vii 10, ct clamasti de longin- ^ Conf. viii II, vcluti dorso mussi- quo: Immo vero ego sum qui sum. et tantes, et discedentcm quasi furtim vel- licantes, ut respicerem. 18 I began to think intently whether boys had any such jingle in their games, but none occurred to me.'^ Augustine rose and walked to where he had left the book of St. Paul's Epistles. Opening at a venture, his eyes fell on the startling words, * Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in contention and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the lusts of the flesh.' ^ In that mo- ment his old life died. He closed the book. ' I had no will,' he writes, * nor need to read beyond.' At such a scene, where silence is the fittest reverence, will words from a modern writer sound too strange and dissonant? It may be so. But if not, what late echo will so well repeat to us Augustine's abasement at that instant as the moving lines of Dryden : ' My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires; My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Followed false lights ; and when their glimpse was gone. My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am ; Be Thine the glory, and be mine the shame.' - And why not hear Augustine's own graphic words in which he tells how the news was at once broken to Monnica, — * Inde ad matrem ingredimur, Indicamus^ gaudet.' ^ How Roman! How Christian! His baptism soon follows, and within a short time he starts to return with his mother to Carthage, to take up his new life in the scene of his old disgrace. They went to Ostia, the seaport of Rome, to wait for a ship, and rested for some days. It was there, as they stood together at their window overlooking an enclosed garden, those sublimely beautiful conversations occurred be- ' Conf. viii 12 ^ Conf. viii 12 - Hind and Panther, 72 19 tween mother and son, scarcely matched in all literature. ' So then we were talking alone and very sweetly (valde dulciter), for- getting the past and reaching forth toward that which is before/^ English cannot reproduce them fairly. Monnica was not to see Carthage again. In a few days she succumbed to fever and died. It is in this part of the Confes- sions^ the ending of the ninth book, we are irresistibly carried away by its pathos and beauty. Who can translate it? Not I. The condition of Augustine after his mother's death was at first one of tearless stupefaction. His grief turned him to stone. He records the funeral as though he were an unconcerned spectator: Cum ecce corpus elatum est, imus^ redimus sine lacrimis.'^ But the misery of what he had been and what he had lost soon surged over him in overwhelming force, and the tragic strain be- came too great. Death or some easier remedy had to come. And at last the spell of his agony was broken, as he lay wakeful on his couch, by the magical touch of that most musical evening hymn of Ambrose: Deus creator omnium Polique rector, vestiens Diem decoro lumine, Noctem sopora gratia.^ The swift relief of tears followed, and Augustine, the man who had lied to his mother, the sensualist, the accomplished rheto- rician, the subtle philosopher, again became a child. Such in palest copy is the picture painted from life in Augus- tine's Confessions. ' Conf. ix 10. Colloquebamur ergo •' Conf. ix 12, *0 God, Maker of all soli valde dulciter ; et praeterita oh- and Ruler of the World, who dost robe liviscentes, in ea quae sunt ante ex- the day with beauteous light and night tenti, etc. with the grace of sleep.' -' Conf. ix 12 20 V ^Autobiography' is an old-looking word. Yet its corresponding original occurs nowhere in the whole range of ancient and medi- eval Greek and Latin known to us.^ It is of modern coinage, and almost certainly of English coinage about the beginning of the nineteenth century.'- Still the writing of autobiographies in both kinds, the objective and introspective, — the latter sometimes styled Confessions in imitation of Augustine, — has long been practiced in English and other modern literatures. But, though fifteen centuries have passed, which of the many Confessions surpasses the first one? Coleridge's ^Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit/ * confessions,' he says, ^ of one who is neither fair nor saintly,'^ though similar in tone, is too slight to be set over against Augustine. De Quincey's ^ Confessions of an English Opium Eater^ is more important. But with all its candor and dramatic power, it lacks one thing, the charm of entire freedom from self- excuse. And what of the greatest of modern * Confessions ' ? the astonishing book of Rousseau, — capricious, brilliant, un- sparing, sentimental — and vain. * I have entered on a perform- ance,' he writes, * which is without example, whose accomplish- ment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.' * Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and say aloud, Thus have I acted ; these were my thoughts ; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what ^ Even * biography ' is comparatively curs in the ninth-century lexicon of modern. Its original occurs nowhere Photius. I have found no instance of in ancient or medieval Latin, so far as (j'.OYp^- 'for. we know, though biographus is found - See the Appendix on * Autobiogra- in the medieval period. The sole re- phy.' corded instance of [j'.0'[ [jy/ficf. first oc- '''In * Letter I ' 21 was laudable or wicked; I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues. . . . Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others virtuous, generous and sublime. . . . Assemble round Thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let them grieve at my indignities, let them blush at my miseries; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity at the foot of Thy throne the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.'^ In closing this lecture, let us hear by way of contrast, Augus- tine's letter to a friend, sent with a copy of his book. * Take then the books of my Confessions you have desired. Therein behold me, lest you praise me beyond what I am. Therein believe me, and not others about me, and behold what I was in myself and of myself. If aught in me pleases you, then with me praise Him who should be praised concerning me; for it is He who made us, and not we ourselves: and we have lost ourselves^ but He who made us has remade us. And when you find me therein, pray for me that I fail not, but persevere.' - 'Rousseau's Confessions; opening - Ep. 231, Dario Comiti ; Benedictine paragraphs. Orson's translation, Lon- edition, don 1897. 22 APPENDIX 'AUTOBIOGRAPHY' See the article * Autobiographie' in the ^ictionnaire Univer- selle of Larousse. No instance of * autobiography ' or any of its kin is in any eighteenth-century edition of Johnson's dic- tionary, Murray's New English dictionary records nothing earlier than a quotation from Southey, under date of 1809. All instances cited in other dictionaries I have been able to consult are later. The hyphenating of * auto-biography/ ^auto-biog- rapher' and the like, in books printed about 1 840- 1 830 and even as late as 1853 in the London Quarterly Review (I 494 sqq,), seems to indicate the comparative newness of these com- pounds. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography is styled so in the opening sentence: 'The circumstances that led to this Autobiography will transpire in the course of it.' De Quincey, writing in 1853, divided his own works into * autobiographical sketches,' * essays' and * confessions.' 2. The instance from Southey in Murray's New English 'Dic- tionary should be hyphenated (* auto-biographer') as printed in Southey's essay in the Quarterly Review for May, 1809. There is a doubly capitalized and hyphenated * Auto-Biographer ' ap- plied sarcastically to Coleridge by Hazlitt in the Edinburgh Review for August, I8I7. Coleridge is even more emphatic, using four capitals! He writes of a book he projected, but 23 never succeeded in publishing, that its preface was to be 'illus- trated by fragments of AUTO-biography ' (Letter of September I 2, I8I4,vol. ii. 632, in edition of Ernest Hartley Coleridge, Bos- ton 1895). Then there is the apparently unique 'Autobiogra- phia' in Coleridge's letter of July 29, 181 5 : 'What I first intended as a preface to an '^ Autobiographia Literaria/" {Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ by Campbell, London 1894, p. 212.) Bearing in mind his fondness for making terms out of classical elements^ is not Coleridge most likely the coiner of * autobiography '? 3. 'Autobiography' and its relatives appear in English diction- aries soon after 1820 and in French, German and Italian dictionaries somewhat later. A remarkably early German in- stance occurs in the twenty-seventh chapter of Jean Paul Rich- ter's Leben FiheUs^ composed at intervals from 1806 to 181 I and first printed in 181 2. It reads: 'Was man Selbstlebens- beschreibung. Autobiographic, Confessions u. s. w. nennt.' This is the sole instance of 'Autobiographic ' and of ' Selbstle- bensbeschreibung' in the book. Jean Paul's wavering use of capitals and the hyphen in ' Selbstlebensbeschreibung' 'Selbst- Lebensbeschreiber ' ( chapter 2 2 ) and ' Selbst-Beschreiber ' (chap- ter 27) is closely like the unstable earlier manner of printing 'autobiography' in English. 'Autobiographic' in Jean Paul may have intimate relation to Coleridge's use of the word, but it does not seem likely that Jean Paul is the inventor. 4. The carelessness of editors in printing 'Autobiography' as a title-word of books not styled so by their authors is common enough. In the ' /Jutobiography and Life of Robert ^lair/ who died in 1666, the word 'autobiography' is nowhere in the text of M'Crie's edition, transcribed from the original manuscript (Edinburgh 1848). The title-word is evidently the editor's, not 24 i^. '^■'"*