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AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 CENTENARIES, REVIEWS, MEMOIRS 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 CENTENARIES, REVIEWS 
 MEMOIRS 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1912 
 

 COPYRIGHT 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 O.M. 
 1865-1912 
 
 273231 
 
NOTE 
 
 This volume collects studies in general literature of 
 the present year, and some reviews and memoirs of 
 recent date. 
 
 The first six Chapters, entitled "Among My 
 Books," ^^ere contributed to The English Review^ 191 1- 
 19 1 2, as was the review of the Life of Ruskin (Chap. 
 XVII.). 
 
 The following Chapters appear for the first time : — 
 In Part I., Chap. VII., The Homeric Problem , Chap. 
 VIII., A Lecture on Homer ; Chap. IX., On the Attic 
 Drama and the Comic Drama j Chap. XI., a review 
 of Professor Bury's new volume. The Eastern Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 In Part II. the following essays are new : — Chap. 
 XII., Chatham and the American Colonies ; Chap. 
 XIII., Roseberfs " Chatham '* (partly from the Daily 
 Chronicle) ; Chap. XIV., Fon RuvilWs « Chatham,'' 
 
 Chap. X., Byzantine History^ is a new edition of 
 the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, 1900. 
 
 Chap. XV., The Centenary of Tennyson ; Chap. 
 XVI., Thysia-, Chap. XIX., Rodin-, Chap. XXL, 
 vii 
 
viii AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 My Reisehilder^ were all contributed to the Nineteenth 
 Century^ 1908-12. 
 
 Chap. XVIII., Charles Eliot Norton ; and Chap. 
 XXII., Professor FirtKs " Cromwell^'' appeared in the 
 Cornhill Magazine. 
 
 Chap. XX., Centenaries ; Chap. XXIII., Two 
 Coronations-, Chap. XXV., The London Library^ 
 appeared in The Times^ 1 909-11. 
 
 I have to thank the proprietors and editors of these 
 above-named pubHcations for their courtesy in enabling 
 me to use these pieces. 
 
 Chap. XXVI., The Positivist Library^ is a new- 
 edition of the book privately printed by myself for the 
 use of the Society at Newton Hall in 1886. 
 
 F. H. 
 
 Hawk HURST, August 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART 1 
 AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancient Poetry ...... 3 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 Ancient Prose . . . . . . . 22 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Poets that I love ...... 42 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Great Biographies ...... 65 
 
 ix 
 
X AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tragic Drama ....... 86 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 General Literature . . . . . .109 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Homeric Problem . . . . .124 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 A Lecture on Homer . . . . . 145 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 On the Attic Drama . . . . .161 
 
 The Comic Drama . . . . . .177 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Byzantine History in the early Middle Ages. 180 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Eastern Roman Empire (a.d. 802-867) • 232 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PART II 
 CENTENARIES, REVIEWS, AND MEMOIRS 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PATyt. 
 
 Chatham and the American Colonies . . 251 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Lord Rosebery's "Chatham" .... 263 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Von Ruville's " Chatham " . . . . 276 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Centenary of Tennyson .... 284 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Thysia 297 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 The Life of Ruskin ....•• 3°^ 
 
xii AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Charles Eliot Norton . . . . .314 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 Rodin . . . . . . , .325 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Centenaries . . . . . . -339 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 My Reisebilder — Old and New . . . 344 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 Firth's "Cromwell" . . .. . 361 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 Two Coronations . . . . . -376 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 Westminster Abbey . . . . . .381 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The London Library Subject Index . . . 385 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 The Positivist Library ..... 395 
 
PART I 
 
 » 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 ANCIENT POETRY 
 
 Said Royer-Collard in his old age, ^^Je ne lis plus, 
 je relis.^'' I, too, have reached that tranquil time 
 of hfe ; and no time and no practice can be more 
 welcome to any reading man. I am now, by the 
 passing of years, a man of leisure, for I have no 
 pressing task to complete, at least none that the busy 
 world would care to notice. So I rest in my library 
 and take from its shelf now this, now that well-worn 
 volume, dip into its pages, and turn to many an un- 
 forgotten verse or passage — and, ah me ! — too often 
 do I light upon a glorious burst of poetry, a fragrant 
 saying, a humorous thought, which had long slipped 
 out of memory, even indeed if it had ever reached 
 my mind at all. 
 
 I had never been a great reader, for I have always 
 had too many things to do and too varied interests to 
 allow much time for serious reading. I often notice 
 that hard workers and even versatile writers may be 
 said to refer to books, to use books, rather than to 
 read them from cover to cover. Nor have I a large 
 library, for I never bought a book because others 
 bought it, much less because it was " rare," or costly, 
 or famous. The ^^^n thousand books I keep on my 
 shelves have been invariably chosen because I wanted 
 
4 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 to have them at hand, and many of them have been 
 presented to me by the authors, and bear their inscrip- 
 tion. And I may add, w^ithout boasting, that at one 
 time or other I have read them, or as much as I needed 
 to read. And now, as a hermit in the Weald, I turn 
 to them again and again. 
 
 How I pity the restless people who want the last 
 book out, and worry till they can get sight of some 
 ephemeral tale that they will forget the very name of 
 to-morrow. These Danaids are for ever doomed to 
 fill their little pitchers with a stream of printer's ink 
 which runs' out at the bottom, and a dull and un- 
 wholesome fluid it is. What pure draughts, fresh 
 from the Pierian spring, are all the while at hand, if 
 they would but open the poor old standard books, as 
 they call them, of which they know nothing but the 
 name. These prodigals are fain to fill themselves 
 with husks that the swine eat, when they should arise 
 and go home to sup off the fatted calf. 
 
 Of late it has amused me to catalogue the working 
 part of my library ; and a catalogue makes books to 
 stand cheek by jowl in alphabetic order, and in any 
 modest book store they must stand in order of size 
 rather than of subject. My library, moderate as it 
 seems, is decidedly miscellaneous. It excludes nothing, 
 from Lagrange on Analytic Functions to Pickwick. 
 There is no particular study in which I pretend to 
 be " an expert " ; and, indeed, lama sworn foe to 
 " specialism " of any sort. My favourite " period " in 
 history is that which extends from B.C. 50,000 to 
 A.D. 19.12, and I feel the thrill of supreme art in a 
 chorus of ^schylus as in Tom "Jones. Since my 
 reading is thus miscellaneous, and my tastes in litera- 
 ture, to say the least, somewhat promiscuous, the 
 books on my shelves have to put up with strange 
 bedfellows. I trust that none of them are what the 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 5 
 
 French call mauvais coucheurs^ or there would be 
 shrewd knocks, for the exigences of space force one 
 to place incongruous tomes on the same shelf. My 
 quarto Rabelais is near my quarto Imitation (1658) 
 in old Corneille's verse. Hobbes' Leviathan jostles 
 Lord Lovelace's privately printed Astarte. The 
 PilgrinCs Progress (facsimile of 1678) stands between 
 Cardinal Newman's Apologia and Haeckel's History of 
 Creation. And Mr. Arthur J. Balfour's Creed has for 
 supporters the Suras of the Koran and the ^^ Sayings " 
 of Confucius. The books are a somewhat mixed 
 company, and I often take them down from their 
 shelves in a desultory way. 
 
 What joys, what memories, and yet what searchings 
 of heart, rise up as one turns from book to book. 
 Here are the school classics wherein, some sixty-five 
 years ago, I first hammered out my Iliad or my 
 Agamemnon^ with the hard words translated by pencil 
 in the margin. Has there ever been a hero like 
 Achilles or a tragedy queen like Clytaemnestra ? 
 Where are the schoolfellows, the teachers, the friends 
 of the " 'forties " ? And yet how eternal, how ever- 
 present, how familiar are the speeches of the podas 
 okus dios Achilles^ how intensely visible and real is the 
 inexorable queen ! 
 
 This book was given me by a dead friend, years 
 ago, when we both looked forward to tell mankind 
 what was in us. This book reached me at a time 
 when I was too hard pressed to read it. It has stood 
 there, year after year, with continual resolves to master 
 it. Good heaven, it is still uncut, or but cut in parts, 
 though full of what I want to know. I seize my 
 paper-knife. I will read it now ! 
 
 Let me implore any reader who has a fairly large 
 library of his own, and is honestly anxious to know 
 what his books contain, to devote some period of 
 
6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 leisure to go through these volumes, shelf by shelf, as 
 they stand ; to learn which of them he can remember 
 well, which are half-read or unread. What pleasure 
 and profit he would find in recalling the poetry he 
 once so enjoyed, or in turning to such essays as he 
 had hitherto overlooked. He would find, I am sure, 
 that the very things he long wanted to know, the 
 poetry that had almost faded from his memory, the 
 bursts of eloquence and prophecy that had stirred 
 his youth, now grown dim in his mind as "an ancient 
 tale although the words were strong" — all this had 
 stood silent and unnoticed on his walls for years and 
 years, whilst he had been stuffing himself with the 
 last short story, the lives of the royal laundry women ; 
 or it may be an article in a Magazine. Just like old 
 Bunyan's man with a muck-rake, he had been search- 
 ing in vain for jewels in the litter, whilst an angel 
 above offered him a crown of gold, which he would 
 not see as he grovelled in the dirt. 
 
 The seventy years which have rolled over me since 
 I first spelt out my menin aeide thea have not dulled 
 the rapture of listening to the ringing clarion of 
 Homer. As he was the first to give me that thrill, 
 communicable only in a foreign tongue, indeed only 
 in Greek, so he remains to the last my supreme joy. 
 And even to this day I love to take him up in my 
 dirty school text, scandalously devoid of critical scholar- 
 ship and of modern research. When I was a boy a 
 dear old widow lady presented me with the books of 
 her husband who had taken his degree at Christ Church 
 about 1820 A.D. Now the classics current in the first 
 twenty years of the nineteenth century would be 
 thought to-day quite puerile and obsolete. But, as a 
 schoolboy from 1840 to 1850, I used them, a Delphin 
 Horace^ Clarke's Iliad and Odyssey^ with Latin versions 
 below the text, Porson's Euripides (and even Barnes* 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 7 
 
 of the eighteenth century), a Tacitus in four volumes 
 of 1790, and PHny's Letters of 1805. 
 
 Barbarous and corrupt as these texts would now 
 be pronounced to be by scholars, I used them at 
 school and college. I keep them still. I love to 
 take them up in a spare hour, though I now have the 
 thick, profound, critical editions printed in Leipsic or 
 Berlin on that horrid blotting-paper j and of course 
 I have the editions of our own scholars, my Jebb, and 
 Jowett, Munro, Robinson Ellis, Conington, Verrall, 
 and Murray. But for sentimental reasons I often 
 prefer to take up an old school book. Scholarship and 
 commentators go hang ! — I say. I see the sense of 
 the Greek well enough, and I can hear the shout of 
 Achilles in the fighting Hne, and the wail of the 
 women at the funeral of Hector, without any German 
 professor's droning about the Digamma, or insisting 
 on spurious lines which he marks to be obelised. 
 
 These editors are the death of Greek poetry. 
 Who can really take to heart his Iliad whilst he is 
 worried with disquisitions as to whether A belongs 
 to the original poem, and if Z were not a later inter- 
 polation ? Poetry is the very last thing these sages 
 of the MSS., these sticklers for grammatical purism, 
 ever think of or care for. I have never truly enjoyed 
 my Homer until years after I had ceased to read him 
 in those voluminous notes, and did not care one brass 
 obol whether the Zoster panaielos of Menelaus meant 
 a supple belt or a shining belt (of course a brilliant belt 
 makes a better picture) — No ! nor whether that aorist 
 was rightly spelled in the Aeolic form. Does your 
 "scholar" really feel the sublimity of the immortal 
 epic, or does he merely dress up the words as the 
 binder puts the pages into russia, calf, or vellum ? 
 Let me tell these pundits, if they want to understand 
 the lliady to do what I have done : take a i2mo plain 
 
8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Bekker text, as easy to hold as a child's hymn-book, 
 and lie on the deck of a ship as it sails off the plain 
 of Troas in sight of Ida and Olympus ; or take an 
 Odyssey bare of notes, and read the story of leukolenos 
 Nausicaa in Corcyra, or the picture of the awakening 
 of Ulysses from the grotto in Ithaca, on the very 
 spot where the myth was first imagined. Homer, 
 gentlemen, was a mighty poet. He was not a 
 meticulous grammarian, nor a garrulous scholiast. 
 
 So, too, with my -^schylus. I enjoy him best in 
 my old Dindorf text, exactly sixty years old, which at 
 Wadham I heavily and stupidly margined. I used to 
 insist that the Agamemnon was absolutely supreme and 
 incomparable in the whole range of tragic poetry — 
 not even "bar one." That chorus about the lion's 
 whelp, those wails of Casandra, and the tremendous 
 audacity with which the bloody queen bursts forth, 
 always seemed to me the highest note of pure tragedy. 
 But I now see that I must modify this judgment. It 
 is the entire Trilogy^ not the initial Agamemnon which 
 is the true tragedy. Having seen the Trilogy played 
 through by Benson, even in a sadly mutilated form, I 
 now admit that the Agamemnon must not be detached, 
 any more than the Libation-bearers^ or the Furies. 
 The Trilogy is one tragedy — a single, indivisible, 
 incomparable, perfect drama — of which no single line 
 can be added or abstracted, or forgotten. 
 
 Time was when I read my iEschylus with Blom- 
 field, or Peile, or Paley, or Verrall and the rest ; but it 
 seems more natural, more " convincing," as critics say, 
 to read him in the old school and college texts, dirty and 
 dusty and scrawled over as they are. And I never so 
 heartily entered into the illusion of the Attic stage as 
 when I listened to it in the Bradfield open hemicycle, 
 following the words in the ragged book which I had 
 used as a boy of fifteen or so. Fifteen or twenty may 
 
cH.i ANCIENT POETRY 9 
 
 be the right age to unravel what the chorus in 
 Aristophanes' Frogs calls "the charging of plume- 
 waving words," the "high -prancing phrases," the 
 "Titanic snortings" of ^schylus, son of Euphorion ; 
 but seventy or eighty is the proper age for enjoying 
 his dramas, and for knowing how mighty a poet 
 he was. 
 
 I am enchanted by the exquisite music of Sophocles, 
 and the statuesque symmetry of his dramatic instinct. 
 I am even steadily working through my seven volumes 
 of Jebb, commentaries, notes, metrical analyses and all. 
 As a very poor scholar myself I bless him for his 
 invaluable prose version on the opposite page, as I 
 bless B. B. Rogers for his marvellous verse rendering 
 of Aristophanes. I bless G. G. Murray, too, for 
 opening to us Euripides, and I have seen some of the 
 plays on the stage. By the way, Murray's rhymed 
 version of King CEdipus^ though an astonishing tour de 
 force^ does not succeed in its impossible task. But I 
 linger over Murray's Euripides^ and having read him 
 I go back to my Porson, and then I wonder how the 
 Regius Professor at Oxford, who is not only one of 
 the finest scholars whom England ever knew, and not 
 only a scholar but a poet, and a historian, and indeed 
 a philosopher, can find it in his heart to say so much 
 for Euripides. I explain my meaning in a later essay. 
 
 To me Euripides is much what he was to Aristo- 
 phanes, and to iEschylus himself in the Frogs. I 
 know all they say, in this age of Ibsenomania and of 
 Tolstoic schwarmeretj about the "subtle psychology," 
 the " modernity," the " up-to-date humanitarianism," 
 of the Attic apostle of Free Art ! But all this makes 
 me even less in love with Euripides. However great 
 he may be in melodrama, in analytic psychology, as a 
 romantist, as a revolutionist, I cannot allow that he is 
 truly great in pure tragedy. Again, exquisite as is 
 
10 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 the art of Sophocles, he is to me always the consummate 
 artist, not the soul-stirring tragic poet. Sophocles 
 may be the Raphael of Greek drama, with Raphael's 
 ethereal grace and harmony and tone, his mastery of 
 composition, his unerring self-restraint, his Attic 
 genius for form and symmetry. But Raphael is not 
 Michael Angelo, and Sophocles is not iEschylus. 
 When Aristotle declared Euripides to be the most 
 " tragical " of poets he must have meant in melodrama, 
 "sensation," not in tragedy proper in our sense. 
 When a young graduate wanted me to draw up a 
 class list with " marks " of the Attic dramatists, I gave 
 ^schylus 100, or "the highest possible," Sophocles 
 75, with 2i proxime accessit — and Euripides a fair 50, 
 mainly for the remarkable pathos and the versatiHty of 
 his work. 
 
 The heroic attempts of great scholars and of some 
 real poets to reproduce in English verse the Greek 
 dramatists interest me greatly, and if we admit that 
 all fail for one reason or other, even when they succeed 
 in part, they are all well worth reading. I take up 
 all — from time to time — Dean Milman's, Fitzgerald's, 
 Browning's — Morshead, Campbell, Warr, Swanwick, 
 Blackie, Murray, and others who have tried their hand 
 at iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Curiously 
 enough, ^schylus, the most untranslatable of all, is 
 the poet who chiefly fascinates the translators. To 
 my mind Milman's Agamemnon is of all the most like 
 a poem. Fitzgerald's attempt to recast or even parody 
 the great drama is almost unforgivable, and I do not 
 feel sure that he ever meant it to be made public. 
 And Browning's Agamemnon is really absurd. On 
 the whole, I think Morshead's House of Atreus gives 
 the English layman the best idea of Oresteia. But 
 for any one who has retained enough Greek to follow 
 the text with a literal version beside him, I urge him 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY ii 
 
 to read his Greek poets with such admirable prose 
 translations as those of Jebb, Verrall, Paley, Butcher, 
 Lang, and others. No poetry whatever can be turned 
 into poetry in another language. But it can be 
 enjoyed in its own language with the help of really 
 adequate prose versions. 
 
 But of all modern translations of Greek drama the 
 most wonderful is that of Aristophanes by B. B. 
 Rogers. This illustrious scholar has been engaged on 
 his favourite task now for upwards of sixty years — 
 for in 1 85 1, when we were both undergraduates at 
 Wadham, he would recite to us portions of his version. 
 His heavy practice at the Bar naturally interrupted a 
 work so laborious as that of a verse translation of the 
 eleven plays, with commentary and textual readings. 
 He is now, in his eighty-fourth year, steadily working 
 on revision of the whole, which will be one of the 
 masterpieces of English scholarship. One who will 
 study this astonishing tour de force^ with enough Greek 
 left in him to follow the text, will have some insight 
 into the inexhaustible fountain of wit, poetry, satire, 
 portraiture, and torrential eloquence left us by the 
 inimitable comedian of Athens, who is at once the 
 most Attic of Athenians and the most modern of 
 the ancients. 
 
 When it comes to Greek lyrics I draw the line, 
 and drink, if at all, in occasional sips. I used to enjoy 
 Bergk's Lyrics sixty years ago at Wadham ; though, 
 as we did not "take up" lyrics, it was sheer waste of 
 time for purposes of "exam." Hesiod was always too 
 dull for me, and Pindar too stodgy. At school and 
 college I used a fine old massive octavo Pindar of 
 1 8 14 (from the Hbrary of my Christ Church friend) 
 with the Benedictine Latin version below the page, 
 Heyne's annotationes^ and Damm's Lexicon Pindaricum. 
 Oh ! how we sweated over those Olympic odes ! But 
 
12 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 now I give it up, even with the excellent translations 
 of my old college friends, Ernest Myers and Thomas 
 Charles Baring. It is hopeless for a busy man to take 
 up Pindar. Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari, says 
 Horace, will have a fall. And we may say the same 
 of any one who would read him — not being a fresh 
 and professed Greek scholar. 
 
 The lighter Greek lyrics are quite another thing. 
 Even at Wadham I vowed that " the world has never 
 produced the equal of Sappho." And now I use a 
 very pretty little duodecimo Sappho by H. Thornton 
 Wharton, with memoir and Life^ all the fragments, 
 and all known translations collected, with a new quaint 
 fount of Greek typography — and the head of Sappho 
 by L. Alma Tadema — altogether a dainty book to 
 be taken up any spare ten minutes. Then I am so 
 old-fashioned as to enjoy the spurious Anacreontica^ 
 which used to tickle my palate as a schoolboy. I dare 
 say it would shock a serious scholar, but there is a 
 Tommy Moore rattle about the sad dog who used 
 Anacreon's name which runs in one's head. And 
 now some kind friends have given me an edition de luxe 
 by A. H. Bullen, with fascinating pictures by J. R. 
 Weguelin (quarto, 1893), with a grand Greek type, 
 verse translation opposite, and the genuine fragments 
 of Anacreon from Bergk (1882). The book has ten 
 somewhat luscious studies by Weguelin as befits the 
 old amourist. Altogether a pretty book. My copy 
 is numbered 25. 
 
 As to Theocritus we are particularly fortunate. 
 In the first place Christopher Wordsworth's text and 
 notes form one of the boasts of British scholarship. 
 The Greek typography splendid ; and, in spite of the 
 Doric dialect and queer words, no one need be stopped 
 who uses the really consummate prose translation of 
 Andrew Lang and the masterly verse translation of 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 13 
 
 C. S. Calverley. It is not too much to say that Mr. 
 Lang's prose Theocritus, Hke his Homer, may really 
 enable one who does not read Greek to have some idea 
 of what Greek poems are. 
 
 The translations also of another Oxford scholar 
 carry this even further. There is no book in my 
 Hbrary which I take down and taste and taste again 
 with the gusto of an epicure more often than Mackail's 
 Greek Anthology (new edition of 1906). The marvellous 
 versatiHty and continuity of Greek epigrams, ranging 
 over some twelve or even fifteen centuries — from Solon 
 to Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the middle of the 
 tenth century — is one of the marvels in the history of 
 Hterature. No other language has ever retained its 
 vocabulary and its form over so vast a period, and to 
 this day it is but slightly modified. Latin changed 
 its forms more often and more radically than Greek. 
 What a range of topic, mood, and thought in these 
 Epigrams, or Epitaphs, or monumental Thoughts, for 
 they are all of these. Take Mr. Mackail's classifica- 
 tion of the short poems under twelve heads. These 
 are : — 
 
 Love — Prayers and Dedications — Epitaphs — Litera- 
 ture and Art — ReHgion — Nature — The Family — 
 Beauty — Fate and Change — The Human Comedy — 
 Death — Life. 
 
 Every one knows that noble epitaph on the dead 
 Spartans of Thermopylae — 
 
 Friend, report to the men of Lacedaemon 
 That here we lie, obeying their ordinances. 
 
 This is perhaps the earhest and the best authenti- 
 cated epitaph of Greece. How tender is Meleager's 
 " Parting at Dawn " — 
 
 Farewell, Morning Star, Herald of Dawn, 
 And quickly come as Evening Star, 
 
14 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Bringing again unseen 
 
 Her whom thou takest away. 
 
 This play of words upon the Planet Venus was a 
 favourite idea with the Greeks, and gave rise to the 
 celebrated epigram attributed to the philosopher Plato, 
 which Mackail calls " the most perfect epigram ever 
 written in any language." It was on the death of 
 Aster, a beautiful boy (Aster being Greek for Star) : — 
 
 Aster, thou who didst once shine 
 Amongst the living as our Morning Star, 
 Now in death thou shinest 
 As the Evening Star to those below. 
 
 I don't call it more than a pretty conceit. But in 
 Greek it is full of pathetic music. 
 
 It is in their monumental epitaphs that the Greeks 
 show all the pathos of reserve. I love that "sweet 
 myrtle-berry of Callimachus, ever full of acid honey," 
 as Meleager calls it. How exquisite in its marble 
 simplicity is this : — 
 
 The child of twelve years 
 Philip his father laid here, 
 His great hope — Nicoteles. 
 
 Or take this, on another dead boy : — 
 
 As you look on this monument. 
 
 Pity him who was so beautiful — and died. 
 
 But Meleager was a lover too : — 
 
 The cup is sweet and joyous, and it says 
 
 It sips the bubbling lips of Love's darling, Zenophile. 
 
 Blessed would it be if she would 
 
 Put up her lips to my lips and, without drawing breath, 
 
 Drink up the soul in me. 
 
 Not but what some of these verses are " epigrams " 
 in our sense : — 
 
cH.i ANCIENT POETRY 15 
 
 One, who having married once, seeks a second wife 
 Is a sailor, who, after shipwreck, sets forth towards a perilous 
 channel. 
 
 This, as Mackail reminds us, was Dr. Johnson's 
 "triumph of Hope over Experience." 
 
 But for sheer bitterness, neither Voltaire nor Heine 
 ever beat this : — 
 
 A cobra, a toad, a viper — keep clear of — 
 And of the Laodiceans ; avoid also a mad dog, 
 And again, I say — the Laodiceans too ! 
 
 Yet Holy Writ gives us a very different picture 
 of the people of Laodicea. St. Paul speaks of his 
 yearning towards them (Coloss. ii. i), and he salutes 
 "the brethren which are in Laodicea," and desires 
 his epistle to be "read also in the Church of the 
 Laodiceans." And in Revelation iii. 14 we find there 
 was an "angel of the Church of the Laodiceans." 
 And yet, perhaps about the same time, the Greek 
 poet calls the Laodiceans worse than a toad or a 
 mad dog. 
 
 I suspect that the "angel of the Church of the 
 Laodiceans " was a venerable Jew with whom the 
 Greek satirist had a quarrel. And this reminds me 
 of a point by which I have often been struck, but 
 have never seen noticed. Meleager, who collected 
 these epigrams in his famous Garland^ and himself 
 wrote 134 of them, was a man of Gadara, the very 
 place so infested with devils, whom Christ cast out 
 into the 2000 swine (Mark v. ; Luke viii.). Meleager 
 might easily have known Joseph, the husband of 
 Mary. Not only was Meleager a Gadarene, but 
 Menippus, his contemporary, was also. Again, Philo- 
 demus, a distinguished Epicurean philosopher, was 
 also a Gadarene ; and he is mentioned by Cicero as 
 profligate, but of consummate wit and elegance. He 
 
i6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 is also mentioned by Horace in that appalling satire 
 " amhuhaiarum collegia^ pharmacopolce^^ where he quotes 
 apparently a very nasty epigram of Philodemus. All 
 three poets wrote what they called "witty maxims," 
 and amatory pieces of the freest sort. All three men 
 were Gadarenes, and about the age of Joseph and 
 Simeon. 
 
 In his own epitaph, Meleager boasts of his origin 
 at Gadara, which he calls a "sacred land," and he 
 says, "Stranger at this grave, if thou art a Syrian, 
 say ' Salam ' " ; and in another poem he calls the 
 "Syrian Gadara his Attic Fatherland." Yet in the 
 very district where the Gospel was first preached, and 
 nearly about the age of the older apostles, lived three 
 famous Greek poets who devoted their lives to satire, 
 amatory, and lyric effusions. Could any of the devils 
 who went into the swine have come out of them ? 
 
 This, however, is the least of the paradox. We 
 owe the immense collection of the Greek Anthology 
 with all its profusion of erotic, satiric, and polytheist 
 poetry to Planudes, a Byzantine monk, a contemporary 
 of Dante, a theologian and eminent ambassador in 
 Europe. We know also that Heliodorus (in the fourth 
 century), author of the earliest amatory romance, was 
 a Christian bishop, and a native of Syria. Indeed 
 the entire antique literature, including Aristophanes, 
 Lucian, Athenaeus, Anacreon, and all the rest, has 
 been preserved for us by Christian ecclesiastics of one 
 kind or other. No doubt at Byzantium, for eleven 
 centuries, from Constantine I. to Constantine XII., 
 in the midst of a Christian and indeed grossly 
 superstitious society, there always existed a keen zest 
 for pagan poetry, and even for Greek facetice^ just 
 as in Italy in the Cinque Cento^ or in^ France in the 
 age of Voltaire. Of this the Anthology is the most 
 signal proof, for it was largely produced, and entirely 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 17 
 
 preserved in Christian ages, and even by professed 
 Churchmen and ecclesiastics. 
 
 Not only w^as some of the lightest and most human 
 of Greek literature produced in the very country and 
 the very age in w^hich the Gospel was to appear, but 
 those two great concurrent forces which have made 
 the modern world — I mean Roman Law and the New 
 Testament — were produced within the space of a few 
 generations by Hellenised and Romanised Syrians, and 
 within a moderate distance of that coast we now call 
 the Levant — say between Gaza and Tarsus, a distance 
 of about 400 miles from north to south, and a district 
 not more than fifty miles from the sea-coast. 
 
 If we were to follow out this thought we should 
 have to recount the schools of philosophy, law, poetry, 
 and religion in the cities, or those taught by natives 
 of Tyre, Sidon, Berytus, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Ptolemais, 
 Gadara, Emesa, Damascus, Samosata, Tripoli, Laodicea, 
 Antioch, Tarsus — to which we might add Palmyra 
 and Alexandria. What a splendid world of thought, 
 imagination, enthusiasm, and devotion flourished within 
 that small corner of our planet for some five centuries, 
 from a century or two before the birth of Christ and 
 for two or three centuries after it. 
 
 And what is that region now ? What has it been 
 for ten or twelve centuries since the Hegira ? It is 
 an awful sight — which almost makes a man of peace 
 forgive the French Conquest of Algeria, and the 
 Italian Conquest of Tripoli and Cyrene — to witness 
 the vast and continuous remains of Greek and Roman 
 civilisation, industry, arts, and letters in those North 
 African regions which are now lifeless deserts roamed 
 over by wild barbarians. What prodigies of intellect, 
 of genius, of poetry, of beauty were produced in the 
 compass of Asia Minor, of Syria, and of the North 
 African littoral in the ten centuries between Thales 
 
i8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 and Augustine ! And now for twelve centuries 
 how blank is the record of these very regions ! Does 
 civilisation sway, like a pendulum, backwards and 
 forwards from one quarter of our planet to another ? 
 Will the New Zealand student of 2912, as he sits on 
 the ruins of St. Paul's, really bring with him a pocket 
 Shakespeare — or will he care only for telesemes from 
 Mars ? 
 
 I have not forgotten my Latin Classics, but some- 
 how the Greek seem to meet my humour more 
 readily and often. With all his pathos, music, and 
 thought, Virgil is not a cheerful companion. One 
 needs to be in a serious mood to enjoy his lacrymce 
 rerum^ and it is natural to think of him as a sensitive 
 invalid rather than a happy man. But take him at 
 the right hour at his best — and his best no doubt are 
 his episodes — what fascination in the familiar lines 
 which we all know, and yet none can exactly reproduce 
 in English. I cannot see that any poet has succeeded 
 in turning Latin poetry into English verse. I try 
 them all, from Dryden and GifFord to Conington, 
 Robinson Ellis, Theodore Martin, Henry King, and 
 Bowen. Perhaps one reason is that Latin is the 
 highest type of a monumental language — one which 
 reduces its words to the fewest and avoids the subsidiary 
 vocables which are the peculiarity of Enghsh. Take 
 the famous line — 
 
 Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. 
 
 Here are but five words, two being verbs and two 
 practically substantives. Now put it in English. It 
 runs (Remember, O Roman) — 
 
 To be merciful with those who submit, 
 And to war down those who defy you. 
 
 But that makes fifteen words — not five. And though 
 it might be put barely thus in nine words — 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 19 
 
 To spare the subject and to crush the haughty, 
 
 the full meaning is not there. Indeed there is a 
 "subtlety in Virgil which is incommunicable by words. 
 It is the melody of phrase which enchants us and 
 haunts the memory like the Adelaida of Beethoven. 
 
 I suppose most persons remember Horace better 
 than almost any other poet, Latin or Greek. The 
 reason is, no doubt, that he clothes a sententious 
 commonplace with such perfect clarity and light- 
 hearted wisdom that, once heard, the phrases stick 
 in the memory like a proverb of our childhood. 
 
 What can be more clear-cut, more tenderly 
 humorous, and yet more slily pathetic than the 
 famous : — 
 
 Linquenda tellus et domus et placens 
 uxor, neque harum quas colis arborum 
 te praeter invisas cupressos 
 
 ulla brevem dominum sequetur. 
 
 Here is poetry wrung out of the commonest of 
 truisms — grace obtained by the perfect simplicity and 
 directness of the wording — and a sort of melancholy 
 charm irresistibly playing about the most natural 
 statement of obvious facts — all achieved by nothing 
 but felicity of language. 
 
 The nearest analogue of Horace that we have is 
 Pope. Nothing, in our rather loosely-jointed tongue, 
 has ever surpassed his neat, sententious apophthegms, 
 such as : — 
 
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; 
 The proper study of mankind is Man — 
 
 or — 
 
 A mighty maze, but not without a plan. 
 
 And Pope can condense into four short lines the entire 
 history of the evolution of religion : — 
 
20 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Father of All ! in every age, 
 
 In every Clime ador'd 
 By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage, 
 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 
 
 But how far below Horace is Pope even at his 
 best. He can imitate Horace, but he cannot translate 
 him. And when we get to the Ars Poetica^ with its 
 tags that every educated man knows by heart, and 
 the maxims which come into a thousand essays and 
 speeches — 
 
 Difficile est proprie communia dicere — 
 parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus, 
 
 we have that concentrated essence of good sense and 
 simplicity, in a memorable phrase, which has never 
 been equalled unless in a Greek epigram. I can take 
 up my Horace at any time, even if I have but a spare 
 ten minutes before an appointment, or the dinner-bell. 
 
 I don't much trouble my Orellius (two fat vols, of 
 1700 pp., Zurich, 1850), unless I get puzzled. But 
 the edition I love is that of H. A. J. Munro with 
 C. W. King's illustrations from antique gems (8vo, 
 Bell & Co., 1869) — a work admirably printed, 
 exquisitely engraved, and edited as to text and illus- 
 trations by two consummately accomplished scholars. 
 This book is to me the very perfection of a student's 
 manual. When I was a boy, before Mr. King's gems 
 were engraved, I used Dean Milman's beautiful edition 
 with illustrations (Murray, 1849), but I now prefer 
 Munro's text. How delicious are those antique gems. 
 If I had been ever able to collect anything, my hobby 
 would have been antique gems which seem to me to 
 possess the very aroma of the old world. 
 
 I do a passage from Lucretius now and then with 
 my Munro, using the translation very freely ; and 
 also Catullus with my Robinson Ellis, and Persius 
 with my John Conington and Nettleship. But, oh ! 
 
CH.i ANCIENT POETRY 21 
 
 in the name of all the thousand and one kisses of mea 
 Lesbia — why bury the lepidum novum lihellum of the 
 airiest of poets under two ponderous octavos of nearly 
 one thousand closely printed pages ? Perhaps in the 
 year 2912 Anno Domini, or Anno Diaboli, the 
 University of the Planet Mars will issue the Songs 
 of Robert Burns in four folio volumes of learned 
 commentary and a big glossary. 
 
 When in the mood for study I do sometimes take 
 up a Lucretius, a Catullus, or a Persius j but they are 
 all rather stiff for a busy man. And for my part I 
 prefer a handy Anthology with selections — such as that 
 dainty Httle duodecimo Latin Anthology (Macmillan, 
 1909) in the "Golden Treasury" series, curiously 
 anonymous as yet. This invaluable book has passages 
 selected from Latin poetry extending over six centuries 
 from Ennius to Boethius, beautifully printed and with 
 adequate notes and an exquisite portrait of Augustus 
 from the Blacas Cameo in our Museum. In 180 
 pages, which will go in a jacket pocket, this handy 
 book contains gems of Latin verse. I keep it beside 
 me on my writing-table, and in my travelling bag 
 when I leave home. 
 
 I am all for the old tag for boys — aut d'tsce^ aut 
 discede^ manet sors altera caedi. It is right that the 
 young should be pounded through three huge com- 
 mentaries of many volumes on a single poem ; but 
 busy men and old men want handy books — what the 
 Greeks call encheiridta. When I went on a cruise 
 the other day I took a dozen of the " Everyman " 
 standard reprints, I will not say, with Kaliph Rose- 
 bery and Grand Vizier Gosse, burn old books and 
 only keep the last new thing. No ! I say to the 
 busy men, and to aged men — Read your old books 
 again, those you have forgotten, those you never cut — 
 but read them in some pleasant and portable form. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ANCIENT PROSE 
 
 Let me reassure the gentle reader that I have no 
 intention of discussing Greek and Latin texts, or of 
 troubling him with arry niceties of classical scholar- 
 ship. In these desultory notes about the books I take 
 down from my own shelves from time to time, I have 
 much more to say about EngHsh versions than of 
 original texts, and I shall talk more often about books 
 which purists neglect, and are seldom heard of in 
 Academic "Schools." 
 
 I can enjoy a dialogue of Plato in my Jowett, my 
 Llewellyn Davies, or my F. J. Church, without refer- 
 ence to Bekker or Stallbaum. And I read Aristotle 
 on the Constitution of Athens without troubling the 
 British Museum for Papyrus CXXXI. Why are we 
 to be tied down through life to the " books " and 
 "periods" which are prescribed for Degree examina- 
 tions ? Professor Freeman was never tired of denoun- 
 cing the pedantry of scholars who turned away from 
 the " bad Greek " of Polybius — " the one Greek 
 historian before whose eyes the history of the world 
 was laid open as it never was to any other man before 
 or after." And Professor J. W. Mackail, in his 
 masterly manual of Latin Literature^ has much to 
 tell us about Petronius and his Supper of Trimalchio^ 
 
CH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 23 
 
 about Fronto and his fable of the Origin of Sleepy 
 about Apuleius and his Cupid and Psyche and his 
 pantomime entitled The Golden Ass. 
 
 Now, in my day, at Oxford, where we were 
 pounded through the Posterior Analytics^ and that 
 cryptic Persius, and were drilled to imitate Sophocles' 
 iambics and Cicero's Familiar Letters^ nobody ever 
 read — even heard of — Apuleius, Fronto, or Petronius 
 — much less had we seen the Greek of Polybius or 
 Lucian, of Epictetus, or Theophrastus, or knew a 
 line of the Pervigilium Veneris^ or Daphnis and Chloe. 
 I dare say all this is now remedied, and "scholarship" 
 is not limited to half a dozen Greek writers of one 
 age and as many Latin writers of another age. I do 
 not encourage any general reader to try the original 
 texts of any of these. But there are now very good 
 English versions of all of them — and there is excellent 
 reading in all. 
 
 One who knows Professor Dill's two works on 
 Roman Society in the Empire^ or Warde Fowler's 
 Roman Religion^ or Professor Vernon Arnold's Roman 
 Stoicism^ or Alfred Zimmern's Greek Commonwealth^ 
 will understand how stunted a view of Latin thought 
 it is to narrow down our reading to the Augustan 
 Age, or our knowledge of Greece to the Periclean 
 Age. These later writers, whom " scholars " despise 
 for their decadent style, are full of novel ideas and 
 new forms of art, which ultimately blossomed into 
 mediaeval literature. To exclude all this is to ruin 
 the sense of continuity in civilisation, as Freeman so 
 often and so justly insisted. And I do not hesitate 
 to say that one who read with intelligence mere 
 translations of the Greek writers between Theo- 
 phrastus and Longus in the fifth century a.d., and 
 who read the Roman writers between Tacitus and 
 Claudian, would really understand the spirit of Greece 
 
24 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 and the spirit of Rome better than some learned first- 
 class man who can study Thucydides in a railway 
 train, and construe at sight Catullus, Tacitus, and 
 Persius. 
 
 There used to be a tradition at Oxford that, in 
 the early days of " school exams.," men like Professor 
 Brewer, Orlando Hyman, and, I think, Robert Lowe, 
 offered as their "Books" the Greek and Latin 
 Classics. But when I knew the "Schools," we were 
 tied down to the regulation authors, and we had to 
 know them pretty close. I believe Macaulay said 
 that a real scholar was one who would read his Greek 
 Plato by the fire, with his feet on the fender. I am 
 not up to this myself, but there is no reason why we 
 should not enjoy an hour or two with Plato in one 
 of the admirable versions ready to hand. Plato's 
 Greek is to my mind, as I wrote long ago, the most 
 perfect form of prose style in all literature — "easy, 
 lucid, graceful, witty, pathetic, imaginative by turns." 
 Now very much of this exquisite language is retained 
 in Jowett's translation. And I know no more delight- 
 ful book for a quiet hour. 
 
 Well ! if Jowett's Plato^ in five stout octavos, be 
 too heavy to hold in an armchair, there are two lovely 
 little i2mos in the "Golden Treasury" series, the 
 Republic^ by LI. Davies and Vaughan, and The Trial 
 and Death of Socrates^ being four Dialogues in one 
 volume, by F. J. Church. This delicious Httle book, 
 which I have often had in hand since its first issue 
 in 1880, has in it the very aroma of Plato, all his Attic 
 grace and mind. If a man desires to enter into the 
 spirit of the most exquisite prose style ever devised 
 by the genius of man, let him read the story of the 
 death of Socrates in the Phaedo. Read it in Greek 
 if you can — I read the original at school ; but in the 
 sixty-four years since then, I dare say I should want 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 25 
 
 my Liddell and Scott at hand. Now I read it in 
 Church with ever new delight, though I care for 
 Plato's metaphysics as little as I care for the rhapsodical 
 gammon of Professor Bergson or Miss Marie Corelli 
 — who used to be so sorry for poor Satan. 
 
 Men who really care to read ancient history in the 
 ancient authors have excellent English versions of 
 Herodotus by Professor Rawlinson, of Thucydides by 
 Jowett, and of Polybius and Tacitus by Oxford and 
 Cambridge scholars. I have them on my shelves, 
 but I cannot pretend that I use them for more than 
 an occasional reference. No one can be said to be 
 well read unless he knows, at any rate, something of 
 Herodotus' own account of the Persian War and of 
 the great speeches of Pericles. A man must indeed 
 have forgotten his Greek if he cannot still turn to 
 these with the help of Jowett, Thomas Arnold, Grote, 
 Curtius, and Holm. No one reads Polybius for his 
 style, and he may really be as well read in English. 
 Those cool, weighty judgments of his go quite 
 naturally into our tongue. Shuckburgh came long 
 after my time, and my only translation was that of 
 " Mr. Hampton," of the eighteenth century. It was 
 quite good enough for my purpose. The two men 
 who have most highly praised Polybius are the his- 
 torian, Edward Freeman, and the philosopher, Auguste 
 Comte. I have already quoted the really extravagant 
 encomium of Freeman. But it was Comte who spoke 
 of "the great Polybius," "the last organ of Greek 
 Sociology," and he placed him in the Calendar next 
 to Alexander. 
 
 I must make a special plea for Tacitus, to be read 
 at least partly in the original Latin. Comte, again, 
 calls Tacitus "incomparable," and he places him in 
 the Calendar next to Socrates, no doubt on account 
 of " his profound insight into human nature." The 
 
26 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 magical phrases of Tacitus crop up to this day in 
 speeches and political articles. Every one knows his 
 " soUtudinem faciunt pacem appellant ; " his " sera 
 juvenum Venus^ ideoque inexhausta puhertas ; " " corrum- 
 pere et corrumpi saeculum vacatur ; " " omnium consensu 
 capax imperii^ nisi imperasset ; " and his famous ^^felix 
 opportunitate mortis ; " " odisse quem laeseris^'' 
 
 How tremendous is that Preface to Tacitus' 
 Histories. Its close, sardonic sentences sound in our 
 ears like the judgments of Rhadamanthus in Hell. 
 "A time of catastrophies, of bloody wars, rent with 
 seditions, cruel even in peace. Four emperors slain, 
 three civil wars, volcanoes and earthquakes ruined our 
 lovely coast ; Rome and its monuments destroyed by 
 fire at the hands of its citizens, public ceremonies 
 polluted, sensational adulteries, exile, slaughter on sea 
 and land everywhere rife. Birth, wealth, public service 
 whether filled or declined, were counted crimes, to 
 have a reputation for virtue was a sentence of death " 
 — Nobilitas^ opus^ omissi gestique honores pro crimine ; 
 et oh virtutes^ certissimum exitium. These inimitable 
 apophthegms cannot be translated, and must be kept 
 in their gem-like chiselling. 
 
 Tacitus is no easy author, but with a good trans- 
 lation, such as Church and Brodribb's, no one need 
 be stopped from reading the Germania and the Agricola 
 in the original. My Harrow and Christ Church god- 
 father, Robert Lawrence, left me a delightful book 
 with these two essays (Cambridge, 8vo, 1809). I 
 take up this fine and dear volume in its original calf 
 binding, scored, I regret to say, with my boyish pencil 
 notes, and I can read again and again the magnificent 
 eulogium of Agricola by his son-in-law. And when 
 we reach the death of the hero, without his daughter 
 or her husband by his bedside, we feel that the Roman 
 stoicism of the historian gives way in a truly modern 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 27 
 
 outburst of pathos. When Tacitus in his stately 
 confidence declares that the glory of Agricola will 
 survive for after ages, in reality he is prophesying his 
 own immortality. 
 
 Tacitus, of course, brings up Pliny, the Younger, 
 who was "proof-reader" to Tacitus, and the pair 
 used to be called "the duumvirs of letters." How 
 delightfully fresh, how modern, how redolent of our 
 own culture, are those Letters of .Pliny to his friends. 
 Without any thought of "exams.," I used to read 
 them with that eccentric scholar, Orlando Haydon 
 Hyman, of Wadham, who would buy books, and tear 
 out the pages as he turned them over, and when the 
 whole was read and remembered^ he would litter the 
 floor with the covers. To Hyman, a classic was what 
 the letters of a friend are to us. But he made me 
 love PHny's Epistles. How modern, how human, how 
 English is this : — 
 
 ^id agit . Comum^ tuae meaeque deliclae P quid 
 suburbanu?n amosnissimum ? quid ilia porticus^ verna 
 semper ? quid TrAaravcov opacissimus ? quid Euripus 
 viridis et gemmeus^ quid subjectus et serviens lacus ? 
 
 And people who soak themselves in despatches of 
 Pitt, Peel, and Palmerston, never read Pliny's Letters ! 
 
 I cherish a delightful octavo with Latin notes, 
 dated 1805, and still in its perfect calf binding, with 
 its gold lettering and tooling fresh and bright. Why 
 cannot modern binders make calf backs to last 100 
 years ? Most of the bindings that I had at Wadham 
 are all out of shape. They tell me now : " Oh ! calf 
 will not last more than twenty years ! " How delight- 
 ful is that descriptio villae Laurentinae (Ep. XVH.). 
 " Do you wonder why I love my Laurens ? " he writes 
 to Gallus. " You would cease to wonder if you knew 
 all the charm of the house, the convenience of its site, 
 the spacious coast it commands." The Greek terms 
 
28 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 of architecture and convenience remind us how com- 
 pletely imperial civilisation was a combination of 
 Roman power with Greek intelligence. The Epistles 
 contain more than one hundred Greek words beside 
 whole pages of extracts from Greek authors. It was 
 my old enjoyment of Pliny's Laurentinum which led 
 me to write my book on the gratiam villae of Sutton 
 Place. 
 
 I had as a gift from the library of our dear old 
 Mark Pattison, a copy of an early Frontonis Reliquiae ; 
 and though I certainly never studied Fronto, who was 
 a Roman Euphuist of the decadence, I did turn up 
 the famous Letters that passed between Marcus 
 Aurelius, Emperor, "my Lord," and "my Master 
 Fronto," about the fetes at Alsium, to see the fable 
 on the Origin of Sleep, so charmingly introduced by 
 Pater in Marius the Epicurean. The Creation of Sleep 
 is a very pretty fable. It reminds me of the delicious 
 outburst of Sancho Panza : " Oh ! blessed is the man 
 who invented sleep ! " There is a great deal about 
 sleep in the famous correspondence between the 
 Emperor and the old rhetorician whom Marcus at 
 last found out to be a windbag. But the letters 
 between the saintly Master of the World — fancy 
 Agrippa addressing Augustus as "My Lord!" — ^and 
 his prig of " a Master," Fronto, are among the most 
 fascinating pages of antiquity. 
 
 I do not recommend any one to read Fronto, the 
 Doctor Johnson of the second century (a.d.), who 
 attacked the Christians and tried to return to the 
 language of Ennius. But I do advise every one to 
 get that fine Life of Marcus Aurelius^ by Paul Barron 
 Watson, of Cambridge, U.S.A., and to read what he 
 tells us in his second chapter about the intercourse 
 of Fronto and Marcus AureHus. Their letters were 
 fished up, or scraped up, a century ago by Angelo 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 29 
 
 Mai out of a pile of Church chronicles which had 
 been written over them on the parchment. They 
 are still in a broken state, many in Greek. Nobody 
 reads them now. But P. B. Watson has translated 
 enough of them to show us how lovable, how affec- 
 tionate, how noble was the nature of M. Aurelius, 
 how playful and intimate was the relation between 
 this imperial hero and his devoted but rather finikin 
 tutor. Here, again, in a book which the "Schools' 
 Examiners" would not touch with the tip of their 
 blue pencils, we have a picture of a world far different 
 from that of Caesar or Tacitus : curiously modern, and 
 already bearing the germs of the mediaeval world. 
 
 My Christ Church friend left me, among other 
 books, a handsomely bound octavo of 1804 of the 
 Clarendon Press, Simpson's edition of Epictetus, 
 Cebes, Prodicus and Theophrastus in one volume ; 
 text, Latin translations, and notes. I suppose that 
 at Oxford they read these books one hundred years 
 ago, before the rage for Examinations set in ; but in 
 my day, fifty years later, we never heard of these 
 authors. I do not recommend any one to read the 
 Discourses of Epictetus in the somewhat stiff Greek 
 of the original. But there is no need to do so, for 
 there are excellent editions of the translation by George 
 Long in " Bohn's Classical Library," and another in 
 "Everyman's Library" (No. 402). There are also 
 many translations of the Pinax^ or Picture, or Cartoon 
 of Cebes. 
 
 Cebes was a follower of Socrates and one of the 
 enquirers at his last day in the Phaedo. His Platonic 
 Dialogue on Virtue and Vice, in an almost mediaeval 
 kind of allegory, is perhaps seldom read now, and I 
 cannot say I have done more than dip into it, to see 
 what Oxford men took up in old days. The Choice 
 of Hercules is the famous allegory by Prodicus, of 
 
30 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 whom we hear in Xenophon's Memoirs^ which had 
 such a singular success all through Greek and Roman 
 times, and in the Middle Ages, and down to the age 
 of Reynolds, furnished such endless " motives " to 
 Moral Discourses, Painting, Tapestry, Poetry and all 
 forms of Art. The Characters of Theophrastus are 
 now well known, and have been admirably translated, 
 edited and annotated by the indefatigable industry of 
 the late Sir Richard Jebb. 
 
 Though I do not suggest the reading of Epictetus 
 in the Greek, he can be read very well now in good 
 English — perhaps for choice in A. L. Humphreys' 
 quarto " luxurious " reprint of George Long's trans- 
 lation. There has been a great revival of interest in 
 Epictetus of late, owing largely to such books as Sir 
 Samuel Dill's Roman Society^ Dr. Bigg's Church under 
 the Roman Empire^ Warde Fowler's Roman Religions^ 
 Professor Vernon Arnold's Roman Stoicism, How 
 fine, how wise, how truly religious are many of the 
 sayings of the Stoical slave : — 
 
 " Death is a change, not from the state which now is 
 to that which is not, but to that which is not now. Shall 
 I, then, no longer exist ? Tou will not exist, but you will 
 be something else, of which the world now has need." 
 
 Surely this is Comte's subjective immortality. Here 
 is the Te Deum of this apostoHc Stoic : — 
 
 "Great is God, who has given us implements with 
 which to cultivate the'earth. I give thee all thanks that 
 thou hast allowed me to join in this thy assemblage of 
 men, and to see thy works, and to comprehend thy 
 administration. Let us sing hymns to the deity, and 
 bless him, and tell of his benefits." 
 
 He adopts the Hymn of Pythagoras j one quite as 
 good as Bishop Ken's : — 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 31 
 
 " Let sleep not come upon thy languid eyes 
 Before each daily action thou hast scanned j 
 What's done amiss, what done, what left undone j 
 From first to last examine all, and then 
 Blame what is wrong, in what is right rejoice." 
 
 — G. Long. 
 
 Epictetus was a stern moralist, and in some ways 
 would satisfy a Cromwellian Ironside or a primitive 
 Quaker — but his maxims upon marriage, chastity, and 
 the dangers of youthful philosophers were full of 
 moderation and good sense, such as would scandalise 
 the Christian fanaticism of Origen and Tertullian. 
 Let not the young acolyte of Stoicism entangle 
 himself with women. Whatever you do in this 
 matter keep within what's lawful and proper. But 
 don't go about scolding those who do not share your 
 moral views, making yourself a nuisance, and per- 
 petually bragging about your own superior virtue. 
 
 When one reads Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, 
 and looks into the lives and teachings of Zeno, 
 Cleanthes, and the later Stoics, one is constantly 
 reminded how close are the analogies of the nobler 
 Stoics with the best and earliest followers of Christ — 
 how in not a few things — in good sense, in humanity, 
 in practical morality, they were superior to the con- 
 temporary teachers of the Gospel. There was always 
 in them a something wanting ; nor was Epictetus 
 such a power as Paul, nor was Aurelius as great as 
 Augustine. Superior to the Christians as the greater 
 Stoics were in their more rational and balanced view 
 of human nature, they failed to recognise what a 
 tremendous social revolution, what a purging as by 
 fire, was needed to cast out the devils of self-indulgence, 
 cruelty, and lust, in which the ancient world was 
 sunk. 
 
 For my own part, too, I always feel how close to a 
 
32 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 truly human religion the wiser and purer spirits of the 
 ancient world were gradually becoming conscious. 
 Plutarch, Seneca, Trajan, Tacitus, Epictetus, Marcus 
 Aurelius, with their solid, cultivated, human morality 
 and humane ideals, were more akin to Hume, Adam 
 Smith, Kant, Condorcet and Comte than were the 
 Christian Fathers of Rome or Byzantium. Had such 
 men been powerful enough to recast the antique 
 world, with slavery, debauchery, and savagery rampant 
 around them, civilisation might have been spared some 
 centuries of Monkish tyranny. It was not to be. A 
 cataclysmal upheaval of society from its bed-rock had 
 to work itself out under cruel and terrific phantasms, 
 from the insanities and inhumanities of which we are 
 slowly and painfully shaking ourselves free. 
 
 Is there not an uncanny warning to us all to-day 
 as we read Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and 
 see what pure and sublime thoughts the better spirits 
 could nourish, as we study the record of the high 
 civilisation of those ages of the Antonines, the art, 
 the learning, all the resources of the Empire stretch- 
 ing from the Grampians to the Euphrates, and as yet 
 troubled only by Picts, and Goths, and Parthians, and 
 Numidian barbarians on its distant frontiers — and then 
 in a century or two over the greater part of that vast 
 dominion everything was swept away — its laws, its 
 arts, its learning, its culture, its rehgion ! Will 
 Europe ever know again its Dark Ages ? 
 
 I never read Theophrastus at school or college, or 
 until I got hold of Jebb's translation. And now, in 
 the new edition by Dr. Sandys (1909), it is a most 
 entertaining book. I do not care much for Theo- 
 phrastus himself. There is a crudeness, and even a 
 coarseness, about most of his Characters which ^ is far 
 from the subtlety of Moli^re, La Bruy^re, La Roche- 
 foucauld, Addison, or Swift. The sHght sketch of 
 
CH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 33 
 
 the areskos^ the faux bonhomme^ is piquant, and so is 
 the microphilotimos^ the swagger "smart" man, the 
 dandy " aesthete " (the compound word for the man 
 who goes in for social distinction is not translateable). 
 That is a delightful touch when the smart man puts 
 up a tombstone to his little Maltese puppy — and 
 inscribes an epitaph on him — "pure-bred Maltese." 
 Only nowadays it would be "a pedigree Pekinese." 
 
 But the real interest is in Professor Jebb's notes 
 and illustrations. They give a wonderful picture of 
 Athenian manners in the time of Alexander. How 
 like, and yet how different, was life then and life 
 to-day — how like, and yet how unlike, was Athens 
 to Paris in the seventeenth century or London in 
 the eighteenth. The swagger smart ways are those 
 of a Park Lane or Fifth Avenue millionaire — and yet 
 the general tone of the characters is that of homely 
 farmers or small tradesmen m the provinces in the 
 time of the Vicar of Wakefield or Tom Jones, Read 
 Jebb's Theophrastus carefully through with all his 
 explanations and illustrations, and you will get a vivid 
 idea of — 
 
 Athens, the eye of Greece, Mother of arts 
 And eloquence, native to famous wits — 
 
 a city which for centuries led the way to man in all 
 things of beauty, truth, and grace, and yet had a 
 democratic simplicity, an ideal equality, and a material 
 penury, which has never been seen since then on 
 earth, unless in some Franciscan or Trappist monastery. 
 There is another moralist of the quiet age of 
 Athens, which Sir Richand Jebb has opened to us, 
 in his fine translation and scholarly edition of 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric^ also revised by Dr. Sandys (1909). 
 It is a real encyclopaedia of antique ethical analytics 
 in 200 pages, as Bishop Copleston told us, "a text- 
 
34 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 book of human feeling ; a storehouse of taste ; an 
 exemplar of condensed and accurate, but uniformly 
 clear and candid, reasoning." Of course, Aristotle 
 is not Plato. He is not a master of fascinating 
 language ; nor has he the stern Puritanism of 
 Epictetus, nor the spiritual melancholy of Aurelius. 
 How shrewd, how sensible, how universal-minded in 
 his survey of human speech, is "the master of those 
 who know." Utterly different in form as it is, 
 systematic, reserved, and self-restrained, the Rhetoric 
 reminds me in its profound knowledge of man and of 
 the world of Bacon's Essays, Do our psychologic 
 romancers, our soul-poets, and esoteric critics study 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric ? 
 
 Now, no one who knows me will suppose that I 
 care for nothing but philosophers and essayists, and do 
 not enjoy the wit of Lucian and the romances of 
 Apuleius and Longus. Every thoughtful person now 
 recognises the startling analogies between the world of 
 the later Roman Empire and our own times. The 
 similarities have been admirably described by LesHe 
 Stephen in the famous essay in his Apology^ which I 
 keep next to Mr. Balfour's Belief. As Leslie says, 
 we have just what they had in the time of the 
 Antonines — " theosophical moonshine," " rationalistic 
 interpretation of orthodoxy," " the galvanising dead 
 creeds," sundry "philosophic moraHties," and many 
 "strange superstitions." Hence the number of new 
 books about ancient thought in the three or four 
 centuries when the Gospel was fighting its way against 
 apolaustic Culture and rotting Paganism. Of these 
 historical studies the recent works of Prof. Dill and 
 of Warde Fowler are good types. 
 
 And now we have the whole of Lucian, admirably 
 translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler (4 vols., i2mo, 
 Oxford, 1905). This dehghtful book is as curiously 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 35. 
 
 modern in essential thought as it is historically redolent 
 of the Roman world. The translators have caught the 
 very spirit of Lucian's banter, and the English is as 
 racy as Thackeray's Book of Snobs. Any one who 
 enjoys real fun should try one of the Dialogues of the 
 Dead^ or one of the Dialogues of the Hetairae^ or 
 Charon^ or the Death of Peregrinus, A friend of mine, 
 liable to insomnia, keeps by the bedside a copy of 
 Fowler's Lucian^ and takes it up to while away a 
 wakeful hour. Any one can turn to any part of the four 
 volumes to amuse a spare half-hour. He would find 
 it quite as lively as one of the wonderful sixpenny novels 
 which form the staple literature of our motor age. 
 
 Then there is that singular and enigmatic person 
 Petronius, whom Tacitus celebrates for his erudite 
 luxuriousness^ " the arbiter of elegance," the Oscar 
 Wilde of Neronian aestheticism, the professor of the 
 " too-too," whose wild satires remind us, says Dill, of 
 Smollet and Le Sage. Petronius' most famous bit, 
 the Supper of Trimalchio, has been well translated and 
 edited by Michael J. Ryan, 1905. Trimalchio is the 
 " bounder," or " rastaquouere," the self-made vulgarian, 
 who by his money thrusts himself into society, 
 curiously like a gold-bug of Park Lane or Chicago. 
 All this makes the Supper worth reading for all its 
 debased Latin and slum talk. Petronius, a sort of 
 Beau Brummel to Nero's Prince Regent, paints a 
 vivid but disgusting picture of the "smart" world 
 of Rome — of Paris — of New York — of London. 
 Vulgarians are immortal. 
 
 Every one has heard of the beautiful myth of Cupid 
 and Psyche ; but I doubt if they have all read it in the 
 book in which it first appears in literary form, and I 
 doubt still more if many of them have read through the 
 works of Apuleius, Golden Jss^ Florida^ Apology^ and 
 all. No one need read the Latin original, except those 
 
36 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 parts of the book which the translator declines to 
 print in English ; but it is all to be read in " Bohn's 
 Classical Library," and, in spite of its characteristic 
 brutalities, the Metamorphoses is highly entertaining. 
 Apuleius, an African, half-Numidian he says himself, 
 comes from Madaura, near the country where Italians 
 and Arabs are slaughtering one another now. He is 
 a rather mysterious person himself, and his various 
 writings are a startHng testimony to the clash that 
 filled the Roman world in the second century a.d., 
 between bestial and frivolous licence, spiritual mysti- 
 cism, ideal aspirations for a new Heaven and a new 
 earth, fierce asceticism, and preaching of the Sermon 
 on the Mount. Apuleius touches on all. In the 
 words of Dill — " the painter of the foulest scenes in 
 ancient literature, seems to have cherished the faith in 
 a heavenly King, First Cause of all nature. Father of 
 all hving things. Saviour of Spirits, beyond the range 
 of time and change, remote, ineffable." 
 
 One may read Cupid and Psyche in Pater's version, 
 and it looks as strange in the licentious fun of the 
 Golden Ass as if we had a long episode of Spenser's 
 Faery ^ueen stuck into the middle of Gulliver's 
 account of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms. But the 
 whole of the Golden Ass is curious and amusing. It 
 reminds one of some Italian romance of the Renascence, 
 now and then of the mediaeval myths of Tannhaiiser 
 or the Niblungs. The entire book of Metamorphoses 
 is a vivid proof that what we call the Middle Ages 
 were beginning under the early Empire — indeed that 
 the Renascence was interrupted and choked off pre- 
 maturely by the Christian propaganda which for 
 centuries had a hard struggle with Isis and Mithras. 
 Apuleius would have made a typical Humanist under 
 Leo X. — with all the literary agility, fancy, eloquence, 
 shamelessness, and vital energy of an Aretino or Cellini. 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 37 
 
 But to grasp the entire contradictions of such a 
 curiously versatile epoch, one ought to read the works 
 of Apuleius entire — and not just pick out Cupid and 
 Psyche^ nor even the Golden Jss alone. 
 
 It is quite an exploded error that Romance is a 
 modern invention, unknown to the ancients. Perhaps 
 small parts of the " six shilling novels " of Greece and 
 Rome have survived. But a {qv7 have passed the 
 monastic censorship ; and one wonders how the 
 magister scriptorii of mediaeval monasteries was induced 
 to sign his imprimatur^ or rather his scribatur^ to the 
 Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. This sweet and very 
 pagan story was written in Greek in the Eastern 
 Empire long after the formal adoption of Christianity, 
 about the time when Jerome composed the Vulgate 
 and Augustine wrote the City of God. There is not in 
 the prose idyll a trace of anything Christian, of any- 
 thing, indeed, but pure Hellenic naturalism. It is one 
 of the marvels of literary history that Greek imaginative 
 work was continuous from Homer to Longus, with 
 little break in the continuity of language and even of 
 tone, over no less than thirteen or fourteen centuries. 
 Comte thought so much of it that he put the Daphnis 
 and Chloe^ with Theocritus, in the Library ; and, in 
 the Calendar, Longus stands with Theocritus in the 
 month dedicated to Homer and ancient Poetry. 
 
 The Daphnis and Chloe of Longus, the Ethiopica 
 of Heliodorus, a Christian bishop, and the romance 
 of Achilles Tatius, are together in "Bohn's Classical 
 Library " in English. The translation of Daphnis and 
 Chloe which I know best is that by Amyot, Paris, 
 1559, revised and completed by Paul Louis Courier, 
 the mordant pamphleteer, in 18 10. In French this 
 charming idyll, the last dying swan song of ancient 
 Greece, makes a pleasant relief as one shakes the mind 
 free from the eternal torrent of up-to-date slang. 
 
38 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Though it is certainly erotic, in the fine Greek sense, 
 the naive innocence of the two children and the 
 graceful nature of the whole atmosphere are no more 
 evil than a Greek statue in the nude. 
 
 The copy which I sometimes take up is the Amyot 
 version, fantastically printed and got up by "Louys 
 Glady," of Pimlico, London, i2mo, 1878, idition de 
 luxe^ etc., on Turkey paper in parchment. This book 
 is quaintly printed in red and in blue ink alternately, 
 at the Chiswick Press, and my copy is signed by 
 Louys Glady — his motto being Gladio non Gladi — and 
 it has a preface by Alexandre Dumas, fils, written in the 
 old French of Amyot : Entre les escripts tratctant des 
 plaistrs d*amour^ oncques rCen vets plus gentil et plus 
 plaisant a painctures et couleurs plus fresches que ceste 
 pastorale dy Daphnis et ChloL This wonderful intro- 
 duction is printed alternately in red and blue ink with 
 not more than three words in a Hne and occupies 24 
 pages. It is a quaint caprice, but is pleasant to read, 
 the speeches in commas being all in red ink. So curious 
 a romance as the Daphnis and Chloe may bear a form 
 so fanciful, and I suppose unique, in its red, white, 
 and blue type, and Dumas fils, writing in the sixteenth- 
 century French, for a London publication of 1878 ! 
 
 I would not let it be supposed that I read all my 
 classics in translations, and have sworn ofF pure Latin 
 of the great time — especially that I do not care for 
 standard Ciceronian prose. I keep my old school and 
 college Ciceros at hand — Verrines^ Philippics^ Offices^ 
 Letters^ and so forth, and occasionally turn up a quot- 
 ation in the old texts. Like others who have had a 
 fair education, I have on my spare shelves the collective 
 works of Greek and Latin classics in single folio 
 or quarto volumes for reference.^ 
 
 ^ e.g. Ciceronh Opera Omnia, uno volumine comprehensa. C. T. A. 
 Nobbe. Folio, Nutt. London, 1850 j 
 
CH. II ANCIENT PROSE 39 
 
 In his Latin Literature (1895) — the most masterly 
 survey of the written language of any nation whatever 
 — Mr. J. W. Mackail has paid a splendid tribute to 
 Cicero as the creator of Latin style : — 
 
 "He created a language which remained for sixteen 
 centuries that of the civilised world, and used that language 
 to create a style which nineteen centuries have not replaced, 
 and in some respects have scarcely altered." 
 
 I can hardly go as far as that. myself, unless this 
 praise be Hmited to Cicero's later ethical and familiar 
 essays, and is not extended to his earlier political and 
 forensic orations. 
 
 Now that I have at last come to years of discretion, 
 there is nothing I find more soothing than Cicero's 
 garrulous commonplaces on Old Age and on Friend- 
 ship. Every man who has attained, or hopes to attain, 
 to Old Age, or who has, or who hopes to have, a 
 friend, should read Cato Major and Lalius. If he has 
 forgotten his Latin, there is a pleasant Httle duodecimo 
 in the " Gt)lden Treasury " series, the two essays 
 together, translated by E. S. Shuckburgh in 200 pages. 
 A pleasanter book for a quiet elderly man cannot be 
 found. But no one who has been through the fifth 
 form need be stopped from Cicero's really "Lower 
 School " Latin, especially if he gets help from Dr. 
 Shuckburgh's two editions of the Cato Major and the 
 Lcslius^ with notes, vocabulary, and illustrations. 
 These are in the " Classical " series, uniform with the 
 translation in the "Golden Treasury" series. 
 
 How soothing is it to us octogenarians to read in 
 the orator's stately sentences that we need not regard 
 
 Platonis Opera Omnia. G. Stallbaum. Folio, Nutt. London, 
 1850. 
 
 Of course, one does not read these, but turns up a passage, as in 
 Poetae Scenici Graeci. Dindorf, 18465 or, Corpus Poetarum Latinorum. 
 London, 1841. 
 
40 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 ourselves as useless crocks. He makes Cato say that 
 in his eighty-fourth year he is still listened to in the 
 Senate, and still performs his duty as a citizen. The 
 Republic does not want muscles in all its sons ; it 
 needs counsel, experience, moderation from some. 
 Each age of man has its own tasks, its proper powers, 
 and its special happiness. Ours, says old Cato, lies 
 in memory and in a sense of repose derived from long 
 converse with men and things. The illustrious Fabius, 
 he says, had that gravitas condita comitate — his dignity 
 was sweetened with courtesy (a good description of 
 Mr. Gladstone !) — nee senectus mores mutaverat — age 
 had brought no change in his manners or his character. 
 He certainly retained his alertness, as when he retorted 
 on Salinator, who nearly lost Tarentum — nisi tu 
 amisisses^ nunquam recepissem. 
 
 To sensible men who know how to use their lives, 
 says Cato, old age is by no means hard to bear. But 
 neither wealth nor honours can make it pleasant to 
 the unwise. Insipienti etiam in summa copia gravis. 
 How cheering are all the words he uses of placida et 
 lenis senectus as the natural end of the quiete et pure 
 et eleganter actae aetatis. And then he tells us about 
 Plato who died at his writing-desk in his eighty-first 
 year, about Gorgias working on at 107, and saying 
 to one who asked him how he felt — nihil habeo quod 
 accusem senectutem — how Sophocles refuted the charge 
 of senile imbecility by reciting in court the (Edipus 
 at Colonus^ which he had just written when approach- 
 ing the age of ninety — num illud carmen desipientis 
 videretur ! Would that the Gods could have made 
 a few more contemporaries of Sophocles so mad or so 
 senile — at least sufficiently sane to have preserved the 
 hundred and odd plays they allowed to perish. 
 
 Don't call us veterans useless, says Cato to his 
 young friends ! The helmsman on the ship sits very 
 
cH.ii ANCIENT PROSE 41 
 
 quietly at his post, and does not work his muscles 
 like the men at the oar or those aloft on the mast. 
 Non facit ea quae juvenes : at vero multo major a et 
 meliora facit. Non viribus aut velocitatibus aut celeri- 
 tate corporum res magnae geruntur^ sed consilio^ auctoritate^ 
 sententia ; quibus non modo non orbari^ sed etiam augeri 
 senectus solet. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 POETS THAT I LOVE 
 
 When our thoughts turn from the immortal books 
 of the ancient world to those of the modern, we begin 
 with Dante as the father of European literature, just 
 as all ancient literature sought its ancestry in Homer. 
 To me, Dante has ever been the source and fountain 
 of my love of great imaginative thought — 
 
 Tu se'lo mio maestro e il mio autore — 
 
 My Study of Dante and my love of him and his world 
 of art and thought are of no recent date. It was 
 exactly sixty years ago when I boldly began the study 
 of Italian with Dante for first text-book, being then 
 an undergraduate of Wadham College. And my first 
 master was Count Aurelio Saffi, in 1849, one of the 
 three triumvirs with Mazzini, who maintained the 
 heroic defence of Rome so well described by Mr. 
 George Trevelyan in his Life of Garibaldi. When, 
 in 1856, I was a student for the Bar in London, I 
 continued my lessons in Dante under Campanella, of 
 Milan, stern Republican of the Revolution, another 
 colleague of Mazzini. 
 
 Thus it comes that my interest in the language, 
 history, literature, and aspirations of Italy are all con- 
 centrated in Dante, and are idealised in his poem, 
 
 42 
 
CH. Ill POETS THAT I LOVE 43 
 
 and in memory they are coloured by my youthful 
 enthusiasm for the Mazzinian vision of a great 
 Risorgimento. When I was living in my father's 
 house, my evening devotions included, perhaps even 
 not seldom consisted of, a canto of the Commedia^ 
 which, having a fine baritone voice, I would often 
 j chant in my bedroom before I went to sleep. A dear 
 old grandmother who lay on the same floor, and was 
 disturbed in mind rather than in body by these 
 vespers, warned my parents that at Oxford I had been 
 " perverted " to Rome, for I used to say my prayers 
 in Latin. 
 
 In the 'fifties we had to hammer out our Dante 
 with but few of the translations, commentaries, and 
 " aids " which in this last half century have been 
 poured out in floods, Italian, French, German, English, 
 American, and Greek. I had that excellent prose 
 version of the Inferno^ by John A. Carlyle, brother 
 to Thomas, a version which Froude, in 1884, declared 
 to be " the best that exists." Of course, too, we had 
 Gary, which perhaps is still the most useful of the 
 verse translations ; but I cannot go with Ruskin's 
 wild outburst that it is grander than Paradise Lost. 
 Although men of far higher poetic gifts than Gary 
 have since tried their hand at verse translations, the 
 difficulties are so great, and any attempt to convey 
 the liquid vowels of the ter%a rima into our English 
 endings are so truly impracticable, that I doubt if 
 Gary for verse will easily be superseded. 
 
 But my counsel is_ to begin Italian. IkeratuFe-^th 
 
 /^thf t\ffprpn^ and fn \]^e ^ prO^P tr^nslatinn, I did this, 
 
 just as at nine years I began the study of Greek with 
 the Iliad. Dante is very difficult indeed to master 
 the sense, but not so, simply for the words. Thus : — 
 
 Fecemi la divina potestate, 
 
 La somma sapienza e il primo amore — 
 
44 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 is a very hard saying to accept, and this dogma has 
 been the crux of Theology ever since the time of 
 Thomas Aquinas. But no one who can construe a 
 Latin Delectus can mistake the words of Dante, which 
 are almost plain Latin. With a quite literal translation 
 on the opposite page, the Inferno is not at all difficult 
 in language. The admirably faithful and Biblical 
 prose of John Carlyle in the Inferno has been continued 
 for the Purgatorio and Paradiso in the same excellent 
 way by Arthur J. Butler, of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, who has now completed the entire poem 
 (1880- 1 892). And then for those who have leisure 
 for still more elaborate explanation and need more 
 special help, there are the learned Readings in Dante^ 
 by the Hon. W. Warren Vernon, in six volumes, to 
 which he has devoted more than twenty-five years of 
 his life. To master the whole product of this great 
 hereditary Dantist is t6 acquire an education in 
 mediaeval history. 
 
 In order to begin the study of Dante, I say, use 
 a prose translation, of which there are many in these 
 days. But the prose version which helped me most 
 was that of the Abb6 Lamennais, in rather antique 
 French (Paris, 3 vols., 8vo, 1856). The close relation 
 of old Italian and early French makes the transposition 
 perfectly natural and obvious : — 
 
 Per me si va tra la perduta gente — . 
 Par moi Ton va chez la race perdue — . 
 
 seem to me mere variations of one language. Using 
 this version, and with J. Carlyle and Cary, I worked 
 away on the text, which I interleaved, and therein 
 
 rprprdpfl XT^j pprt;nnql cpflprti'nriQ cvn thw pfViinl nnd 
 
 _reli gions p roble ms raised by th e poem . In those days, 
 
 when I was still in my tweritiegy I o ught to have be en 
 
 en ^ossed in Law reports ; so, perhaps, if D ante 
 
cH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 45 
 
 ruine d my profession al prospects, he did me good as 
 a rnanT 
 
 But now the young Dantist has a plethora of 
 books to turn for help — the massive learning of Dr. 
 Scartazzini, in four volumes, the noble essay of Dean 
 Church, the studies of J. Addington Symonds, of 
 Dr. E. Moore, of W. M. Rossetti, of Charles Eliot 
 Norton, of Dante G. Rossetti, of Walter Pater, of 
 Philip Wicksteed and Paget Toynbee, and the various 
 translations of Longfellow, Plumptre, Dr. Shadwell, 
 and I know not how many more. ^I have th em all, 
 and try the m all in turn. And then there is that 
 
 *~TnvaruabTe~e3rtion of Dr. Moore — Dante's entire 
 Works^ verse and prose, Latin and Italian, which in 
 430 pages gives in a single volume every word of the 
 poet that we possess ; and in the wonderful Oxford 
 India paper this is a volume hardly larger than a 
 collection of sonnets. As a younger man I used to 
 carry about the Pickering print of lire^'C^9«]?7r?zfepin 
 
 "^"diamond type, a miniature volume which would go in 
 a~waistcoat pocket, and could be used on a railway 
 
 ^"journey. I had the entire set of these bijou Pickerings, 
 '" classics, Sha k espeares "an d all, and T be1i eve~ T rnu lH 
 iise them^&tUl, But when I reached old age my wife 
 insisted on my giving them away — a sacrifice I still 
 deplore. But really the thin Oxford (Moore's) Dante 
 ought to be small enough for any one. And nothing 
 can be handier and daintier than the three volumes of 
 the "Temple Classics," edited by Israel Gollancz, 
 with translations and notes by Philip Wicksteed, 
 Thomas Okey, H. Oelsner, and Mabel Lawrence. 
 JTo be ignorantQf j)ante now is a mark of neglecte d 
 edu cati on. 
 
 After all, the essential for Dante is to read him 
 through — not in choice episodes as they did fifty or a 
 hundred years ago, but all together, ag^an -encyclopaedia 
 
46 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 of knowledge and_ of meditation. Xhe c hief o^ ect is 
 *^to try to realise^ what tBe greatest^ind ortKe Middl e 
 Ages had to tell to the mq dlg rn wo r lxTthat^ waL-about. 
 to[]5e"^5orn. Englishmen will not admit that Dante 
 was~the greatest of all poets, nor will Greek scholars 
 admit it. But no. one doubts that Dante was_the 
 ,jnigbtiest philosopher who ever used poetry as his 
 instrument of thought, and also the most profdu rfd 
 poet who ever ideaHsed the <^Q le cycte'^ f p r ev toa^ 
 ^history a ndTearning . ~I remembei a cmiuub instance 
 of the difficulty of mastering the full meaning of the 
 Commedia. I was reading the Purgatorio with 
 Campanella, himself a man of letters, when, having 
 finished one canto, I proposed to go on to the next. 
 " No ! " said my scrupulous teacher ; " I have not 
 made a study yet of the canto you propose to read. 
 No Italian scholar would pretend to make Dante 
 clear to a student until he had given his mind to it, 
 and had refreshed his memory of all the historic 
 allusions." 
 
 In Dante there is fa r more of philosop hy^ of 
 r eligion , o £ history, than_ in any other poet since 
 the world began, ancient or modern. In the grand 
 passage with which Dean Church opens his Essay : — 
 
 The Divina Commedia is one of the landmarks of 
 history. More than a magnificent poem, more than the 
 beginning of a language and the opening of a national 
 literature, more than the inspirer of art, and the glory of a 
 great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments 
 of the mind's power. 
 
 And so say all of us to whom Dante is the New Bible. ^ 
 
 Not only have I used almost all the editions, 
 translations, and commentaries of Dante published 
 in the last sixty years, but I wrote a Life of the poet i*! 
 for our Calendar of Great Men, I have seen the i' 
 
CH. Ill POETS THAT I LOVE 47 
 
 original drawings in the imperial edition at Sudbury 
 Park, on which Lord Vernon lavished his time and 
 fortune. I have seen the portrait in the Bargello 
 and the reputed house of Dante in the Via San 
 Martino. And_in i 8t;Q^ under the guidance of Count 
 Cappi, friend of B yron and the Gambas ^ I made a 
 "pilgrimage to the Tomb of the poet at Ravenna. So 
 that I am proud to be able to say — sono anche io 
 Dantista. 
 
 Devoted from youth to Dante as I am, I have 
 never given much thought to Petrarch, Ariosto, nor 
 Tasso, beyond taking them up occasionally in tempt- 
 ing editions. I have always had at hand the beautiful 
 Pickering print of Orlando Furioso^ edited by Antonio 
 Panizzi, 1834 ; but in spite of the exhortations of Dr. 
 Bridges, and the known admiration of Comte, who 
 classed Ariosto with Homer and Dante for enjoyment, 
 I never got further than a canto or two. I have the 
 translations of Sir John Harington and of Hoole, but 
 they only prove the impossibiHty of putting the charm 
 of Italian verse into English poetry. And when I 
 take up the English yerusalem of Fairfax or of Hoole, 
 it almost turns me against Tasso himself. I am quite 
 alive to the lovely music of the poet, and I did justice 
 to it when I wrote the Life of Tasso for the Calendar. 
 But I said "his honeyed cadences are apt to pall upon 
 the masculine taste." Much as I love chivalric ballads 
 and romantic adventures, the literary epic is an exotic 
 which I fail to enjoy. If I am ever tempted to open my 
 Tasso it is in the sumptuous antique copy I have — a 
 folio in the original parchment binding — printed in 
 double pica type, 32 lines to a tall folio page, with 
 tremendous illustrations in contemporary plates. Its 
 title-page runs thus : Gerusalemme Liberata — Con le 
 figure di Giambatista Piazzetta — Venezia^ ^745 — 
 Giambatista Albrizzi, But the trouble with these 
 
48 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 mighty folios is that one needs a cathedral lectern to 
 hold them. 
 
 A word or two for Boccaccio, for I am not about 
 to restrict the term poetry to verse. Poetry includ es 
 all making of imaginative creations in any for m. And 
 TKe Decamerone is the Humana Commedia of Italian 
 prose, its type and prime source. I have always read 
 my Boccaccio in the exquisite edition printed by 
 Pickering, London, 3 vols., 1825, and edited by Ugo 
 Foscolo. I do not beheve that in eighty-five years 
 British typographers have produced a volume more 
 pleasant to the eye. ' After hundreds of rivals in all the 
 languages of Europe, the Florentine tales of the Seven 
 Ladies and their three Courtiers retain their inimitable 
 freshness, grace, and charm. The spontaneous birth of 
 a prose style of Hmpid ease in the fourteenth century in 
 Italy, centuries before organic prose was written in Spain, 
 France, England, or Germany, is one of the problems 
 of history and a landmark of modern prose literature. 
 
 As to Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia^ I can just take 
 it up in a curious old edition of his Works^ 3 vols., 
 1725, that I have in the original binding, with quaint 
 woodcuts and tail-pieces, rather to see how slowly in 
 Europe a prose style developed than for any interest 
 in the interminable and tangled tales which strangely 
 delighted his sister and the contemporaries of Spenser 
 and Shakespeare. Philip Sidney as a hero yes ! but 
 as a prose romancer he is more than I can stand. 
 
 If we are to have the old-world romances, let us 
 take it in the form of Fabliaux ou Contes du xii^ et du 
 xiii^ siecle. I do not mean in the scholarly texts of 
 Montaiglon and Raynaud, 6 vols., 1872- 1890. I have 
 no time to get up old French, and I am no antiquarian 
 hnguist ; and I am too lazy to get familiar even with 
 *i::^ Chaucer, the great poet of Fabliaux. No ! I read the 
 prose version, translation, and adaptation of the old 
 
CH. Ill POETS THAT I LOVE 49 
 
 songs by Le Grand d'Aussy, 1779, which I have in 
 four deH^tful volumes with the contemporary binding 
 and plates. The notes of Le Grand are an essential 
 part of the book, which is a picture of the feudal, 
 troubadour, popular side of the Middle Ages, as the 
 Divine Comedy and Saint Bernard's Letters are of the 
 spiritual and intellectual side. Here is the esprit Gaulois 
 in all its audacious profan ity, it s nakedness, i ts diablerie 
 — prophetic of Rabelais, Voltaire, and Diderot. How 
 democratic, how revolutionary, how anti-clerical are 
 "Tiese boTd jests. Was there ever a madder bit of wit 
 than the Villain qui gagna Paradis en plaignant^ or 
 that of the Jongleur en Enfer^ or the U Anneau nuptial 
 de la Vierge ? We hardly conceive such Voltairean 
 ribaldry as possible in the Ages of Faith ; but in spite 
 of all the monkeries, and sermons, and penances, and 
 excommunications of Holy Church, throughout all 
 the centuries between Claudian and Diderot, there was 
 never wanting an audience, both popular and scholarly, 
 for the freest wit and the wildest cynicism of the 
 ancient as well as of the modern world. 
 
 And the Fabliaux^ which Comte, for historical 
 reasons, included in his Positivist Library, alongside 
 of the four great poets of the Italian Renascence, 
 certainly have their serious side. Le Grand did his 
 work excellently well. I can read the famous tale of 
 Patient Griselda in his version even after reading 
 Boccaccio's rather overpraised concluding piece in 
 Giornata Decima^ Novella X, And to my taste, the 
 Aucassin et Nicolette^ as told by Le Grand in vol. ii., 
 p. 180, is as good as any other form of the immortal 
 tale. And as to grim tragedy I know nothing better 
 than La Chatelaine de Vergy in vol. ii., p. 196, which 
 is as fierce and redolent of troubadour love, jealousy, 
 and revenge as anything in poetry. For my part, I 
 would read these romances of feudal times and the 
 
50 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Courts of Love in prose rather than in verse. The 
 quaint naivet^ of old French prose is far more real and 
 living than any kind of verse, which the exigencies of 
 metre must make more or less artificial. 
 
 My love for the romance of the Spanish Cid 
 Campeador dates from childhood, when in the fine old 
 Penny Magazine of the 'forties I enjoyed Sir George 
 Dennis' Chronicle and Ballads of the national hero — 
 
 Rodericus, mio Cid semper vocatus. 
 
 'Good old "Penny Mag"! My boyish ideas of 
 chivalry were nurtured on its " Cid," its Nihelunglied^ 
 ^nd English Ballads with spirited woodcuts. The 
 true way to read the Poem of the Cid is in the fine 
 quarto volume by Damas Hinard, Paris, 1858, made 
 for the Empress Eugenie, having the text of the whole 
 poem, 3740 lines, with literal French version on the 
 opposite page and annotations. I have also a French 
 translation by St. Albin, 1865, and a pretty and 
 handy version, part verse, part prose, by John Ormsby, 
 1879. This Httle volume is by the author of the 
 splendid English Don ^ixote^ in 4 vols., 1885. 
 Ormsby's neat handbook must lead a reader to the 
 entire poem in the original. Old poems can be trans- 
 lated only in prose. And I always hold the Poem of 
 the Cid^ perhaps composed not very much later than 
 the hero who was a contemporary of William the 
 Conqueror, to be the earliest of the national romances 
 of Europe, and to be one of the most genuine pictures 
 of early Feudal life that has come down to us. Its 
 native realism is far more true than the modern 
 adaptations of Spanish Ballads ; and Ormsby is as safe 
 a guide as we can have. How effective is the fanciful 
 and no doubt late heraldic shield from the tomb — the 
 crossed swords Colade and Tizon, the field verty 
 enclosed in the chain of sentence, and in the centre 
 
cH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 51 
 
 hangs the Greek cross which held a fragment of the 
 true cross. The historic Cid was a compound of all 
 three sons of our own Conqueror, with a dash of 
 Coeur de Lion, and a figure more worthy of belief 
 than the superfine hero of the later poets. After the 
 grim old Poem^ Lockhart's Cid Ballads read like words 
 for a modern song, and Corneille's Cid smacks of 
 C. Perrault's Contes. 
 
 A favourite mediaeval book of mine was Froissart's 
 Chronicles^ translated by Thomas Johnes, 2 vols., 4to, 
 1839, with abundant illustrations, occasionally copied, 
 but too often "adapted," from contemporary illumin- 
 ated MSS. I think that, in my school days, I read 
 through these huge quartos of 1500 pages more than 
 once, and the pictures, badly " faked " as they were, 
 remain in my eyes to this hour. My prize essay at 
 K.C.S. on the Age of Edward IIL, I know, was 
 largely drawn from these fascinating volumes. I have 
 the Monstrelet of the same series, also by Thomas 
 Johnes, 2 vols., 4to, 1840. It never enchanted me as 
 did the Froissart. When we get into the fifteenth 
 century the colour and the spell of the Middle Ages 
 have gone. However, for a schoolboy, the four 
 volumes, covering the history of Europe from 1326 to 
 15 1 6, was a very fair compendium of mediaeval annals, 
 especially in the personal and biographical form of 
 Froissart and Monstrelet. Ugh ! with what gritty 
 manuals, full of dates, genealogies, and maps, are lads 
 stuffed, like geese for pdtis de foie gras^ when being 
 crammed on a narrow "period" for their next 
 exam. ! 
 
 My own interest in the Catho1ic^and-F#»dal-JVges 
 
 has always lain in the poetic and artistic side of it, 
 
 not on the historic records of events — in Michaud's 
 
 IJroisades^ Milman's Latin Christianity^ some chronicles 
 
 in Migne's Patrologia^ and the art work of Paul 
 
52 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Lacroix, of Jules Labarte, Viollet-le-Duc, and Ruskin. 
 One who will try to make a serious study of the Gothic 
 cathedrals of Europe, of the ancient castles and city 
 remains, with competent books of reference — such as 
 Avignon, Carcassonne, Pierrefonds, Verona, Florence 
 — will really understand the Middle Ages better than 
 one who had spent twenty years in spelling out the 
 entire series of the Patrologia Latina. Dante, Ariosto, 
 Boccaccio, Fabliaux, chansons, cathedrals, castles, 
 ramparts, and towers — these are the history^ of Catholic 
 Feudalism — there exists no other. ^ 
 
 It was, no doubt, my love of the poetry and art of 
 the Middle Ages which has tempered my interest in 
 the two great inimitable satirists of Catholicism and 
 Feudalism — Rabelais and Cervantes. Of cours£^I 
 ^ mire as much as any o ne the inexhaustible wit of 
 the Frenchman, and the Shakespearean wisdom and 
 humour of the Spaniard. I feel them both to belong 
 to the forefront of the modern literature of the world. 
 All I mean is that I do not heartily take to them — 
 'go back on them — carry them with me on a journey. 
 I have both, in the original and in famous translations, 
 and also I have Gargantua and Paritagruel^ with the 
 illustrations of Gustave Dore, whose fertile and 
 extravagant imagination, with a pencil that defies 
 _sgnifyj ^^xf^ncy^ and pafurf ^It'l^-pj seems curiously akin 
 to the madcap genius of Rabelais. I was one of the 
 subscribers to the new translation of 1893, by W. F. 
 Smith, of Cambridge and the Rabelais Club. But 
 wi th all that I don*t take to it. 
 
 I remember that as a young man I fel t a positiv e 
 detestatioi^ Jpr Don Quixote. My sympathies were 
 entirely with the Don, whom I fondly bel ieve d to be 
 one of the noblest and sweetest souls in rom ance. At 
 that age one judges with the heart more than with 
 the head, and I was not philosopher enough to under- 
 
cH.iii POETS THAT 1 LOVE 53 
 
 stand that Cervantes ranks with Shakespeare and 
 Moliere as having the profoundest knov^^ledge of 
 human nature. It took me years to get over my 
 t dislike of practical jokes played upon the heroic 
 ^ knight and lover. I find the Spanish of Don Quixote 
 difficult, as I find the French of Gargantua difficult, 
 and I use translations for both. And I also possess 
 the quarto edition oi Don ^uixote^ w^ith the illustrations 
 of Gustave Dore, v^^hich are less extravagant and more 
 locally true than his Rabelais fantasies. I use now for 
 Don ^ixote the scholarly and graceful translation by 
 John Ormsby, 4 vols., 1885, with Introduction^ life, 
 and notes. This fine Spanish scholar has now recon- 
 ciled me to follow the grotesque adventures of the 
 chevalier. And I quite see the truth of Comte's 
 judgment of "that marvellous composition, in which 
 Cervantes so naturally gathers all the family affections 
 round a character of the most eccentric individuality, 
 striking out at the same time, though he was not 
 aware of it, the true theory of madness, i.e.^ of sub-^ 
 jective ideas overwhelming objective impressions, and/ 
 so running wild without regard to external facts ! " 
 
 The French Fabliaux verbally recall Fables in our 
 sense, though of course the Fabliaux are mainly 
 romances in verse, with occasional Fables^ such as 
 Le Chien et le Serpent^ i.e. the story of Llewelyn and 
 his dog Gelert. The original of this is Eastern, and 
 is adapted from the fables of Pilpay, or Bid-pai, the 
 Hindoo ^sop. The larger part of the Fables known 
 to Europe, and very many of the romances, such as 
 that of Tell or Griselda, were drawn from the East. 
 The Pilpay fables are the residuum of Eastern moral 
 lessons that go back far beyond iEsop or any Greek 
 or European source. They come to us from Indian, 
 then Persian, and Italian and French adaptations. I 
 know not if any one now reads Pilpay. I fear that 
 
54 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Research has smothered up old Bfdpdf in learned 
 disquisitions about language. But I read the quaint 
 stuff in a dirty old i2mo, .an EngHsh version, 1789, 
 with coarse primitive woodcuts to each fable, which 
 keeps the original calf binding. A frowsy little book 
 not worth one shilling at an open bookstall, with its 
 faded type, absurd eighteenth-century woodcuts, and 
 the racy talk that Swift made familiar. To my mind, 
 the easy vernacular of the English and the childish 
 pictures at every other page, fall in with the homely 
 wit and wisdom and the primeval good sense of the 
 immortal " beast-epic." 
 
 I am free to admit that Bfdpaf, whom nobody now 
 reads for amusement, is often quite as good as ^sop, 
 jy^ sometimes better as far nearer to the mind of our 
 I Fetichist ancestors, who trained for us the dog, the 
 [ cat, the horse, and the cow. As for ^sop, I read him 
 in a tall folio (really a modern facsimile, of course of 
 no bibhographical value, but exactly reproducing an 
 original), the Fables of Msop and other eminent Mytho- 
 logists^ with Morals and Reflections^ by Sir Roger 
 U Estrange^ Kt.^ London^ i66g. ... It has a wonder- 
 ful frontispiece representing the dwarf and hunch- 
 backed fabulist, surrounded by all manner of beasts, 
 and inscribing his roll utile dulci. The text is printed 
 very black, in " great primer," about 40 lines to a tall 
 folio — headings are in very big " Old English " type, 
 and the calf binding is a facsimile of that of 1669. 
 This is just the book to recall our childish delight 
 in the immortal apophthegms. I enjoy the rowdy 
 knight's King Charles II. slang. 
 
 As a Cock was turning up a Dunghill, he spy'd a 
 Diamond, Well (says he to himself), this sparkling 
 Foolery now to a Lapidary in my place, would have been 
 the Making of him ; but as to any purpose of mine, a 
 Barley-Corn had been worth Forty on't. 
 
CH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 55 
 
 L*Estrange's vernacular is that which an old carter 
 might use in a roadside tavern. 
 
 A slam (? slim) Thin-Gutted Fox made a hard shift 
 to Wriggle his Body into a Hen-Roost, and when he had 
 Stuflf'd his Guts well, he squeez'd hard to get out again ; 
 but the Hole was too Little for him. There was a 
 Weazle a pretty way off, that stood Learing at him all 
 This While. Brother Reynard (says he). Your Belly was 
 Empty when you went In, and you must e'en stay till 
 Your Belly be Empty again, before you come Out. 
 
 Did Thomas Carlyle get his love of capitals from 
 Sir Roger ? 
 
 I rather prefer to read old books as nearly as 
 possible in j:he form of the original, always providing 
 the spelHng or the antique language does not get 
 troublesome, for I am no student of archaic style, and 
 too busy to get up Anglo-Saxon, Old French, or Old 
 English. And as I have neither the taste nor the 
 purse to indulge in rare first editions, I am ashamed 
 to confess that I am content with a facsimile reprint. 
 Now and then a bibliographical friend presents me 
 with a fine old copy, which I guard with care, and 
 now and then open. One such is an early quarto 
 edition of the Epistles of S. Catherine of Siena — 
 Epistole et Orationi della seraphica vergine Santa 
 Catherina da Siena — In Vinetia appresso Federico 
 ToresanOy MDxlvin, This book was printed at 
 Venice the year following the reign of our Henry 
 VUL, in 305 pp., double column, con la sua tavola^ 
 i.e.^ with a quaint portrait of the Seraphic Virgin 
 being crowned with three crosses by two angels. 
 The inscription above her image runs thus : Transit 
 (? Transiit) ad sponsum tribus exornata coronis^ she 
 holding in the right hand the crucifix, the martyr's 
 palm, her lily emblem, and her book of Epistles ; in 
 
56 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 the left hand she holds the burning heart of Jesus — 
 but no stigmata are visible. In it are various Epistles 
 to Popes Gregory XI. and Urban VI. from " Catherina 
 indegna e miserahile vostra figliola : serva e schiava 
 di servi di Jesu Christo.^* Then follow letters to 
 cardinals, nuntios, abbots, and fathers, whom she 
 stimulates and lectures as if she were headmistress of a 
 high school, even writing so to an archbishop. She 
 certainly induced the miserable Gregory to leave 
 Avignon. She preaches to the King of France as 
 if she were his Father Confessor. I turned to the 
 famous Letter of Catherine to Brother Raymond, of 
 Capua, Letter cii., p. 92, describing her consolation 
 given to Nicolas Tuldo, a young man of Perugia, 
 executed at Rome, whom she visited in prison, assisted 
 on the scaffold as his confessor, and took up his 
 bloody head in her bosom. The story is given by 
 Milman, in Latin Christianity^ v. 391. 
 
 This is the story of the saint's intense love and 
 charity, immortalised in Swinburne's beautiful poem, 
 Siena : — 
 
 And the house, midway hanging, see 
 That saw Saint Catherine bodily, 
 Felt on its floors her sweet feet move, 
 And the live light of fiery love 
 Burn from her beautiful strange face, 
 As in the sanguine sacred place 
 Where, in pure hands, she took the head 
 Severed, and with pure lips still red 
 Kissed the dead lips. 
 
 But it is interesting to read her ecstatic letter about 
 the culprit being taken up to Christ, in a book 
 printed in Italy, in the year of our first Protestant 
 king, and in the heyday of Loyola and Saint Theresa. 
 Another fine old book that we owe to a biblio- 
 graphical friend is Corneille's verse translation or 
 paraphrase of the Imitation, of 1658. It is a quarto in 
 
cH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 57 
 
 its original stout binding U Imitation de yesus-Christ 
 par P. Corneille^ Rouen^ par. L. Maurry^ m.dc.hiii. It 
 has some good plates — Christ giving the Sermon on 
 the Mount, the Annunciation, the Call of Peter, and 
 the Last Supper, all by F. Chauneau. I don't know 
 if they read Corneille's paraphrase now ; it is in the 
 Positivist Library, and I have it in modern reprints. 
 But it is interesting to read it in a volume published 
 at Rouen in the lifetime of the poet under his own 
 eyes. There is no lofty verse certainly in the para- 
 phrase — but it has ample evidence of what Corneille 
 himself called his plume facile. Here is a specimen : — 
 On the Sacrament, Boole iv., c. 2 : 
 
 Je cherche en alt^r^ la fontaine de vie, 
 Je cherche en afFame le pain vivifiant, 
 Et c'est sur cet espoir que mon dme ravie 
 Au Monarque du Ciel presente un mandiant. 
 
 The Latin in the margin reads thus : — 
 — accedo aeger ad Salvatorem^ esuriens et sitiens ad 
 fontem vitae^ egenus ad Regem Cceli. 
 For my part, Corneille and Comte notwithstanding, 
 I much prefer the original Latin. 
 
 Because I occasionally take up the iprohne /acetiae 
 of the Fabliaux, or a Rabelais, or smile at the gross 
 vernacular of L'Estrange, it must not be assumed that 
 I have ceased to care for serious and even devotional 
 books. Besides the Imitation by Corneille I have I 
 don't know how many editions, both Latin and 
 English. One is the text printed from the original 
 autograph (so called), Berlin, 1874; another is a 
 Leipsic edition of the Latin text, 1867, sm. 8vo, pp. 
 346, each page of text being inclosed in broad square 
 margins of illustrations well copied from German 
 -manuscript pictures. Another very pleasant edition is 
 the English version, published by Kegan, Paul & Co., 
 
58 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 i2mo, 1 88 1, as one of the Parchment Series of 
 Handbooks, with a fine engraved frontispiece by Sir 
 W. Richmond. This is beautifully printed at the 
 Chiswick Press, and is a really dainty book to handle 
 and pleasant to the eye. 
 
 It happens that I have a personal interest in this 
 edition, which, after thirty years have passed since its 
 publication, I need not scruple to make public. Mr. 
 Kegan Paul, an old friend of mine, and once closely 
 in touch with our Positivist body, took much interest 
 in the new edition of the Imitation^ which he was 
 commissioned by Cardinal Newman, of the Oratory, 
 to publish. Kegan Paul came to me one day and 
 asked me if I would undertake the English translation 
 for the Cardinal. I naturally hesitated, saying that his 
 Eminence would hardly care to put it in my hands. 
 "I have already consulted him," said Kegan Paul, 
 "and he is quite willing to have you as a translator — 
 adding that he would himself see that the theology 
 was sound, and all that he wanted was an accurate 
 translation in perfectly pure English." I confess my 
 modesty shrank from such a test of my literary 
 resources, and I declined the responsibility. But I 
 have always remembered it as one of the most graceful 
 compliments which I ever received since I could hold 
 a pen. 
 
 Neither Dante, nor k Kempis, nor Cardinal 
 Newman, " converted " me to Catholicism, for I am 
 just as fond of my Milton. And I am a devout 
 believer in the great Puritan Allegory of John Bunyan, 
 which Macaulay declares to be the only work of its 
 class with a strong human interest. Dr. Johnson, 
 Tory and critic as he was, said the PilgrinCs Progress 
 was one of the few books he could read to the end, 
 and he wished it had been longer. There I think 
 Johnson was wrong, for the allegory, as Macaulay 
 
cH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 59 
 
 shows, will not bear to be spun out to minute analogies. 
 I hope every one knows Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan, 
 one of the best in his whole series ; for his great 
 knowledge of the age and his political and religious 
 detachment enable him, as Whig and moderate 
 Churchman, to judge the Puritan enthusiast truly. 
 
 What is so strange of Bunyan's book is, that 
 Catholics, Calvinists, Anglicans, and Agnostics all 
 alike fall under its spell. There is even a Catholic 
 PilgrinCs Progress^ omitting Giant Pope, and there 
 are translations in almost every known language. 
 Comte put Bunyan beside a Kempis, and at .Newton 
 Hall^ \ ye ni ade_a^.^ilgri mage to h is grave in Bunhill 
 Pields an d to his p rison_ at Bedford. P^A we joined 
 in raisirfg the Memorial to him in the Abbey. 
 
 Indeed, another of my cheap facsimiles of old books 
 is that of the first edition of Pilgrirns Progress^ made 
 by Elliot Stock, with great care and meticulous atten- 
 tion to the minutest detail, from the unique extant 
 copy of 1678. The title-page of this curious relic is 
 worth setting out in full. 
 
 It is curious that Bunyan uses the word similitude 
 — instead of allegory. He must have known this word, 
 which occurs once in the Bible, Gal. iv. 24, and is 
 there used correctly for a "figurative discourse" as 
 Johnson explains it. The word similitude occurs ten 
 times in the Bible in the narrow sense of " likeness, 
 resemblance " (Johnson) ; and Bunyan's " Dream " is 
 a true allegory, and not a mere simile or resemblance. 
 Perhaps the sonorous Greek word seemed to the tinker 
 in prison rather too grand. 
 
 The book was published in the crisis of the Popish 
 Plot and the national excitement which preceded the 
 Election of 1679, so powerfully described by Macaulay 
 in his History y vol. i. chap. ii. 
 
6o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 THE 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress 
 
 FROM 
 
 THIS WORLD, 
 
 TO 
 
 That which is to Come : 
 
 Delivered under the Similitude of a 
 
 DREAM 
 
 Wherein is discovered, 
 
 The manner of his setting out, 
 
 His Dangerous journey ; And safe 
 
 Arrival at the Desired Countrey. 
 
 / ha've ufed Similitudes^ Ho/. 12, 10. 
 
 By John Bunyan. 
 £iccnfcb an6 (£ntrc5 accorbing to (2)r6er. 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 Printed for Nath. Ponder at the Peacock 
 
 in the Poultrey near Cornhil^ 1678. 
 
CH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 6i 
 
 Of course the reprint only contains the First Part 
 — with the entrance into Paradise of Hopeful and 
 Christian, and the dismissal to Hell of Ignorance — 
 " Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from 
 the Gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of 
 Destruction. So I awoke, and behold it was a Dream." 
 I confess I do not care so much for the Second Part, 
 with Christiana and her children and Mr. Greatheart, 
 though of course it is popular with young people, and 
 has some new and fine things — such as the man with 
 /Vthe Muckrake in the Interpreter's House, and other 
 parables j and the land of Beulah, and the end of 
 Christiana are pleasant. But, as a whole, the Second 
 Part is to me too domestic, too much of a good 
 book on Sunday for children, with the Catechism, 
 and oh ! the prim marriages on the Pilgrims' Progress 
 to Paradise ! What dainty young ladies are the little 
 Christiankins in Stothard's graceful vignettes ! It is 
 far too intricate, too like an everyday novel, with a 
 sort of mild Sunday-school tone in the discussions 
 hardly veiled. 
 
 I once took the trouble to compare the original of 
 1678 Part I. with an edition of the completed text 
 issued by the Religious Tract Society from Bunyan's 
 last additions. I found that the added matter filled 
 35 pages out of 185, nearly one -fifth. The new 
 matter is thus described : — 
 
 1. The second paragraph of the opening giving 
 Christian's return home to his wife and children after 
 his cry — " What shall I do?^^ This is a bathos, after 
 the magnificent opening of the Dream. How could 
 Bunyan with his genius for speech adopt the phrase in 
 Acts ii., rather than that in Acts xvi., 30 — " What 
 shall I do to be saved ? " This comes only in the 
 revised edition. 
 
 2. Worldly Wiseman of the city Carnal Policy 
 
62 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 and his long dialogue (pp. 21-30 inclusive) is not in 
 the first edition ; and it rather hampers the action. 
 
 3. Mr. Legality is an added character. 
 
 4. Also the dialogue of Charity and Christian. 
 
 5. Three pages (103-105) — the dialogue of Evan- 
 gelist, Faithful, and Christian — is an afterthought. 
 
 6. Mr. By-ends' account of the tow^n of Fair- 
 Speech. 
 
 7. The whole of the discussion between By-ends, 
 Money-love, and Save-all (pp. 121- 127) is new. 
 
 8. The story of Lot's wife, Korah, etc. (pp. 130- 
 
 132)- 
 
 9. Giant Despair's wife — Diffidence (pp. 136-141). 
 
 10. The Shining Company at the gate of the 
 Celestial City (pp. 192-193). 
 
 To my taste, all these additions to Bunyan's first 
 draft rather retard the action and the intensity of the 
 picture, and introduce the elements of argumentative 
 homily and of ingenious enigma. We are told that 
 the Pilgrim'' s Progress was originally written as a 
 private meditation in prison, without any thought of 
 publication. The extended version was composed 
 when the author was famous, and it loses the intense 
 simplicity of the first draft. The Second Part, six 
 years later, shares the fate of so many additions to 
 great masterpieces. To my mind, it is what Paradise 
 Regained is to Paradise Lost. To sum up my im- 
 pressions, after comparing the original draft of 1678, 
 with the tenth, his final edition of 1685, I distinctly 
 prefer the early and simple forms of the immortal 
 Protestant Divine Comedy. When Bunyan was 
 tempted by his popularity to sermonise and lavish on 
 successive versions his amazing resources of invention, 
 the tremendous sincerity and vitality of his Dream 
 began to be obscured by his own literary versatility. 
 Men should read Pilgrim^s Progress only in the text 
 
CH.iii POETS THAT I LOVE 63 
 
 of 1678. Children will always delight in the family- 
 picnic of the Second Part, and may be usefully 
 catechised in the various dialogues finally inserted in 
 the original text. 
 
 As I opened this paper with Dante, I end it with 
 Milton — the English poet to whom I most often turn. 
 In our Calendar^ Milton closes the month of Dante ; 
 our Library includes Paradise Lost and the Lyrical 
 Poems ; and in the Life of Milton which I wrote for 
 our volume of Worthies I cited Comte's estimate of 
 " the inimitable Epic as the highest measure of Man's 
 poetic powers." Having had my say about Milton in 
 our joint book of Biographies, I need say no more 
 here about Epic or lyrics. The 500 lines of the three 
 great lyrical poems have, as I wrote, " every quality of 
 poetry in literal perfection," and Paradise Lost has 
 "music and conceptions even more sustained and 
 enthralling, such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer 
 alone can match." 
 
 In the 'forties, at King's College School, we had 
 to learn by heart books of the Paradise Lost^ which 
 we studied critically, with annotations, " parallel 
 passages," and other stufF of the kind, which perhaps 
 did us more harm than good. At Wadham, on the 
 appearance of my name in the Class List of Easter, 
 1853, ^^^ college presented me with the Works of 
 Milton, in the handsome edition of 1851, 8 vols. 8vo, 
 printed by William Pickering, from the original 
 editions, with the Life by John Mitford. This 
 sumptuous book was solidly bound in antique calf, 
 with the college arms on the cover, and old Ben 
 Symons' Latin inscription. It has been my lifebelt in 
 the storms of modern literature now for almost sixty 
 years, though I fear it has ruined my spelling for life, 
 for the poet wrote — 
 
 And justifie the wayes of God to men 
 
64 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Years ago at Newton Hall I led a pilg Timag;e to vj sit 
 the tom b of the poet in ij t. ^•^'I^'^^j ^ :r7pplpg;afp : and 
 on attoTKer occasion to the antique cottage at Chalfont 
 to which he retreated during the plague and wrote his 
 Paradise Regained. To Milton I say — 
 
 What in me is dark illumine, 
 What is low raise and support. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 If twenty well-read men and women were asked to 
 name the greatest Biography in ancient and then in 
 modern literature, nineteen of them would reply off- 
 hand — Why, Plutarch's Lives and Boswell's Johnson, 
 Everybody has read these two books from their earliest 
 days J and the highest authorities since Montaigne, 
 Henri IV., Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Carlyle, have 
 agreed that these two are the supreme masters of the 
 fascinating and popular art of writing Lives of famous 
 men. 
 
 Montaigne tells us that the Parallel Lives alone 
 might form a good education ; Henri IV. said, Plutarch 
 was his very conscience to guide him in his public duty; 
 to Shakespeare, in his three ancient plays, Plutarch 
 was what Holinsbed was for his " Histories." A 
 French critic calls the Lives one of the noblest books 
 of which humanity has to boast; it offers us "an 
 encyclopaedia of the ancient world." And it has been 
 said of old — "if all other books were destroyed, we 
 could still recover some picture of antiquity provided 
 Plutarch survived." 
 
 And as to Boswelfs Johnson^ similar praises are 
 lavished. " Boswell," says Macaulay, " is the first of 
 biographers. He has no second. He has distanced 
 
 6s F 
 
66 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 all his competitors." Again he adds, though he was 
 a bore, a toady, and a fool, he has written "one of the 
 best books in the world." And Carlyle, who under- 
 stood Bozzy much better than Macaulay, says that his 
 portrait of Johnson "is a more free, perfect, sunlit and 
 spirit-speaking Hkeness than for many centuries had 
 been drawn by man of man. Scarcely since the days 
 of Homer has the feat been equalled : indeed, in many 
 senses, this also is a kind of Heroic Poem." And 
 Carlyle does not scruple to say of what he calls the 
 'Johnsoniad^ that Boswell's book, though it is but a 
 memoir of the conversation of one man, will give us 
 more real insight into the History of England than 
 twenty books of professed historians. And much the 
 same has been often said — and is more truly said — of 
 Plutarch's Parallel Lives. 
 
 That being so, says some reader in a hurry (all 
 readers nowadays are in a hurry), why talk about 
 Plutarch and Boswell ? Have you anything new to 
 tell us about them ? Certainly not ! I reply ; for I 
 have no pretension to be either scholar, or critic, or 
 professor, or one having authority in things of the 
 mind. All that I have to say about Plutarch, or 
 Boswell, or any one else I mention in these stray 
 papers is : Read them, read them again ! My tachy- 
 dromic and polymathic friend says : I have read them, 
 read them years ago ! 
 
 Well ! we know that ; every one has read them in 
 early days ; but have you not forgotten all but a few 
 anecdotes, hurried over the wise rules of life, canons 
 of judgment, pregnant maxims of Plutarch the just 
 moralist and of Johnson the downright judge ? Of 
 course everyone remembers the story of Aristeides 
 writing his own name on the shell, or of Alcibiades 
 cutting off the tail of his pedigree hound, in order 
 to get into the Daily Mail of Athens, or of Alexander 
 
cH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 67 
 
 and Bucephalus, or of Alexander and Diogenes in his 
 tub, just as every one knows about Alfred's cakes. 
 But the point I am asking is this : Have you read 
 Plutarch since your school days ? Do you really 
 know all his thousand and one pictures of the antique 
 world so well, that you never turn to him now in 
 later life ? I strongly suspect that few persons could 
 honestly say as much. 
 
 It would be quite to misunderstand the scope of 
 these occasional notes of mine to look upon them as 
 offering any criticism or essay about famous books, 
 much less as promising anything new about well- 
 known writers. Like the Sapphic but needy knife- 
 grinder, story I have none to tell ; nor even so much 
 as any new light of criticism. My only purpose is to 
 tell what I have been reading myself, why I am still 
 in my old age enjoying the old books. As I keep on 
 saying, I am nothing of a scholar and never have been 
 a great reader. But still in my years of leisure and 
 retirement, I am reading over again the famous books 
 of one's youth — am enjoying them hugely, and per- 
 petually find in them things I had forgotten or missed. 
 
 There has been of late a happy revival of interest 
 in Plutarch and other writers of Imperial times, whom 
 the pedantry of the latter half of the nineteenth century 
 condemned for their poor Greek and their doubtful 
 Latin. But Mahaffy, and Bury, and Dill, and Warde 
 Fowler, Mackail, Vernon Arnold, H. E. Butler, and 
 others are making these most interesting writers 
 known ; and so Plutarch, and Lucian, and Marcus 
 Aurelius, Epictetus, Apuleius, Petronius, Ausonius, 
 Symmachus, and Claudian, and the author of Per- 
 vigilium Veneris are become again living and familiar 
 voices to us to-day. And we are beginning to see, 
 with no Httle surprise and misgiving, that these mystics 
 and philosophers, and these cynics and satirists, make 
 
68 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 these lively times of imperial decadence more akin to 
 ourselves than the Thucydides and Aristotle, the Livy, 
 Cassar, and Cicero de Officiis^ to w^hich in old days our 
 learning w^as confined. There is now no need to read 
 in the original crabbed Greek either Plutarch, or 
 Marcus Aurelius, or Epictetus. George Long and 
 other scholars have done all these excellently vi^ell. 
 Nor need anyone be troubled with late Latin of the 
 silver age now, for the poetry and the prose from 
 Virgil and Cicero down to Ammianus and Boethius 
 are more easily read with good versions in modern 
 tongues. The folly of the older schools, in their zeal 
 for pure Greek and Ciceronian Latin, closed to us 
 books in which we had everything to enjoy and even 
 much to learn. 
 
 And now for the Prince of Biographers — I say the 
 Prince — for no other writer has ever written the lives 
 of fifty great men of action extending in time over 
 some seven centuries, ranging in space from the 
 Euphrates to the Tagus, and drawn from an immense 
 library of Memoirs in various languages and of 
 different ages. Besides these fifty Lives there were 
 fourteen others that are lost, and amongst them at 
 least four of prime importance — Epaminondas, Scipio, 
 Augustus, and Tiberius. There is no compendium 
 of history on such a scale unless it be Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall, 
 
 No one now trusts Plutarch as an historical authority 
 for events. We have heard enough of his inaccuracies 
 and his credulity, his confusion of dates and even of 
 persons, and his love of gossip in lieu of critical research. 
 But when all this is admitted, what wonderful pictures 
 of men and of a bygone world, what wise reflections, 
 what sound judgment, what a treasury of myth, poetry, 
 anecdote, and maxim. I dare say, as Bury says, 
 Lycurgus was a god, not a man. And Romulus was 
 
cH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 69 
 
 as mythical as King Brute. But as kinematographic 
 pictures of ancient Greece, these Lives are worth 
 libraries of mere annals. Plutarch being a Greek 
 with a limited knowledge of Rome and of Latin, 
 is not so good with Romans. But his Lives of 
 Aristeides and Themistocles, of Pericles and Alcibiades, 
 of Demosthenes, and, above all, of Alexander, are 
 delightful reading, full of life and thought and wisdom. 
 I can read them again and again to-day. And it is a 
 mistake to think that our school reading of them can 
 still fill the memory, or can have given us all the 
 ethical and political instruction imbedded in them. 
 Historical judgment often comes back to see the 
 substantial truth of Plutarch's estimates. And now 
 MahafFy, Bury, Adolf Holm, and recent scholars 
 show us how far better a conception of Alexander 
 and his stupendous career and work we can get from 
 Plutarch than if we follow the democratic dogmatism 
 of George Grote. I hold Plutarch's Alexander to be 
 the supreme type of biography proper, as applied to 
 the most superbly endowed human being in the story 
 of mankind. Notwithstanding his crimes, vices, and 
 brutalities, let us admit that the human race never 
 begot a son of such superhuman powers of body, mind, 
 and soul ; nor does human history record any single 
 man who produced such vast and secular movements 
 over the habitable globe. Julius Caesar was certainly 
 a better, nobler, and, taking all his powers together, 
 a greater man ; and his life was in its far-reaching 
 effects more important to civilisation than even was 
 Alexander's. But Julius had far greater problems to 
 solve and far less favouring conditions ; and his mighty 
 achievement of imperial peace and unity was only 
 designed by him ; it was developed by his successors 
 from Augustus down to the Antonines. 
 
 Plutarch is the greatest of biographers, because he 
 
70 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 thoroughly grasped and practised the true principle of 
 biographic work — to make a living portrait of a man's 
 inner nature, not to write the annals of his external 
 acts. The conventional biography records what the 
 person did : the true biography reveals what the person 
 was. It deals with facts as the key of the nature. 
 "I do not write historles^^'' says Plutarch introducing 
 his Alexander^ "but I write Lives-, and a slight 
 circumstance, a jest, a word is often a truer index to 
 a man's character than accounts of his bloody victories 
 and tremendous conquests." If Alexander's was the 
 most electric temperament in recorded history, Plut- 
 arch's portrait of him is the most masterly portrait 
 ever painted with the pen of a historian — far more 
 true, more real, and more graven on the memory of 
 ages, than are the laborious studies of all the annalists 
 ancient and modern. 
 
 For the same reasons, the modern world has given 
 the crown of biography to Boswell's Johnson. Plutarch 
 was essentially a moralist, an umpire of ethics, not a 
 politician, and certainly not a historian. And so was 
 the Doctor. It is always in biography the r^OiKy] 
 TTto-Tt? which tells. We need not compare Boswell 
 with Homer, as did Carlyle with his raucous exaggera- 
 tion, for a " history of England " which leaves out 
 Walpole, Chatham, Burke, and Washington, is rather 
 a one-sided affair. Still, in a small duodecimo way, 
 and making a portrait, not of a founder and statesman, 
 but of a scholar and a talker, Bozzy, by a sort of dog- 
 like instinct of worshipping his master, did achieve, in 
 a literary and miniature form of art, something of 
 what Plutarch did on a grander canvas and a far 
 mightier world. All I have to say is — put aside your 
 Lives of the Royal Laundrywomen^ your Gossip about 
 the Stage^ and try if you cannot take up again for a 
 spare hour your Plutarch and your Boswell. 
 
CH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 71 
 
 On a smaller scale, no doubt, Southey's Nelson^ 
 Johnson's Lives of Poets (the Six Best, selected by- 
 Matthew Arnold), Gibbon's Autobiography^ Carlyle's 
 Essays on Goethe^ Burns^ and Johnson have that in- 
 imitable charm of painting men as revealed to the eye 
 of genius, rather than tabulating the facts of their 
 external actions. On the other hand laborious annals, 
 such as Coxe's Walpole^ Francis Thackeray's Chatham^ 
 Lord Stanhope's P///, Masson's Milton^ and even 
 Carlyle's Cromwell^ are just what biographies should 
 not be. It is fair to say that Masson did not profess 
 to write a Life of Milton, nor did Carlyle profess to 
 write a Life of Cromwell. Both wrote of the con- 
 temporaries and the times. Would that Carlyle had 
 written a Life of Cromwell ! A full and great Life 
 of Cromwell is still to seek, in spite of all the studies 
 and sketches of late years. But as to Stanhope's P/V/, 
 and Masson's Milton^ how many persons read them 
 through from cover to cover — much less who takes 
 them up for a second or a third reading ? They are 
 repertories — not biographies. Now Pattison's Milton^ 
 and Morley's Burke^ are real and enduring Lives. 
 
 To me no life of man, from the time of Adam till 
 that of King George, is so fascinating as that of the 
 noblest, best, purest, wisest man in all recorded 
 history — our own sacred hero, Alfred — the only name 
 of a chief in all human annals on whose memory no 
 blot, no defect, moral, intellectual, or even mythical 
 has ever been alleged. The Millenary Commemora- 
 tion of 1 90 1, when the great monument was raised at 
 Winchester, brought about a new interest in Alfred's 
 life and writings ; and a great amount of fresh Hght 
 was thrown on what was obscure. Dryasdust, of 
 course, raised big clouds and erudite fog which almost 
 veiled again the mighty figure of our greatest man. 
 What on earth does it matter whether he died in a.d. 
 
72 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 900 or 901 — whether he could not read till his twelfth 
 year, and whether legit means " read Latin " or " read " 
 at all ? Fortunately we now know enough to make 
 Alfred's personahty vivid, complete, and certain. 
 
 We have no single adequate biography to which 
 we can entirely trust. For my part, I have always 
 held the contemporary Life attributed to Asser to be 
 substantially both genuine and true, in spite of a good 
 deal of confusion and interpolation. I am quite 
 satisfied by the very careful and learned researches of 
 Charles Plummer as to the way in which we should 
 read Asser ; and for myself I have nothing to amend 
 in the sketches of Alfred's career which I wrote in 
 1 891, and again in 1901. The well-known Life by 
 Pauli is now sixty years old, and was compiled before 
 the researches of our own time ; but it is a useful and 
 memorable book, if used with caution and subsequent 
 discoveries. 
 
 But the true Life of Alfred will always be in his 
 own writings, and especially in his Boethius^ which can 
 now be read in the original Anglo-Saxon, critically 
 edited by Walter J. Sedgefield (Oxford, 1899), and in 
 his excellent English translation (Oxford, 1900). This 
 beautiful book, now open to the English reader in a 
 dainty form, must ever stand beside the Meditations of 
 Marcus Aurelius, as the outpouring of soul by a royal 
 saint. It was the happy idea of Mr. Sedgefield to 
 print in italics those parts of Alfred's Boethius, which 
 are not in the Latin text, but are the king's own 
 reflections on life, duty, and religion (and I think 
 these amount to nearly one-tenth in bulk). They 
 are amongst the most noble passages to be found in 
 the last immortal work of antiquity. These enable us 
 to see into the inmost spirit of the best of kings and 
 the bravest of saints. It is a book to stand beside the 
 Imitation in spiritual elevation, and yet it is the private 
 
cH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 73 
 
 manual of a hero who in battle would " charge up hill 
 on the foe as if he were a wild boar." 
 
 I love contrasts ; indeed, I hold that it is well to 
 vary our reading by turning to widely different sub- 
 jects. Not only on my bookshelves does Aristophanes 
 stand beside my Dante, and Haeclcel near to Confucius, 
 but I think one ought to follow up a study of morals 
 and religion by a dose of poetry or satire — Gulliver^ 
 Tom yones^ or Don yuan. As to history, I like to turn 
 from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Gardiner to Michelet. 
 And I do not care so much as Plutarch did for 
 Parallel Lives (and absurd parallels he made of some). 
 Not only is it pleasant but it is really instructive to 
 contrast lives, to compare dissimilar lives, natures, and 
 types. And after a turn at Saint Louis we may take 
 up Cellini, or beside a Turgot we may Hsten to 
 Rousseau. All of these were men of genius, who 
 represented their age with wonderful life. There 
 was a great deal of human nature in all of them. 
 Let us have no Index Expurgatorius in our libraries. 
 
 By way of contrast I turn from Asser's Alfred to a 
 very different set of studies, just one hundred years 
 later, dealing with a marvellously different civilisation 
 at the other side of Europe — in Africa and in Asia — 
 and narrated in huge tomes of portentous learning and 
 research. I mean the magnificent works of Gustave 
 Schlumberger on Byzantine history of the latter half 
 of the tenth century and the first part of the eleventh 
 century.^ 
 
 These four sumptuous volumes, full of facsimiles, 
 illustrations, maps, views and photographs, form an 
 encyclopaedia of Byzantine archaeology. 
 
 1 " Un Empereur Byzantin," lo"** si^cle, Paris, 4to, 1890 ; " L'Epopee 
 Byzantine" (969-989), Paris, 4to, 1896; " Basile ii. Bulgaroctonus," 
 Paris, 4to, 1900 ; " Les Porphyrog6n^tes, Zoe et Theodora " (1025-1057), 
 Paris, 4to, 1905. 
 
74 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 How wonderful a gulf stands between the world of 
 Alfred and that of Theophano and her terrible son, 
 "the Slayer of the Bulgarians." And yet men 
 might have known both ; and some of Alfred's 
 warriors and some of his Viking foes bred the best 
 guards of Basil's throne. What a contrast as one 
 turns from Asser and his Saxon Chronicle to Schlum- 
 berger's pictures of a magnificent Empire in decadence 
 — from the nai'f, rude, new-born Kingdom of Wessex 
 to the superfine luxury, wealth, art, Hterature, and 
 pomp of a vast State which had rioted in its accumu- 
 lated resources for a thousand years. Yet we find, 
 too, Alfred and the Kinglets, around him and opposed 
 to him, trying to pick up the crumbs that fall from 
 the over-laden treasuries and factories, and arts, and 
 science, and literature that had taken refuge in the 
 stronghold of Byzantium, as an Ark in the deluge 
 of barbarism. Both Saxons and East Romans pro- 
 fessed the same faith, used the same Bible, and 
 followed the same customs. What thrilling adventures, 
 catastrophes, dramas fill the annals of these Basileis 
 and Augustas ; what a world of poetry and art had 
 rolled down in one continuous stream for the twenty 
 centuries which separate the heroes of the Iliad from 
 Basil ii. And of all this Alfred and his learned priests 
 knew nothing but a vague report. Let us think of 
 Asser's monkish picture of Alfred composing his books 
 and studying his Latin like a schoolboy in rude 
 primers — and side by side put the picture of Theo- 
 phano and Zoe and Theodora flaunting their bloody 
 extravagances in a sort of Versailles on the Bosporus. 
 And yet, as the centuries rolled on, Alfred and his 
 people had painfully to learn a thousand imperishable 
 things from these very Byzantine palaces, churches, 
 and libraries. Nay, in 191 1, King George V., in 
 order to be duly crowned, had to repeat the imperial 
 
cH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 75 
 
 formulas and copy the Church ritual of the Con- 
 stantines "Born in the Purple." 
 
 One of the chief scholars of our age, Professor 
 Bury of Cambridge, has devoted his immense learning 
 to clear up the chaos of Byzantine history, until now 
 hidden in foreign, obscure, and Oriental Sources. 
 
 By all means let us study the Lives of the foremost 
 men and women in the ages past ; but not parallel — 
 in the sense of similar — Lives. Rather let us set side 
 by side the dissimilar. And so we may grasp the 
 miraculous complexity of civilisation and the bewilder- 
 ing multiplicity of human capacities. For some years 
 of my Hfe I was occupied with editing a biographical 
 dictionary containing Lives of 558 men of eminence — 
 reaching from Moses to Hegel, and including men 
 even further apart in life and in work than were Moses 
 and Hegel. And I do not know that any task of my 
 life proved to be more enjoyable, or has taught me 
 more. 
 
 And then in the very age of the worse decadence 
 and confusion of that Byzantine Empire, of which 
 Schlumberger has given us such lurid pictures, we 
 have perhaps the most noble portrait ever painted of 
 a feudal Chief in the Memoirs of Joinville. He was 
 the finest type of chivalry at its highest moment, with 
 certainly the longest experience of any mediaeval 
 leader, for he was born in the lifetime of Saint 
 Francis, and he died only two years before Dante, 
 aged 95. His Memoirs form one of the most 
 important documents of the great thirteenth century 
 of which he is the best representative. His Life of 
 Saint Louisy translated by J. Hutton, in a neat and 
 accessible form in the " Bayard Series " is a wonderful 
 portrait of the only mediaeval ruler who can be put 
 beside our Alfred — though how far beneath our Alfred 
 in practical wisdom and true manliness — for Alfred 
 
76 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 lived when the great Feudal-Catholic world was in its 
 rise and Saint Louis, four hundred years later, when 
 it was spent or in decline. 
 
 And along with Joinville's St. Louis, in the same 
 duodecimo series, may be read the Life of Bayard, by 
 the "Loyal Servitor," translated by E. Walford. It 
 is a delightful book, giving a splendid picture of the 
 last gleam of that age of knighthood which all over 
 Europe had ended in an orgy of pride, crime, and 
 blood. But the Chevalier, " without fear and without 
 stain," presents to us a beautiful career of loyalty, 
 courtesy, heroism and piety — the last example of a 
 chivalry which had lasted for good and for evil during 
 four centuries. When I summed up the record of 
 his Hfeas told by his devoted "servitor" (in the week 
 of Charlemagne reserved for Crusaders) my words 
 were — "he was pious, generous, unselfish, modest, 
 temperate, pure, and magnanimous. His courage and 
 prowess in arms were those of a knight of romance ; 
 his generosity was princely, and his courtesy unfail- 
 ing." Read the Loyal Servitor, and see if these words 
 are too strong. 
 
 For a contrast to the story of Bayard we have the 
 Memoirs of Philippe de Comines. How significant 
 is the contrast. They were almost contemporaries, 
 served the same French Monarchy, both fought in 
 the French wars in Italy ; and yet they have utterly 
 different standards of Hfe and thought. Bayard is 
 more than thirty years younger than de Comines, but 
 Bayard belongs to the past age and de Comines to the 
 coming age ; Bayard all generosity, magnanimity, and 
 loyalty — de Comines full of policy, wariness, and 
 statecraft. And yet de Comines, with his subtle 
 insight into men and nations, is one of the earliest 
 and best of political philosophers, the first great 
 European historian, the forerunner of a long line of 
 
CH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 77 
 
 modern biographers and diplomatists. Read the story 
 of Bayard at Brescia, or in the camp of Henry VIIL, 
 or as he lay dying in presence of Bourbon, and then 
 turn to de Comines' account of Louis XI. at Peronne, 
 or the story of Louis sending a servant disguised as a 
 herald to Edward IV. — and we shall see how vast was 
 the difference between the age of Chivalry and the 
 age of Statesmanship. And yet the ages overlap, for 
 Bayard died some forty years after Louis XI. 
 
 De Comines preceded Machiavelli in date by a 
 generation, and was the first to put into studied form 
 the maxims of policy which were worked out by the 
 statesmen who founded the modern States of Europe 
 — maxims which Machiavelli in the next century 
 systematised with maHgn cynicism. But de Comines 
 wrote the French — and truer — " Prince " — an earlier, 
 more human, and wiser manual of statecraft, as his 
 own master in craft was a far greater man than any 
 with whom the Florentine cynic had to deal. We 
 who love our Walter Scott, whose genius never was 
 more brilliant than in his ^entin Durward^ owe it 
 to ourselves and to France to read the Comines' 
 portrait of Louis XI. Notwithstanding his ignoble 
 defects of nature, his cruelty, craft, and superstition, 
 Louis XL was one of the greatest men of modern 
 ages, the real creator of France as a nation, and the 
 giver of peace, order, and progress to his own people — 
 whilst his moral nature was little worse than those of 
 contemporary rulers and in some respects was even 
 better. He has been the butt of romancers, poets, and 
 democrats. But the lifelong veneration he won from 
 a judge of such penetration as de Comines — a man 
 who shared his inmost counsels and knew his mind to 
 the core — should weigh against the brilliant caricatures 
 of the imaginative painters of the past. 
 
 The young people are much mistaken if they 
 
78 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 think that we elders and serious readers cannot enjoy 
 fun on occasions. There is Benvenuto Cellini's 
 Autobiography^ which Horace Walpole truly described 
 as " more amusing than any novel." So it is ! This 
 wonderful scamp, this inexhaustible genius, not only 
 produced priceless works of art in many different 
 kinds, but left an immortal record of one of the most 
 burning moments in the history of mankind. He 
 was at once the ever-ready artist in every department 
 of art- work, but also an incomparable romancer in 
 literary gifts. He was a sort of double superman — or 
 multiman — who lived a dozen lives, could fight, and 
 brag, and lie, and draw, and carve, and design, and 
 outwit any man of his time. Since he was born in 
 the lifetime of Columbus and died in the lifetime of 
 Shakespeare, he thus Hved in the first seventy years of 
 the abounding sixteenth century. 
 
 Benvenuto, in truth, represents the Renascence in 
 its various forms — its art, its rage for humanism, for a 
 new and free world, its romantic audacity, its vices, 
 its crimes, its wild passions and its exuberant vitality. 
 Anyone who reads his autobiography — or rather the 
 extravaganza he so named — will really know the spirit 
 of these Diavoli Incarnati almost as well as if he had 
 read through all the seven volumes of J. Addington 
 Symonds' Renaissance in Italy. And by all means 
 read Benvenuto's own Life in the translation by 
 Symonds, with French etchings, though it is not a 
 book for a drawing-room table. B ut even in Roscoe's 
 version, or in any of the cheap reprints, it is a perfect 
 pantomime of audacious extravagance. Popes, kings, 
 courtiers and prelates, jostle rogues, bravoes, courtesans 
 and painters in his pages. And he touches Leonardo 
 himself in one side of his career, and Boccaccio on the 
 other — the literary side. 
 
 Cellini's unblushing vainglory and confessions 
 
CH. IV GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 79 
 
 reveal to us that seething and ensanguined flood of 
 Italian romance from which Shakespeare drew no little 
 of his inspiration and even of his plots — a world of 
 reckless enjoyment and thirst for beauty. But the 
 charm of the Memoirs lies in this — that we feel it not 
 to be conscious romance or invention of the fancy ; 
 for it is told with such precise local colour and such 
 frank realism that we know the writer believed it to 
 be the fact at the time of writing. He had recounted 
 his adventures, escapes, amours, and duels so often 
 and so freely, that he could no longer see clearly what 
 was a true story and what was bombast. There is a 
 touch of Benvenuto about Marlowe himself; and 
 Faustus and the yew of Alalia in drama recall the 
 fierce and lawless life in which Cellini revelled in 
 actual flesh and blood. 
 
 Even Goethe's Faust gains colour and an atmosphere 
 if we can bring ourselves to believe in a world in 
 which real men did the actual deeds that Cellini tells 
 us made up his own life and that of his art associates. 
 But, after all, are Cellini's tales more mendacious or 
 more mythical than some other famous autobiographies 
 — Rousseau's for instance. Napoleon's, or even Goethe's ? 
 How far is any autobiography literally truthful ? 
 Hume's was, and John Stuart Mill's, and so was 
 Gibbon's, and Walter Scott's, but they are all very 
 short and reveal no secrets. Goethe's famous story 
 of his early hfe is a beautiful and interesting tale, but 
 it always reads to me rather as a romance than as a 
 biography j and it may rank with Werther — not with 
 a real account of an objective person. A great poet 
 perhaps cannot indite a veracious record of his own 
 distant years. Could Shakespeare himself have told 
 the truth about Anne Hathaway, or the dark lady, 
 and the true history of the Sonnets ? And if Byron's 
 Diary had not been burnt but published by Murray, 
 
8o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 could we have trusted it j and, in spite of Lady- 
 Byron and Lord Lovelace, should we be believing it 
 to-day ? 
 
 As to Goethe's own life, the famous Dichtung und 
 Wahrheit will not take us very far. Then George 
 Lewes' Life of Goethe (one of the very best biographies 
 of our age) will certainly tell us what Goethe was, 
 and how he worked. But perhaps the true portrait of 
 Goethe for English readers will always be the various 
 essays of Carlyle, and he wrote altogether something 
 like five or six essays on Goethe — mainly about the 
 prose, not about the poetry, and more on his wisdom 
 than on his genius. The Carlyle Essay on Goethe 
 which we selected for the small volume to which I 
 wrote an Introduction was that of 1828, now in Carlyle's 
 Library Edition, Vol. VL, p. 233. 
 
 There is no more noble biography in all modern 
 literature than the life of the great political reformer 
 of the eighteenth century by one of its foremost philo- 
 sophers. The career of Turgot — who was sacrificed 
 in his effort to avert the chaos of the Revolution — was 
 admirably written by Condorcet, who was one of its 
 purest victims. A copy of this memorable book is 
 among my cherished possessions, it is that which John 
 Morley used when preparing his own impressive study 
 of Turgot, and which he presented to me. It is an 
 octavo of some 300 pages, professing to be printed in 
 London in 1786, in the heyday of the Versailles 
 monarchy, whilst the storms were gathering in the 
 sky. It is a battered and stained volume, still in its 
 original boards, and to me is always a pathetic symbol 
 of the ruin of a great patriot and the tragic end of a 
 profound philosopher. 
 
 The Lifeo{ Turgot, by Condorcet, has always been 
 to me the model of poHtical wisdom and the rehabilita- 
 tion of a great Reformer. It may be read along with 
 
CH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 8i 
 
 the useful biography of Turgot, by W. Walker 
 Stephens (1895), who has translated many documents 
 and letters. The career of Turgot is one of the 
 tragedies of modern civilisation. If his birth and 
 position had been that of a Czar Peter or of a Frederick 
 II., the whole history of France and of Europe might 
 have been different : — 
 
 — Si Pergama dextra 
 Defend! possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent. 
 
 Turgot's whole Hfe was a lesson in social justice, in 
 moderate and gradual evolution of the tremendous 
 interests which are always present and compounded in 
 any ancient Society. He was too just, too considerate, 
 too many-sided to be popular — perhaps even to be 
 successful — in such an age as that of Maurepas and 
 Calonne. When they dismissed him, men of sense 
 knew that the end was at hand. Condorcet, with his 
 ardent vision of a better age, kept restrained in the 
 recesses of his scientific mind — "the volcano covered 
 with snow," they said — was the very man to see the 
 wisdom, tolerance, and intense public spirit of his 
 illustrious friend. And the little book which he 
 dedicated to his memory, if it be no brilliant portrait 
 of a unique genius, is a manual of poHtical wisdom 
 and a magnificent tribute to the immortal ideas which 
 underlay the social passion of the men of 1789. And 
 when Condorcet chose as motto of his hero the famous 
 hnes of Lucan : — 
 
 Secta fuit servare modum, finemque tenere, 
 Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam j 
 Non sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo — 
 
 he was giving the watchword in the battle waged b 
 himself as well as Turgot, nay by all the just sou 
 and the clear brains which have made the eighteenth 
 century an epoch in civilisation. 
 
 G 
 
82 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 It is curious that of the man who in the whole 
 nineteenth century was the most promising subject 
 for a great biography, whilst we have a dozen Lives^ 
 Sketches, Memoirs and Studies, we have not got the real 
 Life — and we never shall have. We should no doubt 
 furiously enjoy Byron's Diary^ if it had not been 
 destroyed ; but it could never have served as a real 
 biography. And intensely interesting as is Moore's 
 book, neither is that an adequate biography ; for it is 
 the apology of a friend, who had but a very poor 
 understanding of the poet's higher nature. In the 
 attempt to dispel the clouds which veil it, we find 
 ourselves confused by a torrent of petty personalities 
 which are continually refuted and revised and never 
 seem to clear up the story or bring it to an end. I 
 shall say nothing here about Byron as a poet, for to 
 me he is not so much a poet as a personality. I agree 
 with those who tell us that it is not easy to find fifty 
 continuous lines of really lofty and finished poetry in 
 all his poems. And yet he is the prime poetic force 
 of the nineteenth century, not so much by his verses, 
 which are usually ragged and sometimes tawdry, but 
 by reason of the inspiration which he gave to his age 
 — by the Titanic power and imagination of the man. 
 To me, it is Byron's prose — not his verse — which is 
 the vehicle of his moral and mental radium — that 
 incandescent, scintillating, mysterious centre of activity 
 which for thirty-six years burnt on within a gross and 
 almost ignoble clay. There is not any biography of 
 Byron — there can be none — except in his own Letters^ 
 Diaries^ and Notes^ which to those who can see the 
 man behind them, form a true Life, I take up the 
 new and complete edition with its six volumes of prose 
 and seven volumes of Poetry^ Letters^ and all the 
 commentaries in the thirteen new volumes, and I say : 
 This is the finest prose in our language ; here is the 
 
CH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 83 
 
 biggest man who blew the Clarion of the Revolution 
 over England. 
 
 By good fortune we have an adequate account of 
 the life of a nobler and better man than Byron — the 
 Walter Scott who carried the banner of feudal chivalry 
 in the van of the romantic revival and reaction from 
 Revolution. My Lockhart's Memoir is in ten duo- 
 decimo volumes of 1848, with twenty illustrations of 
 the Scott family, Abbotsford, and its country-side. 
 Lockhart's book is not a Life (he does not so describe 
 it) ; it is certainly not a work of art, it is too long, 
 and spun out with too many letters and diaries of 
 other persons. And Lockhart in truth is neither a 
 Joinville nor a Boswell. And, worse than all, Scott 
 himself had no great gift as a writer of letters or 
 journals. Byron was immensely his superior in this, 
 and so, as Scott naively told Lockhart, he gave up 
 poetry " because Byron heat him." And yet, though 
 neither Lockhart nor Scott had any genius in biography 
 — Scott's own early fragment might be written by 
 any one — and though the letters are often goody- 
 goody commonplace, and the diaries cited are not 
 literature at all, still I find Lockhart's Memoir the 
 fascinating record of a glorious genius in a great spirit. 
 
 It may be that I am myself fa natico about Scott — 
 whom Comte rated as one of the twelve great poets 
 since Homer. I am, indeed, Scottis ipsis Scottior in 
 the way of adoring Scott ; and I take a childish 
 pleasure in the fact that his last two romances were 
 issued in my own lifetime. I was brought up on the 
 Waverley novels — and even on the poems — and the 
 Waverleys were almost the only novels that I saw as a 
 boy. And now that I have the Waverley edition of 
 the novels in forty-eight volumes, and the companion 
 edition of the poems in twelve volumes, with engrav- 
 ings by Turner, Landseer, Leslie, etc., etc., in each 
 
84 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 volume, I never get tired of them. But I am dealing 
 now neither with novels nor poems, but the record of 
 Walter Scott as a man ; and in spite of its prolixity, 
 and, too often, its commonplace, I enjoy all that 
 Lockhart has to tell. 
 
 Scott himself, I am free to confess, had a strain 
 of commonplace — his silly pride in his border robber 
 ancestors (as the cousin of a Norman Duke told me 
 once, there are no such snobs as the cadets of a titled 
 family) — the absurd craze to found an ancestral domain, 
 and the gimcrack at Abbotsford (I fear it disillusions 
 most of us English when we first see it), Scott preserv- 
 ing the glass from which George IV. drank, etc., etc. 
 Put aside these trivialities, and what a fine nature and 
 unconquerable soul was in that colossal lump of man- 
 hood ! I know the scenes of the romances well, and 
 the poet's grave at Dryburgh — a worthy rival in its 
 pathos to the graves of Keats or of Wordsworth — and 
 I have read some of the novels in the original M.S., 
 written at the rate of some 2000 words in a morning 
 — what a prodigious mountain of work ! what a world 
 of imagination ! what a generous, warm, brave nature ! 
 
 I can enjoy any one of Lockhart's ten volumes — 
 the raptures of Scott's early courtship, the anecdotes of 
 law and lawyers ; the commencement of Waverley^ 
 and the laying of it aside for years ; the meeting with 
 Byron, their correspondence and mutual admiration ; 
 the visit to Waterloo, to Paris, to London ; the 
 banquet with the Prince, and, above all, the last journey 
 and the death and burial. I know nothing finer than 
 the way in which two men of genius, so utterly 
 opposed as were Byron and Scott, recognised each 
 other, and this culminates when Byron dedicates to 
 Scott his Cain^ and Scott accepts the honour and 
 applauds the poem. Lockhart's entire book, long as 
 it is and at times langweilig^ brings Scott to us in life. 
 
cH.iv GREAT BIOGRAPHIES 85 
 
 We may all know Scott now at home. Byron and 
 Shelley may be enigmas, Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 may be self-contained recluses, hermits, prophets ; but 
 Scott is our dear familiar friend whom we have known 
 and loved from boyhood. And so, Lockhart, whatever 
 his genius, secured the essence of the biographer's art, 
 to give a Hving portrait of the man as he was, not a 
 mere record of what he did. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 A FRIEND, much given to " first nights," who has 
 dipped into some of the books I have been advising 
 him to read, now says : "Won't you tell us some- 
 thing about Plays ; do you not want us to read 
 Shakespeare ? " Well, of course, I am as much 
 devoted to Shakespeare as Sir Sidney Lee himself, 
 without pretending to any special knowledge of the 
 older dramatists, much less to any research into the 
 life and work of our own mighty poet. But I am not 
 so garrulous as to discourse about Shakespeare, for our 
 most learned students and our ablest critics have now 
 told us everything about Shakespeare which Research 
 and Criticism can discover — perhaps everything which 
 ever will be known or can be judged as sound and 
 true. Years ago, indeed, I was asked if I would 
 write a Life of Shakespeare for a famous series, but I 
 thought it would be quite presumptuous in me to 
 undertake such a task. And it has been perfectly 
 well achieved long since. 
 
 Of course, I have read my Shakespeare since I was 
 a boy ; and my father, who had heard Mrs. Siddons, 
 the Kembles, and Edmund Kean in all the Plays then 
 given on the stage, used to read to us Shakespeare of 
 an evening as he had heard it played. As a young 
 
 86 
 
cH.v TRAGIC DRAMA 87 
 
 man, I carried the diamond Pickering edition in daily- 
 railway journeys to and from Lincoln's Inn. Now 
 I have A. Treherne's miniature copies in good " Long 
 Primer," hardly more than two inches square (Edin- 
 burgh, 1904). I find the " Arden " set (Methuen 
 & Co.) very useful ; and for general use I want 
 nothing handier than the twelve volume set small duo. 
 (issued by Constable & Co., N.D.). 
 
 All that I have to say about Shakespeare is this : 
 Don't be satisfied with reading him, but go to see 
 the plays on the stage. It is impossible to judge any 
 great drama by reading it. The whole nature of a 
 Play of the first rank is transfigured when we see 
 it adequately performed. It is only revealed in acting. 
 Solvitur amhulando — a great drama unfolds itself to its 
 catastrophe when we see the characters walk the stage 
 before our eyes — segnius irritant animum demissa per 
 aurem — no imagination can enable us to conceive the 
 whole force of a really great drama until we see it. 
 You might as well try to judge a Symphony of 
 Beethoven by looking at the score. And this is more 
 true of Shakespeare than of any other dramatist, 
 ancient or modern. Shakespeare was a player to the 
 tips of his toes ; and he must be seen and heard on the 
 stage to be truly known. 
 
 I speak from personal experience. I have known 
 the stage now for nearly seventy years, and I have 
 heard all the great Enghsh interpretations of Shake- 
 speare from Charles Kemble, and Macready and Charles 
 Kean down to our day. I have seen Shakespeare's 
 tragedies and comedies given in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, 
 Milan, Florence — by French, Italian, German, and 
 American actors, including Ristori, Salvini, Devrient, 
 Fechter, Mounet-Sully, Booth, and Grasso. I never 
 miss a Shakespeare play, however staged ; and I 
 never see one played without learning much about it. 
 
88 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 which I never observed in reading the text. The 
 only thing then that I have to say about Shakespeare 
 is this — Don't be satisfied with reading him — go and 
 hear him, as often as you can, and, if possible, as I 
 have heard him, in different languages. 
 
 That is the way to understand the universality 
 of Shakespeare's genius — the unique quality in which 
 his mind surpasses that of all other poets, no doubt all 
 other sons of Adam. I remember a philosophic French 
 friend taking me to see Mounet-Sully in Hamlet at the 
 Fran^ais. When the second act was finished, I said, 
 " That may be fine, but it is not our idea of Hamlet^ 
 "No!" said my French philosopher — himself an 
 intimate of Mounet-Sully and of Coquelin — "You 
 forget that Hamlet was not an Englishman. There 
 was a French Hamlet, a German, an Italian, a Russian 
 Hamlet, each different in personal and national 
 idiosyncrasy, but all profoundly true to Shakespeare's 
 ideal of the inscrutable spirit of the ill-starred Prince 
 of Denmark." As I walked away that night from the 
 Palais Royal I saw the truth of the remark. Hamlet 
 appeals to all nations, expresses the thought, the 
 yearnings, the dilemmas of all, because Shakespeare 
 deals not with national characteristics, but with the 
 universal ideas, struggles and despair common to 
 human nature. 
 
 I am quite clear that our William was the greatest 
 poet that ever lived, by reason of his incomparable 
 range of power, and his mastery of every form of poetic 
 art — dramatic: — lyric — tragic — comic ; by his profound 
 grasp of psychology ; by his exquisite sense of melody ; 
 by his wit, his humour, his supreme imagination, 
 and his universal humanity. No other poet, ancient 
 or modern, combined all these gifts in the highest 
 degree. But though he was the greatest of all poets^ I 
 am not at all convinced that he has left the greatest 
 
CH.v TRAGIC DRAMA 89 
 
 of all tragedies, nor the greatest of all comedies. For 
 pure tragedy in its highest form, I hold -^schylus 
 to be supreme. For perennial comedy^ in its deepest 
 humanity, I hold Aristophanes to be supreme. It is 
 true that there is more poetry, more psychologic 
 insight, more mysterious wisdom in Hamlet^ or in Lear^ 
 than in all other extant dramas ; but for massive power 
 and organic symmetry, I hold that a more perfect 
 type of tragedy was reached in the Trilogy and the 
 Prometheus. 
 
 So, for comedy, I find in Aristophanes, along with 
 quite equal comic genius, a more Olympian vein 
 of lyricism, a wider range of satire, and a grander sense 
 of social and moral justice than in any of Shakespeare's 
 Comedies. For to crush Cleon was a bigger task than 
 to chafF FalstafF. To correct the opinion of such a 
 subtle people as that of Athens in politics, in art, in 
 poetry, in philosophy, in manners, and in morals, and 
 to do that by a few Comedies occasionally heard in the 
 theatre — by plays which for two thousand years have 
 been the delight of all serious readers of all nations — 
 this was a kind of comedy, which, with all his glorious 
 wit and versatility, Shakespeare never attempted to 
 touch. Nay, Moliere, inexpressibly below Shakespeare 
 in poetry, in imagination, in fancy, dealt with the 
 moral, social, and intellectual follies of his age in a 
 systematic and serious spirit, which we do not find 
 even in the most delightful of Shakespeare's Comedies. 
 The greatest of poets did not leave us the greatest 
 of all pure tragedies^ nor the greatest of all mere 
 comedies. 
 
 I venture on this, though I know I shall be called 
 names — as pedant, crank, Early-Victorian, and the 
 like. But it bears on a point of importance. We 
 have got into a habit of attributing to our poet a sort 
 of divine infallibility, so that every thing which does 
 
90 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 not exactly fit the Shakespearean model, must be inferior 
 and wrong. Now, it is clear there is more than 
 one type of tragedy, and of comedy, as of all other 
 imaginative work. In truth, there are not one or two, 
 but several modes of poetry, of which no single one 
 has any absolute supremacy. It is also clear that 
 different ages and various races hold diverse forms 
 of poetic beauty and power. Those who awarded 
 Sophocles the prize for his (Edipus and his Antigone 
 would have found Macbeth too tumultuous, and would 
 have been puzzled with Lear. They clung to unity 
 of motive, symmetry in unfolding the plot, and a 
 stately measure of heroic verse from prologue to 
 catastrophe, unbroken by interludes, merriment, and 
 subordinate by-play. 
 
 It is no question of "right" or "wrong" or of 
 better or worse. It is simply whether the 'highest 
 range of tragic intensity may not be reached by the 
 iEschylean type of statuesque simplicity and symmetry 
 as well as by Shakespearean complexity and contrast. 
 Even an Aristophanic extravaganza is less of a fantastic 
 medley — and is more of a drama — than Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream or the Tempest ; and the Greek 
 reverence for proportion would have been sorely tried 
 by Cymbeline^ the Winter* s Tale^ Troilus and Cressida. 
 Now, it is certain that the classical taste held fast by 
 the Attic type in its widest extension and development j 
 and the classic drama of France, Italy, and Germany 
 had a similar ideal. Of course I recognise the mar- 
 vellous poetry and imagination of all the Shakespeare 
 Plays just mentioned. I am speaking now of their 
 strictly dramatic power for representation on the stage. 
 All I ask is, that our delight in their supreme beauty 
 as poems should not lead us to rule out of comparison 
 the dramas of the older type as obsolete and mechanical. 
 We are all too apt to " scrap " and " crab " the so-called 
 
CH. V TRAGIC DRAMA 91 
 
 classical drama — (I try to follow the popular terms of 
 the day), and to invest our great poet with a sort 
 of "verbal inspiration." 
 
 It would be childish vainglory to pretend that 
 either as actors, dramatic authors, or dramatic critics, 
 we English are to-day superior to the actors, play- 
 wrights and critics of France, Italy, and Germany. 
 Reasonable men who know these countries and are 
 familiar with their stage are fain to admit that we 
 are not their match. Now, for some centuries, the 
 highest drama in France and Italy, and in the main 
 that of Germany, has maintained its classical type, and 
 follows its own native tragedians at least as keenly as 
 we follow Shakespeare. Of course, I hold Shakespeare 
 as a poet and dramatist to be immensely the superior 
 of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, Metastasio, Alfieri, 
 Schiller, and even Goethe. But whilst these last still 
 hold the Stage in their own countries, at least as well 
 as Shakespeare does with us, I cannot admit that 
 French, Italian, and German play-goers are utterly 
 without true understanding of drama. 
 
 Poetry in all its forms, and especially of all other 
 forms dramatic poetry, has various modes ; and it 
 would be narrow and insular to throw aside all but 
 one. To ridicule the French classical drama, as 
 Matthew Arnold did, would be as Philistine a mistake 
 as when Voltaire ridiculed Shakespeare. Because I 
 revel in Hamlet^ Lear^ or Romeo and yuliet^ I am not 
 deaf to the heroics of the CzW, or the spasms of 
 Phedre. In a case like this personal taste comes in, 
 and I confess to an ingrained belief that the Trilogy of 
 iEschylus — by its intense concentration, its symmetry 
 of evolution, the sustained superhuman majesty of its 
 tone — has touched a higher note of pure tragedy than 
 even Macbeth or Othello. To me Hamlet is an in- 
 spired and modern Book of Job, and Lear is a super- 
 
92 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 human Apocalypse, For strict and true tragedy 1 hold 
 by the Trilogy. 
 
 I dare say the young people of to-day think all this 
 is the result of pedantry or convention. But I am no 
 " modernist " in art. I hold by iEschylus, Sophocles, 
 and Aristophanes for types of drama, pure and simple, 
 just as I hold by Pheidias rather than Michael Angelo, 
 by the Parthenon rather than St. Peter's, by Giorgione 
 and Raphael rather than by Tintoretto or Veronese, 
 by Milton rather than Browning, by Mozart rather 
 than Wagner. But whilst I love symmetry and 
 proportion even more than brilliancy and audacity, 
 I never fail to honour the originality of those who 
 tear aside all restrictions and traditions. What I 
 contend for is respect for all great types of art, and 
 freedom from national, personal or sectional bias. 
 " Art is long " — but inexhaustible. " Life is short " 
 — but infinite. 
 
 It is not easy for an English audience to grasp 
 the full meaning of the classical drama, either in 
 its ancient or in its modern form. The Attic drama 
 was a religious festival — and all the greater tragedies 
 were pervaded by a halo of sacred solemnity — by 
 myth, divine revelation, heroic symbolism, which even 
 scholars can hardly realise in all its intensity and 
 fulness. They were always, to a Greek audience. 
 Miracle Plays or Passion Plays — seen with a con- 
 vincing realism quite as much as in the Middle Ages 
 by a Catholic audience, and presented on a far grander 
 and more artistic stage. When the Greek dramas are 
 given in a modern theatre, not only is the sacred and 
 mythical solemnity entirely absent, but the scenic 
 conditions are reversed. In the greater Greek theatres, 
 some 30,000 spectators in open air and broad daylight 
 surrounded what for the choric parts of the drama was 
 more a religious pageant or an oratorio, than a play. 
 
cH.v TRAGIC DRAMA 93 
 
 There was no change of scene, no acts, no intervals, 
 no artificial Hghting, and quite simple and occasional 
 machinery. When our public sees a Greek tragedy, 
 nearly all these conditions are changed. 
 
 I was deeply impressed by the recent performance 
 of CEdipus King at Covent Garden, where an effort 
 was made to avoid some of these anomalies. If the 
 whole of the area of the pit and stalls could have been 
 reserved for the chorus, if it had been marshalled in 
 rhythmic movements, if the crowd had been far less 
 numerous, less vociferous and unruly, if the whole 
 could have been shown in daylight — the effect of the 
 great tragedy would have gained. I cannot share the 
 outcries of many scholars, especially of those who did 
 not see it but trusted to reports in the Press, that this 
 was not what Sophocles meant it to be, nor what 
 Athenians would have accepted. The criticism is 
 quite true in fact, but the answer to it is this : The 
 myth of CEdipus as conceived by Sophocles, and as 
 famiHar to his Greek audience, simply embodied a 
 certain religious, ethical, and social Decalogue, from 
 which there was no appeal, and on which there could 
 be no criticism. To an ordinary London audience 
 these Ten Commandments of Hellenic mythology 
 were not only unknown but hardly intelligible. And 
 yet they form the basic and inspiring motive of the 
 whole tragedy, as completely as the Ghost's revelation 
 of his murder forms the motive of Hamlet. At 
 Covent Garden the producers of the play, who saw 
 the impossibility of a London audience realising the 
 feehngs of an Athenian audience of the fifth century 
 B.C., resorted to the plan of investing the tragedy 
 with a Barbaric or prehistoric atmosphere, the ex- 
 ternal forms of which we now know better than 
 Sophocles did, whilst the crude superstitions of it 
 make the horror of the catastrophe more tolerable 
 
94 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 to us to-day. If you accept this transposition, you 
 will find that nothing more grandly tragic has ever 
 been seen on the modern stage. 
 
 To return to the modern Classical stage — say 
 Corneille and Racine as played in Paris. It cannot 
 be judged fairly by reading the book. It must be 
 seen as performed with all the traditions of the Theatre 
 Fran^ais, and with familiarity with the French 
 alexandrine verse as recited by their best actors. 
 To those who are perfectly at home in this most 
 subtle modulation, and year after year have become 
 acclimatised to the foreign stage, the classical tragedies 
 have a character of their own, which ought not to 
 be rudely rejected by British prejudice. So seen, so 
 understood by a trained student of the drama, Horace^ 
 the Cidj Cinna^ Polyeucte^ Andromaque^ PhHre^ Athalie^ 
 have a real tragic power and impressive dignity. No 
 one can imagine by mere reading these long rhetorical 
 orations, with their Grand Monarque airs, and their 
 petit mattre courtesies, how wonderfully they live on 
 the stage when presented by consummate actors. 
 
 I confess that it was long before I could get over 
 our British prejudice against Theseus making love to 
 Dirce like a marquis at Versailles, and Hippolyte 
 sighing for Aricie in languorous cadences, with 
 masculine and feminine rhymes, set orations one 
 hundred lines long, and elaborate dialogues wherein 
 nothing is done. But on the stage in the " House of 
 Moliere " one loses all sense of these artificial prosodies 
 and unities. Let us remember that a Greek play, 
 with its Porson's rules and antistrophic echoes, the joy 
 of editors and the curse of schoolboys, was far more 
 artificial in its stringent limits. My Corneille, with 
 Voltaire's Commentary (Paris, I2 vols., 8vo, i"]<^"]\ and 
 my Racine, with various Commentaries (Paris, 8 vols., 
 Svo, 1822), show how elaborately every phrase and 
 
cH.v TRAGIC DRAMA 95 
 
 turn of expression, every word that carries on the plot 
 to its denouement^ was studied by author and by a most 
 subtle and critical public. I do not read Corneille 
 and Racine now, except to compare them with Greek, 
 Italian, German and modern plays. But the half- 
 dozen best of them played in Paris by their best actors 
 remain grand art. 
 
 They who will study the Lives of Corneille, 
 Racine, and Voltaire, Corneille's own Prefaces and 
 Examens of each play, Racine's own Prefaces^ and 
 the commentaries of Voltaire, La Harpe, Boileau, and 
 so many famous critics, cannot dispute this, that the 
 French classical tragedy was built up by most learned 
 and subtle studies of the principles of tragic art. 
 English opinion usually pronounces all this study to 
 have been idle and mistaken. I am not at all a 
 zealous convert to it myself: but what is far more 
 important and cannot be disputed is, that the French 
 tragedians consciously bent their efforts to stamp on 
 the national mind great heroic ideals, and to glorify 
 the noble names and memorable epochs of human 
 history. Their types of ancient history were often 
 sadly modernised by the crude knowledge of their 
 time ; but no one can mistake the fine patriotic and 
 social enthusiasm with which they laboured to make 
 Attic poetry and Plutarch's Biographies familiar to 
 their own people. It is this which makes them 
 worshipped in France, nearly as much as we worship 
 Shakespeare. Frenchmen regard them as national 
 prophets of patriotism, moraHty, and heroism. 
 
 Corneille, as we see in his curious Examens^ had a 
 most profound belief in his own mission as moralist 
 and preacher ; and, with Racine, we know it ended 
 in a morbid religious quietism. Do British critics 
 know Racine's Preface to Phedre ? He declares " that 
 no tragedy of his paid a higher tribute to Virtue, for 
 
96 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 in it small faults meet their punishment, the mere 
 thought of crime is treated with horror ; when passion 
 is shown, it is to paint the disorders which it causes ; 
 and vice is drawn in colours which make it repulsive. 
 Such is the end," he insists, " of one who labours for 
 the public, as did the great tragic poets of old. Their 
 stage was a school of morals, as much as were any 
 of the philosophers." Englishmen treat all this as 
 Pecksniffian, but to Frenchmen it still speaks words 
 of pride and truth. 
 
 When we come in the next century to Voltaire as 
 a dramatist, we find certainly none of the profound 
 pietism of Corneille and Racine, but we do find an 
 even keener purpose to make France familiar with 
 the heroes of antiquity, with the apostles of Hberty 
 of thought as well as of liberty as citizens, but also 
 to show Orientals and Chinese as members of the 
 human family. Voltaire was not such a poet as either 
 Corneille or Racine at their best — and their best is 
 but a fraction of their whole — nor was he so wise and 
 generous a critic of manners and follies as Moliere — 
 but he exerted his proHfic genius in his dramas, as 
 much as in his essays and his satires, to defend honesty 
 of belief, resistance to fanaticism and tyranny, and 
 in all cases to teach a larger and wiser humanity. 
 Voltaire's dramas are now, perhaps even in France, 
 little read and seldom performed. But pregnant 
 apophthegms and eloquent passages to be found in 
 them resound through the Hterature of France, and 
 even occasionally are cited in Europe. 
 
 I suppose nobody, nowadays, ever turns to Metas- 
 tasio, whose life was a romance, who has been extra- 
 vagantly esteemed by great critics, and who certainly 
 enjoyed in his own age a European popularity such as 
 never fell to the lot of any other dramatist. But no 
 one who follows the evolution of dramatic art can 
 
CH. V TRAGIC DRAMA 97 
 
 neglect the study of this magical improvisatore^ who, 
 with moderate gifts as a poet, poured forth such a 
 flood of successful plays, to the delight of a wide and 
 highly-cultured society. The secret of his triumphs 
 is that Metastasio was not strictly a dramatist at all, 
 was a rebel to all dramatic conventions, and made 
 himself the interpreter of some of the finest musicians 
 and singers of an age of great music. 
 
 His plays are, in fact, the librettos of operas ; but 
 his pure and exquisite language, his versatility and 
 learning, his marvellous instinct for musical conditions, 
 exactly hit the needs of the time. Mr. J. Addington 
 Symonds has explained his career with perfect truth 
 and judgment. Read Clemenza di Tito, which, even 
 without the music of Mozart or of Gluck, may 
 delight those who care for noble ideas put in limpid 
 phrase. The last act is fine tragedy : — 
 
 Vendetta ! Ah, Tito ! E tu sarai capace 
 D'un si basso desio, che rende eguale 
 L'offeso air ofFensor ? 
 
 One cannot easily count the plays of Metastasio. 
 Forty of them were set to music by such musicians as 
 Gluck, Mozart, Handel, Porpora, many of them by 
 several different composers. My edition is in fourteen 
 duodecimos, and the last volume contains 170 pages of 
 Sentenze e Massime^ some of which are noteworthy, 
 and all present honest thoughts in graceful words : — 
 
 inutilemente nacque 
 Chi sol vive a se stesso : — 
 
 or, again : — 
 
 Odio 
 € un ben, che posseduto 
 tormenta il possessor. 
 
 Many of these plays, as, for instance, Didone^ 
 Catone^ Temistocle^ in spite of their historic extra- 
 
 H 
 
98 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 vagances, and their obvious subservience to the needs 
 of composer and singer, may be read for their generous 
 humanity and heroic tone. It is for this that Rousseau 
 called Metastasio "the one poet of the heart," that 
 Voltaire found in him some scenes w^orthy of Corneille 
 " without his declamation, and of Racine when he is 
 not weak." Of course, since he wrote only for the 
 musical stage, everything he touched must be regarded 
 from the conventions of opera — his heroes are always 
 magnanimous and his heroines always sentimental. 
 But the singular range of his subjects, over Greek 
 and Roman history, mythology, and legend, over 
 Asiatic and even Chinese tradition, gives a curious 
 variety to his inventions, though, alas, we find little 
 variety either in his characters or his plots. 
 
 I must put in a word for Alfieri, who is more to 
 me than Metastasio, and whose tragedies I have seen 
 played by great actors, though I must admit that they 
 are better to read than to see. Alfieri, with all his 
 faults and limitations, had a lofty spirit and true ideals, 
 and like Corneille, and even we may say like -^schylus, 
 he stamped upon his tragedies his own dignity and 
 severe aspirations. His Roman pieces, such as 
 Virginia^ Ottavia^ Cleopatra^ Bruto Primo and Bruto 
 Secondoj are full of himself, for there was much of the 
 uomo antico in him. Living just before, and at the 
 crisis of the great Revolutionary upheaval, his mind 
 dwelt entirely on great public crimes, struggles and 
 plots. He almost equalled Marlowe and Webster in 
 his passion for the terrible, the heroic, and the bloody. 
 And, as he was not a great poet and disdained all 
 trace of grace in language, he is too often stony, and 
 dry, if not dull on the stage. He seldom admits more 
 than one woman in his characters ; in the two tragedies 
 of Brutus there is not a single woman. The catastrophe 
 is almost invariably assassination or suicide — even on 
 
CH,v TRAGIC DRAMA 
 
 99 
 
 the stage in defiance of all the classical rules, so that 
 the stage direction — si uccide — becomes monotonous. 
 Still, gruesome as are his plots, hard as is his method, 
 and harsh his style — he gives the reader a feeling of 
 tragic power. 
 
 His great distinction is to have cured Italian 
 literature of mawkish morbidezxa. There is no touch 
 of tenderness in the man, and hardly a real love-scene, 
 even in the horrible denouement of Mirra which threw 
 Byron into an epileptic fit. But Alfieri has one 
 characteristic so important that he should be studied 
 and honoured. Almost for the first time since the 
 great Attic drama, a tragic poet flung himself entirely 
 free both from the vanity of actors and from the 
 prejudices and tastes of his audience. The French 
 stage was always in bonds to the popular actress of the 
 hour and also to the conventional etiquette of senti- 
 mental amours. Corneille and Racine were forced 
 to make demigods and emperors simper out their love 
 in the language of a courtier's sonnet. And our own 
 groundlings at the " Globe " would have sensations 
 and slaughters as well as coarse buffoonery. The 
 French stage and the English stage had to satisfy 
 popular actors and popular caprice. Metastasio willingly 
 laid himself out to satisfy the ambition of musicians 
 and singers ; and the Spanish stage was in similar 
 bonds to the dominant friars and hidalgos. Super- 
 stitious Autos and the fantastic Spanish "point of 
 honour" were the inevitable result. But Alfieri, who 
 was noble, haughty, wealthy, and indifferent to popular 
 applause, almost for the first time, put his own soul 
 into his plays. 
 
 His Autobiography and his Dedications and Arguments 
 show that he meant to raise the spirit of his countrymen 
 by presenting to them types of tragic grandeur, 
 patriotism, and honour. To this end he discarded 
 
100 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 everything in the nature of by- play, complication, 
 love-making, and any sentimental or comic relief, and 
 from the first scene to the last he kept one dominant 
 catastrophe brooding over the stage, ^schylus himself 
 was not more alien to irrelevant tenderness and 
 intricate distraction. Not only did Alfieri revert to 
 the classical type of severe concentration of interest, 
 though he cared nothing for classical conventions, but 
 he insisted on weeding out of his speeches and 
 dialogues anything like ornament of language, any 
 phrase of fancy or wit, any weighty thought or 
 epigrammatic word which could arrest the mind. His 
 speeches are as free from superfluous embellishments 
 as the iambic parts of Sophocles. Every line is a 
 direct vigorous statement of the thought of the 
 speaker, designed to carry conviction and make his 
 purpose clear without wasting a breath on poetic 
 embroidery. This gives an air of reality and power 
 to Alfieri's characters which is quite absent not only 
 in Metastasio, in Racine, and in a far greater degree 
 in our own Tudor and Stuart dramas. I hold this 
 return by Alfieri to the grand dialogue of the Attic 
 stage with its simple logic and directness of purpose to 
 be a great step in advance towards high art. Unfor- 
 tunately Alfieri failed to see that the Attic stage developed 
 the Chorus, wherein the most soaring lyrics had full 
 range, and so a Greek tragedy was always rich with 
 poetry. And even if Alfieri could have included the 
 chorus in his scheme, he had neither imagination nor 
 fancy to use it to high poetic purpose. But Alfieri's 
 conception of Tragedy was noble and well worth 
 careful study. 
 
 I shall say little here about our own Elizabethan 
 and Stuart drama, because I neither study it nor read 
 it, unless for comparison, and I am writing now 
 nothing like any review of literature, but simply what 
 
CH.v TRAGIC DRAMA loi 
 
 I habitually read and re-read for my own enjoyment. 
 I have had to read most of these plays for literary 
 purposes, but they seldom give me pleasure. The 
 monstrous extravagances, unnatural savagery, and 
 coarse filth of too many of them weary me ; and I do 
 not advise decent men and women to acquire a taste 
 for them. It is an entirely artificial taste. 
 
 Of course, I admire as much as any man the red- 
 hot passion and superb music of Marlowe, that Caesar 
 Borgia of our poets. No man with an ear can be 
 deaf to the triumphal march of Marlowe's "mighty 
 line." His Hero and Leander^ his poetic pieces, are 
 another thing. He was indeed a great poet, or a 
 great poet manqui. But his terrific plays — even 
 Faustus^ the only one I could read often without pain 
 — are as tragedies the splendid failure of an abnormal 
 and precocious genius. Their Gargantuan mega- 
 lomania, their ferocious egotism, their inhuman 
 brutalities, to my taste, ruin even their pompous 
 rhetoric and semi-deHrious imagination. 
 
 It is sad that a man of kindred genius, as was 
 Swinburne, deluded by the wonderful rhythm of 
 Marlowe, should have committed the extravagance 
 of placing Marlowe by the side of Shakespeare. 
 Marlowe does not touch the profound thought, the 
 universality of Shakespeare. It is true that in the one 
 or two notes of his favourite blank verse Marlowe is 
 the equal even of Shakespeare at his best — but then 
 he has nothing of the infinite variety, spontaneity, 
 and ease of Shakespeare's moods. Look carefully at 
 Marlowe's famous speeches, read them aloud, and 
 then note how they play upon two, at most three, 
 rhythmical schemes — each superb, it is true, but from 
 repetition apt to become monotonous. 
 
 Take the glorious speech in Faustus^ when Helen 
 reappears, Act iv. scene 3 : — 
 
102 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 
 Yes ! worthy of Shakespeare, but the whole speech 
 rings on the same note : — 
 
 And wear thy colours on my plumM crest — 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. 
 
 Turn to the Second Part of Tamhurlaine : — 
 
 Proud fury, and intolerable fit. 
 
 That dares torment the body of my love. 
 
 And scourge the Scourge of the immortal God. 
 
 Here we have the resounding tramp, the bombastic 
 arrogance, and the monotonous music of the young 
 giant. It is as difficult to find in Marlowe a line of 
 monosyllables as it is to find in Tennyson's Morte 
 d* Arthur 2. line of polysyllables. In Tamburlaine^ Part 
 II., scene 4, the verse 
 
 To entertain divine Zenocrate 
 
 occurs six times over within twenty-one lines. It is a 
 magnificent heroic, but artificial and monotonous. 
 
 Let us not be misled by Marlowe's wonderful gift 
 of words into thinking his melodious fantasias great 
 Plays. Swinburne's laudations betray his own fatal 
 preference for musical language over coherent thought 
 and organic power. Both Swinburne and Marlowe 
 were intoxicated with their own lyrical eloquence. It 
 is always unsafe to trust a poet to judge a poet. 
 Being himself a poet, he is charmed by the poetic 
 quality in which he specially delights and, finding that 
 in rich measure, he overlooks defects. I am ready to 
 say, in all forms of critical judgment, do not give 
 ourselves up to any expert. Listen to the expert as to 
 all facts and indications he can suggest, but do not let 
 him be judge and jury himself. Being an expert, he 
 
CH. V TRAGIC DRAMA 103 
 
 is a specialist, limited in his knowledge. The higher 
 criticism has to take in all sides of each art — each 
 work of art. 
 
 I can read Massinger at a pinch, but I am not 
 fond of him. He wrote some fine passages, and some 
 most effective scenes ; and he tried to work out with 
 ingenious steps his plots, which at least are intelligible, 
 however unnatural and strained. The Maid of Honour^ 
 Camiola, is the least violent and impossible. The 
 savageries, and the obscenities of the Picture and the 
 Duke of Milan spoil what but for its inhuman key-note 
 would be very skilfully -contrived catastrophes. In 
 the Virgin-Martyr^ Dorothea's head is cut off on the 
 stage, and Theophilus coram populo is subjected to 
 prolonged and revolting tortures. The reek of lust 
 and gore scents the Italianate diablerie imported from 
 abroad. Massinger's Comedies are less offensive. J 
 New Way to Pay Old Debts must have survived some 
 two centuries, for my father saw Edmund Kean in 
 Sir Giles Overreach and said it was terrific, and we 
 are told that it threw Byron into a convulsive fit. 
 
 I do not think any but students of Hterature need 
 plunge largely into our own exotic Renascence drama. 
 We see too clearly how it became the slave of a public 
 which craved for ribaldry and horrors, and cared 
 nothing for modesty and organic form. The sad part 
 of it is that we find in the young dramatists, from 
 Kyd to Massinger, bad specimens of the things we 
 like least in Shakespeare — his careless improvisation, 
 hurried denouements^ and coarse jesting. It would be 
 treason to our matchless poet to delude ourselves that 
 he was always at his best, always wrote entirely to 
 please himself, and kept at the high level of his 
 Othello^ which I hold to be his supreme triumph in 
 pure tragedy. 
 
 As to Beaumont and Fletcher, I have taken them 
 
104 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 up at times as a study, but hardly as a pleasure — in 
 a queer, old edition of seven volumes, u^ith absurd 
 engravings, and 4076 pages (Jacob Tonson, at Shake- 
 spear's Head, MDCCXL), It is a copy good enough 
 for me. There are plenty of powerful scenes, most 
 ingenious plots, splendid passages — but as plays they 
 are, to me, unpleasing j and I care not for what is 
 said by Lamb or Swinburne, or any other hunter of 
 ghastly situations, wild fancies, and resounding verses. 
 All these they have — I try the Knight of Malta and 
 Oriana's heroic chastity, the bloody catastrophes of 
 Valentintan^ Evadne's ferocities in the Maid's Tragedy^ 
 and the horrible dilemma in Thierry and Theodoret. 
 But the improbability, rather impossibility, of the 
 plots, at once unnatural, inhuman, and fantastic, in- 
 vented only to exhibit rank extravagances, along with 
 the gross talk of women as much as of men — all this 
 wearies me 5 and to me startling surprises and beautiful 
 Hnes are no adequate compensation. 
 
 I know there are people who profess to love the 
 Elizabethan drama, and wish you to believe they give 
 days and nights to it. I have heard a lady who hardly 
 knew Hamlet or the Tempest properly, who had never 
 read the Faery ^een^ and thought Comus and Samson 
 Jgonistes only fit for the schoolroom on a Sunday, send 
 deep sighs through a drawing-room with, " Ah ! but 
 Kyd or Webster," or, again, "Try T^he Broken Heart." 
 I have seen it played, and in spite of powerful scenes 
 and fine declamation, I don't like inhuman outrages 
 coram populo. This grubbing up the dregs of the 
 Stuart Stage is decadence. It feeds the fashionable 
 fad that the unnatural and the ghastly is "so powerful," 
 and naked lust is " so bold." I do not for a moment 
 deny that there are scenes of keen tension in most of 
 them ; but if the plot is an artificial dancing of male 
 and female puppets in order to arrange these sensations, 
 
CH. V TRAGIC DRAMA 105 
 
 it disgusts me. Nor do I fail to find brilliant, even 
 magnificent, speeches in them ; but it sickens me to 
 have those followed by rank smut. 
 
 Like any other reader, I have tried to pick out 
 Shakespeare's part in the Two Noble Kt7ismen. That 
 scenes and passages in it are worthy of him, no one 
 can doubt. But the play, as a whole, has been over- 
 praised. The Knight^s Tale in Chaucer is a beautiful 
 romance, and even Dryden's Palamon and Arcite has 
 no little of old John's splendid art in telling a tale. 
 But the incoherences of the Play as it stands in 
 Fletcher's works to be seen on the stage, with its 
 jumble of Theseus and Hippolyta, Emily and the 
 Jailor's daughter, is utterly different from the Mid- 
 summer Night^s Dream^ with its lovely fairy world. 
 The hard, gross, cruel realism of the Jailor and his 
 mad daughter, a horrid travestie of Ophelia, and the 
 disgusting " cure " of the mad girl, who is handed 
 over by her father to the embraces of a sham " wooer " 
 — all this is enough to spoil any stage-piece, whatever 
 hand in it our great poet ever did have. Critics like 
 Swinburne and other students of style get so intoxicated 
 with sonorous lines and exquisite turns of speech that 
 they seem blind to outrageous incongruities and deaf 
 to vulgar ribaldry. 
 
 The worst of all this Walpurgis Night in so much 
 of Elizabethan and Stuart drama is this, that it shows 
 us how often the world that made it and loved it 
 reacted on the sublime genius of Shakespeare. We 
 ought to get free from the superstition that he was 
 always at his best, always faultless, and almost super- 
 human, not only in intellect, but in soul and in 
 character. There is enough evidence that he was 
 very far from heroic or saintly as a man, and good 
 ground to think him incredibly careless even of his 
 own genius, and a reckless spendthrift of his own 
 
io6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 unparalleled powers. I am unable to get rid of the 
 suspicion that he knew better than any man how often 
 he had failed to give his best, how at times he let 
 himself sink down to the level of his fellow play- 
 wrights, and even yield to the temptation of raising 
 a gross laugh. The more we judge Shakespeare by 
 the test of his own truest and mightiest, the more 
 shall we be doing him true justice. 
 
 The great Spanish drama had its own national 
 development, and a grand school of poetry it was. 
 Comte made a selection of twenty dramas by eleven 
 different poets, a book which was published in Paris in 
 1854, seven of these being by Calderon. I have the 
 book, but I read them only with the help of translations. 
 Fitzgerald's well-known Six Plays, it must be re- 
 membered, are hardly more than paraphrases, and do 
 not include the Mag'ico Prodigioso^ of which Shelley 
 translated a scene, nor Vida es Sueno^ both being 
 perhaps the grandest of all Calderon's works. I 
 have found in the British Museum a proof copy of 
 Fitzgerald's attempt to paraphrase the latter, which he 
 apparently never published. But D. F. McCarthy has 
 translated both these magnificent poems, as well as six 
 other dramas. The noble poetry and heroic spirit of 
 Calderon can only be entirely felt when we read his 
 own Hnes in the original. His truly Shakespearean 
 imagination, his tragic intensity, his devotional ardour, 
 are hardly represented in any version, unless by Shelley, 
 for Fitzgerald's six do not touch the lyrical and 
 religious dramas. But as Calderon is not seen on our 
 stage, and I am writing about drama, not about poetry, 
 I say no more here about the great Spanish poets. 
 
 For the same reason I say nothing here as to the 
 German or our recent " dramatic poems," such as 
 Faust^ or Manfred^ or the so-called Plays of Browning, 
 or of Tennyson, or Swinburne. They are to us 
 
cH.v TRAGIC DRAMA 107 
 
 more poems than dramas, and do not come into touch 
 with the great problems of the Classical and the 
 Renascence drama. When Ben Jonson, with all 
 his learning and his energy, attempted to return to 
 the classical model, he missed the conditions of tragedy 
 as much as he mastered those of comedy. Sejanus or 
 Catiline are interesting to a student of Roman history, 
 but they are more fit to be translated into Greek 
 iambics than to be played on the stage. And when 
 Dryden and Otway sought to imitate Shakespeare, or 
 Racine, or Sophocles, and they tried all in turn, they 
 produced many telling scenes, some noble speeches ; 
 they " held the stage " of their day, and even for a 
 century, but they showed themselves to be poets, not 
 dramatists. 
 
 It is vain to hope for any return to great drama in 
 England until it is made indifferent to "long runs," 
 and is not dependent on the money in the till from 
 night to night. We may add also, until it is not 
 dependent on pageantry, costumes, and mechanical 
 devices. The best Hamlet I ever saw was given 
 without scenery at all. To me personally the absurd 
 modern craze of darkened house, Hme -light and 
 magic-lantern tricks dodging the principal player, 
 the nasty smoking and drink "intervals," the im- 
 pudent boom of modistes' frocks, are quite nauseous. 
 And still more, is the craze for crude realism of what 
 is most brutal, depraved, and decadent in modern life. 
 
 All great tragic art in ancient or in modern ages 
 presented heroic, or grand, or pathetic types of public 
 and social catastrophes, and left us to draw our own 
 judgment on profound problems of morals, of duty, of 
 passion. In Greece, in Rome, in the French, Italian, 
 Spanish and German drama — and eminently in all 
 that is great in Shakespeare — the familiar myths and 
 histories of the past were the subject. The French 
 
io8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 tragedy, down to Victor Hugo, Alfieri, Goethe, 
 Schiller, followed and even developed Shakespeare's 
 persistent practice to make history famihar and ideal. 
 But to-day the "advanced" school offers Kinema 
 pictures of what can be seen to be most brutal, dirty, 
 or cruel, in the street, the tavern, or the thieves' den. 
 And we are told all this is " so actual," " convincing," 
 " up-to-date." Or else the subject is the squalid past 
 of a "kept woman," or the week-end frolic of the 
 " smart set." 
 
 By its necessary conditions Drama depends on the 
 taste and culture of those who choose to frequent the 
 theatre. In England to-day they do not form a public 
 of culture. To satisfy them scenes must be rapid, 
 cheery, realist, or sensational. To them serious 
 tragedy is "rot." The historic, the heroic, the 
 moral, bores them and drives them out. The only 
 Icme they care to see is the crambe repetita of adultery 
 and seduction, as imitated from some foreign novel. 
 Drama cannot live in a society so degenerate. 
 
 No return to the old Classical drama is possible in 
 our country and in our time. The very conditions 
 of the Attic stage could not be reproduced. We 
 could not endure the pedantic limitations of the 
 French stage ; nor would the severe manner of 
 Alfieri, or of Schiller, be bright enough to amuse 
 a generation which wants everything to be short, 
 quick, and new. But if all these belong to the past, 
 and are incapable of return to life, the study of their 
 ideals and methods is the sole basis of regenerated art. 
 If tragedy is ever to live again, it will be when we can 
 distinguish Shakespeare's poetry from his true and his 
 grandest tragedies^ and when we have essentially bathed 
 our spirits in the immortal dramatists of Athens, as 
 they did in the best ages of the drama both in France, 
 in Italy, and in Germany. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GENERAL LITERATURE 
 
 In closing these notes upon Books, my last word, as 
 it was my first word, is this : Read again the good 
 old books, and do not cast them aside as stale, for 
 ever looking for the "last thing out," the very name 
 of which, when it has been scampered through, will 
 be forgotten in a week. To a reader of any brain 
 the great books of the world are ever new ; at each 
 reading things strike us which we had never noticed, 
 or perhaps had forgotten, or even had misunderstood. 
 I take up again my Plato, my Shakespeare, my 
 Gibbon, my Scott — and I say, How did I miss that, 
 why did I forget that, did I really never read this before? 
 I began to study " the Decline and Fall " for my 
 degree just sixty years ago, and I have been reading it 
 in various editions, and lastly in the new edition by 
 Bury, constantly since then. I have read it in Rome, 
 when I passed a winter in Italy and took out the 
 entire set. And yet the interminable narrative always 
 seems to me new. One cannot take in much at a 
 sitting. It is like a Kinema show of the Delhi 
 Durbar. And so with Fielding or Scott. I can read 
 these novels, even the later and lesser novels, over and 
 over again with fresh enjoyment, and when I go on a 
 tour, or on a cruise, I lay in a dozen Fieldings or 
 
 109 
 
no AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Scotts in reprints to keep my mind clear and my 
 spirits sweet. A man who cannot read his poets and 
 his histories, essays, and romances again and again is 
 like one who tells us that he loves music, but, as he 
 once listened to Gluck's Orpheus^ or Mozart's Don 
 Juan^ or Beethoven's Symphonies years ago, he never 
 wants to hear them again. 
 
 A good test to judge great literature is — what can 
 one read again and again and always find fresh ? 
 Personal taste may affect the judgment ; but for 
 myself I find (to take the moderns alone) that I am 
 never tired of Fielding, of Sterne, of Scott, Jane 
 Austen, Balzac, George Sand, Anatole France. The 
 earlier and greater Thackerays, or Trollopes, or the 
 short and early George Eliots, I can take up any 
 \ day and anywhere. The long and late Thackerays, 
 ] Trollopes, George Eliots, rarely tempt me to return 
 to them. Nor does Dickens, nor the Brontes, nor 
 Meredith, nor Zola, nor Tolstoy. Of course, I am 
 ; an ardent admirer of Dickens — I am a real Pick- 
 wickian, as I have said at length, and I hold Dickens's 
 four. or five masterpieces to stand in the front rank 
 of modern Hterature. As (rn'tiV T say that; but^ as 
 reade r I do not find myself returning to the m. Now 
 Vanity Fair, or Esmond, or Thackeray's smaller cari- 
 catures and satires, I can turn to at any time. I find 
 myself more often taking up Emma, or Cranford, or 
 Doctor Thome than Clarissa, or The Caxtons, or Great 
 Expectations. It is, no doubt, the charm of style, of 
 the simple, easy music of phrase which conveys the 
 idea straight to the mind without either discords, 
 conundrums, or redundance. Richardson wastes 
 words ; Dickens has no formed style ; Bulwer, and 
 George Eliot, and Meredith, wrote themselves into 
 styles of their own, either turgid, or precious, or 
 cryptic — and therefore, with all their imaginative 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE iii 
 
 gifts, they are more or less tiresome for constant 
 perusal. It Ja-5tyle al one which can sec ure peren nial 
 delight^-and in Style^simplicity, ea^e^grace. 
 
 Pure, easy, well-bred prose is always welcome, 
 
 however familiar or old. The greater masters of 
 
 such a prose I rank thus : Voltaire, in his Romans^ 
 
 which I can read time after time ; Rousseau, in spite 
 
 of his morbid sentiment; George Sand — but not 
 
 Hugo, nor Dumas, nor Flaubert — Swift, Goldsmith, 
 
 Gray, Lamb, Thackeray. To my taste some of our 
 
 noblest writers of prose are apt to be boisterous, 
 
 embroidered, rhapsodical, garrulous, or smart. So 
 
 that, whatever their splendid form in their highest 
 
 moments, we cannot take them as types of perfect 
 
 style : even Bacon, or Dryden, or Gibbon, or Johnson, 
 
 or De Quincey, or Macaulay, or Ruskin. We enjoy 
 
 each of them in segments and at times. But for a 
 
 long spe ll and in ordinary hours, there is too much 
 
 druirTand trumpel in Lhc uichesill'i "; or the pomp and 
 
 volume of the music either drown the sense to be 
 
 conveyed or demand too close an attention to be 
 
 easily sustained. 
 
 In all English prose, no one to my mind can beat 
 Goldsmith. I take the Vicar of Wakefield to be the 
 high-water mark of English. It is free from that air 
 of the Beau in full dress of The Spectator^ and from 
 the sardonic harshness of Swift. My "Works of 
 Oliver Goldsmith" are in four volumes, 8vo, 1854, 
 and I can read any part — even "The Citizen of the 
 World," the Comedies, nay, the Poems. To me dear 
 " Goldie " is the Mozart of English prose — the feck- 
 less, inspired ne'er-do-well of eighteenth-century art. 
 He was a poor creature ; and so were Sterne, and 
 Lamb, and Dc Quincey — but they all four live by 
 virtue of their unfailing charm, their ease, grace, and 
 human feeling. 
 
112 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 The supreme form of this lovely type is seen in the 
 Letters of Cowper — the purest and most beautiful 
 letters in English — I had almost said in all modern 
 literature. How marvellous a thing is the magic of 
 language, that the intimate outpourings of heart to a 
 few obscure parsons and women in a sleepy country- 
 side, written by a morbid scholar some 130 years ago, 
 whilst Britain and Europe were shaken with tre- 
 mendous events — letters that record nothing but the 
 affectionate thoughts of a pensive invalid, his deHght 
 in his books, in cats, and birds, and flowers, and 
 meadows — that this should enthral busy men of the 
 world in an age of change and strife like ours ! Read 
 Cowper's letter of 1790 to Mrs. Bodham, when she 
 sent him his mother's portrait, or his letters to John 
 Johnson — his " dearest Johnnie " — full of his exquisite 
 taste in poetry, his loving advice to his young cousin, 
 his peaceful rapture in Nature. There is not a word 
 in these private letters written for any eye but that of 
 gentle women, rural clerics, and students whose very 
 names the world would never have heard but for this 
 — and they remain unequalled as the most perfect 
 letters in our language. 
 
 Gray's Letters^ too, are classics, were it not that 
 they are too redolent of scholarship and have not the 
 poignant tenderness of Cowper's. Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald's also in our own day are excellent reading — 
 another lonely scholar and poet in the Eastern counties 
 — the best letters, I think, of our times. But " Fitz-" 
 is too whimsical, too much up-to-date, too queer to give 
 us anything Hke the charm of Cowper. Tennyson 
 wrote itw letters at all, and none having any mark of 
 his genius have been published. Nor can we see 
 Browning the poet in his prose as yet given to the 
 world. Much in Ruskin's Letters is magnificent, but 
 they differ little from similar outpourings of self in his 
 
I '^ 
 
 CH. VI GENERAL LITERATURE 113 
 
 books ; and the greater part of Fors^ of Praterita^ of 
 Arrorws of the Chase^ and such collected pieces, are 
 really intimate diaries or familiar letters, flung out to 
 the world instead of being reserved for the personal 
 intercourse with a dear friend. Ruskin's public and 
 private careers were all one and the same. 
 
 In their own line, Byron's Letters have intense life 
 \and power, and for the most part are better reading 
 tjhan much of his verse. It is true they have not the 
 tkste of Gray, nor the aroma of Cowper, nor the 
 Tiumour of " Fitz-," but they ring with the vitaHty of 
 a master-mind, they cut folly to the bone, and defy 
 the world of cant and conventions. I never take up 
 Byron's Letters and Diaries without remembering the 
 amusing paradox of my master in the law — " No poet 
 — but a great man." Shelley's life was too stormy, 
 and his own nature was too eager, sensitive, and way- 
 ward, to suffer him to do full justice to his genius in 
 his Letters as we know them. He has not the serene 
 lovabiHty of Cowper, nor the measured judgment and 
 culture of Gray, nor the fun and gossip of FitzGerald. 
 I take little enjoy hient from Landor's prose. His Con- 
 versations are overrated — they are often stilted, un- 
 natural, and monotonous. Achilles, Mahomet, and 
 Anne Boleyn, all talk the same Savage-Landorisms. 
 Can any dialogue be more unnatural than that of 
 Menelaus and Helen, or that of Leofric and Godiva ? 
 Landor, no doubt, was a man of genius, with some 
 grand thoughts and noble aspirations in him, but he 
 always seems to me one of those unlucky men of genius 
 who never found the right instrument on which to 
 express their souls. .Devoted as I am to Keats's 
 poetry, I find no such charm in his Letters. Exquisite 
 poet as he was, he was no scholar, his culture was 
 haphazard, and his breeding was ordinary — in fact, his 
 was in no sense a fine nature, and his letters show him 
 
 I 
 
114 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 as he was. I will not read the Letters to Fanny Brawne^ 
 and I put them aside. There are some touching 
 passages in the later Letters^ especially in the last to 
 Mrs. Brawne from Naples, 1820, and in others there 
 are the words of a poet, but never in heart, nor in 
 language, nor in judgment do they give us the tender- 
 ness of Cowper's Letters nor the fire of Byron's. 
 
 Memoirs stand in the same order as Letters, for 
 they are seldom written for any immediate publication 
 — and sometimes for no publication at all. No one 
 needs to be encouraged to read Horace Walpole's, or 
 Madame D'Arblay's, or Burnet, or Evelyn, or Pepys. 
 Of all of these, if Madame D'Arblay is the most lively 
 picture of a rather unlovely age, Horace Walpole, to 
 my mind, is our prince of diarists. If he has not the 
 feminine touch of Fanny Burney, nor the impudence 
 of Pepys, he lived in a more stirring world and among 
 much greater men. But our best writers of Memoirs 
 cannot hold their own with the best of France, of 
 whom the first hors concours is Saint-Simon, with his 
 vast canvas crowded with living portraits of a memor- 
 able age ; nor with the Memoirs of Madame de Motte- 
 ville ; and along with both the Letters of Madame de 
 Sevign6, which are practically historical and critical 
 diaries even more than family epistles. 
 
 Saint-Simon, whose twenty-two volumes have been 
 boiled down to four in English, must ever remain un- 
 equalled in his pictures of historical persons, and a 
 unique product of modern civilisation. Nor, in the 
 art of critical correspondence, of which the personal 
 and literary charm cannot be lost by time, will the 
 Letters of Madame de Sevign^ ever be displaced or 
 neglected. The painter of such a peculiar world was 
 exactly qualified for the task. A woman of beautiful 
 nature, with a rare gift of subtle observation and un- 
 failing literary charm, for twenty years studied and 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE 115 
 
 described a society of mingled pride, elegance, culture, 
 and vice. And in the midst of this Comus rout of 
 anti-social debauchery, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal 
 remains a sweet, pure, affectionate woman, devoted to 
 her rather ordinary daughter, and passing just judg- 
 ments on the manners of a briUiant age. 
 
 I shall say little about French books here, though 
 for my part I read as much French prose as English ; 
 and in critical essays — and what they call Pensees — it 
 is agreed that the French hold the field. In their own 
 line we have little that can be ranked with Voltaire's 
 best — with the Thoughts of Pascal, of Montaigne, of 
 Vauvenargues, La Rochefoucauld — with the pamphlets 
 of J. P. Courier, the wit of Talleyrand, and the imperial 
 rescripts of Napoleon. In the line of which the finest 
 types are Manon Le scant or Pierre et Virginie^ Nou~ 
 velle Helotse or La Mare au Diahle^ we have little in 
 English to compare ; nor again with the short studies 
 on Nature by Jules Michelet, or Victor Hugo's pictures 
 of the sea. 
 
 I suppose, too, that in literary criticism we have to 
 give way to the French, who from Voltaire to Renan 
 have set the tone. Nothing in the entire history 
 of literature equals the mass, completeness, learning, 
 and authority of Sainte-Beuve. Those who know the 
 thirty-odd volumes of his Causeries and Portraits^ still 
 to be read only in French, will know nearly all that is 
 worth knowing of French literature. We have nothing 
 in English that can compare with this encyclopaedic 
 mass of critical learning and just estimate, even if we 
 call up all that we owe to Johnson, Coleridge, Carlyle, 
 Matthew Arnold, Pater, and Symonds — to say nothing 
 of the famous men happily still with us — for of Hving 
 writers, in this series of essays, I very humbly and 
 wisely forbear to speak. Coleridge, indeed, was a 
 much greater man than Sainte-Beuve, both as critic 
 
ii6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 and as writer ; but he did not touch one-tenth or 
 twentieth of the ground. And admirable critic and 
 deHghtful writer as was Matthew Arnold, he is after 
 all, in mere range and knowledge, hardly more than a 
 Sainte-Beuve le jeune. 
 
 One of the hindrances to pleasant reading nowadays 
 is the doleful superstition " made in Germany " that a 
 serious work is bound to be " exhaustive," drawn from 
 original sources — what the Germans call grundlich. 
 That is to say, every scrap of documentary evidence 
 has to be not only seen by the author, but thrust upon 
 the reader. Now, nine-tenths of contemporary docu- 
 ments are just as shallow, untrue, even mendacious, as 
 contemporary gossip. The business of historian or 
 biographer is to weigh the value of all this old paper 
 and to give us his own mature estimate of the real 
 facts. But the fashion is to serve up most of this 
 documentary material in the raw, and leave the reader 
 to draw his own conclusion. In the result the reader 
 finds these "exhaustive" treatises to be exhausting, 
 and he turns from them to something less prolix. He 
 is told that a well-knit, well-digested book, say, in one 
 modest volume, i2mo, is "a sketch," "a study," a 
 thumb-nail portrait, not to be treated as " serious " 
 literature. Such a book as Southey's Life of Nelson^ 
 Voltaire's Charles XI I. ^ Mark Pattison's Milton^ 
 Froude's Bunyan^ Goldwin Smith's Cowper^ tell us 
 what is essential to know of the men. The rest is to 
 be found in their works or in the history of their 
 times. But it is to confuse and weary the ordinary 
 reader if every bit of printed stuff relating to the sub- 
 ject has to be inserted verbatim^ if the story of the 
 events of the time and descriptions of all the persons 
 brought into touch with the hero have to be dwelt 
 upon at length. In a famous trial, when Whistler 
 the painter was asked in cross-examination if he justi- 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE 117 
 
 fied charging a buyer of his picture a long price for the 
 labour of a few mornings, he replied, " No ! I value 
 the work as the labour of a life of study ! " A good 
 book must be the result of thorough and conscientious 
 study by the writer ; but the less all this preliminary 
 study is thrust upon the reader, the more concise and 
 vivid is the conclusion so laboriously attained by the 
 author — the fewer pages in fact used to convey the 
 impression, the more willingly will the book be read. 
 "Serious" books nowadays are too apt to become 
 weighty, in every sense of the word. 
 
 ^That word of ill-omen known as Research hangs 
 upon literature like the microbe of Sleeping Sickness. 
 No one who knows me will suggest that I disparage 
 thorough and exact knowledge or show any mercy as 
 a critic to superficial work. No man has any right to 
 make pubhc his thoughts upon any subject until he 
 has thoroughly exhausted and assimilated all that can 
 be reasonably learned about it. But he has got to give 
 us his thoughts^ not his materials ; what is worth 
 knowing^ not what can be stated and printed ; what 
 conclusion can be reached by Research, not what 
 Research can unearth and cast up in a rubbish-heap. 
 Books are too often made nowadays by laborious poking 
 into charnel-houses and dustbins of the past, instead 
 of by intelligent understanding of men and things. 
 The first thing and the last thing in a real book is 
 Thought. Tons of Research will not weigh down 
 an ounce of Mind. For this canonisation of dead 
 Facts is the ruin of healthy and pleasant reading. 
 And if reading gives no enduring pleasure it serves no 
 humane purpose. 
 
 On this ground I welcome and I use those handy 
 volumes of " Selections " from poetry and prose, and 
 those summary Lives of statesmen and authors, which 
 are coming into general favour. First and foremost 
 
ii8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 of these we must place Palgrave's Golden Treasury^ a 
 perfect epitome of lyrical verse, which always seems to 
 me to contain every lyric we really love, and to include 
 nothing that we do not care for. No doubt it owes 
 much to the exquisite taste of Tennyson — a veritable 
 Ithuriel spear. To know that little book is to have 
 taken a degree in the Academy of the Poets. Another 
 such admirable selection is Matthew Arnold's Words- 
 worthy a poet who, as Arnold truly says, singularly 
 gains by judicious elimination of his long-winded 
 meditations. Byron, too, may well be condensed for 
 his fine lyrics, but when we get over our irritation at 
 Byron's ragged and theatrical ways, we have to read 
 through Childe Harold^ Manfred^ Cain^ and Don Juan 
 as entire poems, taking the good and evil of them 
 together. And the same is true of Shelley as well as 
 of Keats, for those who love them best have to admit 
 that Shelley, like his skylark, at times sings himself up 
 far out of human ken — loses himself, in fact, in the 
 light of asther ; and Keats, who after all hardly lived 
 to come into his own, only did his genius full justice 
 in his exquisite sonnets, odes, and shorter lyrics rather 
 than in the longer pieces, with some of which he was 
 not at all satisfied, born poet as he was. 
 
 Of modern poets I find myself most often taking 
 up Coleridge, Shelley, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold — 
 and that in their shorter pieces : the more ambitious 
 and long poems I read, as Saint Jerome saith the 
 Church reads the Books of Apocrypha, " for example 
 of Hfe, and instruction of manners," but I do not so 
 readily go through with them, and I am writing now 
 about my own habits of reading. I see all the beauty 
 of Keats, of Swinburne, Rossetti, and others whom it 
 is the fashion to praise, I think, in needless super- 
 latives ; but for my own enjoyment I require sustained 
 and original Thought, and not merely melodious phrase 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE 119 
 
 and luscious images. Thoughts, ideas, appeals to mind 
 or action, are the essence of poetry as of all other kinds 
 of composition. And sweet songs about nothing in 
 particular do not long hold me. Again, they who 
 offer Thoughts without music should write in prose, 
 not in verse. 
 
 I turn to the condensed books in prose, and now 
 nearly all the great men and great events may be read 
 in one or other of the recent shorter histories and 
 handy Lives of our own and European heroes in many 
 popular series. Foremost I rank Jules Michelet's 
 Precis de PHistoire Moderne^ now translated and con- 
 tinued by Mrs. W. Simpson. Then J. R. Green's 
 Short History of England was admirable in design, 
 even if its execution hardly equalled its plan. And 
 this excellent book is even greatly increased in value 
 if read in the four-volume illustrated edition of 1892-4. 
 Several of the Lives of Statesmen and of Writers, in 
 various series, in one short volume are all that such 
 biographies should be. It is mischievous pedantry 
 to ask for 1000 pages octavo, with contemporary 
 documents in full verbatim. There are at least one 
 hundred Lives of prime importance to civilisation, 
 and at least ten all-important periods and movements. 
 And the general reader needs manageable books on 
 each of them, and he is lost if you send him without 
 guidance to the Bodleian or the British Museum to 
 grope amid their shelves. 
 
 Notwithstanding, or rather in consequence of, the 
 enormous mass of material about Napoleon and his 
 times, I think a single adequate Life in 300-400 pp., 
 i2mo, is yet to seek. I think the same is needed for 
 Alexander, for Julius Caesar, for Charlemagne, for 
 Alfred, for Frederick the Great, and for Washington. 
 And we need similar condensed histories of the 
 
120 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Byzantine Empire from the first to the last Con- 
 stantine ; for the Middle Ages ; the Renascence ; the 
 settlement of Europe ; the Revolution, in the style of 
 those excellent Manuals of Victor Duruy. Mega 
 biblion mega kakon — the piling up of massive library 
 works w^herein the events of one year require 500 
 pages octavo, may be the glory of literature — but it is 
 the death of Knowledge. 
 
 I yield to the fascination of new Travels in un- 
 known lands, and I confess that I never see one on 
 the Club table, where about three fresh ones appear 
 each week, without turning them over at least for the 
 photographs and maps. I suppose this age of rapid 
 locomotion cannot stop to look at one of the real old 
 primitive discoverers, such as Cook, or Bougainville, 
 or Anson, or Ross, and the early Arctic explorers. 
 My Cook's Voyages^ in five folios with plates and 
 maps, is wonderfully good reading even to-day, and 
 so are Kane's, and Franklin's, and Parry's. Do our 
 young friends ever take up Eothen^ or The Crescent and 
 the Cross — two books which entranced my youth, and 
 which were literature as well as travels — and this can 
 be said of few modern books of travel — or Burton, or 
 Layard, or Hue, or Vambdry, or Livingstone ? In 
 these days of globe-trotting and Round the World in 
 seventy days, it is curiously amusing to see what 
 travelling was in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 And are old-fashioned books all voted "back 
 numbers" in journalese slang, and does no young 
 person who respects himself ever look at Transforma- 
 tion^ or the Scarlet Letter^ or Washington Irving, or 
 Notre Dame de Paris, or Fumh and Le Chasseur Russe 
 — to say nothing of Vathek, or the Amber fVitch, or 
 Headlong Hall\ And are the ever- fresh Marryats 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE 121 
 
 of our boyhood quite superseded by Joseph Conrad, 
 " scrapped " by the Dreadnought Hterature of to-day ? 
 I suppose that if I admit that I can still enjoy Peter 
 Simple^ and Midshipman Easy^ and Snarley Tow^ 
 my young friends will say that it is my second child- 
 hood. Well ! all I can say is, that second childhood 
 is a delightful time for the reader of old books. I can 
 take up Peter Plymley^ and Disraeli's early Satires, 
 Hadji Baba^ and the Rejected Addresses^ and have a 
 good chuckle — nay, a wiser chuckle than I was able 
 to feel sixty or seventy years ago — we old ones find 
 more truth underneath the fun. 
 
 I care little for Parodies, which are almost all 
 failures — I never could see the charm of Bon Gaultier 
 — but there are one or two which, being real criticisms, 
 have enduring value. Apart from Joseph Andrews^ 
 which, beginning as a parody, soon became an 
 immortal romance, there are two modern Parodies — 
 one in verse and one in prose, which are at once good 
 fun and solid criticism of mannerism and extravagance. 
 The Rejected Addresses is the best, because the 
 truest. Parody we have. The " Byron " hits the poet 
 at his weakest side, and even as a poem is finer than 
 the poet's own prize Prologue. And it is^much to 
 Byron's credit that he pronounced the verses to be 
 the best of their kind, with Hnes " which he- wished he 
 could have written himself." And Scott, too, much 
 to the honour of his generous heart, enjoyed and 
 praised the consummate parody of his " Marmion " and 
 " Lay." The " Wordsworth " and the « Crabbe " also 
 are perfect, though we fear neither poet quite relished 
 the joke. Half the other pieces merely cease to delight 
 us, because the originals are utterly unknown to-day. 
 But the "Johnson," the "Cobbett," the "Southey," 
 the " Coleridge," and the " T. Moore " have delightful 
 touches, even if overdone in the whole. The prose 
 
122 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Parodies of Thackeray are also consummate bits of 
 sound criticism as well as rich with Homeric laughter ; 
 and " Codlingsby " and " Rebecca and Rowena '* are 
 quite worthy of " The Rose and the Ring," or the 
 burlesque Ballads. I remember how a famous Oxford 
 Don, seeing on my library table the big illustrated 
 " Works of Thackeray," in twenty-eight volumes, large 
 octavo, wondered how a serious person could commit 
 the extravagance of purchasing such trifles. I suppose 
 there are no books on my shelves which I take down 
 with more pleasure and more often. Why, Thackeray 
 was even with his pencil a consummate caricaturist, a 
 real ballad singer, and a writer of absolutely perfect 
 English in every form in which our tongue can be 
 used — whether gay, or pathetic, or sardonic, or 
 eloquent. One who desires to write pure EngHsh has 
 to know his Thackeray from end to end. 
 
 A fig for the Dons ! But I must end these chats 
 about Books with a serious word or two, and my 
 main point throughout has been this. The idea that 
 wholly new and original forms of literature or art are 
 likely to be discovered in the twentieth century is a 
 juvenile delusion. In the two or three thousand years 
 that have passed since Homer and Virgil, Sappho and 
 Horace, Plato and Cicero, and all that Italian, French, 
 and Enghsh literature has since achieved, the possi- 
 bilities o^ form in which genius can find expression 
 have been exhausted for all practical purposes. Of 
 course, the limitless expansion of human life and the 
 ceaseless control over the World will give perpetually 
 new ideas to be told and inexhaustible stores of fresh 
 knowledge to be spread. But human language does 
 not expand with infinite rapidity, and the forms of 
 human expression are not infinitely numerous nor 
 infinitely variable. There is such a thing as Style, 
 both in verse and in prose. And, in the centuries 
 
CH.vi GENERAL LITERATURE 123 
 
 since The Psalms and the Lyrical and Dramatic 
 Poetry of the Ancients and the Moderns were made, 
 all practicable forms have been tried. It is affectation 
 to imagine that poetry can be made up with discordant 
 sounds, by lumbering lines that drag when we utter 
 them aloud, or by printing prose in set Hnes of equal 
 length and vowing that this is poetry. It is quite like 
 the " Mad Hatter " paradox, that there is more real 
 beauty in a toad than in a living man or woman. 
 
 There are Types, Standards, and Canons of Beauty 
 both in literature and in art ; and it is a cry of feeble- 
 ness and conceit that a new literature and a new art 
 are going to be invented by the sorry trick of defying 
 all that the good sense of mankind has hitherto loved 
 as beautiful and pleasing. All this ends in a new 
 form of Baroque Decadence. A democratic and 
 revolutionary age reeks with obstreperous forms of 
 vulgarism and anarchism. And no form of either is 
 more in evidence than the fashionable attempt to dis- 
 credit or discard beauty and harmony on the ground 
 that they are signs of weakness or decay. Grace, 
 self-command, proportion are alway strong, however 
 sweet and delightful to the ear, the eye, or the mind. 
 Sophodes, Virgil, Milton, and Shelley are neither weak 
 nor decadent because, whatever their thought, they 
 sought to convey it in exquisite words. Nor will the 
 combined armies of Research in Europe and America 
 ever make Gibbon obsolete ; nor will the Railway 
 Bookstalls of the entire world ever overwhelm Fielding 
 and Scott in an avalanche of up-to-date novels. As 
 an old man, I stand by the old Books, the old Classics, 
 the old Style. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 
 
 The origin, date, authorship, and history of the Iliad 
 and the Odyssey form a problem which lies at the root 
 of literary judgment, and it cannot be ignored in any 
 critical estimate of the World's best thought. It has 
 exercised the mind of the most learned scholars and 
 the acutest critics in ancient and in modern times ; 
 and in our own generation it has grown to be one of 
 the keenest controversies which divide educated men 
 into opposite camps. The " Separators," as antiquity 
 nicknamed those who denied that the two great Epics 
 had one and the same author, have now grown into 
 an army of learned "Smashers," who break up the 
 poems into fragments of many different poets, and of 
 ages whole centuries apart. 
 
 The problem is extraordinarily complex, for its 
 solution depends not only on poetic judgment but on 
 linguistic scholarship, on archaeology, on the history 
 of art, of manners, and even of religion. Its appeals 
 pass to geography, anthropology, and all forms of 
 comparative science. It is a ground on which the 
 poet, the antiquary, the artist, the historian, the 
 palaeographist, and the social philosopher face each 
 other in arms like Hector and Achilles. Some Trojan 
 — say a man of letters, steeped in the poetry of the 
 124 
 
CH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 125 
 
 world — asks us proudly if we can doubt that one and 
 the same immortal genius composed the first line of 
 the Iliad — " Sing the wrath of Achilles " — and also 
 the last line — "Thus they buried Hector, the tamer 
 of horses." And then — ton (Tapomeibomenos prosephe 
 — some eminent scholar tells us that he recognizes a 
 dozen different hands, dialects, and habits, and that 
 the singers of the different " lays " Hved in countries 
 widely apart and in ages remote from each other. 
 
 A majority of the most learned Hellenists of 
 Germany and of Britain declare that " Homer " can- 
 not be the name of any person at all ; that the Iliad 
 is a " Patchwork," worked up into the form in which 
 we know it by an anonymous editor in late historic 
 times, three or four centuries later than the spurious 
 person whose name or nickname got attached to the 
 kernel of the Epic. On the other side, I have heard 
 Mr. Gladstone passionately assert that "the whole 
 tendency of modern scholarship was to show that the 
 entire poems were both the sole work of the same 
 poet." Sir Richard Jebb heard this, and kept a 
 discreet silence. And so did I. But very much has 
 been found out and learned since that day (it was 
 twenty-two years ago) ; and I can keep silence no 
 longer. I am perfectly satisfied that there is much in 
 our Iliad which never came from any original Homer ; 
 but I am no " Smasher," and I feel in my bones that 
 the poem as a whole is the immortal work of a 
 mighty and sublime genius. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Lang is right when he insists that, 
 this is a literary problem in the final appeal, rather 
 than one of verbal scholarship, or archaeological pre- 
 sumption. That is, for the question whether the 
 Iliad in the main is a single creation, we had better 
 take the judgment of Lord Tennyson than that of 
 Professor Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. All which that 
 
126 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 illustrious chief of Greek scholars has written and 
 all that is written by those who have worked with 
 him in Germany and in England and America, and 
 indeed in the educated world — all this has to be 
 considered. So has all the evidence collected from 
 palaeography, prehistoric excavations, archaic art, ethno- 
 graphy, folk-lore, national sagas and romances, and 
 the like. It is now a mass of curious learning heaped 
 up round the Epics of Greece — but in the last resort 
 the verdict must be delivered by a jury drawn from 
 the lovers of great literature. 
 
 It is a commonplace of criticism to call Homer 
 (and by this is usually meant the Iliad) the Bible of 
 antiquity. It was certainly the primary text-book of 
 education and the only book that had any kind of 
 religious authority. And now the modern scholars 
 want to convince us that the Iliad and the Odyssey 
 had as many different authors as the Old Testament 
 and were composed in as many different ages. 
 
 I shall attempt to deal with the problem as 
 essentially belonging to the world of literature — rather 
 than that of pure scholarship. For thirty years I 
 have been fascinated with the task, and have done my 
 best to master the arguments of scholars, historians, 
 archaeologists, and mythologists. I have visited Greece 
 and the islands of its Western and its Eastern Seas 
 three times in my life within the last thirty years, and 
 have read my Iliad and pondered on its origin whilst 
 watching the plain of Troy or the wooded hills of 
 Chios, and again I have read the Odyssey on a yacht 
 voyage to Ithaca, Zante, Cephallenia, and Corcyra ; 
 and text in hand I have tried to identify the Cave of 
 the Nymphs and the "School of Homer," and the 
 Cyclopean walls of the " Castle of Ulysses." I have 
 followed Schliemann's suggestions with curiosity and 
 doubts on Mount Aietos in Ithaca, and again in the 
 
CH. VII THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 127 
 
 excavations of Tiryns and Mycenae, and other ruins 
 in continental Greece. 
 
 I have studied the remains of prehistoric Greek art 
 in situ, as vv^ell as in the Museums of Athens, Naples, 
 Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, and in 
 England and America. And w^ith some sense of 
 disappointment I have sought to extract the final and 
 positive conclusions to be drawn from such erudite 
 libraries as are devoted to archaeology and primitive art, 
 as w^ell as from the enigmas and dilemmas presented 
 by an array of scholars and experts who land us in 
 interminable contradictions and insoluble hypotheses. 
 I pretend to no learning of the kind myself. It is 
 merely what those who try to judge literary problems 
 are bound to know. But alas ! after all these learned 
 disquisitions, vague conjectures, and inexhaustible 
 quarries of antique stones, potsherds, and bronze 
 fragments — there is almost nothing certain on which 
 the scientific historian can rest — and we must fall 
 back on the best judgment which minds trained in 
 the higher literature can give us. 
 
 After wading through learned works on the " in- 
 consistencies," " contradictions," and " blots " in the 
 Iliad, on the vagaries of the Aeolic and Ionic dialects, 
 on the Atticisms, the obeHzed " Spurious " passages, on 
 the "obscenities" and " immorahties " of the grand 
 old bard, on evidence and want of evidence of any 
 known writing in prehistoric times, after studying 
 Cretan "scripts," Cyclopean walls, Mycaenean founda- 
 tions, tombs, gates, halls, the ground plan and cellars 
 of Tiryns, after poring over broken pots, metal, ivories, 
 enamels, the frescoes from Crete, the gold work from 
 the tombs, the battle of commentators " at the ships," 
 or at "the Scaean Gate," the hot blows rained on 
 the great "breast-plate," "zoster," or "shield" in 
 controversy — the tug-of-war between bronze and 
 
128 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 iron, bow and spear, poet or rhapsode — after all this 
 hundred years of a new Trojan War — I come back to 
 this — that I do not see we are much further than was 
 Grote in 1845 — and in the main I have held by him 
 ever since. 
 
 For the ordinary English reader who has no time 
 for German scholarship, the two schools of Unitarians 
 and Separatists for the Epics may be roughly classed 
 as those who follow Gladstone, Symonds, Monro, and 
 A. Lang, and those who hold by the German scholars 
 and Professor G. G. Murray and Walter Leaf. But 
 we must remember that if there are two schools of 
 opinion, the critics differ amongst themselves. No two 
 hold precisely the same view. Every statement is met 
 by blank contradictions, and the appeal to taste is even 
 less convincing than the appeal to learning. "A 
 man," says a German scholar, " who can suppose the 
 same poet to have written the Iliad and the Odyssey 
 cannot have read either throughout." "The man," 
 says Mr. Gladstone, "who takes the Iliad to be 
 ' patchwork ' has no feeling for great poetry." Even 
 about "scripts," bronze, arms, burial, houses, dress, 
 and food, the learned archaeologists contradict each 
 other. Each ingenious guess is constantly discredited 
 by some new " find." 
 
 This is not the place, nor am I the man to discuss 
 those points of language and archaeology in detail. I 
 do my best to follow them and I will briefly state 
 my own conclusions. The great crux started by Wolf 
 in his Prolegomena of 1795 opens the modern battle 
 of Homer. He showed that there was no evidence 
 either in the poems or elsewhere that the art of writing 
 existed in prehistoric Greece j and that a poem of 
 some 15,000 lines could not have been composed or 
 preserved without writing. Upon that premiss, which 
 has never been absolutely proved to be false, various 
 
cH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 129 
 
 results have been argued — either that the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey (as we know them) were largely the work 
 of historic times, or that they were never composed as. 
 single poems, but were "Lays" of various dates by 
 different poets, finally evolved, completed, and edited 
 in an age of formal literature and books to be read and 
 not to be recited. 
 
 Desperate efforts have been made by learned and 
 ingenious students, especially since the wonderful 
 excavations in Crete, and in other Asiatic remains, 
 to show that some form of writing was practised in 
 Greece in early ages. 7'he single phrase in the Iliad 
 in which it is thought that a message was conveyed 
 by " baneful signs " has been discussed as much as the 
 Rosetta stone or the Capitoline marbles. But all that 
 we hear about the Cretan undecypherable "script," 
 about Dipylon vases, and inscribed decrees, fails to 
 convince us that the Greek language was ever written 
 in Greece proper before the seventh century B.C. 
 Even this preliminary point is uncertain. It is 
 perhaps highly improbable that the Greek language 
 was written much earlier than this — Professor Bury 
 will carry it back in Ionia to the ninth century — but 
 actual proof of its use in Greece proper until near 
 historic times is still to seek. 
 
 But does it follow that, in the absence of writing, a 
 poem of the length of the Iliad could neither be com- 
 posed nor transmitted ? It does not follow. Knowing 
 what has been done by memory in ages when poems 
 could only be preserved by memory, and looking at 
 the example of other races, we may well conclude that, 
 at any rate, the bulk of the Iliad could be composed, 
 and fairly well retained, by professional reciters trained 
 from boyhood to that art. li if be admitted that this 
 is within human powers in a primitive society where 
 every fact and art in life could only be perpetuated in 
 
130 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 memory, then both the alleged inconsistencies of the 
 plot become natural and the variations and faults in 
 the text are explained. A poet who had no manu- 
 script in separate " Books " to refer to might easily 
 fail to perceive, or even might be indifferent to, a 
 discrepancy. And reciters, however well trained, 
 would easily vary the familiar phrases or incidents. 
 
 The ground is very much cleared if we refuse 
 WolPs minor premiss that neither Epic could be 
 retained in the memory. The want of symmetry in 
 plot on which some critics fasten becomes inevitable ; 
 and as to the contradiction and varieties in the text, 
 the marvel is that they are not more numerous. It is 
 obvious that, in any case, the Epics were primarily 
 used for oral delivery and not for a reading public — 
 for national and religious ceremonies and not for 
 critical coteries. To apply to the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey tests which might be reasonably brought to 
 bear on the Paradise Lost^ Racine's tragedies, or 
 Wordsworth's Excursion would be alike uncritical and 
 misleading. The whole spirit of both Epics cries out 
 against their being submitted to the verbal and textual 
 analysis of those who read and criticised poetry in 
 books. 
 
 If we can lay the ghost of the terrible Wolf — and 
 we can do this either by believing it possible to rely 
 on memory in lieu of writing for a great Epic 
 organically composed and transmitted in its entirety, 
 or by accepting the possibility of writing being in use 
 a century or two earlier than any yet discovered script 
 — then we are at once free from the intolerable 
 thought that the Iliad is an "artificial" creation of 
 late {i.e. of historic) times, deliberately thrown into 
 an archaic form. Into this sorry paradox some 
 illustrious scholars have been driven by the dilemmas 
 of dialect ; by trivial points of habit, as that of using 
 
cH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 131 
 
 fish for food ; by the absence of given forms of arms, 
 houses, burial, and so forth ; and, worst of all, by some 
 certainly gross bits of facetiae^ which we are told 
 savour rather of Attic comedy, nay even of a Paris 
 farce. Let us hold no terms with the idea that 
 the Iliad can be compared with the Argonautica of 
 Apollonius Rhodius in the third century. 
 
 For my part, I cannot shake ofF the faith that the 
 bulk of the Iliad was composed in the ages of transi- 
 tion and settlement (to be precise), a century or two 
 before the first Olympiad 776 B.C. ; and I prefer the 
 tenth to the ninth century B.C. That is to say, the 
 Iliad belongs to the interval of migration, conquest, 
 fusion, and expansion between the Mycenaean age 
 (anterior to lOOO B.C.) and the beginning of historic 
 Hellas (about 700 B.C.). The Epic, as nearly all 
 Epics have done, paints the traditions and welds the 
 Lays of an age many generations earlier than its own 
 time, and yet is itself many generations earlier than 
 any time when real events and actual persons could be 
 recorded in any written form. The poet described 
 not what he saw and knew around himself, but what 
 he imagined to have been in a former age from the 
 traditions and Lays that it had left. There was no 
 conscious archaism in this. He lived in thought in 
 an older and grander world. 
 
 This idea that the poet of the Iliad lived and sang 
 in an age midway between the heroic or mythical 
 world of his imagination and the historic and democratic 
 world of which we have certain record, must be taken 
 subject to two very important conditions : — 
 
 (i) Our Homer (whoever he was) was saturated 
 with, and he incorporated in his Epic, old but 
 detached Lays about a traditional Trojan war — and 
 therein, no doubt, a primal Lay of the " Wrath of 
 Achilles " and possibly other Lays of the kind. 
 
132 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 (2) The Iliad of our Homer was transmitted and 
 recited for many generations in various fluctuating 
 forms, received minor additions and corrections in 
 points of dialect and of detail, and was finally reduced 
 to the "received version" in Athens in the sixth 
 century. 
 
 But yet, neither the early Lays incorporated, nor 
 the later literary recension and editing, were of 
 sufficient bulk or importance to affect the essential 
 unity of the Iliad as we know it, nor did they diminish 
 the authentic originality of the real poet. Away with 
 talk about "a first Homer,'' a second Homer, and 
 even a third Homer ! There was, and is, but one 
 Homer (whatever his real name and origin). He is 
 our Homer, the true Homer. The Iliad — our Iliad 
 — is the real Epic. There are no more several 
 Homers than there are several Miltons. Nor are 
 there first, second, and third Paradise Losts. The 
 poet of the Iliad used current myths and early Lays 
 just as Milton used Genesis and the Bible as a whole. 
 But to tell us that Homer No. i composed the 
 " Wrath of Achilles," and Book A or Book x., is 
 like telling us that Moses wrote Books v. and vi. of 
 the Paradise Lost. The Iliad^ as a whole and in the 
 mass (granted some additions, interpolations, and 
 modern editing), is a single poem — the grandest Epic 
 in the whole range of human genius. 
 
 We may give full value to the subtle and ingenious 
 points raised mainly by German scholars and collected 
 in the learned treatises of Professor Murray and Mr. 
 Walter Leaf as to the discrepancies of dialects, the 
 signs of early and late forms, arms, ornaments, habits 
 of life, moral standards, and details of the kind. To 
 me, none of these are sufficiently important or 
 sufficiently certain to weigh against the judgment 
 of literary culture. I find no agreement amongst 
 
cH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 133 
 
 grammarians as to the Aolic and Ionic problems, no 
 agreement among historians as to the dates and 
 conditions of the tribal migrations, conquests, and 
 settlements. The archaeologists are not agreed as to 
 scripts, patterns, implements, art, or buildings of the 
 various ages. The fact that certain types have been 
 found in w^hat we call the ruins of Mycenae is not 
 wide enough to typify the industry of an age. That 
 what looks like the remains of burial here, of cremation 
 there, is slender evidence of an exclusive practice 
 either of burying or of burning. 
 
 The whole of the archaeological argument about 
 the age either of the Homeric poems or of the 
 society they profess to describe seems to me too thin, 
 too local, and too partial to found on it any theory of 
 the historic conditions of a whole age, which may 
 reach in space from Corcyra to Smyrna and Crete, 
 and may reach in time from the age of Cadmus to 
 that of Solon — traditionally counted as about 700 
 years. Not only are these fascinating and suggestive 
 finds of the Diggers too scanty and too dispersed 
 to be by themselves historic evidence, but they yield 
 as yet little but mere hypotheses which interpreters, 
 from Schliemann downwards, explain in contradictory 
 ways. The entire material archaeology appHed to 
 problems of language, race, epoch, art, or civilisation, 
 is a quicksand of conjecture, controversy, and chaos. 
 Till Archaeology can give us oracles less free from 
 double senses, such as the priests can agree to interpret 
 in the same meaning, we must do the best we can to 
 interpret the Iliad by the same canons we apply to 
 the initial poems of other races. 
 
 There seems to me to be a very useful rule which 
 was stated and worked out thoroughly by Grote in 
 1845. In his famous Chapter xxi. of his History of 
 Greece (vol. ii.), he tells us to take the construction 
 
134 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 of the Odyssey before that of the Iliad ; and to note 
 the sequence and systematic plot of the " Return of 
 Odysseus " instead of breaking up into detached Lays 
 the battles round Troy in the Iliad. When we do 
 this, we see, as Grote shows, that the Odyssey is 
 " pervaded almost from beginning to end by marks of 
 designed adaptation " ; and the instances of flaws 
 and fissures in the organic unity of the poem are too 
 small, too trivial, too easily explained to found any 
 evidence of separate composition by different poets 
 in various ages. 
 
 Even Wolf and other critics of the unity of the 
 Iliad are quite alive to the more organic character 
 of the Odyssey. Grote himself and others after him 
 have shown a thoroughly artistic scheme pervading 
 the poem as the wanderings and adventures of the 
 single hero who gives his name to the Epic. The 
 construction of the Odyssey is singularly concentrated 
 round the person of the dominant chief. The most 
 determined "Smasher" recoils before him like the suitor 
 Antinous before the clang of the mighty bow whose 
 string no other mortal can draw. From first to last 
 we have Odysseus as the hero of the poem — especially 
 if with Aristarchus we allow the original poem to end 
 in the nuptial chamber — so that the Epic begins Book 
 i. I. "Sing me, Muse, the Man of genius versatile" 
 down to Book xxiii. 296, when we leave Odysseus 
 and Penelope " happy again in their bridal bed." The 
 whole Epic is a marvel of constructive symmetry. 
 
 This does not mean that the Odyssey has not been 
 tampered with, revised, and expanded at various times, 
 and the concluding lines of Book xxiii. and Book 
 xxiv. have been justly suspected even in antiquity. 
 I confess the idea of the Virgin Goddess Athene 
 watching over the due measure of her favourite 
 Hero's marital bliss is a little comic, and might 
 
CH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 135 
 
 almost justify the prudery of Professor Murray. But 
 apart from corrupt passages, "sinking the ofFal," as 
 butchers say, interpolations excepted, the Odyssey is 
 a single great Epic and not " a patchwork " of Lays. 
 Attempts to make it much later than the Iliad have 
 failed, i.e. to ascribe it to a new era and a different 
 epoch of culture. If so, we have a great symmetrical 
 Epic as long as the ///W, not widely separated from 
 it in time, which was obviously composed by a single 
 poet and maintained for at least two centuries earlier 
 than those of indubitable written records. 
 
 The Wolfian bugbear of no possible writing fails 
 to destroy the unity of the Odyssey^ and if so, why 
 need it affect the Iliad I The Iliad does not profess 
 to have the same unity, and does not bear the name 
 of any hero, or even of anything Greek. It is the 
 " Song about Ilium." It opens with the Wrath of 
 Achilles — but it ends with the Burial of Hector. 
 Still there is an adequate unity about the whole poem 
 to dispel the idea of its being put together piecemeal 
 by different bards. Every one agrees that Book i. 
 of the Iliad and Books xxiii. and xxiv. are quite 
 the grandest of the whole poem, and that almost all 
 the intervening Books either follow naturally from 
 the original Quarrel in the Proem, or lead up to the 
 final closing of the terrible vengeance of Achilles. 
 Mr. Symonds in two brilliant essays {Greek PoetSy 
 second series. Chapters ii. and iii.) has quite 
 convinced me of the essential unity of the Iliad as an 
 organic Epic with a central motive. 
 
 I do not pretend to judge the difficult questions 
 if all the Books of the Iliad as we know it are parts 
 of the original poem and were composed by the 
 author of Book i. I can think it possible that some 
 of them, and parts of them, may have been added, or 
 interpolated after the Proem was composed. If so, 
 
136 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 by the original poet, or by another hand ? I ofFer no 
 opinion on that mysterious point. Most scholars 
 tell us it was another hand. From the purely literary 
 point of view, to my mind, there is very Httle solid 
 ground to support the scholars. Looking at the tone 
 of the Epic and its metrical form, I can quite believe 
 that some second or third poet might be capable of 
 adding episodes in a form which neither ancients nor 
 moderns could reject as inferior and spurious. But 
 I will not believe that any Episodes or Books were added 
 at an epoch distinctly later in time, or in any distant 
 place or race. The bulk of the Iliad is one conception 
 — of one age. 
 
 I pass to the very interesting problem, if the Iliad 
 and the Odyssey were the works of the same poet. 
 To those who cannot find any certain evidence that 
 either Epic was composed in an age when Greek could 
 be written, and I have shown that it is my own view, 
 it becomes an almost insoluble mystery how any 
 single mind could have elaborated two stupendous 
 Epics of such infinite variety and vast mass. It 
 borders on the miraculous to us who for five centuries 
 have relied on print in lieu of memory to attribute 
 such a feat to a single mind. But to ask us to 
 extend the miracle to a second inspiration seems to 
 overstep the powers of man. Even to put aside the 
 problem of writing, it seems to me in the highest 
 degree improbable that such a miracle ever happened. 
 There is thus an antecedent improbability that the 
 same mind conceived and composed both Iliad and 
 Odyssey as we know them. 
 
 This is usually met by the antecedent improbability 
 of there existing in any one race and age more than 
 one poet of such transcendent genius. For my part, 
 I can see no impossibiHty in the matter, ^schylus, 
 Sophocles, and Euripides flourished nearly together in 
 
CH.vii THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 137 
 
 the same petty city. Pheidias, Myron, and Polycleitus 
 came from the same school. Sappho, Alcman, and 
 Pindar were not so far apart. So far from any single 
 age producing but one supreme poet, the testimony 
 of history is rather that poets come in groups, rather 
 than in absolute singleness. The antecedent prob- 
 ability to my own mind is that an age favourable to 
 poetic genius may develope its supreme power in more 
 than a single brain. Though I cannot see the hand 
 of more than a single poet either in the Iliad or in 
 the Odyssey^ I can easily conceive there may have 
 been two poets each capable of producing their own 
 Epic. — 
 
 Both linguistic and archaeological difficulties are far 
 less numerous and important in the Odyssey than in 
 the Iliad^ and from the literary point of view the 
 cohesion and unity are far greater. But to me the 
 tone and ethos of the Odyssey is quite different. It 
 is essentially social, affective, peaceable, and even 
 domestic. Wives, sons, homes, servants, dogs, play 
 a part that is unknown to the Iliad. In the whole 
 Iliad there is nothing like Penelope's love, the innocent 
 charm of Nausicaa, the cottage of the swineherd, the 
 death of the dog Argus. There are no battles in the 
 Odyssey — but there are romantic myths and a perpetual 
 intervention of divine and semi-divine beings. There 
 is a difference of standard, of sentiment, and of ideal 
 between Iliad and Odyssey akin, I may say, to the 
 different tone between Paradise Lost and the Faery 
 ^ueen. Can we conceive Achilles being left at the 
 end of the Iliad in the arms of a long-lost bride 
 (Briseis restored), as Odysseus is left in the Odyssey^ 
 with Pallas Athene contemplating their joys with 
 maidenly pride ? 
 
 To my thinking there is also another dominant 
 difference which I have never seen noticed. The 
 
138 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 scene of the Iliad passes in Asia : continental Greece 
 and the Peloponnese are mentioned, and the islands 
 of the iEgean. But we hear almost nothing of 
 Western Greece and its islands, much less of Sicily 
 or Corcyra. Now, the whole scene of the Odyssey 
 passes in the Western Islands and the Ionian Sea, and 
 deals with the Southern and Western Mediterranean, 
 and dwells with peculiar and local sympathy on 
 Ithaca and its neighbouring islands, and especially on 
 Corcyra. I once spent a week in Ithaca with my 
 Odyssey in hand, trying to localise each scene, and 
 I could not shake off the impression that the poem 
 had been composed by a native of that island. The 
 geographical position and the mountains, bays, and 
 natural features of Ithaca seem singularly favourable 
 to the rise of a dominant Lord of the Isles with a 
 stronghold on Mount Aietos, where are certainly 
 extensive prehistoric remains. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that the Odyssey has 
 a local origin wholly different from that of the Iliad^ 
 belongs to a different moral tone, and represents the 
 ideal of a much more domesticated and romantic spirit 
 than that of him who conceived the ruin and slaughter 
 caused by the Wrath of Achilles. I could as easily 
 imagine the author of Tamburlaine narrating the Fairy 
 Tale of the Red Cross Knight. But if the poet of 
 the Odyssey be a different person from the poet of the 
 ///W, there is no reason to believe them to be widely 
 separate in time, or belonging to a later epoch of 
 general civilisation. The Odyssey may be perhaps, 
 by a generation or two, later than the ///W, and may 
 spring from a slightly different state of living and 
 from a rather more humane scheme of mythology. 
 But I can find no serious change of moral opinion or 
 ethical ideal sufficient to prove a later age, or one 
 which might not be due to the different spirit of two 
 
CH. VII THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 139 
 
 poets — neither quite of the same time nor of the same 
 tribe. 
 
 Why need we assume that the poets of the Iliad 
 or of the Odyssey literally described the manners and 
 the institutions of their own times ? There was no 
 conscious attempt to present an archaic society as 
 might be done in our day by historic learning. All 
 great poets live in a world of their own imagination — 
 just as Dante conceived Virgil and Milton conceived 
 Adam. The Iliad and the Odyssey paint a bygone 
 time of traditional heroes, adopting the familiar life 
 of their actual experience in a perfectly free and 
 natural way. Mr. Andrew Lang in his Homer and 
 his Age^ 1906, has well explained the process by 
 comparing the Chansons de Geste^ the Nibelunglied^ 
 and the Arthurian Legend as arranged by Sir Thomas 
 Malory. These are full of anachronisms and im- 
 probabiHties. The great difference is that they never 
 found a very great poet, and were not put into an 
 organic Epic in an age of great poets. 
 
 We cannot neglect all the learned and most 
 ingenious suggestions of Professor Murray in his 
 Greek Epic^ ^9^7- All that we are told by one of 
 our greatest modern scholars and one of the foremost 
 thinkers of our time has to be duly weighed. But, 
 to my mind, these highly ingenious possibilities remain 
 suggestions, hypotheses, grounds for further research, 
 but not historic evidence. The " finds " in unknown 
 and undated ruins are too few and too local to prove 
 the epoch of civilisation. Suppose any European 
 city to be overwhelmed, and a palace or building 
 of it excavated by New Zealand archaeologists in 
 the year 2912 a.d., would the "find" of Egyptian 
 scarabs, Chinese porcelain, Greek statues prove much ? 
 Is it certain that the Minoan people spoke Greek — 
 or even that the people of the first city of Troy had 
 
140 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 any connection with Greeks in language or race ? 
 All these problems of prehistoric language, race, and 
 date are still unsolved — are perhaps insoluble. 
 
 But when it comes to dissecting the Iliad into 
 genuine and spurious, old and recent, barbarous and 
 civiHsed sections, I for one cannot follow it. Still 
 less do I see the marks of " expurgation " by a more 
 refined poet who was scandalised by old Homer's 
 coarseness of mind, nor the " vices " of the poem as 
 poem, nor the "ready-made" similes and "insincerity" 
 due to the use of conventional phrases in the wrong 
 way and with misunderstanding of their original 
 meaning. Mr. Murray explains these " flaws " in 
 the Iliad as the inevitable result of a long traditional 
 story being " worked up " by whole generations of 
 successive poets working through four or five successive 
 centuries. I will have none of it. Not all my profound 
 respect for Mr. Murray's immense learning and brilliant 
 gifts as historian, philosopher, and poet will help me 
 to go with him here. Spurious passages, corrupt 
 lines, later insertions there are, here and there, in 
 the Iliad^ we all recognise. But before I can believe 
 that the Epic was concocted by an unknown series 
 of poets, I would rather believe that the Faery ^een 
 was a hotch-pot, founded on the Saxon Chronicle, 
 and "worked over" age after age by Layamon, 
 Langland, Lydgate, Chaucer, Malory, and Wiat. 
 
 I take it to be wholly misleading to moralise over 
 the Homeric Epics and to attempt to apportion ethical 
 standards to different ages of Hellenic culture. It 
 involves the double error of breaking the poems into 
 successive epochs, and that of stamping the morality 
 of an age by a passage of purely arbitrary date. It 
 looks like the Bowdlerising of Homer to pick out 
 incidents which the Peisistratean editor felt to be 
 indecorous but could not omit, and then to ascribe 
 
cH. VII THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 141 
 
 a facetious scene to mere modern ribaldry. This 
 involves the absurd dilemma, that whtn we come 
 upon some horrible act of savagery, we are to call 
 it a bit of antique brutality which "survived" and 
 was too familiar to be dropped. And when we come 
 to an amorous scene which is almost comedy, we 
 are to regard it as the modern interpolation of a 
 scandalous age. The brutality, they pretend, betrays 
 the rude age of the first Homer : the indecency is 
 just the hcence of the tenth Homer ! 
 
 I can see no need for all this censorship of old 
 Homer. I am not shocked by the occasional horrors 
 nor by his rare outbursts into erotic Idyll. All early 
 poetry and mythology reeks with savage incidents as 
 well as scandalous amours — even the Bible, the Sagas,* 
 the Nibelungenlied^ the Chansons^ the Fabliaux^ the 
 Morte d^ Arthur. The whole history and the literature, 
 the whole religion and morality of Hellas, from Cad- 
 mus to Longus and even to Zonaras, is studded with 
 things to us unnatural, cruel, gross, and sensual. 
 Plato's ideas of Love and Marriage are revolting to us, 
 and Alexander, the Achilles of historic Greece, was as 
 cruel and as selfish as his heroic type. And I confess 
 I do not find >57 less Homeric than A or 12, nor do 
 I think that Athenians of the time of Cleon saw any- 
 thing obsolete, archaic, or barbarous in the slaughter 
 of prisoners of war. The Greeks of all ages were 
 capable of strange brutalities and curious indecencies. 
 The religion, the moral standard of Homer, was 
 certainly not that of iEschylus, nor that of Plato. But 
 I will not count as spurious, or survivals, or inter- 
 polations, passages which we may suppose Plato or 
 iEschylus would not tolerate. After all, iEschylus 
 and Plato in certain aspects were anything but typical 
 Athenians. Homer was certainly more the real Greek 
 type than iEschylus. If we take all the remains of 
 
142 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 early Lyric poetry of the ^gean lands, I can see 
 nothing in Homer which we might not expect to have 
 glorified and magnified by the voice of a supreme 
 genius as much greater than Sappho as she was greater 
 than Anacreon. 
 
 There are two points arising from my own study 
 of the sites of the Iliad and the Odyssey — which I give 
 for what they may be worth, without pretending that 
 they come from local examination of a serious kind. 
 As to the site of Troy, it is clear from Schliemann's 
 and all later excavations that Hissarlik was a spot on 
 which a long series of towns had been erected, 
 destroyed, rebuilt, and enlarged from the very earliest 
 age down to late Roman times. This covers some 
 thousands of years. We know of no other town of 
 which the successive buildings, destructions, and re- 
 buildings were so numerous. Why has this by no means 
 conspicuous or defensible spot been defended, assaulted, 
 restored so often ? I have passed that promontory up 
 and down from the iEgean to the Bosporus more 
 than once, and it has each time been borne in on me 
 that it is the headland of Asia Minor which commands 
 the entrance and the exit of the Hellespont, the Sea of 
 Marmora, the Bosporus, and the Euxine. 
 
 No colony or trader could from the South or West 
 reach any part of the vast coast ranging from Phrygia 
 to the Chersonese, unless with the privilege of the 
 power which was based on the stronghold of Ilium. 
 It was the Gibraltar which commanded access and 
 egress to two important Mediterranean seas, the 
 Propontis and the Euxine. Imagine the Greeks of the 
 Continent and the iEgean Islands determined to force 
 their colonies and their trade into these northern 
 regions, and met by Asiatic tribes, and a long war to 
 destroy Ilium is inevitable. 
 
 Again, I cannot believe that either Iliad or Odyssey 
 
CH. VII THE HOMERIC PROBLEM 143 
 
 were contemporary with the remains we see to-day at 
 Tiryns, Mycenae, or Ithaca. Nor could I ever tread 
 the soil of Ithaca without the impression that the 
 Odyssey was conceived on that island by one familiar 
 with the Ionian Islands and with the Western — but not 
 the Eastern side of the Greek world. Could the author 
 of the Iliad show so little local interest in the Ionian 
 Islands, and could the author of the Odyssey be silent 
 about the glories of the -/Egean Islands, if both Epics 
 were composed by one man ? 
 
 As Homeric research is so often a mass of fascinat- 
 ing guesses, I will add my small pebble to the cairn 
 by a few guesses of my own. The continent of 
 Greece had been for generations swept by successive 
 migratory tribes of warlike men coming down from 
 the north, and gradually pushing their way into new 
 settlements and also amalgamating with the aborigines. 
 The tribes had traditions, a mythology, and Lays 
 embodying both. They kept moving on downwards 
 and eastwards, forming strong kinglets in Thessaly, 
 then in Boeotia, then in Peloponnesus, and next swarm- 
 ing across the Eastern and Western seas and settling in 
 the islands. At length (some time, say, before 1000 
 B.C.) the European Greeks found themselves confronted 
 with Asiatic races along the ^gean coast, and a series 
 of contests culminated in a grand struggle for posses- 
 sion of the tongue of land which was the key of the 
 Northern seas and the shores of Asia Minor. The 
 Greeks from Europe got the upper hand and gradually 
 won settlements all along the Asiatic coast, bringing 
 with them their mythology, their traditions, and their 
 songs. A century or two of amalgamation and re- 
 settlement passes, and then, some time about 900 B.C., 
 a glorious poet arose in a softer and richer country than 
 continental Greece, and in a people less disturbed by 
 incessant migrations and conquests. He composed the 
 
144 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Iliad^ or the story of the great battle of past times, 
 incorporating and fancifully transforming old Lays, 
 many of which had been chanted in old Greece for 
 ages. He taught a body of singers to rehearse different 
 Lays and episodes from place to place. There being 
 no regular books and no authorised divisions, the 
 poems were often recited in somewhat different forms; 
 incidents were added, some fell out, and the language 
 became somewhat irregular. 
 
 Still the substance of the great Epic remained, 
 though for some centuries in various forms, even when 
 committed to writing. At length, in the sixth century 
 B.C., when Athens began to be recognised as the 
 literary centre of Greece, an authorised ///W, which is 
 ours, was finally given to the world. 
 
 The diffusion throughout the Greek-speaking world 
 of the original Iliad would give a great impulse to 
 poetic inspiration. And as Western Greece and the 
 Ionian Sea and its islands came to fill its imagination 
 with the story of Achilles — a generation or two after 
 the Iliad another great poet arose in Ithaca to sing the 
 marvellous adventures of his native chief Odysseus, in 
 a poetic key more akin to a people of a quiet rural life 
 and enriched with mysterious tales of its seamen who 
 had sailed from one end of the Western Mediterranean 
 to the other. This is the story of the Odyssey^ later 
 in date, better preserved, and with fewer barbaric 
 remnants. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A LECTURE ON HOMER 
 
 In our New Calendar the month of Homer, with the 
 poets, artists, and dramatists of antiquity, follows on 
 the month of Moses, with the founders of antique Theo- 
 cracies down to Bouddha, Confucius, and Mahomet. 
 Nothing can show more decisively the human and 
 relative nature of our Faith than this passing from 
 absolute systems of Theology to the men whose genius 
 has given beauty to human life. A true reverence for 
 the higher instincts of human nature implies an equal 
 honour of all essential forms of human sympathy and 
 oneness. . Religion, if it is to bind together the various 
 elements of man's being, and if it is also to bind 
 together in one blood all races of mankind, must be 
 able to co-ordinate all the gifts of our complex nature. 
 Hence it must be a task of any complete religion to 
 sanction the part of Poetry in a complete human life. 
 
 Art, poetry, wit, joy, in their highest ideal types, 
 are quite as essential to the fullness of Humanity as 
 are any primitive Theologies. Homer is at least the 
 equal of Moses in influence on mankind as a whole. 
 The idea that the Psalms are all sacred poetry, but 
 the parting of Hector and Andromache is profane 
 poetry, is worthy of a Trappist monk. Poetry is 
 everywhere older than Prose, and is far more associated 
 145 L 
 
146 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. 1 
 
 with early religion. In every known society the 
 earliest poets were the teachers, prophets, and moralists 
 of their age, forming their religion, their manners, 
 their ideals of a great life. And this is pre-eminently 
 true of Homer — of the poems which became to all 
 antiquity their Scriptures, the sole bond of national 
 life, the text-book of moraHsts, philosophers, and 
 artists. To imbibe the spirit of Homer is to reach 
 the primary sources of the thoughts and the sympathies 
 of the old antique world far better than to have studied 
 the history of events, for the poems stamp in memor- 
 able words the ideals of the age. 
 
 Every year seems to increase our interest in these 
 immortal Epics which are equally fascinating to the 
 child as to the statesman, to the scholar as to the poet. 
 Mr. Gladstone finds in Homer's goddess a type of 
 the Virgin Mary, and an ingenious author of paradox 
 is certain that the Odyssey was written by Nausicaa 
 of Corcyra to solace her solitary life after her un- 
 requited attachment to the hero. After all the 
 discordant guesses of scholars and historians as to 
 the origin, composition, and preservation of the two 
 Epics we name " Homer," we come back to this — 
 that the substance of the Iliad from the quarrel of 
 Achilles to the burial of Hector makes an artistic and 
 majestic Epos ; and that it is the work of a sublime 
 poet. And so the Odyssey is a still more organic 
 whole, and the work of a glorious poet, even if not 
 the same. 
 
 Of all the names in history hardly any one, unless 
 it be Caesar or St. Paul, has exerted over the whole 
 human race for 2500 years a social influence so vast 
 as Homer. If the world has had possibly two other 
 poets of equal genius, none have exerted such a 
 permanent sway over the imagination of mankind. 
 The Iliad and the Odyssey will be fresh and living 
 
CH. VIII A LECTURE ON HOMER 147 
 
 poetry when the Pentateuch will have an historic 
 interest like the Code of Menu. The Koran may 
 one day rank with the laws of Numa or Zoroaster, 
 and the Psalms of David may become curiosities of 
 Hterature. But men will still thrill with the immortal 
 tale of Achilles and Priam a suppliant in his tent, and 
 with the burial of Hector, and the sweet lyric of 
 Nausicaa on the sea-shore playing with her maidens, 
 and the return of Odysseus to wife, home, friends, and 
 dog. The Codes of Moses, Confucius, and Mahomet 
 have served their end, or are passing away as living 
 forces. Homer, after near 3000 years, is fresh, native, 
 unstained by time, not affected by novelty or age. 
 
 The Poets alone are immortal. All other men, 
 however great, pass away into a dead past ; their 
 names become ancient history ; their work is super- 
 seded, corrected, undone, and recast. The great 
 poems of the world know no change with age ; they 
 lose nothing of their original life. Moses is now 
 venerated by the remnant of scattered tribes. Alexander, 
 Caesar, Charles laid the foundations of empires of 
 which nothing remains in direct descent. Pheidias 
 and Apelles have left but broken stones and traditions. 
 But Homer, Dante, Shakespeare delight us now as 
 much as they did their contemporaries — and indeed 
 delight us far more. And of the three, if Homer be 
 not the greatest, he is the oldest, the best known, 
 the one who has most widely influenced the whole 
 human race. 
 
 It is a fortunate circumstance that the sociologic, 
 or the poetic, or merely human value of Homer is 
 not much entangled with the puzzles which occupy 
 scholars and historians as to the origin, date, and 
 personality of the author or authors of these Epics. 
 The niceties of language are perceived only by pro- 
 fessed students of Greek ; the inconsistencies of the 
 
148 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 plot hardly appear to those who read the verses for 
 their poetic beauty, even if they read them in the 
 original. For our immediate purpose v^^e need not 
 occupy ourselves w^ith these fascinating problems. It 
 is a profound remark of our Philosopher that the social 
 and moral influence of Homer in the ancient world 
 was greater, not only than that exerted by any other 
 poet, but greater, we may say, than that which ever 
 can be exerted again by any poet in the ages to come. 
 The like conditions can never arise again. A poet 
 of transcendent genius, saturated with every moral 
 and artistic faculty of a most wonderful race, in one 
 grand poem transfigured for them their reHgion, their 
 morality, their code of duty, their standard of grace, 
 their patriotism, and all manifestations of their abound- 
 ing vitality. They had no other teaching, no writings, 
 no education, no organised priesthood, no other in- 
 tellectual or artistic guides but the poet. All the 
 other arts of form and of sound were in their rudest 
 infancy. The chants of the bard alone filled the 
 imagination of the most poetic race in all human 
 history and satisfied the aesthetic aspirations of a people 
 dedicated from their origin — nay sacrificed — to high 
 Art. 
 
 The supreme poet appeared : and he filled up all 
 their longings at once. He systematised their theo- 
 logy in a spirit of sensuous abandonment to freedom 
 and to joy. He gave them ideals of a manly and 
 spacious life. He glorified their memories of the past, 
 and foretold a Utopian dream of national glory and 
 expansion which was not fully made real until 
 Alexander appeared as a new Achilles some six cen- 
 turies later in time. During all these ages Homer 
 filled the imagination of these scattered and anarchic 
 tribes of the Greek name with unfading types of 
 heroism, loyalty, audacity and ingenuity, hospitality 
 
cH.viii A LECTURE ON HOMER 149 
 
 courtesy, and noble simplicity of existence — but withal, 
 with tragic pictures of man's destiny, the unseen 
 powers of the gods, cruel sufferings for crime, agonies 
 of blighted love, marred friendship, ruined ambition, 
 hope, and pride. Homer became the Scriptures, the 
 literature, the school, the art of a race having super- 
 human sensitiveness to emotions and widely scattered 
 over the central area of the cultivated world. And 
 all this happened — and it is a point of supreme 
 moment — at the critical epoch in the evolution of 
 Humanity. 
 
 The hackneyed phrase that Homer was the Bible 
 of Greece falls far short of the whole truth. Homer 
 was to the Greeks for some ten centuries, and to the 
 Greco-Roman world for five centuries also, much 
 more than what the Bible has ever been to Christian 
 people except to Puritans in Britain and some Northern 
 races for about one hundred years after its diffusion 
 in the vernacular. To the contemporaries of Luther, 
 Calvin, and Zwingli, to Cromwell, and to Fox and 
 Knox, the Bible was their literature, their standard 
 of duty, and their code of life. No doubt the Koran 
 has exercised absolute sway over the lives of large 
 populations ; and so have the traditions of Confucius. 
 But no poet has ever approached Homer in similar 
 authority over the education and the tone of the lives 
 of men. For some three centuries his Epics, and 
 others in imitation of his, were the only lengthy and 
 regular works of any kind accessible to the mass. 
 And when the Iliad and the Odyssey were crystallised 
 in authorised forms, they became the Sacred Books of 
 the whole Greek race — of a race to whom sanctity 
 meant not sacrifice, purity, or contemplation, but 
 Beauty, the thrill and zest of life. 
 
 After these Epics had enjoyed for 500 years an 
 undisputed ascendancy as the national creed, literature, 
 
150 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 and education, the conquest of the East by Alexander 
 carried them over the whole civilised world from 
 Epirus to the Persian Gulf. In the age of the Roman 
 Empire this ascendancy, at least as supreme poetry, 
 was extended from the British Channel to the coast of 
 Spain and Africa, and thence eastward and northward 
 to the Danube and the Caspian Sea. The Church, of 
 course, did its best to suppress Homer for nearly a 
 thousand years — though Dante hails him as the poeta 
 sovrano^ who soars above all others like an eagle. But 
 at the re-birth of ancient science and art the supremacy 
 of Homer burst forth again, and it seems to have been 
 increasing ever since. No poet has ever possessed 
 such an ascendancy over the imagination of men, over 
 so vast an area of the planet, and during such a pro- 
 longed period of time. 
 
 I said that this mighty poet appeared at the critical 
 period of human evolution, and we may trace the 
 steps of this process. For once, in the whole history 
 of mankind, there was an era of civilisation, itself 
 capable of perfect artistic presentation, simple enough 
 to be resumed in a majestic Epic, primitive enough 
 to be free from all discordant, revolutionary, and 
 metaphysical blots — and this type of civilisation was 
 transfigured by the genius of an incomparable poet. 
 This era was the turning point of human evolution — 
 from the stationary to the progressive form of civilisa- 
 tion. For how many centuries the great Oriental 
 Theocracies had held sway we know not. As far 
 as our imagination can pierce we recognise a long 
 monotony of fixed and rigid life under the despotism 
 of a priestly and royal caste. In Egypt, in Asia 
 Minor, in the valleys of the Euphrates and of the 
 Indus, we trace vast ages of a settled system of tradi- 
 tional order in hierarchic grades. 
 
 Yet around these motionless communities and 
 
CH.viii A LECTURE ON HOMER .151 
 
 within their borders, the whole procession of human 
 progress lay in embryo as in the womb of some 
 mythic Mother of Mankind. The man that was to 
 be was already stirring within her in the instinct 
 towards new and open life, movement, and a new 
 world. Freedom of thought and of life, the inter- 
 change of inventions, of industry, and wider knowledge 
 of the earth could not expand in the vast autocracies 
 settled in the plains of Asia or -Africa. It could only 
 begin on the open coasts of Syria and Asia Minor, in 
 the south-eastern Mediterranean, the islands, bays, and 
 mountain recesses of the complex peninsula of Greece. 
 Thither by the aid of Phoenician, Syrian, and Cretan 
 seamen, adventurously roving the -^gean Sea, the great 
 industrial, artistic, and intellectual products which 
 had been slowly elaborated during long centuries in 
 the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates, perhaps of 
 the Indus, were carried to a keen race, who in the 
 intricacies of their islands and bays could evade the 
 pressure of theocratic conservatism. 
 
 The problem was this. Human progress, science, 
 art, policy, and freedom could not develope within the 
 great Theocracies. And yet they could not develope 
 without the aid of the wealth, the arts, and knowledge 
 which in long silent centuries the Theocracies had 
 slowly piled up. The problem was solved first on the 
 coast and promontories of Asia Minor, in the islands 
 of the ^gean, and the bays of Greece. Thither 
 traders, sailing from the Syrian and African coast, 
 carried the germs of progress, as bees fertilise flowers 
 whilst they are draining them for honey. The 
 Phoenician or Cretan merchants came in search of 
 ore, skins, woods, stones, and marbles, and they 
 brought with them the alphabet, the use of writing, 
 the art of working metals, the variety of arms, the 
 science of building, and all the arts of the East and 
 
152 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 South — fictile, textile, glyptic, plastic, and the various 
 methods of ornament and life of which we find traces 
 in archaic remains. We can trace them swarming up 
 by Cyprus, Rhodes, Cnidus, Miletus, Smyrna, and the 
 islands of the upper ^gean, and by the bay of Salamis, 
 and of Mycenae, Tiryns, Eleusis. 
 
 This great beginning of human evolution can be 
 traced step by step for many centuries from about 
 1000 B.C. on to 500 'B.C. when the grand struggle 
 between Greece and Asia, between Progress and Con- 
 servatism, began in open war. Now Homer, it is fair 
 to guess, lived between these two periods of the old 
 world of Theocratic fixity and the new world of 
 freedom and change — perhaps a century or two after 
 the decay of the primitive era of royal and semi- 
 divine heroes, and at least three or four centuries 
 before the great Persian wars of historic times. Living 
 whilst the heroic traditions were fresh and mellowed 
 by time. Homer idealised the expansion of free civilisa- 
 tion of the heroic forces around him ; he was dimly 
 conscious and poetically prophetic. He stood between 
 the secular ages of human fixity and the wonderful 
 drama of human evolution of which he felt the earliest 
 yearning. As man of his time, he is bursting with 
 energy, fire, curiosity, and manful audacity — the soul 
 of Achilles and of Odysseus — but with none of the 
 cruel doubts, confusions, and broken hopes of later 
 ages of progress and discord — with all the moral and 
 aesthetic dignity of the old world of tradition still 
 glowing within him. 
 
 In this way we see how Homer opens the grand 
 procession of Western progress, gave for ever the type 
 of Western art, painted the dawn of human freedom, 
 movement, adventure, the joy of life. His poems are 
 real history, not literal history of actual events, but 
 pictures of an idealised society, much as Milton painted 
 
cH.viii A LECTURE ON HOMER 153 
 
 Adam and Eve in an ideal world. But if conceived 
 as in an idealised v^^orld seen through long tradition, 
 it gives us human nature in its simplest and freest 
 aspect, untrammelled by any vicious system, too young 
 and healthy to have fallen into the anarchy of mere 
 change, or the sordid, but inevitable vices of complex 
 civilisation. In many things the society of the heroic 
 vsrorld is no-bler than that of historic Greece. In 
 many things there is a higher social tone. Homer 
 inspires a genuine national feeling, which rises grandly 
 above the narrow jealousies of the rival republics 
 recounted by Thucydides. This is no doubt one 
 element in the unmeasured passion for the Iliad which 
 was shown by Alexander, who performed Homeric 
 fiineral games in person round the tomb of Achilles. 
 There is also in both Epics a reverence for age, for 
 settled forms of manners, a respect for the personal 
 wisdom of the veteran and the sage, for the sanctity of 
 office, whether martial or spiritual, a moral simplicity 
 and steadfast bearing which is sadly to seek in the 
 narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, or the works 
 of Zenophon, or Demosthenes. Thus Homer is 
 sufficiently close to the theocratic order of society to 
 preserve some of its best moral qualities, and yet he 
 is so far out of it as to be free from its hide- bound, 
 rigid, and exclusive spirit. He is the eternal type of 
 the potent genius who transfigured with a radiant halo 
 the earliest free life of human societies. 
 
 No one wants any idle comparison whether the 
 genius of " Homer " (either, or any. Homer to 
 satisfy the " Smasher " scholars) was equal to that of 
 Dante or of Shakespeare. Perhaps not ; perhaps it 
 was hardly equal to one of them, or even to either. 
 But assuredly there is in Homer a freshness, an 
 unfailing charm, an equable atmosphere of beauty, and 
 what Matthew Arnold calls " the grand manner," 
 
154 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 which neither Dante nor Shakespeare uniformly 
 sustain. Dante has his metaphysical conundrums, 
 which may be profound philosophy but which are 
 hardly pure poetry, and he has his furious invectives 
 which may be noble indignation against vice but do 
 not inspire us with a sense of beauty or of peace. 
 Our own Shakespeare — matchless as he is in all his 
 greatest hours as poet, dramatist, philosopher — indulges 
 at seasons in not a little conceit, fustian, and incon- 
 gruous medley dear to his jovial, careless, irrepressible 
 imagination. 
 
 Old Homer " never nods," for all they say — no ! 
 not even when he is telling a Fabliau of Zeus — if 
 " nods " means that he bores us. He never descends 
 from art to scholastic disquisitions, to mannerisms 
 of an artificial preciosity, to incoherence and mere 
 pantomime. Homer is for ever fresh, limpid, native 
 as spring water, radiant as his own sunlit land, as 
 inexhaustibly mobile as his own unresting sea. He 
 may be sometimes monotonous as in the Catalogue of 
 the Ships — which has an obvious political and national 
 object — and he is certainly not always at the height of 
 the Quarrel of the two Chiefs, or the funeral of Hector, 
 or of the return of Odysseus. But in neither Epic is 
 there a single example of incorrigible affectation, no 
 deliberate offence against art, dignity of human Hfe, 
 simplicity of bearing, not a single rag of fustian, not a 
 touch of helter-skelter, buffoonery, tinsel, sentiment- 
 ality or bombast. It is hardly possible to say the same 
 of any other poet ancient or modern — unless it be 
 Sophocles or Milton — not even of Virgil. 
 
 Homer gave the tone to the Greek race — as no poet 
 before or since has ever done to his own people — 
 a tone at once free, manly, joyous, serene, and sympa- 
 thetic, a tone, the ideal of which was a sense of beauty, 
 proportion, symmetry, a thirst after perfection and 
 
CH. vm A LECTURE ON HOMER 155 
 
 completeness. Homer is the one connecting link of 
 Greek life. " Homer was the one common possession 
 of all Greeks," says Mr. Marvin in the New Calendar ; 
 " their actual life was broken up by innumerable feuds 
 and jealousies. In Homer, more than in any other 
 historical event — more even than in Marathon or 
 Salamis — they had a meeting-ground in the record of 
 a united and disinterested action. The Iliad is the 
 charter of Greek unity.'* 
 
 Those who know Greece only from books and 
 from maps with difficulty realise the diffused character 
 of what we call Greece. The Greek race never had, 
 has not now, any actual country that can be called 
 theirs. In historic times they were spread out from 
 the mouths of the Nile to Marseilles, from Gades 
 (Cadiz) to Trebizond and the Crimea on the Black 
 Sea. In any list of eminent Greeks in history, litera- 
 ture and science, barely one in three will be found 
 to be a native of continental Greece proper. Homer, 
 Sappho, Aristotle, Archimedes, Hippocrates, and 
 Hipparchus were not born on the mainland. If we 
 except the dramatists, sculptors, and moralists of 
 Athens, Pindar, and Hesiod, few great names come 
 from what is popularly known as Greece. In truth, 
 the Greeks were not a nation, with a local country of 
 their own, but a nomad race bound together exclusively 
 by a language, a literature, and a tradition. These 
 things hold together groups of emigrants in all parts 
 of the earth, and also in the islands and promontories 
 of what geography names Greece, even when hardly 
 a drop of pure Hellenic blood can be proved to survive 
 in them. The bond is language. 
 
 A voyage round Greece and through the ^gean 
 to the Black Sea reveals an almost endless vista of 
 islands, headlands, bays, and peninsulas within sight of 
 each other, but separated by reaches of restless sea. 
 
156 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 They rise one behind the other, as if to form stepping- 
 stones between Europe and Asia, Europe and Africa. 
 They are pecuHarly fitted to receive a succession of 
 colonies, settlers, and conquerors, but are almost 
 physically incapable of being welded into a real nation. 
 This interminable panorama of mountain, sea, and 
 harbour suggests how this Eastern Mediterranean was 
 adapted to be the refuge of a free people striving to 
 escape from the immovable tyrannies of Asia and of 
 Egypt. 
 
 So, too, a voyage up to the Bosporus suggests the 
 impression that a great struggle — or a succession of 
 struggles — must have occurred round the southern 
 mouth of the Hellespont. The free Greeks of the 
 west would easily become more warHke and adven- 
 turous than the people of the coast of Asia under the 
 shadow of the great empires of the East. The 
 Hellespont was the key of the free passage to the vast 
 tracts that surround Propontis and the Euxine on the 
 side of Europe as on that of Asia. The control of 
 that seaway would be a thing of life and death to 
 a race of warriors and seamen thirsting for new fields 
 of settlement and merchandise. Some time or other 
 there must have been a grand contest around the 
 mouth of the Scamander river on which stood the hill 
 called Troy. The Iliad^ fusing old sagas perhaps 
 descended from European local combats, records the 
 tradition of the contest. At what date, in what form, 
 with what historic reality, either the war or the poem 
 took place we may never know. But the remains at 
 Hissarlik are there to prove a long succession of 
 strongholds of some kind being built, destroyed, re- 
 stored, and abandoned. 
 
 Our admiration for the poems must not lead us to 
 exaggerate the moral value of the poet. They served 
 to ennoble, unite, and inspire the Greek race — but 
 
cH.vm A LECTURE ON HOMER 157 
 
 they are stamped with the innate defects of the Greek 
 type of civihsation. There is wanting in them the 
 majestic sense of discipline, of law, of patience, rever- 
 ence for the ideals of purity, virtue, and courage found 
 in Republican Rome. Nay, even the late and more 
 artificial poem of Virgil inspires a higher type of 
 patriotism and duty. The Gods of the Homeric 
 Olympus are very human personages beside the less 
 material deities of old Rome. Still less does Homer 
 know anything of the spiritual communion of Soul 
 with Godhead such as we have in the Psalms, or in 
 Isaiah, or in Job. And far less is there a trace of the 
 passion of purity, truth, self-denial, and love, such 
 as the world owes to St. Paul, or Augustine, or 
 Gregory, or Ambrose. The Epics are Greek — frankly 
 and nakedly Greek, noble in their simple human 
 nature, fresh with the dayspring of human freedom, 
 serene, joyous, sociable, like a statue by Polycleitus of a 
 young athlete, strong, nude, and unashamed of its 
 corporeal loveliness — but crudely Greek, in its utter 
 ignorance of purity, higher love, or spiritual exaltation, 
 too emotional for perfect courage, too sensitive for the 
 sternest ordeal of duty, always near the sensual, or 
 at least the sensuous, too eager after beauty to form 
 a solid moral code. 
 
 We must take Homer as we find him, with the 
 joyous, artless, radiant outburst of the poet's soul, 
 seeking to rouse, warm, and delight his age by the 
 picture of free men, nobly living their lives in manly 
 self-reliance, eager to know, keen to observe, 
 thirsting after beauty, and ardent to cultivate their 
 entire nature to every point in its vitality in perfection 
 — in the sense in which in later ages Goethe conceived 
 it. In Goethe it ended too readily in self-adoration, 
 affectation, and even vice, for " to develope our nature 
 to the full" is no sufficient gospel to-day. But in 
 
158 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 the age of Homer, when men were awakening from 
 the weary millenniums of theocratic conservatism, it 
 was perhaps the most needful, it may be the only 
 possible, gospel. And in the immortal poet whom 
 antiquity called Homer, whom we fancy to have 
 lived and sung in one of those lovely islands which 
 fringe the Asian coast, this gospel found an infallible 
 prophet, priest, and lawgiver. 
 
 The Iliad was the text-book of Greek education in 
 a way more exclusive than any book has ever been — 
 even the Bible. We are told that many men could 
 repeat it by heart, which disposes of the impossibility 
 of learning to recite it without writing. When 
 Pheidias said that he drew his conception of the 
 Olympian Zeus from Homer, he must have meant 
 the grand spirit of Homer in general ; for Zeus in 
 the Iliad cuts a rather poor figure. When ^schylus 
 said his tragedies were " morsels from the feast of 
 Homer," he must have been speaking in an equally 
 general way, for we find almost nothing in common 
 between the extant tragedies and the Iliad either in 
 myth or in ethos. All that those rather dubious 
 anecdotes mean is that poets and artists felt inspiration 
 from their earliest association of heroic and divine beings 
 from the ideal world, as Handel and Raphael may have 
 drawn theirs from the Old and the New Testament. 
 
 Homer sums up the genius of Greece more com- 
 pletely than Dante sums up the genius of the Middle 
 Ages, because the Greek genius was far simpler and 
 more capable of harmonious artistic expression. The 
 Divine Comedy tells us little indeed of the lay, 
 chivalrous, satiric side of Feudalism. But Homer 
 gives us his early Greek world with all its weakness 
 and even its vices, its naked love of physical beauty, 
 and its audacity and irrepressible thirst for novelty, 
 movement, freedom, and joy. 
 
CH.viii A LECTURE ON HOMER 159 
 
 In these latter days of revolution, doubt, the babel 
 of rival schemes, of new worlds, and the interminable 
 battle of factions, we turn with a sense of rest to 
 listen again to the poems which delighted us in 
 boyhood. What charm is felt as the soft ripple of 
 these melodious lines flows over the weary brain ! I 
 remember in more than one holiday voyage when I 
 was reposing after work, how I lay on the deck of 
 a ship as it sailed past the birthplace (as is said) 
 of the poet, or past the plain of Troy, amidst 
 the shimmering dimples of the iEgean waves, with 
 the blue folds of Ida and Gargarus rising over the 
 plain of the Scamander ; and distant Samothrace with 
 its gigantic peaks towering away high over Tenedos 
 and Lemnos. The very waters seemed to murmur 
 in exquisite cadences the magical rhythm of the old 
 lines. The very bays and hills and promontories 
 seemed to me to ring with the tale of Hector and 
 Achilles. 
 
 This soft, soothing, purifying echo may be heard 
 even to-day by those who will give an hour to the 
 old poem — so fresh, bright, natural, and spontaneous 
 is the soul of it. Give but an hour to the blind old 
 man, and you will find the wearied spirit carried 
 away to the Islands of the Blest, where heroes were 
 wont to meet deities from Olympus, where Athene 
 whispered counsel to warrior and chief, and where 
 the flowers burst forth under the feet of some divine 
 being who had descended to man. And then the 
 tired spirit listens to the roll of the Homeric billow 
 with the refreshing sound that the townsman hears 
 when he scents the sea after long absence. A 
 flush of Nature, of beauty, of rest passes over the 
 soul. 
 
 Is this religion ? Yes, it is ! 
 
 Religion is the complex development of man's 
 
i6o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 highest nature in accordance with the true constitution 
 of the World and Humanity in its fullness. And that 
 which stimulates human nature and teaches it to be 
 at peace in its home on earth — this is the task of 
 religion. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 
 
 In the Greek world the higher Poetry, in Epic, 
 Hymns, Lyrics, and Dramas, stood to these peoples 
 as a religious power. It was the direct outcome of 
 their reHgious traditions and was a familiar mani- 
 festation of religion. The great poets were really 
 priests ; the Epics and Hymns were ritual and 
 services ; the grander Poems were at once educational 
 Scriptures and congregational manuals of devotion. 
 This does not mean, as modern church people may 
 be apt to suppose, that since Polytheism was a poor, 
 debased, and unspiritual substitute for religion, they 
 had to fall back on mere human poetry, and were fain 
 to take fine poems and beautiful forms of earthly life 
 as being the nearest symbol .of things sacred or 
 supreme that they could find in their lives. 
 
 Not so ! Greek poetry, in its highest forms, was 
 religious in the true sense, as human religion under- 
 stands the term ; that it is religious for us to-day, 
 as much as for the Lesbians or Athenians of old ; 
 that Homer has done as much for the true spiritual 
 progress of mankind as Moses, David, or Isaiah ; that 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey should be as much part of our 
 Bible as the Psalms or the Major and Minor Prophets. 
 We are altogether on the wrong path so long as we 
 i6i M 
 
i62 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 fail to see that poetry must be inspired by religion, 
 if it claims to be great poetry at all ; and that religion 
 must be humanly and really poetic, if it is ever again 
 to be the supreme master and guide of human life. 
 Pedantry and scepticism combined have placed a gulf 
 between religion and poetry, by which both have 
 suffered. Poetry has become too much of a literary 
 amusement ; and religion has become too much of a 
 mystical quietism. 
 
 This, of course, impHes that by religion we mean a 
 power which is co-extensive with human nature and 
 can exert its influence over the whole of human life. 
 Religion must be made real and human through great 
 poetry. And poetry must be made social and spiritual 
 through practical religion. No religion can permanently 
 touch man's life unless it speaks through great human 
 poetry, or, if it pretends to vaunt itself, as independent 
 of, and superior to, great human poetry. No poetry 
 has abiding power or can rise to the highest level, 
 if it claims to be outside of any religious sympathy 
 or sanction. No mere literature can be great poetry, 
 just as no anti-human hypotheses can be practical 
 religion. Thus, the mission of the Epics was grander 
 and more truly sacred than that of the Psalms of 
 Israel, for they sprang out of wider and more humane 
 sympathies with life as a whole than Hebrew War 
 Songs and Lamentations. 
 
 This is more true of the great dramatists of Athens 
 than it is of Homer. And we need to dwell on the 
 spiritual meaning of the highest triumphs of that 
 wonderful art, which has been the standard of the 
 drama to the civilised world for two thousand years. 
 Of all other dramatists ^schylus presents us with 
 the obvious type of the religious uses of the drama. 
 We know far more of ^schylus than of Homer, of 
 the Attic drama than of the early Epic. There tragedy 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 163 
 
 had its origin in religion ; it was itself a religious 
 ceremony, and was a function of religion surrounded 
 with religious symbols and forms. And we know 
 the soul and nature of iEschylus as well as we know 
 that of Isaiah or St. Paul, or Dante or Milton. No 
 great poet has ever more completely revealed himself 
 to us as a man. No poet has ever more passionately 
 thrown his own soul into his works. No poet (not 
 Dante, nor Milton, nor Wordsworth) has manifested 
 in verse a more profound sense of vital religion. 
 
 iEschylus was born at Eleusis near Athens five 
 and thirty years before the great Persian invasion. 
 His origin and early history are full of significance. 
 Eleusis was one of the oldest and most famous cities 
 of Greece, associated for a thousand years down to 
 Christian ages with the Mysteries which undoubtedly 
 had a primitive source in the Oriental myths of Nature 
 Worship. Putting aside the crude Greek derivation 
 of the name of the city from the "Arrival" of Demeter, 
 I always associate the name with the Hebrew town 
 of Eleph (or the Ox), allotted to Benjamin by Joshua, 
 and said to denote the pastoral character of the tribe. 
 Eleusis stands in the rich Thriasian plain, and may 
 have been a very early settlement of some Phoenician 
 or Syrian traders, who left their name and the mystic 
 rites of some Goddess of the abundance of Earth. 
 It is said that his father, Euphorion, was an official 
 of the Mysteries, and thus from childhood he was 
 associated with the most venerable ritual of the 
 ancient world. 
 
 There is a tradition that, as a boy after attending 
 the representation of the Dionysian festival, the god 
 appeared to him in a vision and bade him devote 
 himself to the drama, then only in its rudimentary 
 stage. At the age of twenty -six he presented his 
 first tragedy.. His first victory was not won till he 
 
1 64 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 was forty-one, about midway between the great battles 
 of Marathon and of Salamis, in both of which he and 
 his brothers had a glorious part. As a poet, iEschylus 
 had a singularly late development. None of his 
 extant dramas were produced until he was forty-seven. 
 His greatest tragedy, the Trilogy^ the greatest tragedy 
 in all literature, was not produced till he was sixty- 
 seven. Like so many other Athenians he was accused 
 of impiety, and was exiled or withdrew for safety 
 like Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristeides, Thucydides, 
 Alcibiades, Socrates, Xenophon, Pheidias, Plato, and 
 Euripides. The Athenian democracy prosecuted its 
 greatest soldiers as well as its greatest thinkers, as is 
 the way of ignorant and jealous mobs. 
 
 ^schylus shares with Dante, Cervantes, and 
 Camoens the character of a poet who had fought 
 in pitched battles, and I often think Shakespeare must 
 have served abroad in his youth. But iEschylus is 
 far the greatest warrior of all, for he took an heroic 
 part in the two most famous battles of the world. 
 His poetry breathes throughout the fire of war ; and 
 in his Persians he gives a vivid picture of the greatest 
 sea-fight in all history. By a fortunate coincidence 
 in the great fight off Salamis, on which hung the fate 
 of the future civilisation of Europe, there was serving 
 in the victorious fleet the greatest tragic poet in the 
 history of the world ; and a few years after it this 
 poet presented the scene to his triumphant comrades 
 in a lyric and dramatic pageant which is still the 
 noblest Hymn to patriotism in the records of man. 
 There is none more glorious than the speech of the 
 Herald to the mother of Xerxes as he tells the awful 
 tale of ruin and defeat. 
 
 Then the trumpet rang out its rousing note 
 along their ranks above the splashing of the 
 
cH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 165 
 
 waves, the hurtling of the oars, and the captain's 
 call of command. And as their serried ranks 
 dashed on together a great roar rose, so that we 
 could hear them cry : — 
 
 "Sons of the Greeks charge on. Strike 
 for the freedom of your fatherland. For 
 the freedom of your children and your wives 
 and the shrines of your fathers' gods. Fight 
 for the tombs of your forefathers. The 
 struggle this day is for your all on earth." 
 
 ^schylus is the poet of valour and patriotism as 
 he recorded (it is said) on his own tomb — 
 
 "^schylus, son of Euphorion, lies beneath 
 this monument : he died in fertile Gela [in 
 Sicily, and in exile, away from his own land]. 
 The weald by Marathon may tell the tale of 
 his proven valour, and the long-tressed Median, 
 for he had full knowledge of it." 
 
 Not a word of poetry ! 
 
 I hold the loss of the seventy plays of iEschylus, 
 of which we have no trace but titles and fragments, 
 to be perhaps the most cruel blow that literature has 
 ever sustained. Not only was iEschylus the greatest 
 tragic poet of the world, but he was the creator of 
 tragedy as an art — in a way that no other man has ever 
 created an art. We do not believe that the author 
 of the Iliad created epic ; nor did Pheidias create 
 sculpture. We know that Shakespeare did not create 
 the Elizabethan drama. Nor did Herodotus, "the 
 father of History," really create historical record. 
 Nor did Boccaccio create the novel, nor did Giotto 
 create modern painting. But -^schylus did create 
 Tragedy — which before him was a sort of Mummer's 
 
1 66 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 rhapsody at a Sacred Fair. It was jEschylus who 
 invented dialogue and action by doubling the actors, 
 and he soon followed Sophocles by accepting a third 
 actor as well as the Chorus. He limited and arranged 
 the Chorus, which now became the accompaniment 
 instead of the protagonist. He invented the use of 
 majestic scenery as a background, he gave the actors 
 a noble and imposing costume, and threw over the 
 whole stage that atmosphere of subhmity and heroic 
 dignity which breathes in every line he wrote. 
 
 This mighty genius conceived in mind and created 
 in visible form one of the grandest instruments of 
 human art. He transformed what had been down 
 to his time a lyric celebration of Bacchic emotion 
 into an inspiring expression of heroic character and 
 life. Perhaps it was in this sense that, according to 
 a plausible tradition, he called his plays "morsels 
 from the rich banquets of Homer." His extant 
 dramas deal but slightly with the epic personages and 
 myths ; and the saying may mean only that he 
 substituted great poetic action for the traditional ritual 
 of sacred revelry. 
 
 He made the theatre a new vehicle for transfiguring 
 the great lessons of human destiny and moral struggle. 
 In this way, no doubt, Cicero calls -^schylus a 
 Pythagorean, as a follower of the most spiritual and 
 social of philosophic creeds. iEschylus was a stern 
 and passionate supporter of the old traditions and of 
 the Homeric conservation of a semi-feudal chieftain- 
 ship. He was a warm apostle of the pervading 
 power of religion in the sense of a just Providence, of 
 the duties of hospitality, of the sanctity of oaths, of 
 claims of family, and of the marriage bond. And in 
 the deeply ethical and spiritual sincerity with which 
 he treated these, he did not scruple to break away 
 from the formal theologies and obsolete formulas of 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 167 
 
 past ages — even holding up Zeus to moral indignation, 
 casting aside the doubtful intervention of divine oracles. 
 Thus, conservative as he was, ^schylus offended the 
 ignorant democracy of a jealous people, and w^as 
 accused of impiety and want of faith. 
 
 -/Eschylus was thus at once a great reformer in 
 religion and also a profound conservative in morals. 
 His conception of virtuous life and of an overruling 
 Providence was far too spiritual to fall in with the 
 archaic licence of the Homeric Olympus. And withal 
 his conception of the primary institutions and duties 
 of civilised life was abhorrent of the critical and 
 sceptical logic of the new sophistry. Thus he stood 
 fast by all that was solid and enduring in the pubHc 
 and domestic traditions of his forefathers, whilst he 
 felt that a new humane and social morality could not 
 be bound by the popular hymnology about Zeus and 
 Hera, Aphrodite and Bacchus. In the religious aspect 
 i^schylus was a Puritan, an Idealist, a Reformer, a 
 sort of Athenian Latimer, Cromwell, or Milton. . 
 
 Primarily, ^Eschylus is a warrior, a patriot, a man 
 of honour. His style rings with a clarion call to 
 arms. His persons breathe the heroic spirit of the 
 great age. There is in him much of the spirit of the 
 older Romans, of Coriolanus, Camillus, Fabricius, and 
 Cato. In his Prometheus^ iEschylus ranges almost 
 with Shelley in a magnificent appeal to the efforts of 
 Humanity to free itself from antique tyranny and 
 superstition. Would that we could have had ^schylus' 
 play Prometheus Released. The Prometheus as we 
 have it is one of the most stupendous triumphs of 
 human imagination — hardly a drama, or, if a drama, 
 a species of sacred Oratorio ; for it is more a lyric, or 
 a monologue, than a tragedy, but as a Dithyrambic 
 Hymn to the power of Will in Man it has hardly its 
 equal in literature sacred or profane. 
 
i68 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 For tragedy pure and simple, with all the incidents 
 of a great drama worked out to a systematic end, the 
 Trilogy of Oresteia stands in the foremost place. In 
 mass, in intensity, in accumulated horror, in unity of 
 idea and of tone, and in statuesque sublimity of execu- 
 tion, this triple tragedy has never been equalled. We 
 need not doubt that Lear and Hamlet have a subtle and 
 profound poetry even higher and wider, or that Othello 
 and Macbeth have ethical mysteries even more intricate. 
 But the Trilogy remains still supreme in concentrated 
 majesty and power. 
 
 I go further, and insist that in the quality of 
 sublimity no poet has been quite the equal of ^schylus 
 — neither Dante nor Shakespeare nor Milton — I 
 mean in the creative fire of imagination that can bring 
 to life before the eyes of all mankind, so long as human 
 language shall remain, beings so imposing, so original, 
 so superhuman and yet so Hving ; nor has any poet 
 painted scenes of weird imagery so sublime, so gorgeous, 
 and- withal so eternal in their realism and truth. Take 
 the scene on Caucasus at the opening of the Prometheus^ 
 the magnificent silence of the tortured demi-god, the 
 lyrical beauty of the sea-nymphs who fly round him 
 in pity, the indomitable defiance of the catastrophe, 
 the prophetic constancy of the Friend of Man in 
 martyrdom amidst the fury of Gods above and the 
 crash of Nature. 
 
 I take again the bursting forth of the Beacon 
 fire which has been watched and longed for during 
 ten weary years, the home-coming of the victorious 
 monarch amid sinister warnings, mysterious chants of 
 coming doom, the piercing wail of Cassandra, the 
 intolerable agony of suspense which swells to an 
 oppressive omen as the Queen leads her victim within. 
 Then the silence, the awe, the mystery, the sense of 
 impending bloodshed broken at last by the shriek of 
 
cH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 169 
 
 the prophetess and the groan of the king. And, 
 whilst all without are torn with anxiety and alarm, 
 Clytemnestra appears with the bloody axe, avowing 
 and glorying in her crime, defying all who might 
 dare to question her right to take vengeance for her 
 child — standing over the dead like a lioness at bay over 
 her prey. The whole range of the drama contains no 
 scene so tremendous, so vivid, so rich in mass, pathos, 
 and intensity of colour. 
 
 It is significant that the men who, to my know- 
 ledge, have held iEschylus in the highest honour — 
 one in the ancient world, one in the modern world — 
 are these two : Aristophanes, who heard the plays on 
 the stage, and Auguste Comte in a miserable French 
 prose translation of the eighteenth century. I was 
 looking over Comte's books in his rooms in Paris with 
 Pierre Laffitte when I found a dingy i2mo prose 
 version of -^schylus. " How could he have such a 
 book ? " I asked. Laffitte replied, "Well ! he had no 
 other, he could not read Greek." And with this Httle 
 scrap of a translation Comte seized the overpowering 
 superiority of -/Eschylus to all the tragedians — the 
 profoundly religious bent of his genius, his Homeric 
 soul, his passionate revolt from the old Theocracy, his 
 inspiration of the great hour of Greek heroism, the 
 defence of the new world of freedom and inquiry 
 against the oriental tyranny of the old Theocracies. 
 
 ^schylus was one of the great religious teachers 
 of the world, to be ranked with Isaiah, Pythagoras, 
 perhaps with Mahomet and even Dante. Comte saw 
 what Aristophanes could not see, that ^schylus is the 
 poetic voice of the one great epoch in Greek history. 
 Aristophanes in the Frogs gives a wonderful picture of 
 iEschylus' style. He brings out the heroic temper, 
 the proud and stately self-will, the fiery imagination, 
 the avalanche of great thoughts and high ideals, and the 
 
 y^ 
 
170 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 superabundant splendour that he threw into his work. 
 The chorus begins as the poetic duel between Euripides 
 and iEschylus opens — with Sophocles for umpire. 
 
 " What torrents of fiercely-battling words shall 
 we now have ! They will shine like the glancing 
 of helms in the fight, waving with crested 
 plumes on high ! What high-prancing charges 
 of speech from the mighty master of mind ! How 
 he will shake his shaggy mane and bristle his 
 bushy locks, knitting in wrath his terrible brows 
 and roaring as a lion over his prey, hurling huge- 
 jointed phrases about as if they were masses of 
 timber from a ship's side, bound fast in bolts of 
 iron ; and these he will breathe forth with the 
 Titanic blast of his lungs." 
 
 SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES 
 
 Aristophanes does not venture to put Sophocles in 
 competition with iEschylus ; he adroitly reserves him 
 to be the arbiter ; but he makes Euripides over- 
 whelmed by his tremendous rival. The comic poet is 
 fully alive to the subtle psychology of Euripides, to his 
 ingenuity and invention, his literary audacity, and his 
 inexhaustible pathos. We all feel that, and to-day more 
 than ever. Euripides was the herald of " modernity," 
 and we are all "modernists" to-day — even "futurists" : 
 the twentieth century is Euripides' " day " ! But, to 
 compare ^schylus with Euripides is to compare Dante 
 with Ibsen, or Milton with Robert Browning. They 
 are not in pari materia ; they have no common ground. 
 
 So quickly did the great spiritual aim of the Attic 
 drama die out, so early did literary refinement and 
 artistic enjoyment of cultured form succeed to an 
 imaginative gospel of noble life, that at the age of 
 fifty-seven .^schylus was displaced in the judgment 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 171 
 
 of his time by the exquisite art of Sophocles, who was 
 but twenty-seven years old. ^schylus himself was 
 forty -one before he won the prize. With some 
 seventy-seven plays he won the prize but thirteen 
 times, whilst Sophocles and Euripides carried it off 
 twice or three times as often. By the voice of 
 antiquity, including that of Aristotle, it would 
 seem Sophocles was the tragic poet, as Homer was 
 the epic poet. Such are the verdicts of literary prizes 
 and of Academies of Letters. 
 
 To be devoted to the glorious power of -^schylus 
 is not to be blind to the magical versatility of 
 Euripides — much less to the exquisite grace of 
 Sophocles. His consummate mastery of tone, with 
 its severe abhorrence of violence and monstrosities, 
 the matchless purity of his language, and the subtle 
 symmetry of his tragic catastrophes — all as inimitable 
 and as faultless as a statue of Praxiteles — have made 
 Sophocles, in ancient and in modern times, the ideal 
 of the Hterary conception of great tragedy. Aristotle 
 found, as the world has found, the type of tragedy 
 in the two dramas of CEdipus. The wonderful 
 ingenuity of the plot, even with some inexplicable 
 dilemmas as to actual facts, the terrible winding of 
 the net of Fate round a noble and innocent man, the 
 fall from greatness and prosperity to abject misery, 
 the crescendo of horror, pity, and confusion make 
 King CEdipus the most consummate work of tragic 
 art. And then, in the CEdipus at Colonus^ the mystic 
 transfiguration of the blind and outlawed King into a 
 demi-god amidst the sweet peace of the local sanctuary 
 and the ministration of his daughters forms the relief 
 from the intolerable agony of the King's dethronement 
 and torture. As we study the three tragedies of the 
 Oresteia^ the two tragedies of CEdipus^ we protest 
 against the error of isolating Greek tragedies from 
 
172 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 their sequences, of allied series and the current myths. 
 Almost every Attic drama was an Act, as it were, of 
 a complex catastrophe, or was an incident in a familiar 
 myth. Hardly any one stood by itself as Hamlet or 
 Othello stand complete within their own Acts. When 
 we see (Edipus the King on the stage we know nothing 
 of the lyric restoration to peace and rest in the sublime 
 finale of (Edipus at Colonus. That is unpresentable 
 on our stage. And without it the agony of the first 
 tragedy is too poignant. 
 
 But with all the majestic perfection of the two 
 (Edipus plays and of the others of Sophocles, I do not 
 find in them the Titanic imagery of the Prometheus^ 
 nor the sublime wrestling of heroes with Gods and 
 Destiny as told in the Trilogy. Though it is difficult 
 to rank the Prometheus Bound — the only one that is 
 left us — as a tragedy pure and simple, yet I hold it to 
 be an Apocalypse of human power quite unequalled 
 even by Dante, Calderon, or Milton. Nor did 
 Shakespeare ever touch the tremendous intensity of 
 Clytemnestra's blood-guiltiness, defiance, punishment, 
 and the expiation of her son and executioner. No ! 
 that mighty Passion-Play of the primeval world stands 
 forth for ever as the tragic tale graven deepest in the 
 soul of Humanity. 
 
 It is true that with Sophocles the moral problems 
 of humanity are by no means overlooked or dis- 
 torted. They are constantly and justly faced. But 
 they are placed on a much more practical and logical 
 plane, and are treated with far less of mysticism and 
 awe, with far more indulgence and suavity than 
 by iEschylus. Sophocles never defies the antique 
 superstitions of his time ; he uses them like a 
 consummate artist ; he never risks an accusation of 
 impiety or of " modern " thoughts. He presents to 
 his hearers the temptations, vices, and punishments of 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 173 
 
 men with all the careful balance of a conscientious 
 judge in a court of morality and honour. He is 
 always, like Bossuet, a pathetic preacher of courtly 
 sermons on the ways of Providence and the sorrows 
 of man. It is an exquisite and edifying type of 
 religious teaching. But it has not altogether the 
 passionate inspiration of a Paul, a Dante, or a Milton. 
 Now -^schylus had this in a measure never approached 
 by drama, whether before or since. 
 
 They who place Euripides below both iEschylus 
 and Sophocles do not dispute the splendid versatility, 
 pathos, and subtlety of that poet, and are not blind 
 to the world-wide influence which he has continued 
 to shed over the whole field of dramatic literature 
 from his own day to our own. In Greece for 
 generations he ruled supreme. Roman tragedy, such 
 as it was, was founded on his ideas, and Latin plays 
 were rude parodies of his. The French dramas were 
 essentially Euripidean. His laws, forms, and ethic 
 held them spell - bound and hypnotised. And to a 
 great extent this was so with the Italian tragic drama, 
 and the Frenchified English drama of Dryden and 
 Otway. And to-day, with ourselves, the influence 
 of Euripides is again rising to the front rank, largely 
 owing to the work of one of the most brilliant and 
 most learned scholars of our age. Now, a power of 
 this enduring and pervading kind could have been 
 achieved only by a poet of the very highest order in 
 the Hterature of the world. 
 
 The key to the problem of the relative greatness 
 of Euripides turns on the point of his leading an 
 artistic and moral revolution in Attic drama. It is 
 agreed by all that he did this. Was it a glorious 
 and unquaKfied success ? If it were not this, it was 
 a step downwards in a (perhaps inevitable) decadence 
 that the state of Athens, its art, its literature, and 
 
174 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 its manners all shared alike. Euripides, it is certain, 
 attempted to develope the tragic drama somewhat in the 
 lines which have been splendidly filled in modern ages 
 by dramatists from Marlowe to Ibsen and by romance 
 from Boccaccio and Chaucer down to Richardson, 
 Goethe, and Victor Hugo. Clearly, Euripides is the 
 most " modern " of the ancient dramatists. But the 
 revolution he founded was fatally incomplete and 
 distorted. This prophet of a new epoch was not 
 free, but was in the bonds of the old epoch. He 
 sought to " modernise " the heroic world. And in 
 the end he was neither really heroic nor truly modern. 
 The career of Euripides coincides with the long 
 agony and disastrous war of Athens which led to her 
 ruin. It was a time of burning questions, of wild 
 expectations, and angry revolt from cherished ideals. 
 The dramas of Euripides seethe with all these — they 
 are critical, disputatious, sceptical, sentimental, and 
 cynical. They cover the conventions and sanctities 
 of old time with scorn as of a Voltaire and a Swift. 
 Do they estabHsh or even suggest the sanctities and 
 verities of a new time ? It can hardly be said that 
 anything solid or wholesome is given in lieu of what 
 the poet ridicules and condemns. With all his 
 exquisite lyricism, pathos, brilliancy of invention, 
 psychologic subtlety and bold thought, Euripides 
 remained a social and artistic revolutionary. Was 
 the revolution pregnant with great issues ? In his 
 hands, in that age of chaos and loose thought, it was 
 not destined to a great new birth. They who hold 
 that any revolution, any new ideas were a good thing 
 in themselves will hold to Euripides, come what may. 
 They who feel that Shelley, Browning, Ibsen, and 
 Tolstoy have displaced and made obsolete Dante, 
 Milton, Spenser, and Wordsworth will take their 
 stand with Young Athens when it gave the first 
 
cH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 175 
 
 prize in the festival of Dionysus to the author of 
 Hippolytus and Electra, For my part, I take my 
 stand along with Aristophanes in the Frogs, 
 
 But, in casting a humble vote in the greatest 
 contest in all human literature, I would not be taken 
 to undervalue the wonderful gifts of Euripides in his 
 own special Hnes — the limpid charm of his verse, the 
 passion of his heroines, the subtle vision into character, 
 motive, and intellect. We always begin our zest for 
 Greek tragedy with Euripides. We know him better 
 than his rivals. We have far more of his works to 
 study, and we find them more easy, more familiar, 
 more akin to our time. In the ancient world he was 
 the representative poet of Athens, and no doubt he 
 will long so continue to be. 
 
 The inner purpose of ^schylus was entirely that 
 of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Dante, and Milton, the present- 
 ment of the great problem of human life, the sense of 
 'an overruling Providence, the moral greatness and 
 force of the just man, the inevitable ruin and shame 
 that awaits the unjust man in the end, the retribution 
 that follows crime, the inheritance of evil, the triumph 
 of virtue, courage, purity, and good faith. Whatever 
 be the exact meaning of Aristotle's definition of the 
 function of Tragedy that it was "to purify the soul 
 by pity and terror," the sense of it is, to rouse the 
 spirit and cleanse it from all that is sordid, selfish, 
 torpid, and mean by touching our humane sympathies 
 to the quick, by calling forth the dormant feelings of 
 interest in our fellow-men, of pain at their sufferings, 
 and enthusiasm in their heroism ; to stir the worldly 
 self-contented spirit, fattened by comfort, ease, and 
 enjoyment, to a consciousness of the tremendous issues 
 for good and evil with which human life is surrounded ; 
 to force the dull soul to see Retribution dogging the 
 steps of injustice and crime and Ruin standing beside 
 
176 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Prosperity and Self-glorification — ^just as Death stands 
 beside the rich and prosperous man in some mediaeval 
 Dance of Death. This was ever the aim of the great 
 prophets and preachers. They too sought to purify 
 the soul by pity and terror. It is the aim of the 
 Vision of Ezekiel, of the cry of Isaiah. 
 
 " Wash you, make you clean ; put away the 
 evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease 
 to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgment, 
 relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead 
 for the widow. . . . And the destruction of the 
 transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, 
 and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. 
 . . . And the strong shall be as tow and the 
 maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn 
 together, and none shall quench them." 
 
 That is the spirit of iEschylus in even grander 
 imagery. There is nothing fanciful in thus identify- ' 
 ing the aim of ^fEschylus with that of the preachers 
 of the Hebrews, of the Middle Ages, of the Puritans 
 and the Reformers. The drama which ./Eschylus 
 founded in the highest moment of Greek history 
 lasted on until the superstitions of mediaeval fanaticism 
 extinguished it with all the splendid creations of 
 Polytheism in art. This drama absorbed the epos, 
 the lyrics, the sententious poetry of Greece. It stood 
 in the place of literature, of sacred books, almost of 
 a priesthood. It soon lost its religious and much of 
 its moral force, and degenerated into a Hterary amuse- 
 ment. But in the hands of iEschylus it was uniformly 
 profound, wise, and religious, and reached a sublimity 
 which this tragic art has never equalled since, and 
 which, in the extinction of the mystical conceptions 
 of the primitive world of free imagination, it may 
 never reach again in equal dignity and power. 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA 177 
 
 THE COMIC DRAMA 
 
 The comedy of the Frogs is the most typical 
 product of the Attic mind and character, and un- 
 doubtedly is one of the most amazing triumphs of 
 poetic wit in the entire history of literature. It was 
 produced at Athens at the moment of her utmost 
 strain and military exhaustion, just before her final 
 annihilation as a dominant and imperial state. Never 
 had she seemed more recklessly gay : absorbed in a 
 trial, not of battle but of wits, rejoicing in the songs 
 and sounds and sights of the country amidst the 
 horrors of the crowded plague-stricken city. That 
 was the hour when Aristophanes sought to relieve 
 the gloom around his fellow-citizens by one of his 
 brightest, maddest, drollest phantasmagorias, of which 
 the scene is Hades and the river Styx, and the prin- 
 cipal player the tipsy god of the Dramatic festival. 
 
 As a poet, pure and simple, in the whole history 
 of literature, no one except Shakespeare himself can 
 be thought of as the rival of Aristophanes in versatility 
 and range of spontaneous imagination. He is not 
 the peer of Shakespeare, of course, in tragic power, 
 nor of iEschylus, indeed ; nor in sustained vision of 
 a higher world does he approach Dante, or Calderon, 
 or Milton. But, in the magical combination of 
 exquisite lyrics, riotous fancy, with immortal satire 
 such as Rabelais, Swift, and Molidre hardly reached, 
 Aristophanes stands supreme. Shelley has no more 
 ethereal pictures of the heavens above than we find 
 in the Choruses of the Frogs and the Clouds ; Keats 
 never sang the song of the nightingale with more 
 luscious music ; Goethe never swept us more swiftly 
 down into an underworld of phantoms or up into a 
 dreamland of winged and superhuman spirits. But 
 
 N 
 
178 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 these are but incidents and by -play in the Attic 
 comedy. 
 
 The real Aristophanes is on a larger and profounder 
 plane of thought when he scourges the demagogue, 
 reveals the mountebank in his impudent imposture, 
 mocks at the pretender to wisdom, jeers the silly 
 ambition of unsexed females, and denounces the public 
 treason of oratorical windbags. This is the true 
 Aristophanes, and in this, the essential work of great 
 comedy, no one but Shakespeare can be put beside 
 him in ancient or in modern times. Menander, 
 Plautus, Terence were too local in their scene, and 
 belong to their special eras and people. Moli^re is 
 too purely Parisian, too much the creature of the 
 Grand Roi, as Cervantes is too purely Spanish and 
 Renascence, Rabelais is too gross and ribald, and Swift 
 too brutal and sardonic. No one of these has the 
 dithyrambic audacity, the aerial music, and the wild 
 laughter of Aristophanes ; nor does any one, as he 
 does, touch every nerve that quivers in the nature 
 of man, nor speak, as he does, to all races and to all 
 times. 
 
 Nay, I go further, for I hold the masterpiece of 
 Aristophanes — the denunciation of Cleon's demagogy 
 — to be, as a triumph of wit and certainly of patriotic 
 valour, even a bigger thing than Shakespeare's master- 
 piece in FalstafF. The Frogs^ the Birds^ the Clouds 
 have poetry equal to that of Midsummer Night's 
 Dream or the Tempest-, but the Great Assize of 
 Tragedy, the Imperial Jingoism of Athenian ambition, 
 the wordy scepticism of metaphysical sophistry, the 
 unsexing of the New Woman — these are subjects of 
 comic philosophy more eternal in their use, more 
 deeply rooted in human nature than even the finest 
 successes of our Tudor or Stuart comedy. No 
 reasonable man to-day can justify Aristophanes' out- 
 
CH.ix ON THE ATTIC DRAMA ^79 
 
 rages on decency, nor adopt his personal antipathies 
 and party passions, but as I claim for ^schylus the 
 first prize in the Tragedies of the World, so I claim 
 for Aristophanes the first prize as the greatest of all 
 comedians. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 In one of the most suggestive of his essays. Professor 
 Freeman calls the Roman Empire on the Bosporus 
 " the surest witness to the unity of history." ^ And 
 Professor Bury, whose great work has done so much to 
 develope that truth, insists that the old Roman Empire 
 did not cease to exist until the year 1453, when 
 Mohammed the Conqueror stormed Constantinople. 
 The line of Roman emperors, he says, "continued in 
 unbroken succession from Octavius Augustus to Con- 
 stantine Palaeologus." ^ Since George Finlay, nearly 
 fifty years ago, first urged this truth on public atten- 
 tion, all competent historians have recognised the 
 continuity of the civiHsation which Constantine seated 
 on the Golden Horn ; and they have done justice to its 
 many services to the West as well as to the East.* 
 But the nature of that continuity, the extent of these 
 services, are still but dimly understood by the general 
 public. Prejudice, bigotry, and rhetoric have done 
 much to warp the popular conception of one of the 
 chief keys to general history. In spite of all that 
 scholars have said, the old sophism lingers on that 
 the empire and civilisation of Rome ended with 
 Romulus Augustulus in 476, until, in a sense, it was 
 
 * The Rede Lecture, Cambridge, 1900. 
 180 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY i8i 
 
 revived by the great Charles ; that, in the meanwhile, 
 a vicious and decaying parody of the Empire eked out 
 its contemptible Hfe on the Bosporus. 
 
 Such was the language of the popular writers of the 
 last century, and Gibbon himself did something to 
 encourage this view. When, in his 48th chapter, he 
 talked of Byzantine annals as "a tedious and uniform 
 tale of weakness and misery," and saw that he still had 
 more than eight centuries of the history of the world 
 to compress into his last two volumes, we suspect that 
 the great master of description was beginning to feel 
 exhausted by his gigantic task.* In any case, his 
 undervaluing Byzantine history as a whole is the main 
 philosophical weakness of his magnificent work of art. 
 The phrases of Voltaire, Lebeau, and of papal contro- 
 versialists still Hnger in the pubHc mind ; ^ and in the 
 meantime there exists no adequate history in English 
 of the whole course of the Roman Empire on the 
 Bosporus. This still forms the great lacuna in our 
 historical Hterature. 
 
 Modern historians continually warn their readers 
 to cast ofF the obsolete fallacy that a gulf of so-called 
 dark ages separates ancient from modern history ; that 
 ancient history closes with the settlement of the Goths 
 in Rome, whilst modern history mysteriously emerges 
 somewhere in the ninth or the tenth century. We all 
 know now that, when the northern races settled in 
 Western Europe, they assimilated much that they 
 inherited from Rome. In truth, the Roman Empire, 
 transplanted on to the Bosporus, maintained for many 
 centuries an unbroken sequence of imperial life ; re- 
 taining, transforming, and in part even developing, the 
 administrative system, the law, the literature, the arts 
 of war, the industry, the commerce, which had once 
 been concentrated by the Caesars in Italy. After all 
 the researches of Finlay, Freeman, Bryce, Hodgkin, 
 
1 82 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Bury, Fisher, Oman, Dill, to say nothing of a crowd 
 of French, German, Italian, and Russian specialists, 
 we must regard these facts as amongst the truisms of 
 general history. 
 
 The continuity of government and civilisation in 
 the Empire of New Rome was far more real than it was 
 in Western Europe. New Rome never suffered such 
 abrupt breaks, dislocations, such changes of local seat, 
 of titular and official form, of language, race, law, and 
 manners, as marked the re-settlement of Western 
 Europe. For eleven centuries Constantinople remained 
 the continuous seat of an imperial Christian govern- 
 ment, during nine centuries of which its administrative 
 sequence was hardly broken. For nine centuries, until 
 the piratical raid of the Crusaders, Constantinople 
 preserved Christendom, industry, the machinery of 
 government, and civilisation from successive torrents 
 of barbarians. For seven centuries it protected Europe 
 from the premature invasions of the Crescent ; giving 
 very much in the meantime to the East, receiving very 
 much from the East, and acting as the intellectual and 
 industrial clearing-house between Europe and Asia. 
 For at least five centuries, from the age of Justinian, it 
 was the nurse of the arts, of manufacture, commerce, 
 and literature, to Western Europe, where all these were 
 still in the making. And it was the direct and 
 immediate source of civilisation, whether secular or 
 religious, to the whole of Eastern Europe, from the 
 Baltic to the Ionian Sea. 
 
 In picturesque and impressive incidents, in memor- 
 able events and dominant characters, in martial 
 achievement and in heroic endurance, perhaps even 
 in sociologic lessons, Byzantine history from the first 
 Constantine to the last is as rich as the contemporary 
 history either of the West or of the^ East. It would be 
 a paradox to compare the great Charles, or the great 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 183 
 
 Otto, or our own blameless Alfred, with even the best 
 of the Byzantine rulers of their age, or to place such 
 men as Gregory the Great, or Popes Silvester or 
 Hildebrand, below even the best of the Patriarchs of 
 the Holy Wisdom. Nor have the Orthodox Church 
 or the Eastern Romans such claims on the gratitude of 
 mankind as are due to the Church Catholic and the 
 Teutonic heroes who founded modern Europe. But 
 the three centuries of Byzantine history from the rise of 
 the Isaurian dynasty in 717 down to the last of the 
 Basihan emperors in 1028, will be found as well worthy 
 of study as the same three centuries in Western Europe, 
 i.e. from the age of Charles Martel to that of Henry the 
 Saint. 
 
 During those three centuries at least, the eighth, 
 ninth, and tenth, the Emperors of New Rome ruled 
 over a settled State which, if not as powerful in arms, was 
 far more rich in various resources, more cultured, more 
 truly modern, than any in Western Europe. I am not 
 about to attempt, in the short space at my disposal, even 
 a brief sketch of these three centuries of crowded story. 
 I purpose only to touch on some of the special features 
 of its civilisation and culture, which, for the three 
 centuries so often called the darkest ages of Europe, 
 made Constantinople the wonder and envy of the 
 world. Byzantine history has its epochs of ebb and 
 flow, of decay, convulsion, anarchy, and recovery, as 
 had the empire at Old Rome. This Roman Empire 
 was the most continuous institution in Europe, next 
 after the Catholic Church ; and, like the Church, it 
 had the same marvellous recuperative energy. It is 
 true that it had none of the latent power of growth 
 which Frank, Lombard, Burgundian, and Saxon 
 possessed. It was from first to last a conservative, 
 tenacious, and more or less stationary force. But it 
 kept alive the principles of order, stability, and con- 
 
1 84 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 tinuity, in things material and in things intellectual, 
 when all around it, on the east and on the west, was 
 racked with the throes of new birth or tossed in a 
 weltering chaos. Byzantine story is stained red with 
 blood, is black with vice, is disfigured with accumulated 
 waste and horror — but what story of the eighth, ninth, 
 and tenth centuries is not so disfigured and stained ? 
 And even the atrocities of Constantinople may be 
 matched in the history of the Papacy in these very ages, 
 and in the intrigues and conspiracies which raged 
 around the thrones of Frank, Lombard, Burgundian, 
 and Goth. 
 
 Strangely enough, the inner Hfe of this Byzantine 
 history has yet to be opened to the English reader. 
 For these three centuries that I am treating, Finlay has 
 given us about 400 pages ; ^ and Finlay, alas, is no longer 
 abreast of modern authorities, and was writing, let us 
 remember, the history of Greece. Mr. Bury's two 
 volumes stop short as yet with Irene at the end of the 
 eighth century, and Dr. Hodgkin has drawn rein at the 
 same date. For the period I am treating, we have but 
 a hundred pages or so in Mr. Bury's second volume, 
 and the mordant epigrams of Gibbon are about of equal 
 bulk. '^ For the law, the literature, the economics, the 
 administration, the ceremonial, the art, the trade, the 
 manners, the theology of this epoch we have to depend 
 on a mass of foreign monographs, — French, German 
 Greek, and now Russian and American, — on Ram baud 
 Schlumberger, Labarte, Bayet, Zachariae, Krumbacher 
 Heimbach, Krause, Neander, Salzenberg, Huebsch 
 Kondakov, De Vogii6, Bordier, Texier, Hergenrother. 
 Heyd, Fr. Michel, Silvestre, Didron, Mortreuil 
 Duchesne, Paspates, Buzantios, Van Millingen 
 Frothingham.s So far as I know, we had not, in 1900 
 a single English study on the special developments of 
 civilisation on the Bosporus from the fourth to the 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 185 
 
 twelfth century. Here are a score of monographs open 
 to the research of EngHsh historians. 
 
 Current misconceptions of Byzantine history mainly 
 arise from inattention to the enormous period it covers, 
 and to the wide differences which mark the various 
 epochs and dynasties. The whole period from the first 
 Constantine to the last is about equal to the period 
 from Romulus to Theodosius. The Crusaders' raid, in 
 1204, utterly ruined Constantinople, and from that 
 time till the capture by the Turks it was a feeble 
 wreck.^ Even at the date of the First Crusade, about a 
 century earlier, the Empire had been broken by the 
 campaign of Manzikert j so that the Hvely pictures of 
 the First Crusade by Scott and Gibbon present us with 
 the State in an age of decadence.^^ The epoch when 
 Byzantine was in the van of civilisation, civil, military 
 and intellectual, stretches from the reign of Justinian 
 (527) to the death of Constantine VIII. (1028), a period 
 of exactly five centuries — more than the whole period 
 of the Roman Republic. 
 
 During those five centuries there were a series of 
 alternate periods of splendour, decline, revival, expansion, 
 and final dissolution. The rulers differ from each 
 other as widely as Trajan differs from Nero or 
 Honorius ; the times differ as widely as the age of 
 Augustus differs from the ages of Cato or of 
 Theodoric. There were ages of marvellous recovery 
 under Justinian, again under Heraclius, again under 
 Leo the Isaurian, then under Basil of Macedon, next 
 under Nicephorus Phocas, and lastly under Basil II., 
 the slayer of the Bulgarians. There were ages of 
 decay and confusion under the successors of Heraclius, 
 and under those of Irene, and again those of 
 Constantine VIII. But the period to which I desire 
 to fix attention is that from the rise of the Isaurian 
 dynasty (717) to the death of Basil II. (1025), rather 
 
1 86 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 more than three centuries. During the eighth, ninth, 
 and tenth centuries the Roman Empire on the 
 Bosporus was far the most stable and cultured power 
 in the world, and on its existence hung the future of 
 civilisation. 
 
 Its power was due to this — that for some five 
 centuries of the early Middle Ages which form the 
 transition from polytheism to feudalism, the main 
 inheritance of civilisation, practical and intellectual, 
 was kept in continuous and undisturbed vitality in 
 the empire centred round the Propontis — that during 
 all this epoch, elsewhere one of continual subdivision 
 and confusion, the southern and eastern coast of Italy, 
 Greece and its islands, Thrace, Macedonia, and Asia 
 Minor as far as the Upper Euphrates, were practically 
 safe and peaceful. This great tract, then the most 
 populous, industrious, and civilised of the world, was 
 able to give itself to wealth, art, and thought, whilst 
 East and West were swept with wars of barbarous 
 invaders. The administration of the Empire, its 
 military and civil organisation, remained continuous 
 and effective in the same seat, under the same law, 
 language, and religion, during the whole period ; and 
 the official system worked under all changes of 
 dynasty as a single organic machine. It was thus 
 able to accumulate enormous resources of money and 
 material, and to equip and discipline great regular 
 armies frorn the martial races of its complex realm, 
 such as were wholly beyond the means of the 
 transitory and ever shifting kingdoms in the rest of 
 Europe and Asia.^^ 
 
 Western Europe, no doubt, bore within its bosom 
 the seeds of a far greater world to come, a more virile 
 youth, greater heroes and chiefs. But wealth, organisa- 
 tion, knowledge, for the time were safeguarded behind 
 the walls of Byzantium — to speak roughly, from the 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 187 
 
 age of Justinian to that of the Crusades. Not only 
 did the empire of New Rome possess the wealth, 
 industry, and knowledge, but it had almost exclusive 
 control of Mediterranean commerce, undisputed 
 supremacy of the seas, paramount financial power, and 
 the monopoly of all the more refined manufactures 
 and arts. In the middle of the tenth century, the 
 contrast between the kingdom of Otto the Great and 
 the empire of Constantine Porphyrogenitus was as 
 great as that between Russia under Peter the Great 
 and France in the days of the Orleans Regency.^^ 
 
 From the seventh to the thirteenth century 
 Constantinople was far the largest, wealthiest, most 
 splendid city in Europe. It was in every sense a new 
 Rome. And, if it were at all inferior as a whole to 
 what its mother was in the palmy age of Trajan and 
 Hadrian, it far surpassed the old Rome in its exquisite 
 situation, in its mighty fortifications, and in the 
 beauty of its central palace and church.^^ A long 
 succession of poets and topographers have recounted 
 the glories of the great city — its churches, palaces, 
 baths, forum, hippodrome, columns, porticoes, statues, 
 theatres, hospitals, reservoirs, aqueducts, monasteries, 
 and cemeteries.^^ All accounts of early travellers 
 from the West relate with wonder the splendour and 
 wealth of the imperial city. "These riches and 
 buildings were equalled nowhere in the world," says 
 the Jew Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century. 
 "Over all the land there are burghs, castles, and 
 country towns, the one upon the other without 
 interval," says the Saga of King Sigurd, fifty years 
 earlier. The Crusaders, who despised the Greeks of 
 the now decayed empire, were awed at the sight of 
 their city ; and as the pirates of the Fifth Crusade 
 sailed up the Propontis they began to wonder at their 
 own temerity in attacking so vast a fortress.^^ 
 
i88 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 The dominant note of all observers who reached 
 Constantinople from the North or the West, at least 
 down to the eleventh century, even when they most 
 despised the effeminacy and servility of its Greek 
 inhabitants, was this : they felt themselves in presence 
 of a civilisation more complex and organised than any 
 extant. It was akin to the awe felt by Goths and 
 Franks when they first fell under the spell of Rome. 
 At the close of the sixth century, as Dr. Hodgkin 
 notes of Childebert's fourth invasion of Italy, " mighty 
 were a few courteous words from the great Roman 
 Emperor to the barbarian king" — the king whom 
 Maurice the " Imperator semper Augustus " con- 
 descends to address as "vir gloriosus." ^^ And this 
 idea that New Rome was the centre of the civilised 
 world, that Western sovereigns were not their equals, 
 lasted down to the age of Charles. When the 
 Caroline Empire was decaying and convulsed, the 
 same idea took fresh force. And the sense that the 
 Byzantine world had a fullness and a culture which 
 they had not, persisted until the Crusades effectually 
 broke the spell. ^'^ 
 
 This sentiment was based on two very real facts. 
 The first was that New Rome prolonged no little of 
 the tradition, civil and military organisation, wealth, 
 art, and literature of the older Rome, indeed far more 
 than remained west of the Adriatic. The second, the 
 more important, and the only one on which I now 
 desire to enlarge, was that, in many essentials of 
 civiHsation, it was more modern than the nascent 
 nations of the West. Throughout the early centuries 
 of the Middle Ages — we may say from the age of 
 Justinian to that of Hildebrand — the empire on the 
 Bosporus perfected an administrative service, a hier- 
 archy of dignities and offices, a monetary and fiscal 
 system, a code of diplomatic formulas, a scientific body 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY * 189 
 
 of civil law, an imperial fleet, engines of war, fortifi- 
 cations, and resources of maritime mobilisation, such 
 as were not to be seen in Western kingdoms till the 
 close of the Middle Ages, and which were gradually 
 adopted or imitated in the West. At a time when 
 Charles, or Capet, or Otto were welding into order 
 their rude peoples, the traveller who reached the 
 Bosporus found most of the institutions and habits of 
 life such as we associate with the great cities of much 
 later epochs. He would find a regular city poHce, 
 organised bodies of municipal workmen, public parks, 
 hospitals, orphanages, schools of law, science, and 
 medicine, theatrical and spectacular amusements, 
 immense factories, sumptuous palaces, and a life which 
 recalls the Cinque Cento in Italy .^^ 
 
 It is quite true that this imperial administration 
 was despotic, that much of the art was lifeless and all 
 the literature jejune ; that cruelty, vice, corruption, 
 and superstition were flagrant and constant, just as 
 the European Renascence had cruelty, vice, and 
 corruption, at the very heart of its culture. The 
 older historians are too fond of comparing the Leos 
 and Constantines with the Scipios and the Antonines, 
 instead of comparing them with the Lombard, Frank, 
 or Bulgarian chiefs of their own times. And we are 
 all too much given to judge the Byzantines of the 
 eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries by the moral 
 standards of our own age ; to denounce their pompous 
 ceremonials, their servile etiquette, their frigid com- 
 positions, and their savage executions. We forget 
 that for many centuries Western chiefs vied with each 
 other in copying and parading the external para- 
 phernalia of the Roman emperors in their Byzantine 
 ceremonial : their crowns, sceptres, coins, titles, palaces, 
 international usages, golden bulls, pragmatic sanctions, 
 and court ofiicialdom. There is hardly a single 
 
190 * AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 symbol or form or office dear to the monarchies and 
 aristocracies of Europe of which the original model 
 was not elaborated in the Sacred Palace beside the 
 Golden Horn. And most of these symbols and 
 offices are still amongst the most venerable insignia 
 to-day at the State functions of Tsar, Kaiser, Pope, 
 and King.^^ 
 
 The cohesive force of the Byzantine monarchy 
 resided in its elaborate administration, civil and 
 military. It formed a colossal bureaucracy centred 
 round the sacred person of the Sovereign Lord of so 
 many races, such diverse provinces, such populous 
 towns, united by nothing but one supreme tie of 
 allegiance. No doubt it was semi-Oriental, it was 
 absolutist, it was oppressive, it was theocratic. But 
 for some seven centuries it held together a vast and 
 thriving empire, and for four centuries more it kept in 
 being the image and memory of empire. And with 
 all its evils and tyranny, it was closely copied by 
 every bureaucratic absolutism in modern Europe. 
 And even to-day the chinovnik of Russia, the Beamten 
 of Prussia, and the administration of France trace 
 their offices and even their titles to the types of the 
 Byzantine official hierarchy. 
 
 Much more is this true of ceremonial, titles, and 
 places of dignity. We may say that the entire nomen- 
 clature of monarchic courts and honours is derived 
 direct from Byzantine originals, ever since Clovis was 
 proud to call himself Consul and Augustus^ and to 
 receive a diadem from Anastasius, and ever since 
 Charles accepted the style of Emperor and Augustus, 
 pacific, crowned of God in the Basilica of S. Peter on 
 Christmas Day, 800 ; when the Roman people shouted 
 "Life and Victory," just as the Byzantines used to 
 (Jq 20 When in the tenth century our Edward the 
 elder was styled Kex invictissimus and Athelstan called 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 191 
 
 himself Basileus of the English^ they simply borrowed 
 the Greek formulas of supreme rank. We are amused 
 and bewildered, as we read Constantine the seventh on 
 the Ceremonies of the Court^ by the endless succession 
 of officials, obeisances, compliments, gesticulations, and 
 robings which he so solemnly describes : with his 
 great chamberlain, his high steward, his chief butler, 
 his privy seal, his gold stick, his master of the horse, 
 lords and ladies in waiting, right honourables, ushers, 
 grooms, and gentlemen of the guard. But we usually 
 forget that the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, Hohen- 
 zollerns, and Romanoffs have maintained these very 
 forms and dignities for centuries. Indeed, it might 
 be amusing to take the Purple King's Paa-iXeios ra^ts 
 to a court drawing-room, and check off the offices 
 and forms which still survive after a thousand years. 
 Michael Psellos, in the eleventh century, speaks of his 
 ijXios Paa-iXevs — the exact equivalent of Louis's Roi- 
 Soleil. The officialdom and ceremonial of Byzantium 
 was rotten and absurd enough ; but it is not for the 
 courtiers of Europe to scofF at it. It was an anticipa- 
 tion by many centuries of much that we still call 
 civilisation. 
 
 And it would be quite wrong to assume that the 
 organisation of the Empire was a rigid and unchanging 
 system. On the contrary, it steadily developed and 
 was recast according to the necessities of the case. In 
 the main, these necessities were the shrinkage of the 
 boundaries, the loss of rich provinces, and, above all, 
 the pressure of Oriental invaders together with the 
 growth of the western kingdoms and empire. Nor 
 was there anything casual or arbitrary in these 
 changes. The process of Orientation and of Auto- 
 cracy which Aurelian and Diocletian had begun in the 
 third century had been developed into a system by 
 Constantine when he planted the Empire on the 
 
192 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 Bosporus and founded an administrative and social 
 hierarchy in the fourth century. Justinian in the 
 sixth century introduced changes which gave the 
 empire a more mihtary and more centralised form 
 to meet the enemies by w^hich it was surrounded. 
 Heraclius and his dynasty in the seventh century 
 carried this process still further under the tremendous 
 strain to which their rule was exposed. They insti- 
 tuted the system of Themes^ military governorships 
 under a general having plenary authority both in peace 
 and war ; and the system of Themes was developed, in 
 the eighth and ninth century, until in the tenth they 
 are classified by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who 
 mentions about thirty. During the whole period, 
 from the seventh to the eleventh centuries inclusive, 
 the organisation was continually developed or varied, 
 not violently or improvidently, but to meet the needs 
 of the time. There is reason to believe these develop- 
 ments to have been systematic, continuous, and judici- 
 ous. If we compare them with the convulsions, 
 anarchy, racial and political revolutions which shook 
 Western Europe during the same epoch, we cannot 
 deny that the tyrannies and formalities of the Byzantine 
 Court were compatible with high aptitude for Imperial 
 government, order, and defence.^^ Alone amongst the 
 nations of the world, the Empire maintained a system- 
 atic finance and exchequer, a pure standard coinage, 
 and a regular commercial marine. 
 
 For the historian, the point of interest in this 
 Byzantine administration is that, with all its crimes 
 and pomposities, it was systematic and continuous. 
 It never suffered the administrative and financial chaos 
 which afflicted the West in the fifth century, or in 
 the ninth century after the decay of the Carlings, and 
 so on down to the revival of the Holy Roman Empire 
 by Otto the Great. It is difficult to overrate the 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 
 
 93 
 
 ultimate importance of the acceptance by Charles of 
 the title of Emperor, or of its revival by Otto j and 
 history has taken a new life since the modern school 
 has worked out all that these meant to the West. 
 But we must be careful not to fall into the opposite 
 pitfall, as if the Roman Empire had been translated 
 back again to the West, as some clerical enthusiasts 
 pretended, as if the Empire of Charles was a con- 
 tinuous and growing organism from the time of 
 Charles down to Rudolph of Hapsburg, or as if the 
 coronation of Charles or of Otto at Rome broke the 
 continuity of Empire at the Bosporus, or even greatly 
 diminished its authority and prestige. On the con- 
 trary, these Western ceremonies affected it only for a 
 season, and from time to time, and affected its temper 
 more than its power. 
 
 The Western Empire, in spite of the strong men 
 who at times wielded its sceptre, and whatever the 
 fitful bursts of force it displayed, was long before it quite 
 recognised its own dignity and might ; it was very 
 vaguely and variously understood at first by its com- 
 posite parts ; and for the earlier centuries was a loose, 
 troubled, and migratory symbol of rank rather than a 
 fixed and recognised system of government. All this 
 time the Emperors in the vermilion buskins were 
 regularly crowned in the Holy Wisdom ; they all 
 worshipped there, and all lived and ruled under its 
 shadow. Their palaces by the Bosporus maintained, 
 under every dynasty and through every century, the 
 same vast bureaucratic machine, and organised from 
 the same centre the same armies and fleets ; they 
 supported the same churches, libraries, monasteries, 
 schools, and spectacles, without the break of a day, 
 however much Muslim invaders plundered or occupied 
 their Asiatic provinces, and although the rulers of 
 Franks or Saxons defied their authority or borrowed 
 
 o 
 
194 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 their titles. The Empire of Franks and Teutons was 
 not a systematic government and had no local seat. 
 That of the Greeks, as they were called, had all the 
 characters of a fixed capital and of a continuous State 
 system. 
 
 There is nothing in all history more astonishing and 
 more worthy of study than the continual rallies of this 
 Roman Empire. There is an alternate ebb and flow 
 in the extent and power of the Empire most fascinating 
 to observe. The wonderful revival under Justinian, 
 and again that under Heraclius in the sixth and seventh 
 centuries, are familiar enough even to the general 
 reader, as well as the troubles which supervened under 
 their respective successors. The more splendid and 
 more permanent rally under the Isaurian dynasty and 
 again under the Basilian dynasty, the whole period 
 from 717 for three centuries, to the last of the Basilian 
 Emperors, in 1028, is less familiar to English readers, 
 and yet is rich with incidents as well as lessons. The 
 anarchy which followed the fall of the miserable tyrant 
 Justinian II. seemed certain to ruin the whole Empire. 
 From this fate it was saved by the Isaurian (or Syrian), 
 Leo III. and his descendants and successors ; and 
 again order and empire were saved by Basil I. of 
 Macedon and his descendants, who ruled for 160 years. 
 The onward sweep of the conquering Muslims had 
 roused the whole Empire to defend its existence. 
 And all through the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries 
 it found a succession of statesmen and warriors from 
 Asia Minor and Thrace whose policy and exploits at 
 least equal any recorded in the same age either in the 
 East or the West. And it is to be noted that these 
 two glorious periods of the Byzantine power coincided 
 with the great revival of the Franks under Pippin and 
 his dynasty, and that of the Saxons under Henry the 
 Fowler and the dynasty of the Ottos. 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 195 
 
 Nothing could have saved the Empire but its 
 superiority in war — at least in defence. And this 
 superiority it possessed from the sixth to the eleventh 
 century. It was a stange error of the older historians, 
 into which Gibbon himself fell, that the Byzantine 
 armies were wanting in courage, discipline, and 
 organisation. On the contrary, during all the early 
 Middle Ages they were the only really scientific army in 
 the world. They revolutionised the art of war, both in 
 theory and practice, and in some points brought it to a 
 stage which was only reached in quite modern times, 
 as for instance in mobiHsation and in providing 
 ambulance corps. They quite recast the old Roman 
 methods and armies, whilst retaining the discipHne, 
 spirit, and thoroughness of Rome. The great changes 
 were four- fold : (i) they made it as of old a native 
 army of Roman subjects, not of foreign allies or 
 mercenaries ; (2) they made its main force cavalry, in 
 lieu of infantry ; (3) they changed the weapons to bow 
 and lance instead of sword and javeHn — and greatly 
 developed body armour ; (4) they substituted a 
 composite and flexible army-corps for the old legion. 
 Men of all races were enlisted, save Greeks and Latins. 
 The main strength came from the races of the high- 
 lands of Anatolia and Armenia — the races which 
 defended Plevna. 
 
 When, towards the close of the fourth century, the 
 battle of Adrianople rang the knell of Roman infantry, 
 the Byzantine warriors organised an army of mounted 
 bowmen. Belisarius and Narses won their victories 
 with tTTTTOTo^oTat. Thc cataphractl, or mail-clad 
 horsemen, armed with bow, broadsword, and lance, 
 who formed nearly half the Byzantine armies, were 
 immensely superior both in mobiHty, in range, and in 
 force to any troops of old Rome, and they were more 
 than a match for any similar troopers that Asia or 
 
196 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Europe could put into the field. From the sixth to 
 the tenth centuries we have still extant scientific 
 treatises on the art of war under the names of Maurice, 
 Leo, and Nicephorus. When to this we take into 
 account the massive system of fortification developed 
 at Constantinople, the various forms of Greek fire, their 
 engines to project combustible Hquids, and one form 
 that seems the basis of gunpowder, and last of all the 
 command of the sea, and a powerful service of trans- 
 ports and ships of war, we need not doubt Mr. Oman's 
 conclusion that the Byzantine Empire had the most 
 eflicient forces then extant, nor need we wonder how 
 it was that for eight centuries it kept at bay such a 
 host of dangerous foes.^^ 
 
 The sea-power of the Empire came later, for the 
 control of the Mediterranean was not challenged until 
 the Saracens took to the sea. But from the seventh 
 to the eleventh centuries (and mainly in the ninth and 
 tenth) the Empire developed a powerful marine of 
 war galleys, cruisers, and transports. The war galleys 
 or dromonds^ with two banks of oars, carried 300 men 
 each, the cruisers 100, and many of them were fitted 
 with fighting - towers and machines for hurling 
 explosives and liquid combustibles. Hand-grenades, 
 and apparently guns whence gunpowder shot forth 
 fire - balls but not bullets, were their armament. 
 When Nicephorus Phocas recovered Crete from the 
 Saracens, we are told that his expedition numbered 
 3300 ships of war and transports, and carried infantry, 
 bowmen, and cavalry, a siege-train, and engines, in all 
 amounting to 40,000 or 50,000 men.^^ Nothing in 
 the tenth century could rival such a sea-power. He 
 might fairly boast as Emperor to the envoy of Otto that 
 he could lay any coast town of Italy in ashes. Such 
 was the maritime ascendancy of Byzantium, until it 
 passed in the eleventh century to the Italian republics.^* 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 197 
 
 The most signal evidence of the superior civilisation 
 of Byzantium down to the tenth century is found in 
 the fact that alone of all states it maintained a con- 
 tinuous, scientific, and even progressive system of law. 
 Whilst the Corpus Juris died down in the West 
 under the successive invasions of the Northern 
 nations, at least so far as governments and official 
 study was concerned, it continued under the Emperors 
 in the East to be the law of the State, to be expounded 
 in translations, commentaries, and handbooks, to be 
 regularly taught in schools of law, and still more to be 
 developed in a Christian and modern sense.^^ It was 
 the brilliant proof of Savigny that Roman law was 
 never utterly extinct in Europe, and then rediscovered 
 in the twelfth century. As he showed, it lingered on 
 without official recognition among Latin subject races 
 in a casual way, until what Savigny himself calls the 
 Revival of the Civil Law at Bologna in the twelfth 
 century .26 But for official and practical purposes, the 
 Corpus Juris of Justinian was superseded for six 
 centuries by the various laws of the Teutonic con- 
 querors. These laws, whatever their interest, were 
 rude prescriptions to serve the time, without order, 
 method^ or permanence, the sure evidence of a low 
 civilisation — as Paulus Diaconus said tempora fuere 
 harharica. If we take the Code of Rothari the 
 Lombard, in the seventh century, or the Capitularies 
 of the Carolines, or Saxon Dooms, or the Liber 
 Papiensis of the eleventh century, civil law in any 
 systematic sense was unknown in Western Europe, 
 and the Corpus Juris was obsolete.^^ 
 
 Now, there was no revival of Roman Law in 
 Byzantium, because there it never was extinct. 
 Justinian's later legislation was promulgated in Greek, 
 and his Corpus Juris was at once translated, summarised, 
 and abridged in the East. Although schools of law 
 
198 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 existed in Constantinople and elsewhere, the seventh 
 century, in its disasters and confusion, let the civil 
 hw fall to a low ebb. But the Isaurian dynasty, in 
 the age of the Frank King Pippin, made efforts to 
 restore and to develop the law. The Ecloga of Leo 
 III. and Constantine V. was promulgated to revise 
 the law of persons in a Christian sense. It was part 
 of the attempt of the Iconoclasts to form a moral 
 reform in a Puritan spirit. This was followed by 
 three special codes — (i) A maritime code, of the 
 Rhodian law, as to loss at sea and commercial risks ; 
 (2) a military code or law martial ; (3) a rural code to 
 regulate the police of country populations. And a 
 register of births for males was instituted throughout 
 the Empire at the same time. 
 
 In the ninth century the Basilian dynasty issued a 
 new legislation which, whilst professing to restore the 
 Corpus Juris of Justinian, practically accepted much 
 of the moral reforms of the Isaurians. The Procheiron 
 was a manual designed to give a general knowledge of 
 the entire Corpus Juris of Justinian. It was followed 
 by the Epanagoge^ a revision of the Procheiron. We 
 have other institutional works and a Peira or manual 
 of practice, or the application of law to life. But the 
 great work of the Basilian dynasty was the Basilica^ 
 in sixty books, of Basil I. and Leo VI., the Philosopher, 
 about 890, an epoch that Mr. Bryce justly calls "the 
 nadir of order and civilisation " in the West, at the 
 time when the Carolines ended with Charles the Fat 
 and Lewis the Child. The Basilica.^ which fill six 
 quarto volumes, stood on a par with the Corpus Juris 
 of Justinian. It was a systematic attempt to compile 
 a complete code of law, based on the Roman law, but 
 largely reforming it from the influences of Christianity, 
 humanity, and the advancing habits of a new society. 
 
 We thus have in Greek a new Corpus Juris^ a 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 199 
 
 long series of institutions, amendments, text-books, 
 scholiasts, and glosses, down to the foundation at 
 Constantinople of a new school of law by Constantine 
 Monomachus in the middle of the eleventh century, 
 so that the continuity of civil law from Tribonian to 
 Theophilus the Younger is complete. As Mr. Roby 
 has pointed out (Int. p. ccliii), these Greek trans- 
 lations and comments are of great value in determining 
 the texts of the Latin originals. The Basilica^ 
 indeed, was as permanent as the Corpus Juris^ and has 
 formed the basis of civil law to the Christian 
 communities of the East, as it is to this day of the 
 Greeks. Nor is it worthy of attention only for its 
 continuity and its permanence. It is a real advance 
 on the old law of Rome from a Christian and modern 
 sense. The Basilica opens with a fine proem, which 
 is an admirable and just criticism of the Corpus Juris. 
 "Justinian," says Basil, " had four codes. We combine 
 the whole law in one. We omit and amend as we go 
 on, and have collected the whole in sixty books." ^s 
 The influence of Christianity and its effect on personal 
 law was feeble enough in the code of Justinian. The 
 Isaurian and Basilian laws are deeply marked by the 
 great change. They proclaim the principle and work 
 it out to its conclusions — that "there is no half 
 measure between marriage and celibacy." Con- 
 cubinage disappears and immoral unions become penal. 
 The marriage of slaves is gradually recognised, and 
 the public evidence of marriage is steadily defined. 
 The law of divorce is put very much on the basis of 
 our existing conditions. The wife is gradually raised 
 to equality of rights. She becomes the guardian of 
 her children ; women can legally adopt ; there can be 
 no tutelage of minors during the Hfe of either parent. 
 The property of husband and wife is placed under 
 just conditions, the patria potestas is aboHshed in the 
 
200 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 old Roman sense, and the succession on death of 
 either spouse is subject to new regulations. The 
 cumbrous number of witnesses to a testament is 
 reduced ; the old formal distinctions between personal 
 and real property are abolished, and a scheme of 
 liquidated damages is introduced. There is no feudal 
 system of any kind. There is a systematic effort to 
 protect the peasant from the Swarot, to give the 
 cultivator " fixity of tenure." 
 
 Here, then, we have proof that the grand scheme of 
 Roman law, which was officially ignored and forgotten 
 in the whole West for six centuries, was continuously 
 studied, taught, and developed by Byzantines without 
 a single interruption, until it was moulded by Christian 
 morality and modern sentiment to approach the form 
 in which the civil law is now in use in Europe. No 
 higher evidence could be found to show that civilisation, 
 morality, and learning were carried on for those 
 troubled times in the Greek world with a vigour and 
 a continuity that have no counterpart in Latin and 
 Teutonic Europe. Strangely enough, this striking 
 fact was ignored till lately by civilians, and is still 
 ignored by our English jurists. The learning on the 
 Graeco-Roman law between Justinian and the school 
 of Bologna is entirely confined to foreign scholars ; 
 and I have not noticed anything but brief incidental 
 notices of their labours in the works of any English 
 lawyer. It is a virgin soil that lies open to the 
 plough of any inquiring student of law. 
 
 Turn to the history of Art. Here, again, it must 
 be said that from the fifth to the eleventh century the 
 Byzantine and Eastern world preserved the traditions, 
 and led the development of art in all its modes. We 
 are now free of the ancient fallacy that Art was 
 drowned beneath the waves of the Teutonic invaders, 
 until many centuries later it slowly came to life in 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 201 
 
 Italy and then north of the Alps. The truth is that 
 the noblest and most essential of the arts — that of 
 building — some of the minor arts of decoration and 
 ornament, and the art of music, down to the invention 
 of Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century, lived on 
 and made new departures, whilst most of the arts of 
 form died down under the combined forces of barbarian 
 convulsions and religious asceticism. And it was 
 Byzantium which was the centre of the new archi- 
 tecture and the new decoration, whilst it kept alive 
 such seeds of the arts of form as could be saved 
 through the rudeness and the fanaticism of the early 
 Middle Ages. To the age of Justinian we owe one 
 of the greatest steps ever taken by man in the art of 
 building. The great Church of the Holy Wisdom 
 exerted over architecture a wider influence than can 
 be positively claimed for any single edifice in the 
 history of the arts. We trace enormous ramifications 
 of its example in the whole East and the whole of the 
 West, at Ravenna, Kief, Venice, Aachen, Palermo, 
 Thessalonica, Cairo, Syria, Persia, and Delhi. And 
 with all the enthusiasm we must feel for the Parthenon 
 and the Pantheon, for Amiens and Chartres, I must 
 profess my personal conviction that the interior of 
 Agia Sophia is the grandest in the world, and certainly 
 that one which offers the soundest basis for the archi- 
 tecture of the future.29 
 
 The great impulse given to all subsequent building 
 by Anthemius and Isodorus lay in the perfect com- 
 bination of the dome on the grandest scale with 
 massive tiers of arches rising from colossal columns — 
 the union of unrivalled engineering skill with exquisite 
 ornament, the whole being a masterpiece of subtlety, 
 sublimity, harmony, and reserve. It is true that the 
 Pantheon, which we now know to be of the age of 
 Hadrian, not of Augustus, and the vast caldar'ia of 
 
202 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 the Thermae, had given the earHest type of the true 
 dome.^^ It is true that the wonderful artifice of 
 crowning the column with the arch in lieu of architrave 
 was invented some centuries earlier. But the union 
 of dome, on the grandest scale and in infinite variety, 
 with arched ranges of columns in rows and in tiers 
 — this was the unique triumph of Byzantine art, 
 and nothing in the history of building has borne a 
 fruit so rich. Ravenna, Torcello, St. Mark's, and 
 Monreale are copies of Byzantine churches. Aachen, 
 as Freeman recognises, is a direct copy of Ravenna, 
 from whence Charles obtained ornaments for his 
 palace chapel. And on both sides of the Rhine were 
 constant copies from the city of the great Charles. 
 It is quite true that French, Rhenish, Russian, 
 Moorish, and Saracen architects developed, and in 
 their facades, towers, and exteriors, much improved 
 on the Byzantine type, which, except in Italy, was 
 not directly copied. But the type, the original con- 
 ception, was in all cases derived from the Bosporus. 
 
 Without entering on the vexed problem of the 
 mode and extent of the direct imitation of Byzantine 
 architecture eithei in the East or the West, we must 
 conclude, if we carefully examine the buildings in 
 Greece and the Levant, in Armenia and Syria, and 
 on the shores of Italy, that the Bosporus became the 
 nidus of a building art which had a profound influence 
 on Asia and Europe from the sixth to the twelfth 
 centuries. And when justice is done to its con- 
 structive science, to its versatility, and at the same 
 time to its severe taste and dignity, this Byzantine 
 type is one of the most masculine and generative 
 forms of art ever produced by human genius. The 
 Holy Wisdom is twice the age of the Gothic cathedrals, 
 and it will long outlive them. In beauty of material 
 it far surpasses them, and if it has been outvied in 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 203 
 
 mass by the mighty temples of the Renascence, it 
 far exceeds these in richness, in subtlety, and in 
 refinement.^^ 
 
 The people who evolved a noble and creative type 
 of architecture could not be dead to art. But even 
 in the arts of form we rate the Byzantines too low. 
 From the sixth to the eleventh century Western 
 Europe drew from Byzantium its type of ornament 
 in every kind. This was often indirectly and perhaps 
 unconsciously done, and usually with great modifica- 
 tions. But all careful study of the mosaics, the metal 
 work, the ivories, the embroideries, the carvings, the 
 coins, the paintings, and the manuscripts of these 
 ages establishes the priority and the originality of 
 the Byzantine arts of decoration.^^ It is undoubted 
 that the art of mosaic ornament had its source there. 
 Mosaic, with its Greek name, was introduced into 
 the ancient world from the East by Greece. But 
 the exquisite art of wall decoration by glass mosaic 
 which we are now reviving was a strictly Byzantine 
 art, and from the fifth to the twelfth century was 
 carried into Europe by the direct assistance of the 
 Byzantine school. The rigid conservatism of the 
 Church, and the gradual decline of taste, stereotyped 
 and at last destroyed the art ; but there still exist in 
 Constantinople and in Greece glass mosaic figures as 
 grand as anything in the decorative art of any age.^^ 
 
 In the end superstition and immobility more or less 
 stifled the growth of all the minor arts at Byzantium, 
 as confusion and barbarism submerged them in the 
 West. What remnants remained between the age 
 of Justinian and the age of the Normans were nursed 
 beside the Bosporus. The art of carving ivory 
 certainly survived, and in the plaques and caskets 
 which are spared we can trace from time to time 
 a skill which, if it have wholly degenerated from 
 
204 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Graeco- Roman art, was superior to any we can 
 discover in the West till the rise of the Pisan school. 
 The noble Angel of our own museum, the Veroli 
 casket of South Kensington, and some plaques, diptychs, 
 oliphants, vases, and book-covers, remain to prove 
 that all through these early times Byzantine decoration 
 dominated in Europe, and occasionally could produce 
 a piece which seemed to anticipate good Gothic and 
 Renascence work.^* 
 
 It is the same in the art of illuminating manu- 
 scripts. Painting, no doubt, declined more rapidly 
 than any other art under the combined forces of 
 barbarism and the gospel. But from the fifth to the 
 eleventh century the paintings in Greek manuscripts 
 are far superior to those of Western Europe. The 
 Irish and Caroline schools developed a style of fine 
 calHgraphy and ingenious borders and initials. But 
 their figures are curiously inferior to those of the 
 Byzantine painters, who evidently kept their borderings 
 subdued so as not to interfere with their figures. Con- 
 servatism and superstition smothered and eventually 
 killed the art of painting, as it did the art of sculpture, 
 in the East. But there are a few rare manuscripts 
 in Venice, the Vatican, and the French Bibliotheque 
 Nationale — all certainly executed for Basil I., Nice- 
 phorus, and Basil II. in the ninth and tenth centuries 
 — which in drawing, even of the nude, in composition, 
 in expression, in grandeur of colour and effect, are 
 not equalled until we reach the fourteenth century 
 in Europe. The Vatican, the Venice, and the Paris 
 examples, in my opinion, have never been surpassed.^^ 
 
 The manufacture of silks and embroidered satins 
 was almost a Greek monopoly all through the Middle 
 Ages. Mediaeval literature is full of the splendid silks 
 of Constantinople, of the robes and exquisite brocades 
 which kings and princes were eager to obtain. We 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 205 
 
 hear of the robe of a Greek senator which had 600 
 figures picturing the entire life of Christ. Costly 
 stufFs and utensils bore Greek names and lettering 
 down to the middle of the fifteenth century. Samite 
 is Greek for six-threaded stuiF. Cendal is o-tvSwi/, a 
 kind of muslin or taffetas. And some exquisite 
 fragments of embroidered robes of Greek work are 
 preserved in the Vatican and many Northern museums 
 and sacristies. The diadems, sceptres, thrones, robes, 
 coins, and jewels of the early Mediaeval princes were 
 all Greek in type, and usually Byzantine in origin. 
 So that Mr. Frothingham, in the American Journal 
 of Archeology (1894), does not hesitate to write : 
 " The debt to Byzantium is undoubtedly immense ; 
 the difficulty consists in ascertaining what amount 
 of originality can properly be claimed for the Western 
 arts, industries, and institutions during the early 
 Middle Ages." 36 
 
 We err also if we have nothing but contempt for 
 the Byzantine intellectual movement in the early 
 Middle Ages. It is disparaged for two reasons — 
 first, that we do not take account of the only period 
 when it was invaluable, from the eighth to the eleventh 
 centuries ; and, secondly, because the Greek in which 
 it was expressed falls off so cruelly from the classical 
 tongue we love. But review the priceless services 
 of this semi-barbarous Hterature when Hterature was 
 dormant in the West. How much poetry, philosophy, 
 or science was there in Western Europe between 
 Gregory the Great and Lanfranc ? A few ballads, 
 annals, and homiHes of merit, but quite limited to 
 their narrow localities. For the preservation of the 
 language, literature, philosophy, and science of Greece 
 mankind were dependent on the Roman Empire in 
 the East, until the Saracens and Persians received 
 and transmitted the inheritance. 
 
2o6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 From the time of Proclus in the fifth century, 
 there had never been wanting a succession of students 
 of the philosophers of Greece ; and it is certain that 
 for some centuries the books and the tradition of 
 Plato and Aristotle were preserved to the world in the 
 schools of Alexandria, Athens, and then of Byzantium. 
 Of the study and development of the civil law we 
 have already spoken. And the same succession was 
 maintained in physical science. Both geometry and 
 astronomy were kept alive, though not advanced. The 
 immortal architects of the Holy Wisdom were scientific 
 mathematicians, and wrote works on Mechanics. The 
 mathematician Leo, in the middle of the ninth century, 
 lectured on Geometry in the Church of the Forty 
 Martyrs at Constantinople, and he wrote an essay on 
 Euclid, when there was Httle demand for science in 
 the West, in the age of Lewis the Pious and the 
 descendants of Ecgbert. In the tenth century we 
 have an essay dealing with a treatise of Hero on 
 practical geometry. And Michael Psellus in the 
 eleventh century, the " Prince of Philosophers," wrote, 
 amongst other things, on mathematics and astronomy. 
 From the fourth to the eleventh century we have a 
 regular series of writers on medicine, and systematic 
 treatises on the healing art. 
 
 On other physical sciences — Zoology, Botany, 
 Mineralogy, and Geography — a series of Greek writers 
 and treatises are recorded which partly survive in text 
 or in summaries. I need hardly add that I do not 
 pretend to have studied these works, nor do I suppose 
 that they are worth study, or of any present value 
 whatever. I am relying on the learned historian of 
 Byzantine literature, Krumbacher, who has devoted 
 1200 pages of close print to these middle Greek 
 authors, and on other biographical and literary histories. 
 The point of interest to the historian is not the 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 207 
 
 absolute value of these forgotten books. It is the fact 
 that down to the age of the Crusades a real, even if 
 feeble, sequence of thinkers was maintained in the 
 Eastern Empire to keep alive the thought and know- 
 ledge of the ancient world whilst the Western nations 
 were submerged in revolution and struggles of life or 
 death. Our tendency is to confine to too special and 
 definite an era the influence of Greek on European 
 thought, if we Hmit it to what is called the Renascence 
 after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. 
 In truth, from the fifth century to the fifteenth there 
 was a gradual Renascence, or rather an infiltration of 
 ideas, knowledge, and art, from the Grecised Empire 
 into Western Europe. It was never quite inactive, 
 and was fitful and irregular, but in a real way con- 
 tinuous. Its effect was concealed and misrepresented 
 by national antipathies, commercial rivalries, and the 
 bitter jealousies of the two Empires and the two 
 Churches. The main occasions of this infiltration 
 from East to West were undoubtedly — first, the 
 Iconoclast persecutions, then the Crusades, and finally 
 the capture of the City by Mohammed the Conqueror. 
 The movement, which we call the Renascence, may 
 have been the more important of the three, but we 
 must not ignore the real effect of the other two, nor 
 the constant influence of a more advanced and more 
 settled civilisation upon a civiHsation which was 
 passing out of barbarism through convulsions into 
 order and life.^^ 
 
 The peculiar, indispensable service of Byzantine 
 literature was the preservation of the language, philo- 
 logy, and archaeology of Greece. It is impossible to 
 see how our knowledge of ancient literature or civilisa- 
 tion could have been recovered if Constantinople had 
 not nursed through the early Middle Ages the vast 
 accumulations of Greek learning in the schools of 
 
2o8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Alexandria, Athens, and Asia Minor ; if Photius, 
 Suidas, Eustathius, Tzetzes, and tlie Scholiasts had 
 not poured out their lexicons, anecdotes, and commen- 
 taries ; if the Corpus Scriptorum historiae Byzantinae 
 had never been compiled ; if indefatigable copyists had 
 not toiled in multiplying the texts of ancient Greece. 
 Pedantic, dull, blundering as they are too often, they 
 are indispensable. We pick precious truths and 
 knowledge out of their garrulities and stupidities, for 
 they preserve what otherwise would have been lost for 
 ever. It is no paradox that their very merit to us is 
 that they were never either original or brilliant. Their 
 genius, indeed, would have been our loss. Dunces 
 and pedants as they were, they servilely repeated the 
 words of the immortals. Had they not done so, the 
 immortals would have died long ago.^^ 
 
 Of the vast product of the theology of the East it 
 is impossible here to speak. As in the West, and 
 even more than in the West, the intellect of the age 
 was absorbed in spiritual problems and divine mysteries. 
 The amount of its intellectual energy and its moral 
 enthusiasm was as great in the East as in the West ; 
 and if the general result is so inferior, the reason is to 
 be found not in less subtlety or industry in the Greek- 
 speaking divines, but rather in the lower social con- 
 ditions and the rigid absolutism under which they 
 worked. From the first, the Greek Church was half 
 Oriental, profoundly mystical and metaphysical. But 
 we must never depreciate that Orthodox Church which 
 had its Chrysostom, its Cyril and Methodius, the 
 Patriarch Photius, and Gregory of Nazianzus, with 
 crowds of preachers, martyrs, and saints ; which, in 
 any case, was the elder brother, guide, and teacher for 
 ages of the Church Catholic ; which avoided some of 
 the worst errors, most furious conflicts, the grossest 
 scandals of the Papacy j and which brought within its 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 209 
 
 fold those vast peoples of Eastern Europe which the 
 Roman communion failed to reach.^^ 
 
 The Greek Church, which never attained the 
 centralisation of the Church of Rome, was spared some 
 of those sources of despotism and corruption which 
 ultimately tore the Western Church in twain. And, if 
 it never became so potent a spiritual force as was Rome 
 at its highest, in the Greek Church permanent conflict 
 with the Empire and struggles for temporal dominion 
 were unknown. The Greek Church, however, had its 
 own desperate convulsions in the long and fierce battle 
 between Iconoclasts and Iconodules. It would be a 
 fatal error to undervalue this great and significant 
 schism as if it were a mere affair of the use of images 
 in worship. Iconoclasm was one of the great religious 
 movements in the world's history — akin to Arianism, 
 to the Albigensian heresies of the thirteenth century, 
 akin to Mahometanism, akin to Lutheranism, akin to 
 some forms of Puritanism, though quite distinct from 
 all of these. It was evidently a bold and enthusiastic 
 effort of Asiatic Christians to free the European 
 Christians of the common Empire from the fetichism, 
 idol- worship, and monkery in which their life was 
 being stifled. 
 
 The Isaurian chiefs had the support of the great 
 magnates of Asia Minor, of the mountaineers of 
 Anatolia, and the bulk of the hardy veterans of the 
 camp. Their zeal to force on a superstitious populace 
 and on swarms of endowed orders of ecclesiastics a 
 moral and spiritual reformation towards a simpler and 
 more abstract Theism — to purge Christianity, in fact, 
 of its grosser anthropomorphism — this is one of the 
 most interesting problems in all history. And all the 
 more that it was a moral and spiritual reform attempted, 
 not by poor zealots from the depths of the popular 
 conscience, but by absolute sovereigns and unflinching 
 
 P 
 
210 . AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 governments, which united something of the creed of 
 the Waldenses to the cruel passions of Simon de 
 Montfort. The movement shov^^ed how ready was 
 the Asiatic portion of the Empire to accept some form 
 of Islam ; and we can well conceive how it came that 
 Leo III. was called a-apaKrjvocfipiovy "imbued with the 
 temperament of an Arab." The whole story has been 
 shamelessly perverted by reHgious bigotry, and 'we 
 know little of Iconoclasm, except in the satires of 
 their enemies the Iconodules. One of the greatest 
 rulers of the Empire has been stamped with a disgust- 
 ing nickname, and it is difficult now to discover what 
 is the truth about the entire dynasty and movement. 
 Mr. Bury has given us some admirable chapters on this 
 remarkable reformation of faith and manners. But 
 we need a full history of a very obscure and obstinate 
 conflict which for a century and a half shook the 
 Empire to its foundations, severed the Orthodox 
 Church from the Church Catholic, and yet greatly 
 stimulated the intercourse of ideas and arts between 
 the East and the West.^^ 
 
 In pleading for a more systematic study of 
 Byzantine history and civilisation in the early Middle 
 Ages, I am far from pretending that it can enter into 
 rivalry with that of Western Europe. I do not doubt 
 that it was a lower type ; that neither in State nor in 
 Church, neither in poHcy nor in arms, in morals, 
 in Hterature, or in art, did it in the sum equal or 
 even approach the Catholic Feudalism of the West. 
 And assuredly, as the West from the time of Charles 
 and Otto onwards rose into modern life. Eastern 
 Christendom sank slowly down into decay and ruin. 
 My point is simply that this Byzantine history and 
 civilisation have been unduly depreciated and unfairly 
 neglected. And this is especially true of EngHsh 
 scholars, who have done little indeed of late in a field 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 211 
 
 wherein foreign scholars have done much. It is a 
 field where much remains to be done in order to 
 redress the prejudices and the ignorance of ages, 
 multiplied from of old by clerical bigotry, race insolence, x 
 and the unscrupulous avarice of trade. Hardly any 
 other field of history has been so widely distorted and 
 so ignorantly disparaged. 
 
 Let me also add that it is for a quite limited period 
 in the thousand years of Byzantine history that I find 
 its peculiar importance. The Justinian and Heraclian 
 periods have brilliant episodes and some great men. 
 But the truly fertile period of Byzantine history, in 
 its contrast with and reaction upon the West, lies in 
 the period from the rise of the Isaurian to the close of / 
 the Basilian dynasty — roughly speaking, for the eighth, 
 ninth, tenth, and first half of the eleventh centuries. 
 The Isaurian dynasty undoubtedly opened a new era 
 in the Empire ; and in some respects the Basilian 
 dynasty did the same. If we limit our field further, 
 we might take the Macedonian period, where our 
 authorities are fuller, from the accession of Basil I. to 
 the death of Basil II. This century and a half may 
 fairly be compared with the same epoch in the East or 
 in the West. By the middle of the eleventh century, 
 when the Basilian dynasty ended, great changes were 
 setting in, both in the East and the West. The rise 
 of the Seljuks and of the Normans, the growth of 
 Italian commerce, the decay of the Eastern Empire, 
 the struggles of the Papacy and the Western Empire, 
 and finally the Crusades, introduce a new World. It 
 is the point at which Byzantine history loses all its " 
 special value for the problems of historical continuity 
 and comparison. And yet it is the point at which 
 a new colour and piquancy is too often given to 
 Byzantine annals. 
 
 In the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries we may 
 
212 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 trace a civilisation around the Bosporus which, with 
 all its evils and the seeds of disease within it, was in 
 one sense far older than any other in Europe, in 
 another sense, was far more modern ; which preserved 
 things of priceless value to the human race j which 
 finally disproved the fallacy that there had ever been 
 any prolonged break in human evolution ; which was 
 the mother and the model of secular churches and 
 mighty kingdoms in Eastern Europe, churches and 
 kingdoms which are still not willing to allow any 
 superiority to the West, either in the region of State 
 organisation or of spiritual faith.^^ 
 
NOTES (Revised, 19 12; 
 
 1 Freeman, Historical Essays^ third series^ 1879, p. 241. — This 
 essay was a composite embodiment of a series of reviews, 
 beginning with one in 1855 on Finlay's earlier volumes, and 
 incorporating much later matter. It is one of the most eloquent 
 and impressive of all Professor Freeman's writings, and has 
 exercised a deserved influence over English historical thought. 
 It is entitled "The Byzantine Empire," to which name Mr. 
 Bury has shown very valid objections. Mr. Bury's own style, 
 "The Later Roman Empire," served his purpose at first, the 
 period of which is from Arcadius and Honorius to Irene, i.e. 
 From A.D. 395 to 802. But it is not adequate as a description 
 of the Empire from the foundation of Constantinople to its 
 capture by the Turks. The only accurate name for this is the 
 " Empire of New Rome," which covers the eleven centuries from 
 the first Constantine to the last. Whilst prejudice remains so 
 strong it may be as well to avoid the term " Byzantine Empire," 
 though Mr. Oman has not hesitated to use it as his title. But it 
 is inevitable to speak of Byzantine history, or art, or civilisation, 
 when we refer to that which had its seat on the Bosporus. 
 
 2 J. B. Bury, The Later Roman Empire^ vol. i. preface, p. 5. — 
 This masterly work is the most important history of the Eastern 
 Empire from the fifth to the opening of the ninth century that 
 has appeared since Gibbon, and is more full and more modern 
 than the corresponding part of Finlay's work. Mr. Bury has 
 had the great advantage of access to all that has been done in the 
 last fifty years by German, French, Russian, Hungarian, Greek, 
 and Oriental scholars, who have added so greatly to the materials 
 possessed by Gibbon, or even by Finlay. Mr. Bury has published 
 (19 1 2) a further instalment of his history under the title of The 
 Eastern Roman Empire — from the fall of Irene to the accession of 
 
 213 
 
214 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Basil I. (a.d. 802-867). It is to be hoped that Mr. Bury will be 
 induced to continue his work at least down to the Crusades. He 
 has already thrown light on the period in his notes and appendices 
 to his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall (7 vols., Methuen), 
 now happily at last complete. And in the English Historical 
 Re'vietv, vol. iv. 1889, he has given us a valuable sketch of the 
 eleventh-century emperors. It is unfortunate that, as his work 
 rests at present, Mr. Bury has not treated the Basilian dynasty, 
 A.D. 867-1057, the two centuries when the Empire was at the 
 height of its brilliancy and fame — the period when it was most 
 deserving of study. 
 
 3 George Finlay's History of Greece from B.C. 146 to a.d. 
 1864, first begun in 1843, completed by the author and revised 
 by him in 1863, was finally edited by H. F. Tozer, in seven 
 volumes, for the Clarendon Press, 1877. In speaking of this 
 fine work, one must use the hackneyed and misused word that it 
 created an epoch, at least for English readers. But it has to be 
 borne in mind that Byzantine history was not the direct subject 
 of Finlay's labours, and that the Empire of New Rome occupies 
 at most the first three of Finlay's seven volumes, or about one 
 hundred pages to a century. And the parts of Gibbon directly 
 occupied with Constantinople and its rulers form no larger 
 proportion of the whole work. Yet Gibbon and Finlay still 
 remain the only English historians who have treated systematic- 
 ally the continuous story of the eleven centuries from the first 
 Constantine to the last. The general reader may get some 
 notion of this period from Mr. Oman's pleasant summary in the 
 "Story of the Nations" series — The Byzantine Empire (Fisher 
 Unwin, 1892). 
 
 * Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ed. J. B. Bury, vol. v. pp. 169- 
 174 (new edition now preparing). Mr. Bury's edition of 
 Gibbon is quoted in these notes. 
 
 ^ Voltaire's famous remark about Byzantine history as "a 
 worthless repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to 
 the human mind," has drawn down the indignation of Finlay, 
 vol. ii. p. 8, and of Bury, vol. i, p. 6. How often, indeed, did 
 Voltaire himself find the same faults in the annals of the West 
 and of Christian Rome ! Mr. Lecky would no doubt hardly 
 now write of the " universal verdict of history," what he 
 incidentally dropped out more than thirty years ago in his 
 History of European Morals, ii. p. 13. 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 215 
 
 Lebeau's Histoire du Bas-Empirey 1756-79, 22 vols., which 
 nobody now reads, has given the Empire of New Rome a label 
 which modern learning has not yet been able to scrape ofF, It is 
 one oi those unlucky books of which nothing survives but the 
 title, and that is a blunder and a libel. Lebeau did for the 
 Roman Empire of the Bosporus what Iconodules did for 
 Constantine V. He gave it an ugly nickname — which sticks. 
 
 As to the bitter contests between the theologians of Old and 
 of New Rome, good summaries may be found in Neander's 
 Church History^ third period, sect. iv. 2, 3 ; fourth period, sect. 2, 
 3, 4 ; and also in Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. bk. iv. ch. 
 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 ; vol. iii. bk, vii. ch. 6 ; see also Neale, Rev. J. M., 
 Holy Eastern Church. 
 
 ^ Gibbon's ch. xlviii. sketches Byzantine history from a.d. 
 641 to 1 185, i.e. five centuries (in 70 pp. of the new edition by 
 Bury, vol. v.). In ch. xlix. he treats Iconoclasm ; and in ch. liii. 
 he returns to the tenth century for some general reflections. 
 
 J. B. Bury's Later Roman Empire, vol. ii. bk. vi., deals with 
 the eighth century. His work closes with the fall of Irene, 802, 
 His new volume (19 12) goes down to the accession of Basil I., 
 867. 
 
 Dr. HoDGKiN, Italy and Her Innjaders, vol. viii., closes the 
 work with the coronation of Charles as Emperor in 800, and 
 a short account of the close of his reign. 
 
 7 FiNLAY, for the entire period down to the capture by the 
 Turks, and Bury down to the middle of the ninth century, have 
 incidentally treated of the economics, art, manners, and literature 
 of the Byzantine world. Mr. Bury also in his notes and 
 appendices to his edition of Gibbon has given most valuable 
 special summaries and references to later authorities. Mr. Bryce's 
 Holy Roman Empire; Mr. Herbert Fisher's Mediaeval Empire, 
 2 vols. 1898 ; Mr. Tout's Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273, have 
 very useful notices of Byzantine history, and Mr. Charles Oman's 
 History of the Art of War, 1898, has valuable chapters, bk. iv., on 
 the Byzantine warfare from a.d. 579 to 1204. 
 
 BussELL, F. W., Constitutional History of the Roman Empire. 
 From the accession of Domitian (81 a.d.) to the retirement of 
 Nicephorus III. (108 1 a.d.), 19 id. 
 
 8 As to recent monographs on special features of Byzantine 
 history, the following may be consulted : — 
 
2i6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 I. Administration and Economics 
 
 T. H. Krause, Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters in ihrem Stoats-, Hof- 
 und Privatleben, 1869. — A review of the military, civil, social, and 
 religious organisation of the Empire from the tenth to the fourteenth 
 centuries from Byzantine sources. 
 
 Rambaud, U Empire Grec au X***' Sihle, 1870. — The life and reign of 
 Constantine Porphyrogenitus. 
 
 Heyd (Wilhelm von), Histoire du Commerce du hevant au Moyen Age, 
 ed. Fr. 1885. 
 
 ScHLUMBERGER, Uti Empereur Byzantin, Nicephorus Phocas, 1890 j 
 VEpopie Byzantine^ Basil 11., 18965 Sigillographie de r Empire Byzantin, 
 1884. 
 
 Sabatier, Monnaies Byzantines, 1862. 
 
 Bury, J. B., The Constitution of the Later Roman Empire, 1 9 10. 
 
 Gelzer, H. D., Byzantin Kulturgeschichte, 1909. 
 
 II. Law 
 
 Zachariae von Lingenthal (C.E.), Collectio Librorum Juris Graeco- 
 Romani ineditorum, etc., Leipzig, 1852; Jus Graeco - Romanum, 1856, 
 and 3rd ed., 1892 ; Histoire du Droit Graeco-Romain, translated by 
 E. Lauth, Paris, 1870. 
 
 MoRTREUiL (Jean A. B.), Histoire du Droit Byzantin, 2 vols., Paris, 
 1843. 
 
 MoNFERRATus (A. G.), Ecloga Leonis III. et Constantini, 1889. 
 
 Heimbach, Basilicorum Libri LX., X833-70, ed. by Zachariae von 
 Lingenthal, 6 vols. 4to. 
 
 Haubold, C. G., Manuale Basilicorum, 18 19. 4to. 
 
 Ashburner, Walter, Rhodian Sea-Law, 1909. 
 
 Gelzer, u.s. 
 
 III. Literature 
 
 Krumbacher, Carl, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Literatur, 1 897. 
 Hergenrotter (Cardinal), Photius, 1867-69, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 IV. Art 
 
 Bayet (Ch.), UA t Byzantin, new edition, 1892. 
 CoRROYER (Edouard), U Architecture Romaine. 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 217 
 
 Fergusson, History of Architecture, 1874. 
 
 Texier, Asie Mineure. 
 
 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecturey i860. 
 
 De Vogue, Les Eglises de Terre Sainte, i860 j Architecture Civile et 
 Religieuse de la Syriey Paris, 1866-77. 
 
 HuEBSCH (trad. Guerber), Monuments de F Architecture Chritienne, 
 Paris, 1866. 
 
 Dalton (O. M.), Byzantine Art and Archaologyy 19 11. 
 
 DiEHL (C), Manuel de V Art Byzantin, 19 10. 
 
 Ebersolt (J.), Grand Palais, 19 10. 
 
 Millet (G.), Monuments Byzantins, 19 10. 
 
 V. Antiquities 
 
 DiDRON, Annates Archiologiques, 1844-81 \ Iconographie Chretienne, 
 1843, 4to J Manuel d^ Iconographie Chretienne, 1845. 
 
 Labarte, Histoire des Arts Industriels au Moyen Age, 18645 -^^ 
 Palais Imperial de Constantinople, 1 861, 4to. 
 
 Salzenberg, Alt-christliche Baudenkmale, 1854, fol. 
 
 Paspates, BvlavTivd^ KviKTopa, 1885 ; 'Bv^avTival MeKirai, 1877. 
 
 Agincourt (J. Seroux de), Histoire de f Art par les Monuments, 6 vols, 
 fol. 1822. 
 
 RusKiN, Stones of Venice. 
 
 DiEHL (Charles), V Art Byzantin dans Vltalie Meridionale, Paris, 1894 ; 
 itudes d'Archeologie Byzantine, 1877. 
 
 Durand (Julien), Trisor de San Marc, Paris, 1862. 
 
 KoNDAKov (Nic. Partovich), Histoire de I'Art Byzantin, Paris, 1886. 
 
 Michel (Francisque), Recherches sur la commerce des itoffes de soie, etc., 
 Paris, 1862. 
 
 SiLVESTRE, Paleographie Uni-verselle, Paris, 184 1. 
 
 SiLVESTRE ET Champollion, Universal Paleography. 
 
 Westwood, Palaographia Sacra Pictoria. 
 
 N. Humphreys, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. 
 
 W. Maskell, Ivories in South Kensington Museum ; Russian Art in 
 South Kensington Museum. 
 
 Prof. A. van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople, its Walls and Sites, 
 1899 and 1906. 
 
 A. L. Frothingham, Byzantine Artists in Italy, American Journal of 
 Archeology, 1894-95. 
 
 ® The story Is well told in the excellent volume by Mr. Pears, 
 a barrister resident in Constantinople and practising in the local 
 
2i8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 courts. T^he Tall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, by- 
 Edwin Pears, LL.D., 1885. 
 
 See also Riant, Exwvia sacra Constantin., 1887 ; Hopf, 
 Chroniques Grico-Romaines in^dites. 
 
 The Crusaders' raid and the sack of Constantinople was one 
 of the most wanton crimes of the Middle Ages, and remains 
 the great opprobrium of the thirteenth century and of Innocent 
 III. Far more destruction was caused to the antiquities of the 
 city by these pretended Crusaders than by the Turks at their 
 conquest. Invaluable records of the ancient world perished 
 therein. 
 
 10 Mr. Oman in his Art of War in the Middle Ages, 1898, bk. 
 iv. ch. iv., "Decline of the Byzantine Army (a.d. 1071-1204)," 
 has well explained the collapse of the Empire consequent on the 
 battle of Manzikert, 1071, when Alp-Arslan, at the head of the 
 Seljuks, defeated Romanus Diogenes. Manzikert was the Cannae, 
 or rather the Zama of the Empire, and if any battle deserves so 
 to be called, was one of the decisive battles of the world. It is 
 singular how many great revolutions in the history of the world 
 were collected close around that date of 107 1. As Mr. Bury 
 truly says : " The eleventh century was the turning-point of 
 the Middle Ages" {English Historical Re'vieiv, iv. 41, 1889). 
 
 11 Mr. Bury, in his Later Roman Empire, and in his Eastern 
 Roman Empire, and in the Appendices to his Gibbon, has given 
 us most valuable pictures of the mighty bureaucracy which was 
 the real source ot strength of the Byzantine government, both 
 civil and military. F inlay's second volume tells the same 
 story. Consult also Rambaud's UEmpire Grec au X**** Sihle, 
 which gives an elaborate picture of the administration ; also 
 Krause's Byzantiner des Mittelalters ; Oman's Art of War (bk. 
 iv.) and Schlumberger's various works u.s. It must be 
 remembered that the organisation of the empire was not at all 
 immutable, but was frequently modified under new conditions. 
 But it was organic, i.e. invariably centred round the one head 
 permanently seated in Constantinople, and it was practically 
 continuous under all changes of dynasty and palace revolutions. 
 This from the seventh to the tenth centuries made almost 
 the difference between a civilised state and tribes in process of 
 settlement. 
 
 12 Consult Bury, Appendix 5 to Gibbon, vol. vi. p. 538, on 
 the Byzantine Navy ; also Schlumberger's Nicephorus Phocas, 
 ch. ii. ; Krause u.s., 265-274 ; and GfrSrer, Byzantinische 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 219 
 
 Seeiveserty ch. xxii. vol. ii. j Heyd, Commerce du Levant ; and 
 Ashburner's Rhodian Sea-Laiv, 1909, etc. 
 
 Surely Mr. Herbert Fisher in his Medits^al Empire^ vol. 
 ii. p. 273, in making the contrast between Constantinople and 
 Tribur as great as that between Versailles and the home of 
 Fergus M'lvor, somewhat exaggerates the difference. The 
 second Theophano would hardly have endured a mere Highland 
 clansman's lair. When Theophano arrived in Germany to 
 be the bride of Otto H. — cum innumerts thesaurorum di<vitiis — 
 she was regarded as ruining German simplicity by luxury and 
 dress (see Schlumberger, Basil II.). 
 
 13 Banduri, Imperium Orient ale, 171 1, and Ducange, Constanti- 
 nopolis Christiana, Gyliius, and Busbecq, give us some idea of 
 Constantinople in its wreck after the sack of the Latins. 
 Labarte's elaborate work, Le Palais Imperial, gives a wonderful 
 picture of the extent and splendour of the Sacred Palace, and 
 see Paspates' Palaces, now translated by Dr. Metcalfe (1893). 
 
 Gibbon's description of the city was an astonishing act of 
 imagination in one who could only consult books, and those 
 antiquated and imperfect. Those who have never beheld 
 Constantinople should study Salzenberg's grand work on 
 S. Sophia and other churches, and the new account of the Walls 
 of Constantinople in Prof, van Millingen's recent work. 
 
 1* Corpus Scriptorum Historia Byzantina ; Codinus, De 
 yEdiJiciis Con. de Signis ; Paulus Silentiarius, Descriptio S. Sophia, 
 translated in Salzenberg. 
 
 See Bury's Gibbon ii. App. v. p. 54.6, and consult van 
 Millingen's Walls, and his introduction to Murray's Handbook. 
 
 "^^ Early Tr an) els in Palestine. T.Wright. 1868. And see 
 Gibbon, ch. Ix. vi. 393. 
 
 "As they passed along, they gazed with admiration on the 
 capital of the East, or as it should seem, of the earth, rising from 
 her seven hills and towering over the continents of Europe and 
 Asia. The swelling domes and lofty spires of 500 palaces and 
 churches were gilded by the sun and reflected in the waters ; 
 the walls were crowded with soldiers and spectators, whose 
 numbers they beheld, of whose temper they were ignorant ; and 
 each heart was chilled by the reflection that, since the beginning 
 of the world, such an enterprise had never been undertaken by 
 such a handful of warriors " (see Villehardouin, Histoire de la 
 Conquete). All this was true enough in the thirteenth century. 
 
220 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 In the tenth or even in the eleventh it would have proved a very 
 different adventure. 
 
 1^ Hodgkin, Italy and her In'vaders, v. 267, 
 
 Bury, Later Roman Empire, ii. 313. 
 
 Dr. Hodgkin's exhaustive work bears frequent witness to this 
 truth. See his accounts of the immense superiority of the 
 armies of Belisarius and of N arses, iv. 5-7, v. 40, 166. Also the 
 various proposals for matrimonial alliances between Charles 
 and the Imperial family, viii. 12, 210, and the embassies to and 
 from Aachen and Byzantium, viii. 245. 
 
 17 The persistence of Otto the Great in demanding a 
 Byzantine alliance, in spite of rebuffs and difficulties, was a 
 striking fact. It is clear that he regarded it as of great 
 importance to have formal recognition of his claim to empire. 
 
 Looked at from the point of view of Byzantine history, the 
 coronation of Charles in 800 was an event of local interest 
 which did not vitally concern the Empire of the Bosporus. 
 Neither its subjects nor the Orthodox Church were at all 
 shaken or troubled by it. The establishment of the Holy 
 Roman Empire by Otto and his dynasty in the tenth century 
 was a much more decisive change. It notified to the world 
 that there were two co-existent and permanent empires, one of 
 which was Greek, and only Roman by courtesy. Consult 
 Bury's Eastern Roman Empire, chap. x. 
 
 18 These various forms of modern civilisation are brought 
 out in Rambaud's U Empire Grec, Krause's Byzantiner des Mitte- 
 lalters, and Schlumberger's Empereur Byzantin. See also Bayet 
 and Heyd. 
 
 Perhaps the most curiously modern effect in all the contem- 
 porary Byzantine authors is to be found in Constantine Porphyro- 
 genitus' own work, De Ceremoniis. His tone is that of a James I. 
 or a Louis XIV. (in his dotage) explaining the niceties of Court 
 etiquette to crowds of obsequious functionaries with all the 
 absolute serenity of supreme power. 
 
 The modern character of Constantinople comes out in Sir Henry 
 Pottinger's picturesque romance, Blue and Green, 1879, a tale of 
 old Constantinople in the age of Justinian. The Court of Theo- 
 philus or Monomachus was far more modern still. 
 
 1^ Compare the European coinage of the eighth, ninth, and 
 tenth centuries with the Byzantine as given by Schlumberger 
 and Sabatier. All the emblems of sovereignty are borrowed 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 221 
 
 and paraded. The eternal ball and cross of western sovereignty 
 may be seen in the right hand of the Archangel in the noble 
 Ivory of our British Museum of the early Byzantine epoch, with 
 its Greek epigraph, "Lord receive thy servant, though thou 
 knowest his transgressions." Compare the sovereigns and 
 emperors on Byzantine and in Teutonic illuminations. 
 
 Mr. Freeman in his Norman Conquest^ vol. i. 62-70, and 
 Appendix C, has some interesting remarks on the "Imperial 
 supremacy of the West Saxon Kings." He inclines to think 
 that their use of imperial forms and titles was only in part 
 imitative, and was a bona fide claim to rank above kingship. 
 That may be true of such terms as Basileus, Casar, imperator^ 
 monarchus. But when we find Saxon princelets calling them- 
 selves primiceriuSy archon, pacificus^ iti'victissimus, gloriosus, and so 
 forth, it is plain that they wtre borrowing grandiloquent titles. 
 
 Charles's formal style, '* serenissimus Augustus, crowned of 
 God, great and pacific emperor," and the like, was identical 
 with the Byzantine style. There is something sublime in 
 Charlemagne calling himself pacific. 
 
 20 As we read in Hodgkin's Italyy viii. ch. v., and Bryce's Holy 
 Roman Empire, ch. iv.. Dr. Hodgkin's view of the assumption of 
 the Imperial Crown by Charles, that it was almost forced on him 
 by the Pope, has every evidence in its favour. The empire of 
 Charles had at first more of an ecclesiastical than a purely tem- 
 poral character. Neither Charles nor his agents saw, or could 
 see, all that the empire became with HohenstaufFens and 
 Hapsburgs. Mr. Fisher has well pointed out in his opening 
 chapter that the Western Empire was very loosely and differently 
 understood down to the coronation of Otto I. in 962. 
 
 21 The modifications in the organisation of the Empire have 
 been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Bury in his two volumes ; 
 and he has summarised the results in Appendices to his Gibbon, 
 vi. 3, 4, and 5. 
 
 There is no example of equal method and adaptation to 
 changed conditions in the organisation of the Western Empire, 
 either in its early Latin or later Teutonic form. The Byzantine 
 Empire was a real go'vernment, and did not become a title until 
 the very end. 
 
 22 The whole of Mr. Oman's chapter on Byzantine Armies^ 
 bk. iv. A.D. 579-1204, should be studied. He concludes (p. 
 201) : — 
 
 " The art of war as it was understood at Constantinople in 
 the tenth century was the only system of real merit existing in 
 
222 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 the world ; no Western nation could have afforded such a 
 training to its officers till the sixteenth, or we may even say the 
 seventeenth century." He goes on to analyse the Tactics of 
 Nicephorus Phocas in the tenth century : " it might be used on 
 the Indian north-west frontier to-day, so practical is it." 
 
 23 Bury's Gibbon, vi. App. 5. 
 
 Schlumberger's Nicephorus Phocas, ch. ii. p. 32. 
 
 Of this wonderful expedition and conquest of Crete we have 
 the contemporary account of Leo Diaconus in Ccrp. Byzant. 
 Histor., and the poem of Theodosius the Deacon, in the same 
 volume. 
 
 2* So Luitprand reports in his amusing Legatio. Of course 
 we must take much of the witty Bishop's report to be gross 
 exaggeration and flattery of his imperial master. If Otto the 
 Great had believed all the Bishop reported of the barbarism of 
 Byzantium, why did he again risk a rebuff and ultimately win 
 for his son the imperial princess " born in the Purple " ? 
 
 Luitprand tells us what the words of Nicephorus were as to 
 the sea-power of his empire compared with that of Otto — " nee 
 est in mari domino tuo classium numerus. Navigantium fortitudo 
 mihi soli inest, qui cum classibus aggrediar bello, maritimas eius 
 civitates demoliar, et quae fluminibus sunt vicina, redigam in 
 favillam." Nor was this an empty boast. It reminds one of 
 Cromwell's threat to the Italian princes. 
 
 The famous "Greek fire" has been fully discussed by Schlum- 
 berger, Phocas, ch. ii., and by Bury, ii. 311, 319, and see his 
 Gibbon, vi. App. 5. He explains the great varieties of these 
 combustible and explosive compounds, and the modes of using 
 them. One method seems to have been a form of gunpowder 
 ignited to discharge liquid combustibles through some sort of 
 gun. Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his work De administrando 
 Imperio, ch. xlviii., calls this rb did. tQ}v (XKpwvuv iK(t)ep6fievov irvp 
 iyp6v, and says it was invented by Callinicus of Heliopolis in the 
 time of Constantine Pogonatus {i.e. seventh century). The 
 Byzantines seem to have reached the point of inventing (i) gun- 
 powder, (2) using its explosion to drive missiles, (3) applying the 
 gunpowder to guns (cri^oyves). Why did they get no farther ? 
 Perhaps they were unable to use hard or solid missiles, or to 
 expel the charge beyond a short distance, because they could not 
 make guns strong enough to resist a powerful charge. Their 
 crl<f)03ve^ were in fact " Roman candles " and other fireworks. 
 They do not seem to have been effective except at close quarters, 
 to defend walls and on board ships. For these purposes, the 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 223 
 
 " Greek fire " seems to have been quite crushing j and from the 
 seventh to the tenth century, it gave the Byzantine garrisons and 
 warships some such superiority over Saracens and Scythians that 
 gunpowder in modern times gives to civilised nations against 
 barbarians. Consult Oman, ^r^o/'/F^r, 545-48. 
 
 25 A series of German scholars have collected and edited the 
 post-Justinian Law of the Roman Empire. Zachariae von 
 Lingenthal has published Collectio Librorum Juris Graeco-Romani 
 ineditorum, etc., Leipzig, 1852, in which the Isaurian codes and 
 institutes are collected. His 3rd edition is of 1892. His Jus 
 Graeco-Romanum, Leipzig, 1856, has been translated into French 
 by E. Lauth as Histoire du Droit Greco-Romaiuy Paris, 1870. 
 And Mortreuil has published Histoire du Droit Byzantin, 2 vols., 
 Paris, 1843. 
 
 The immense collection of the Basilica was published by 
 Heimbach, and edited by Zachariae : Basilicorum Libri LX Gr. 
 et Lat.j 6 torn., 4to, Leipzig, 1833-70. Also Haubold, Manuale 
 Basilicorum, 1 8 1 9, a collation of Justinian with the later law. 
 
 Mr. Bury has treated the post-Justinian law in his chapter on 
 Leo HL, ii. 41 1-420, but his Later Roman Empire has not reached 
 the Basilian era. He treats it also in his Gibbon, v. App. 11, p. 
 525, but mainly from the point of view of criminal law. 
 
 Mr. Roby, in his Introduction to the Study of Justinian^ s Digest, 
 1844, pp. ccxli-ccliv, has touched on this Greco-Roman law. 
 Otherwise English civilians do not seem to have concerned 
 themselves with a branch of Roman law on which foreign jurists 
 have worked for more than two generations. 
 
 28 Savigny's History of Roman Lanv in the Middle Ages (1815- 
 1831) was written before the publications of Heimbach and 
 Zachariae, and he does not seem to have paid any attention to 
 the persistence and development of Roman law in the East. He 
 triumphantly proved in his famous work that the Roman law 
 was not absolutely extinct, and he found traces of it in Rome, 
 Ravenna, amongst Lombards, Burgundians, Franks, and Goths. 
 But he is not able to show anything like a Corpus Juris, schools 
 of Justinian law, or any systematic treatises down to the rise of 
 the Bolognese school early in the twelfth century. He suggests 
 as a reason for the revival of civil law in Bologna that it was 
 near to Ravenna, which did not cease to belong to the Empire 
 until 751. We may remember that Amalfi and some other 
 Italian seaports remained in Byzantine hands much later, and 
 Byzantine influence in Calabria continued down to the Norman 
 conquest. 
 
224 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 2'" Mr. Hodgkin, in his Italy and its In'vaders, vi,, has treated 
 of the Lombard laws, and has noticed those of the Isaurian 
 emperors. 
 
 If we turn to these Lombard and Frank codes, or to* the 
 Caroline capitularies, or the Saxon laws as collected by Dr. 
 Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen (1899), 4to, we find rude, 
 semi-barbarous penalties and " dooms," — so much for cutting off 
 a thumb, so much for killing a slave, and the like, — but nothing 
 that could be called a scientific code of civil law. Whilst Ine 
 and Rothari in the seventh century, Alfred and the Carlings in 
 the ninth century, were exacting fines and promulgating penalties 
 for violence, the Byzantine world was continuously ordered by 
 working versions of Justinian's law. Down to the time of Cnut 
 or the Franconian emperors there is nothing in Western Europe 
 that, as a scientific code of law, can be compared with the 
 Basilica. 
 
 As Mr. Fisher well reminds us {The Mediaeval Empirey i. 156, 
 ch. iv.), there was no knowledge of Roman law in Germany 
 until much later. 
 
 28 Basilicorum Libri LX. (Heimbach and Zachariae), vol. i. p. 
 xxi. This fine preface is worthy of Justinian himself, and 
 certainly contains an unanswerable criticism on the redaction of 
 the Corpus Juris. It is obvious that the Basilian editors do not 
 cite the Corpus Juris direct from the Latin text. They use 
 translations, summaries, commentaries, and handbooks which 
 had multiplied during three centuries. How strikingly does 
 such a fact witness to the persistence of civil law in the East as 
 compared with its hibernation in the West — a dormant state 
 which till the time of Savigny was thought to be death. Contrast 
 with the rude laws of Franks and Saxons the titles of the 
 Procheiron of Basil. These run thus : — Sponsalia — Marriage — 
 Dower — Property of Husband and Wife — Dissolution of 
 Marriage — Gift — Revocation — Sale — Lease — Pledge — Bailment 
 — Partnership — Testament — Emancipation — Disinheriting — 
 Legacies — Tutors. Here we are in the region of scientific 
 jurisprudence. 
 
 29 The great work of Salzenberg, Alt-christliche Baudenkmaley 
 with its excellent reproductions, should be studied by those who 
 have never seen Constantinople. A scientific and historical 
 account of the great church of the Holy Wisdom (" the fairest 
 church in all the world " — Sir J. Mandeville) has been published 
 by W. R. Lethaby and Harold Swainson (London, 1894, 4to). 
 These enthusiasts — the one historical scholar, the other architect 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 225 
 
 — declare that " Sancta Sophia is the most interesting building 
 on the world's surface " — " one of the four great pinnacles of 
 architecture " — " the supreme monument of the Christian cycle." 
 Their work contains references to the principal authorities for 
 the history and antiquities of the building. See also Fergusson, 
 History of Architecture, vol. ii. (Byzantine Architecture) ; Bury, 
 Later Roman Empire, ii. 40-54 ; and E. Corroyer, U Architecture 
 Romaine ; and Bayet, UArt Byzantin. 
 
 According to Melchior de Vogtl^, La Syrie Centrale, the 
 arch supported by the free column may be found of a date 
 earlier than that of Diocletian, If he is right, the praetorium 
 of Mousmieh, built by Egnatius Fuscus, a.d. 160-169, under 
 Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, has a definite example of 
 the free column supporting an arch. A column engaged in a 
 wall and bearing a vault was familiar enough in Roman baths 
 and basilicas of the second century. It must be doubtful if 
 Diocletian's palace at Spalato really saw the first invention of 
 this supreme discovery in the art of building. See Freeman, 
 Essays, 3rd series, and Architectural Sketches. 
 
 Fossati's Agia Sofia, with chromo- lithographs, gives some 
 suggestion of the colour of the interior and of the general 
 position of this sublime temple. 
 
 30 If we accept the account given by Lanciani {Ruins and 
 Exca<vations of Ancient Rome, 1897, pp. 476-488) and other 
 topographers as to the true date of the Pantheon as we see it, 
 and its relation to the famous inscription on the pediment in 
 front — M • AGRiPPA . L • F • COS • TERTiuM • FECIT. It had always 
 seemed to be a puzzle why the Pantheon, with its marvellous 
 dome, was not imitated and followed for a century and a half, 
 if it were really built so early as B.C. 27. If the true date of 
 the Pantheon be a.d. 125, it belongs to the era of the mighty 
 domes and hemicycles of the second century, and is not so 
 inconceivably premature and solitary in the evolution of Roman 
 architecture. 
 
 31 It seems impossible to study the works of De Vogti^, 
 Texier, and travellers and archaeologists in Asia, copied and noted 
 in Fergusson's works, without coming to a definite conclusion 
 as to the great influence of S, Sophia and Byzantine building on 
 the whole East. The modifications of Byzantine types, the 
 immediate source of the influence and the precise dates and 
 channels of intercourse, are complicated problems. Syrian, 
 Armenian, Persian, and Russian styles have their own 
 characteristics. The decisive fact is the general impression pro- 
 
 Q 
 
226 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 duced on the Eastern world by the grandest, most colossal, and 
 most beautiful of all the dome-plus-arch buildings in the world. 
 
 32 Labarte's great work, Histoire des Arts industriels au moyen 
 dge, 4 vols. 8vo, 1864, with its illustrative plates, gives a complete 
 resume of the progress of the decorative arts, from the capture 
 of Rome to the Renascence. In each case he makes the arrival 
 of the Greek artists in Italy, owing to the Iconoclast persecution 
 in the eighth century, the critical epoch. He has surveyed the 
 history of the arts in turn — sculpture, metal-work, jewelry, 
 enamels, ivories, and illuminated painting, completely establishing 
 the priority and stimulating influence of the Byzantine schools 
 for the early epochs from the sixth to the eleventh centuries. 
 The result is stated summarily in his smaller work, now trans- 
 lated, Labarte, Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages, ^^SSy 
 pp. 3 and 17. 
 
 The school of Constantinople was in the tenth century the 
 source from which Italy and Germany borrowed artists. The 
 famous Pala d'oro of S. Mark's at Venice was ordered by the 
 Doge Orseolo from Constantinople (a.d. 991). The gates of 
 S. Paolo fuori le mura at Rome were ordered by Hildebrand 
 from the same school. 
 
 Labarte's beautiful reproductions in colours are particularly 
 useful for the illuminated manuscripts. The Vienna Manuscript, 
 painted for Juliana Anicia in the sixth century, is almost 
 classical, not inferior to some Pompeian wall-paintings. The 
 manuscript of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Btblioth^ue Nationale 
 of Paris, executed in the ninth century for Basil I., is magnificent. 
 Others in Paris are the Psalms of the tenth century, and the 
 Gospel executed for Nicephorus Phocas, and a manuscript is in 
 the Library of S. Mark's of the date of Basil II. (976). These 
 paintings in design, colour, and drawing are equal to good Italian 
 work of the fifteenth century. 
 
 33 Mosaic decoration (from late Greek ixovauov) has been 
 treated in a useful monograph by Canon Venables in Dictionary 
 of Christian Antiquities. The existing mosaic pictures in S. 
 Sophia and other churches at Constantinople and at Thessalonica 
 are as grand as any wall-paintings of any period. That the 
 mosaics of Ravenna, Rome, Venice, Magna Graecia, and 
 Palermo, all anterior to the twelfth century, have a Byzantine 
 origin, or were executed by the aid of the Byzantine school, is 
 obvious both from external and internal evidence. Consult 
 Labarte, u.s.j also Ch. Diehl's UArt Byzantin dans I'ltalie 
 M&idionale, 1894, Manuel, 1910 ; Dalton, O. M. 191 1. 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 227 
 
 He has proved that the revival of mosaic art in the eleventh 
 century was accomplished under Byzantine influence — "the 
 incontestable superiority of the Byzantine artists made them the 
 educators of Italy." Extant Italian works at Torcello, Venice, 
 Grotta Ferrata, Monte Cassino, S. Angelo-in-Formis, with 
 their Greek lettering and symbols, amply establish this. The 
 fact that Roman lettering is found in Italy with Greek types, 
 is no evidence against a Byzantine origin ; though the 
 presence of Greek letters and types is conclusive on the other 
 side. 
 
 See Frothingham, American Journal of Archaology^ vol. ix., 
 1894. During the eighth century Rome was full of Greek 
 monks, ecclesiastics, and Artists. In 867 Lazarus, a prominent 
 Byzantine painter, was sent to Rome — "pictoriae artis eximie 
 eruditi" {Liber Pontijic). San Prassede at Rome, and S. Mark's 
 at Venice, were executed by Greek artists. The bronze doors 
 of Amalfi, Salerno, Ravello, and St. Paul's at Rome were 
 obviously of Byzantine design. The rough drawings of the 
 gates of St. Paul's in d'Agincourt, taken before the fire of 1823, 
 are visibly Greek. And the palo d'oro enamels of St. Mark's 
 at Venice exhibit the same type. Both were ordered from 
 Constantinople. 
 
 The mediaeval mosaics of Europe show one type, and one set 
 of motifsy and down to the fifteenth century these seem to have 
 had a common origin in the Byzantine world. 
 
 ** Labarte {Histoire des ArtSy vol. i.) treats of the art of ivory- 
 carving, and his sumptuous plates give an idea of the state of 
 the art in the Byzantine perioa. He regards the noble Michael 
 of our Museum to be of the age of Justinian. Several of the 
 early diptychs he reproduces have the character of Western 
 work as late as the fourteenth century. The South Kensington 
 Museum contains numerous caskets and diptychs, original and 
 copies, of which the Handbook by W. Maskell gives a useful 
 account. The Veroli casket in that collection, if really 
 mediaeval, is proof that the classical sense of form did not 
 entirely expire with Polytheism. 
 
 35 Very fine Byzantine illuminations before the twelfth 
 century are not numerous, and none of the best seem to be in 
 England. But the reproductions given by Labarte, by Silvestre 
 and Champollion, Uni'versal Palaography^ by Westwood, 
 Palaographia Sacra Pictoria, and by N. Humphreys, Illuminated 
 Books of the Middle Ages, show grand examples of the early 
 Byzantine school in Venice, Vienna, Rome, and Paris. Silvestre 
 
228 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 {PaUographie Uninjerselhy Paris, 1841) reproduces some of these. 
 The Byzantine miniatures of our British Museum, if not equal 
 to the best abroad, are greatly superior in drawing and 
 composition to the purely Western paintings down to the 
 thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. The calligraphy of the 
 Greeks does not equal that of the best Irish, French, and German 
 schools, and the Greeks eschew the fantastic borders and initial 
 letters which are the main features of the Northern, especially 
 of the Irish schools, reaching their acme in the Bock of Kells. 
 But in dignity of pose, in drawing, in force of expression, some 
 of the best Byzantine paintings anterior to the eleventh century 
 have never been surpassed at any period of the art of miniature. 
 From that epoch it rapidly declined, knd became at last utterly 
 conventional and mechanical. 
 
 Much light was thrown on the history of Byzantine art by 
 M. Didron's discovery of the painter's handbook in the hands 
 of the monks of Mount Athos. The epfirjveia ttjs Zcoypa<piK7]s, 
 translated and published as Manuel d'iconographie Chritienney 
 1845, is said by Didron to be as old as the eleventh century. 
 Its general instructions may have been much older. It contains 
 first, elaborate practical rules for the painter, and next it gives 
 the motifs of some hundreds of designs for compositions, represent- 
 ing every incident in Old and New Testament and in Sacred 
 Hagiology. Here, in fact, in an old monkish practice-book, are 
 the types of sacred art as we find it in sculpture, mosaic, fresco, 
 metal, and illuminated work from the sixth to the sixteenth 
 century, and from Syria to Ireland, throughout the Christian 
 world. The scheme which these Greek monks used traditionally 
 to represent the Last Supper is essentially that which Leonardo 
 and Raffaelle adopted. The scheme of their Last Judgment is 
 that of a thousand mosaics, frescoes, carvings, and illuminations 
 throughout Europe, and indeed the same as Michael Angelo 
 painted in the Sistine Chapel. It would be difficult to find, 
 down to the sixteenth century, any representation of a sacred 
 incident in any form of art in Europe, of which the type is not 
 given in this old Greek ipfir)veia. Christian art, like Christian 
 theology and Catholic ritual, was formed throughout the 
 Middle Ages out of a Greek matrix — Eastern, though not 
 Byzantine specially, until the advance of the Crescent forced 
 Greek Christendom back to the Bosporus. 
 
 36 See Francisque-Michel, Recherches sur le commerce^ la fabrica- 
 tion^ et I'usage des itoffes de soie^ d'or^ et d' argent en VOccident 
 ■pendant le Moyen Age. 2 vols. Paris, 1852. 
 
CH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 229 
 
 The manufacture of silk embroidery was an eminently Greek 
 industry, derived from Ptolemaic Alexandria, and the Empire 
 became its emporium and seat. It was carried to wonderful 
 elaboration. The robe of a senator had embroidered on it no 
 less than six hundred figures picturing the entire life of Christ. 
 The famous Dalmatic of the Vatican is drawn in Schlumberger's 
 Nicephorus Phocas, p. 301. It is a wonderful work of embroidery. 
 These were manufactured at Byzantium and other Greek cities 
 and sent all over the West. William of Tyre records the mass 
 of robes — tapetibus et holosericis — found by the Crusaders at the 
 sack of Antioch in 1098, as does Villehardouin of the prodigious 
 quantity of samite found at Constantinople at the sack of 1204. 
 During the Middle Ages quantities of these embroideries were 
 sent to kings and nobles and greatly esteemed. One of the stuffs 
 was called imperialis. 
 
 ^ On the subject of Byzantine literature consult the great 
 work of Carl Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byxantinischen 
 Literature 2nd ed., by Ehrbuch and Gelzer (Munich, 1897). 
 This elaborate work, in some 1200 pp., reviews the whole course 
 of Byzantine literature from a.d. 527 to 1453. It is a field 
 whereon English scholars seem never to have touched. It is no 
 doubt probable that these numerous works are now as nearly as 
 possible worthless, and few living Englishmen are likely to 
 devote their time to them. But as a fact in general history, 
 their production has great interest. Some of the Byzantine 
 historians rise above that dead level of dullness with which they 
 are usually dismissed. Krumbacher will not allow that even the 
 Byzantine poetry is absolutely barren. The Silentiary's poem 
 on S. Sophia is unquestionably ingenious, and even the iambics 
 of George Pisides and of Theodosius the Deacon, are less 
 barbarous than the Latin contemporary effusions. I suppose 
 some worse verses are annually sent up to the examiners in our 
 universities. Even modern laureates do not always produce high 
 poetry, 
 
 I cannot speak from knowledge on the subject of Music. 
 But I gather from the learned article with that title in Smith's 
 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, that "for the first thousand 
 years of the Christian era, the antique Greek system of music 
 was adopted, with but few alterations, and those chiefly modifica- 
 tions of the compass of the scale and of the notation." " During 
 the first six centuries of the Christian era the Greek musical 
 notation was in universal use." The great change was not made' 
 until the eleventh century by Guido of Arezzo. 
 
230 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 The Byzantine court maintained a regular band of musicians 
 and organs. Leo the Isaurian, and his son Copronymus, en- 
 couraged music, and are said to have given public concerts. 
 Copronymus sent to Pippin the first organ that ever reached 
 Western Europe (Bury, ii. 462). 
 
 2^ It is impossible for modern scholarship to ignore all that it 
 ovv^es to the laborious lexicographers, scholiasts, and anecdote- 
 mongers of Byzantium, although our own generation has almost 
 forgotten how the knowledge of the Greek language and 
 literature has been preserved to Western Europe. Amongst 
 other of its debts to Mediaeval Greece we might note the various 
 Greek words in modern speech which are derived through 
 Mediaeval Latin, French, or Italian, not being new coinage such 
 as telegram^ enteritiSy or atlas. The words of official, artistic, 
 ecclesiastical, and ceremonial usage derived through Low Latin, 
 or lingua franc a J are very numerous, and point to a borrowing 
 of practice — almanac, policy (of assurance), catholic, chemist, 
 dogma, tactics, anthem, basilica, cemetery, diploma, doxology, 
 pope, priest, psalm, dimity, heresy, hermit, laity, litany, mosaic, 
 pandect, parchment, piastre, patriot, patriarch, pragmatic, 
 protocol, samite, syndic, synod, piazza, torso, catapult, bottle, 
 butler, encaustic, hierarchy, catacomb. Some of these words 
 were, no doubt, in use before the transfer of the seat of empire 
 to Byzantium, but their constant usage in the Greek world has 
 led to their general adoption in Europe. 
 
 ^ Neander, Church History^ passim. 
 MiLMAN, Latin Christianity, vols. i. and ii, 
 Neale, Holy Eastern Church. 
 
 HoDGKiN, Italy and Her Invaders., vols. iv. vi. viii. 
 Bury, Later Roman Empire, vols. i. and ii. 
 Bury, Eastern Roman Empire, chaps, i.-vi. 
 
 " Controversies " in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities j 
 " Lives " in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography. 
 
 ^ The Iconoclastic movement down to the death of Theo- 
 philus (a.d. 842) has been efficiently treated by Bury in his 
 works. A sketch of the whole movement is given in the 
 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities under "Images." The 
 interesting and picturesque narratives of Gibbon and of Milman 
 hardly do justice to the long persistence of the Iconoclastic 
 movement, and the enthusiastic support which it must have 
 received from the martial Asiatic portions of the Empire. It 
 was a far deeper and more national effort than the arbitrary 
 ideas of such imperial reformers as Tzar Peter or Francis II. 
 
cH.x BYZANTINE HISTORY 231 
 
 *^ The jealousy of Old Rome for New Rome began from the 
 first. Claudian and Sidonius in the fifth century are full of it, 
 see Dill, Roman Society in the Fifth Century^ p. 283, etc. Under 
 Gregory and successive Popes, this Roman jealousy turned into 
 theological hatred and contempt, as Fisher remarks [Medite^al 
 Empire, i. 19), "the whole influence of the Latin Church was 
 exerted to preach a misleading view of historical continuity." 
 The partisans of Latin Church and of Western Empire vied 
 with each other to the same end, whenever Pope or Empire were 
 not beset by rivals and enemies nearer home. It still remains 
 the task of historical scholarship to remove much of the mis- 
 conception which yet lingers in the mind of the public. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE (a.D. 802-867) * 
 
 The Regius Professor at Cambridge now resumes his 
 great task of clearing up the complex and extraordinary 
 story of the New Rome on the Golden Horn which, 
 in 1889, he wrote from Arcadius to Irene (a.d. 395 to 
 800). The present instalment of some two genera- 
 tions, which he calls the Amorian period, is on a 
 somewhat more detailed scale, and nearly two-thirds 
 of the present volume are devoted not to the fierce 
 struggles of dynastic ambition, intrigue, and bloodshed, 
 but to the development of religion, literature, and art, 
 to financial and military administration, and wars with 
 Saracens, Bulgarians, Slavs, and Russians. 
 
 It is an historical field on which an immense amount 
 of new matter has been recently accumulated by 
 German, Russian, Hungarian, French, Greek, and 
 Oriental scholars, but where as yet hardly any other 
 English historians since Gibbon and Finlay have 
 laboured on an extended scale. Not only has an 
 enormous amount of new learning been produced 
 since Gibbon and Finlay — but our entire conception 
 of the later Roman Empire, its civilisation and its 
 
 * The Eastern Roman Empire (a.d. 802-867), by J. B. Bury, Reg. Prof. 
 Modern History, Cambridge. Macmillan & Co., 8vo, 1912. 
 
 232 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 233 
 
 achievements, has been transformed since their days 
 mainly by Professor Bury himself and by such students 
 as Krumbacher, Schlumberger, and VasiPev. 
 
 The accepted view that prevailed down to our 
 own time was, that from Justinian, or say Heraclius, 
 down to the Turkish conquests, the Roman Empire 
 remained in a kind of lethargy, with universal feeble- 
 ness, ignorance, and obstruction. Its rulers were 
 regarded as pompous puppets ; its religion was servile 
 superstition ; and its general civilisation a long un- 
 broken record of sameness and imbecility. From this 
 prime error of history we have been gradually rescued 
 by a series of scholars, of whom in England Professor 
 Bury stands the chief — indeed, until recently, almost 
 alone. 
 
 We have understood now, for at least a generation, 
 that the Byzantine Empire exhibited at times wonder- 
 ful energy and military genius, that it had its epochs 
 and its course of development, not so sudden and 
 violent as those of Western Europe and rather less 
 spasmodic and unexpected. And we have long known 
 that modern Europe owed Byzantium a great and 
 varied debt in Hterature and in many industrial arts. 
 But we had not that close knowledge of facts and 
 details which would make all this intelligible by 
 trustworthy instances and proofs. What was essential 
 to know were the ideas, persons, and circumstances 
 whereby change was effected to compare in detail 
 one epoch with another. The knowledge of these 
 was slowly worked out by a mass of studies in Russian, 
 Greek, Arabic, and Balkanic memoirs, the very 
 existence of which was unknown to Gibbon and his 
 contemporaries and successors. Professor Bury has 
 now made this foreign learning accessible to English 
 readers. 
 
 All this is strongly put in Mr. Bury's Preface : — 
 
234 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 " The fallacious assumption, once accepted as 
 a truism, that the Byzantine spirit knew no 
 change or shadow of turning, that the social 
 atmosphere of the Eastern Rome was always im- 
 mutably the same, has indeed been discredited ; 
 but even in recent sketches of this civiHsation by 
 competent hands we can see unconscious survivals 
 of that belief. The curve of the whole develop- 
 ment has still to be accurately traced, and this can 
 only be done by defining each section by means 
 of the evidence which applies to that section alone. 
 No other method will enable us to discriminate 
 the series of gradual changes which transformed 
 the Byzantium of Justinian into that — so different 
 in a thousand ways — of the last Constantine." 
 
 When we read Professor Bury's narrative of the 
 Amorian Emperors in the first half of the ninth 
 century — the age be it remembered of the successors 
 of Charles the Frank and of the predecessors of Alfred 
 of Wessex, of the Lombard confusion and the degra- 
 dation of the Papacy — we are struck by the appearance 
 of modern manners, culture, and civilisation as con- 
 trasted with the primitive rudeness of Western Europe. 
 
 In comparing Byzantium of the ninth century 
 with any modern times, it must be taken to mean the 
 Italian Cinque Cento or the worst epochs of the 
 Dukeries of the age of Sforzas, Baglionis, and Borgias. 
 The story of the conspiracies, assassinations, intrigues 
 round the Imperial court, the audacity and craft of 
 the adventurers, the frenzy of religious sects, and the 
 alternate corruption and ascendancy of monks and 
 patriarchs — all this is curiously like Italy of the 
 Renascence. Although Western Europe in the ninth 
 century has a record of blood and crime at least as 
 great, it is not accompanied with such refinements of 
 
cH.xi THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 235 
 
 luxury, literary activity, and systematic organisation. 
 A Michael, a Theophilus, a Theodore, a Photius seem 
 to us a Visconti or a Medici some six centuries in 
 advance — and still more so are the Irenes, Eudocias, 
 Theodoras like Lucrezias, Beatrices, and Violantes of 
 the fifteenth or sixteenth century. 
 
 One must at once put aside the conventional idea 
 that the New Rome of the ninth century W2is wanting 
 in courage, energy, invention — that it has any of the 
 qualities usually thought to be Greek. On the con- 
 trary, its energy is often spasmodic, and as violent as 
 that of Old Rome under a Pope Julius or a Leo X. 
 The Empire in truth was Greek only by language 
 and literary tradition. Its strength rested on an 
 extraordinary compound of races and civilisations partly 
 Oriental, partly European. There were Syrians, 
 Armenians, Phrygians, Thracians, Slaves, and almost 
 every people of the Balkan Peninsula and the shores 
 of the Euxine. Amorion, which gave its name to 
 the dynasty, was the capital of Anatolia in Asia Minor, 
 and the founder of the family was a rude Asiatic 
 countryman. It has been perhaps the main cause 
 of our misunderstanding the " Lower Empire " that 
 jealous Catholic scribes taught Europe to regard 
 Byzantine civilisation as merely decadent Greek. 
 There was really little purely Greek in it apart from 
 language. It was an amalgam of various races which 
 from time to time bred men of surpassing boldness, 
 personal courage, and strong will. 
 
 Another most significant point in this story is 
 the remarkable energy and influence of women. On 
 the whole the women of the leading famihes occupy 
 a larger part on the stage than they do in the ninth 
 century in Western Europe. There are, of course, 
 round Charles, or Alfred, or Henry, or Otto, women 
 of character, virtue, or power. But there are more 
 
236 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 of such women in Eastern Rome ; and not a few of 
 them are women of noble character and of many- 
 virtues equal to that of any famous women in modern 
 history. 
 
 The annals of hardly any country during the 
 Middle Ages and Renascence can equal those of the 
 Byzantine Empire in sensational incidents, astonishing 
 exploits, tragedies, and heroisms. Every reign is a 
 drama, for the most part, beginning and ending in 
 conspiracy and bloodshed. The family histories of 
 imperial and powerful houses are crowded records 
 of intermarriages, divorces, intrigue, and retaliation. 
 The fidelity and devotion of partisans, the intervention 
 of priests, the emergence from convents of princes, 
 princesses, and royal widows, and their no less sudden 
 withdrawal into the rest of the cloister — all this makes 
 a fascinating and dramatic tale. It is not to be under- 
 stood that the actors in all these crimes and struggles 
 were specially cruel or vicious. On the whole, they 
 are certainly not worse than the magnates of Germany, 
 France, and Italy, from Charlemagne to Leo X. And 
 there are some characters of merit and nobility, and 
 perhaps with a higher culture. 
 
 Modern history has no story more dramatic than 
 that of the Empress Irene of Athens. Born an 
 obscure provincial, she was raised by a stroke of 
 fortune to be the wife of the Lord of the Eastern 
 Empire. On the early death of her consort, she 
 became the supreme sovereign, first in the name of 
 her infant son Constantine, and then, when he was 
 deposed and blinded, as sole autocrat during five 
 years of vigorous policy and an ecclesiastical revolu- 
 tion (797-802). Then, as sovran of the East, she 
 received a proposal of marriage from Charles, the 
 sovran of the West. But, whilst the ambassadors 
 of the mighty Emperor were awaiting an answer to 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 237 
 
 this offer in Constantinople, a palace conspiracy broke 
 out, which in a night consigned the Empress to an 
 island prison, where she pined and died ; and the 
 Patriarch in Santa Sophia crowned a certain Nicephorus, 
 a civilian minister who was what we call the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer. Irene disclosed the place where a 
 large hoard of treasure was concealed, and admitted 
 that her fall was an expiation of her crimes. 
 
 Nicephorus I., the new Emperor, was said to be 
 descended from an Arabian king, who had once 
 turned Mussulman and then recanted and entered the 
 Eastern realm. His enemies said he was a swineherd 
 — "a hypocrite, avaricious, cruel, irreligious, un- 
 chaste, a perjured slave, a wicked revolutionary" — 
 but Professor Bury thinks he was a competent states- 
 man, a strong and masterful man, prepared to incur 
 unpopularity in discharging his duty as guardian of 
 the state. Such is the value of "contemporary 
 documents" when scrutinised by the sagacious his- 
 torian of a larger purview. Nicephorus held his great 
 office with eminent ability and energy, suppressed 
 two dangerous revolts in his army and his palace 
 ministers, and after a vigorous administration of nine 
 years he took up arms in a war against the Bulgarians ; 
 and falling into an ambuscade, he lost his life through 
 his failure as a soldier. 
 
 Nicephorus I. was succeeded by his son Stauracius,. 
 for whom four years before a beautiful Athenian had 
 been chosen as wife after one of the fanciful " bride- 
 shows " which were the rule in the Empire, and were 
 afterwards imitated. Theophano, like Irene, like 
 Athenais, was selected as future Augusta from the city 
 of Athene, after a formal beauty competition. These 
 strange shows were an official ceremony. Messengers 
 were sent out through the Empire to summon maidens 
 of rare accomplishments and charm to attend at the 
 
238 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. 1 
 
 Palace, where they were solemnly passed in review 
 by the Emperor regnant or presumptive, his parents 
 and court. Some famous romances have gathered 
 round this celebrated function which in various forms 
 was practised from time immemorial in the East. In 
 more decorous and less public ways it is not unknown 
 in Western courts. 
 
 The unfortunate Stauracius had been struck down 
 in the battle that killed his father with a wound in 
 the groin which proved to be mortal, and from which 
 he hngered in helpless agony for some time. But 
 before he had been nominal sovran for two months, 
 a palace conspiracy, supported by the Patriarch, the 
 Senate, and the imperial guard, proclaimed and 
 crowned as Emperor Michael the husband of Stauracius' 
 sister, almost before the dying autocrat knew what 
 was being done. Stauracius was suddenly informed 
 that he was deposed, tonsured, dressed as a monk, 
 and removed to a monastery, to which his beautiful 
 and childless bride Theophano also was consigned. 
 Procopia, his sister, with her husband, the new 
 Emperor, visited the wretched sufferer on his couch, 
 and assured him that their act was dictated by reasons 
 of state and his own imminent decease. He felt 
 that he had been betrayed by the Church and by 
 his relations. But his displacement was an obvious 
 necessity of public welfare. 
 
 Michael Rangab6, the new Emperor, the son-in- 
 law of Nicephorus I., was, like him, of low birth, and 
 had been one of the leading officers who assisted in 
 overthrowing the revolt of Bardanes. He was a man 
 of good nature, but incapable, weak, and extravagant. 
 He recalled Leo, the Armenian soldier who had 
 escaped in the late revolt. In an expedition against 
 the Bulgarians he suffered an overwhelming defeat, 
 and then put his army and his empire in the hands 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 239 
 
 of Leo, his rival and old colleague. The Church, 
 the Court, the soldiers joined in the desire for an 
 abler chief. Leo was proclaimed and crowned, and 
 Michael, his wife, and children took monastic garb 
 and fled for refuge to a Church of the Virgin. Leo, 
 as the way was, mutilated the male children of his 
 rival to deprive them of any possible succession. The 
 fellen emperor, the empress, and their children were 
 removed to separate islands, and received an adequate 
 allowance after only two years of royalty. 
 
 Leo V. proved an able and just ruler. Of low 
 origin, an Armenian soldier of fortune, he had made 
 his way by his own energy and courage. He proved 
 to be a successful sovran and defended the empire 
 from Northern and Eastern enemies ; but, on reviving 
 the Iconoclast movement, he offended the monks and 
 priests. Another Michael, a rough but able soldier, 
 his commander of the imperial guard, began to 
 conspire against his former comrade and present 
 emperor. Then follows a scene of intrigue and 
 ferocity as dramatic and as exciting as anything to be 
 found in history, ancient or modern. 
 
 Leo had long suspected Michael, and at last had 
 positive proof of his treason. On Christmas Eve 
 Michael was arrested, tried by the Emperor in person, 
 and condemned to be burnt in the Palace furnace, tied 
 to an ape, in the primitive fashion of old Rome. 
 The Empress, roused from her bed by news of this 
 horrible sentence, rushed to her husband's presence 
 barefoot, and implored him not to stain the sacred 
 Day of the Nativity with such a barbarous deed. 
 Leo gave way, saying that she had saved his soul from 
 sin, but imperilled his life and that of herself and her 
 children. The Emperor, tortured by omens, oracles, 
 and dreams, could not sleep, but he stole secretly to 
 the room where his prisoner was secured under heavy 
 
240 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 bolts and in fetters of which he held the key. 
 Michael and his jailor were asleep and the Emperor 
 stood over both with a look of menace and withdrew. 
 But a boy in the service of Michael concealed under 
 his master's bed watched the entire incident and 
 roused both Michael and the jailor. The man, seeing 
 that he too was in danger, by the agency of a priest 
 brought to confess the criminal, summoned Michael's 
 fellow -conspirators. They, disguised as the choir 
 entering the Palace at dawn to sing the Christmas 
 Hymn, concealed themselves in the private Chapel, 
 where the Emperor was to take part in the early 
 service. At a signal, the disguised choirmen drew 
 their swords and rushed upon the Emperor. He 
 stood at bay at the altar wielding in defence the sacred 
 ornaments, his only weapon. A gigantic conspirator, 
 known as One-and-a-half, cut off his right arm at a 
 blow and then his head. And after seven years of 
 energetic rule, the great Leo V. perished in a palace 
 conspiracy. The headless body was dragged naked 
 and exposed in the Hippodrome. The four sons were 
 mutilated to extinguish their claims and imprisoned in 
 an island, the youngest dying under the knife. The 
 women were relegated to another island, where the 
 widowed Empress could reflect upon her unfortunate 
 interference with her husband's justice. 
 
 Whilst the assassins of Leo were completing their 
 slaughter Michael lay in his celhwaiting for a throne or 
 a hideous death. His colleagues freed him and hurried 
 him to be crowned at noon ; but as the key of his 
 fetters had been hidden in his victim's clothes, the 
 gyves had to be broken by tools. Michael the 
 Amorian, the second of the name, was a rude but 
 bold soldier who ruled with skill for nine years, and, 
 after another bride-show, married his son Theophilus 
 to Theodora, a Paphlagonia lady of the official world. 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 241 
 
 For two years he was engaged, and the Empire was 
 racked by an obstinate civil war led by a colleague and 
 rival, a Sclavonian soldier named Thomas. The war 
 of the rival Emperors is an exciting story of desperate 
 battles, sieges, intrigues, and personation. It ended 
 at last by the capture and barbarous execution of the 
 leaders of the rebellion, and after a reign of some 
 peaceful and successful years Michael II. died of 
 disease (a.d. 829). 
 
 Theophilus, the son of Michael, had long been 
 associated in government with his father, and proved 
 to be for thirteen years an able, just, and brilliant ruler, 
 though hated by the Church as an iconoclast. He is 
 charged with cruelly persecuting the worshippers of 
 images, and the records of his reign have been written 
 by his clerical enemies. At his death the long 
 struggle was finally ended by a Council in 843 a.d. 
 which was a species of compromise. Icons, in the 
 sense of sculpture or graven images, were discarded by 
 the Eastern Church, whilst Icons, as meaning pictures, 
 or embossed and gilt or jewelled tablets, were more 
 furiously worshipped than ever before. 
 
 Michael III., a.d. 842-867, " reigned for a quarter 
 of a century, but he never governed," says Professor 
 Bury J when of age to rule he had neither capacity 
 nor desire. His mother Theodora, with good advice, 
 reigned in his name for fourteen years, when she and 
 her chief minister were displaced by Bardas, Theodora's 
 brother, who ruled . in his nephew's name for some ten 
 years with signal energy and success. After the 
 murder of the Empress's minister, Bardas took his 
 offices and authority, and in peace and war, in civil 
 administration, and in ecclesiastical policy, he proved 
 to.be a model sovran, whilst the frivolous Michael III. 
 pursued his trivial sports, and his ribald follies. But 
 at length Bardas was overthrown by a rival even more 
 
 R 
 
242 AMONG MY BOOKS pt.i 
 
 energetic and able, and much more subtle than 
 himself, the famous Basil the Macedonian, the founder 
 of the great Basilian dynasty which endured for some 
 two centuries. 
 
 The life story of this man is one of the most 
 romantic in history. Of an Armenian family settled 
 in Thrace, he had been carried as a prisoner into 
 Macedonia, but at the age of twenty-five he escaped 
 and made his way as a penniless adventurer to 
 Constantinople. There his great stature and superb 
 physique recommended him to an officer of the house- 
 hold, who engaged him as groom. Then he was 
 adopted by a Greek lady of great wealth, who gave 
 him an estate. The chance of his breaking in a 
 favourite charger of the Emperor gave him promotion 
 as captain of the Foreign Guards, and Basil rose 
 rapidly in the personal service of the Court. He 
 soon obtained the extravagant favour of the scandalous 
 Michael. The Emperor forced Basil to divorce his 
 wife, to marry (officially and ostensibly) the Imperial 
 mistress, but provided him with a real mistress, being 
 one of the Emperor's own sisters. One of Basil's 
 sons by his wife succeeded him on the throne, but 
 was believed to be the child of Michael. 
 
 An alliance so extravagant between the Emperor 
 regnant and his High Chamberlain could not long 
 subsist without awakening the suspicions and jealousy 
 of Bardas the real sovran in his nephew's name. 
 Suspicion and jealousy at that Court meant intrigue 
 and death, and Basil soon had Bardas slaughtered. 
 Thereupon the miserable Michael made Basil his 
 Co-Emperor, and he was officially crowned as such 
 in Santa Sophia. But the buffoon Michael proceeded 
 to greater lengths, and actually after a banquet at 
 Basil's table arrayed an obscure courtier as a third 
 Emperor. Basil saw that he could hesitate no longer. 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 243 
 
 Michael had invited him and his wife to dine in the 
 Palace, and when the wretched creature was in his 
 cups and retired to his bed, Basil and his fellow- 
 conspirators rushed into the chamber, and hacked the 
 Emperor to pieces. In the morning Basil I. with 
 his official wife were duly crowned at Santa Sophia, 
 and a new dynasty called the Basilian begins. 
 
 Basil, like Bardas, was a real ruler, and fully capable 
 to direct the Empire in peace or in war. Both had 
 been for years almost in the position of Viceroys ; 
 and being suspected, and in danger of being destroyed 
 under that suspicion, they were forced to destroy 
 their superiors, in self-defence as much as through 
 ambition. Michael III. had become an intolerable 
 tyrant of the worst oriental style. The imperial 
 history concocted by Basil's grandson asserts that 
 the Ministers and Senate "took counsel together and 
 caused him to be slain by the Palace Guand." 
 
 The Basilian dynasty, like the other dynasties, 
 opens with complex Palace conspiracies and murders ; 
 but it would seem that these had but slight and 
 occasional effects on the general welfare of the Empire. 
 The administration in Church and State, civil and 
 military and ecclesiastical, continues to be carried on 
 without confusion or break. 
 
 One of the most fascinating, and also one of the 
 most instructive passages in Mediaeval history, is the 
 story of the long-drawn battle between the Papacy 
 and the sovereigns of Europe from the ninth to the 
 fifteenth century — from Leo III. to Julius II. At 
 times a similar struggle went on at Constantinople 
 on a far narrower stage, and with far less open 
 violence, between the Eastern Roman Emperor and 
 the Greek Patriarch. The stage was so much smaller 
 because at Byzantium Emperor and Patriarch lived 
 side by side, in the same capital city and in con- 
 
244 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 tiguous palaces ; and the struggle affected the nation 
 outside the city in far less conspicuous and stormy 
 ways, because it was usually effected by secret intrigues 
 and palace revolutions, directly touching only the 
 principal actors and their followers. But the secular 
 conflict between Church and State — a conflict which 
 still rages amongst us to-day — was perhaps all the 
 more marked in that it passed in a concentrated area, 
 and without extraneous complications. 
 
 The history of Photius, the encyclopaedic scholar, 
 and of Ignatius, the ascetic and domineering Patriarch, 
 as told in Mr. Bury's sixth chapter, is of special 
 interest. It reminds us how vast a store of ancient 
 learning was being preserved in Constantinople in 
 the ninth century — by one who was a rival of Western 
 scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; how 
 a proud Patriarch of Byzantium could prefigure by 
 a long era the pretensions of a Hildebrand or an 
 Innocent ; how again the Greek culture, wealth, 
 and civic organisation of an Amorian dynasty looked 
 down with contempt on the barbarism and rudeness 
 of Franks, Latins, and Saxons in the age of the 
 Caroline Kings, Lombard Dukes, and the Kinglets 
 of Wessex, about two or three generations after the 
 melodramatic crowning of Charles at Christmas, 
 800 A.D. 
 
 They who believe that the Eastern Roman Empire 
 was a mass of corruption and chaos may be astonished 
 to learn the facts of the financial organisation as 
 explained by Bury in his seventh chapter. Financial 
 regularity and stabiHty is a prominent test of superior 
 civilisation. And we need not wonder at the pride 
 of the Byzantines when they compared their budgets 
 and their system of taxation with the rude and puny 
 levies of the West. The professor calculates that 
 the Imperial revenue from taxation in the ninth 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 245 
 
 century might amount to ^^125,000,000 of our money. 
 Of this, about one-sixth came from the capital, which 
 was known as the richest city in the world. The 
 expenditure included army, navy, civil administration, 
 religious foundations, pubHc institutions, charities, and 
 infirmaries, diplomatic donations, and the maintenance 
 of a splendid and magnificent court. It is the parallel 
 of Versailles or Madrid in the eighteenth century. 
 
 The Professor quotes a fine encomium from a 
 German historian. 
 
 " In the period of 800 years from Diocletian 
 to Alexius Comnenus the Roman Government 
 never found itself compelled to declare bankruptcy 
 or stop payments. Neither the ancient nor the 
 modern world can offer a complete parallel to 
 this phenomenon. This prodigious stability of 
 Roman financial policy therefore secured the 
 ' byzant ' its universal currency. On account 
 of its full weight it passed with all the neighbour- 
 ing nations as a valid medium of exchange. By 
 her money Byzantium controlled both the civilised 
 and the barbarian worlds." 
 
 In 856 A.D., fourteen years after the death of 
 Theophilus, whose reign was famous for his lavish 
 court and splendid buildings, his widow Theodora 
 proved to the Senate that, under her own careful 
 administration, the Treasury had a balance in reserve 
 of gold equal in purchasing power to upwards of 
 ^20,000,000, besides 300 pounds of silver. And yet 
 Theophilus is believed to have laid out ^^ 12,000,000 
 in his magnificent works. Let us guess what trifling 
 sums in gold were Hkely to be found, in the middle 
 of the ninth century, accumulated in the treasuries of 
 Prankish, Saxon, Lombard, or Papal sovereigns. 
 
 Nor was the military and naval organisation of the 
 
246 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 Eastern Empire less elaborate and modern than the 
 economic system. Professor Bury very carefully works 
 out the details of the army of the Amorian dynasty 
 in its eleven Asiatic and its twelve European Themes, 
 or Provinces, together with two naval Themes (or 
 Commands). Each army corps was divided into 
 brigades, battalions, and companies — the company 
 being normally 200 ; the battalion looo to 3000 ; 
 the brigade 5000, more or less. Each army corps 
 largely consisted of cavalry, and the soldiers and officers 
 had regular stations, duties, and pay. There were 
 also four special regiments of household cavalry, to a 
 great extent consisting of foreign mercenaries. The 
 numbers naturally varied at different times and under 
 different emperors. But in the ninth century we are 
 told that each of these regiments was 6000 or 4000 
 strong. The sanitary arrangements were good. At 
 Dorylaion there were warm baths from natural springs, 
 with seven basins, each holding 1000 men breast high. 
 There was also a corps of ambulance and medical 
 staff. The regular army may be estimated for each 
 side of the Empire at about 80,000, and the total cost 
 of both may have been five millions of our money 
 each by year. 
 
 The Navy was similarly organised in six fleets ; 
 and we hear of expeditions of 300 warships to Egypt 
 and of 400 ships operating in Southern Italy. 
 
 Mr. Bury throws new light on the coronation of 
 Charles by the Pope, and the relations of the Western 
 Empire to Venetia and Northern Italy. To those 
 who held the conventional contempt for the " Lower 
 Empire," the desire to proclaim a Western Empire 
 and to win the friendly attitude of the Golden Palace, 
 and still more the idea of Charles marrying the 
 widowed Empress Irene, may have appeared rather 
 ceremonial by-play and not serious politics. Mr. Bury 
 
CH. XI THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE 247 
 
 shows in detail how much richer, more sohd, better 
 organised was the Empire on the Bosporus than the 
 vast agglomeration of semi-civilised races temporarily 
 united by the genius of Charlemagne. Rome recog- 
 nised the incalculable prestige of the rulers who bore 
 the name of Augustus. The courts of the Franks, 
 and Lombards, and Burgundians well knew and 
 admitted the legitimacy and sacro-sanctity of the real 
 Imperator. And Charles, and his ministers and pre- 
 lates, saw the importance of securing the secular title, 
 and the potent authority it held over the minds of 
 that age. 
 
 A most interesting and instructive chapter is the 
 story of the gradual development of Venetia, i.e, of 
 the whole lagoon district as it stood on the borders 
 of the Western and Eastern Empires, and with Italian 
 adroitness alternately played off one power against the 
 other. The preponderant naval power of the East 
 prevented the absorption of Venetia by the Lombards. 
 And the desire of Charles to conciliate the Byzantine 
 potentates, in order to obtain formal recognition of 
 his title, enabled the refugee cities in the Lagoons 
 to maintain themselves free and prosperous and outside 
 the Carlovingian state. Thus by degrees the Rialto, 
 before the middle of the ninth century, what we now 
 know as Venice proper, gradually won a practical 
 independence and a magnificent mercantile position. 
 Venice, in fact, became, as the clearing house of the 
 trade between the Greek and the Frank Empires, 
 much what Constantinople had been for the trade 
 between Asia and Europe. 
 
 In 812 A.D. formal treaties were signed and peace 
 secured between the Eastern and the Western 
 Emperors. Michael I. saluted Charles at Aachen as 
 Basileus ; and in 814 a.d., on the death of both 
 emperors, Leo V. saluted Lewis the Pious by the same 
 
248 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. i 
 
 title. '' This transaction rendered valid retrospectively 
 the Imperial election at Rome in 800 a.d. ; and, 
 interpreted strictly and logically, it involved the formal 
 union of the two sovran realms. For the recogni- 
 tion of Charles as Basileus meant that he w2ls the 
 colleague of the emperor at Constantinople ; they 
 were both Roman emperors ; but there could be, in 
 theory, only one Roman Empire." 
 
 This had often been the rule in earlier centuries, 
 and it was revived in the ninth. It was nominal and 
 could not be worked in practice. Thus an imperium 
 Romanum stretched from Armenia to the Atlantic. 
 Constantinople gave it grudgingly and for a price. 
 But it served the purposes of both. 
 
 Mr. Bury's concluding chapter on Art, Learning, 
 and Education is specially instructive. He entirely 
 disposes of the legend formed by Lebeau and Gibbon 
 as to the immobility and confusion of the Eastern 
 Empire. Even in art, whilst it abolished sculpture, 
 it was not utterly lifeless, though but fragments of 
 lay ornamentation have survived. In enamel and 
 mosaic work it supplied Europe during the whole 
 Middle Age period. Though poetry and all imagina- 
 tive and creative literature was practically dormant, 
 the maintenance of ancient learning and letters was 
 an invaluable gift which we owe to Byzantium along 
 with Baghdad. The modern world owes to these 
 men "an inestimable debt for preserving the monu- 
 ments of Greek literature." The manuscripts were 
 not written for posterity, but to satisfy the large body 
 of cultured and learned readers who from the first 
 to the last Constantine maintained for eleven centuries 
 the priceless traditions and products of the ancient 
 world. 
 
PART II 
 
 CENTENARIES, REVIEWS, AND 
 MEMOIRS 
 
 249 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CHATHAM AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES* 
 
 Three of the greatest men in all modern history 
 were contemporaries together in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century ; and each of them was a principal 
 founder, or the second creator, of his own country — 
 countries which are now the most powerful of modern 
 States. 
 
 These three men of creative genius and command- 
 ing character towered above all their contemporaries, 
 and exercised in their prime a truly imperial authority. 
 They were all associated with each other in joint 
 efforts and in personal admiration. All three were 
 heroes, patriots, and martyrs to duty in the service of 
 humanity and civilisation. All were great in war ; 
 but never so great as amid defeat, disaster, and 
 abandonment. Yet great in war as all were, they 
 were greatest of all in their efforts to bring war to a 
 close and to found a durable peace. Frederick the 
 Great created the kingdom of Prussia. His ally in that 
 work was William Pitt, Lord Chatham, who created 
 the British Empire. George Washington was the 
 father of the Great American Commonwealth, the 
 
 * An address to the American Circle on the Birthday of Washing 
 ton (22nd February 1909). 
 
252 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 early struggles of which against tyranny were heartily 
 supported by Chatham. 
 
 Chatham was in a sense the link between Frederick 
 and Washington, who had no direct relations with 
 each other. The connection of Chatham and Wash- 
 ington was continuous and real. The relation of 
 Chatham to the American Commonwealth is indeed 
 twofold. He gave the American continent to our 
 Saxon race, and not to the Latin tongue or name j 
 and he nobly strove to free the United States from the 
 tyranny of the British King. To-day the anniversary 
 of Washington makes it meet to couple the name of 
 the Father of the United States with that of the great 
 Englishman who drove French and Spaniard from 
 that continent and fought most resolutely to rescue 
 our transatlantic fellow-citizens from the prejudices 
 and the follies of a besotted sovereign and his mis- 
 guided ministers. 
 
 The work of Pitt in respect to America is twofold ; 
 and I shall seek to keep these two aspects quite distinct, 
 and to treat them in due order. In the first place, as 
 William Pitt and as War Minister of George II., he 
 was acting entirely against foreign nations, in concert 
 with the king's colonial fellow-subjects, before any idea 
 of rebellion or separation had entered the mind of any 
 colonist. George Washington, indeed, was serving 
 in the very campaign which Pitt had planned and 
 organised j and the great city of Pittsburg bears 
 witness to-day to the magnificent strategy by which 
 the English statesman drove out the French and 
 planted our race and language over the continent, 
 from the great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi. 
 
 The second work was very different. No longer 
 William Pitt, but Earl of Chatham, no longer the 
 dominant minister of a victorious government and king, 
 no longer in office or in power, no longer in health of 
 
CH. XII CHATHAM 
 
 253 
 
 body or in peace of mind, without followers or hope 
 or future, the wreck of a great man himself, and the 
 mark of hostility and scorn to his sovereign and his 
 peers — Chatham, in his decrepit old agCj fought on 
 alone in prophetic passion against the crimes of his 
 tyrant master, in defence of the just rights of his 
 countrymen in America, in denouncing it as "civil 
 war," as the curse and ruin of his country. And in 
 defence of an oppressed and calumniated people of 
 three millions, he died at last in the midst of the 
 disasters he had foreseen. And yet to me — and I 
 think to you — this second career of his — utter failure 
 as it seemed to be to those who heard him and saw 
 him carried out to die — is truly the grandest, the 
 purest, the most heroic. To me — and I think to you 
 — Chatham with his racked limbs swathed in flannel, 
 staggering through a speech in support of Franklin 
 and Washington and the patriots of their time, is a 
 grander man than Pitt, the organiser of victory, the 
 terrible war minister who announced a new triumph 
 in each despatch — before whom Spain and France 
 trembled, whose return to power foreign statesmen 
 prayed heaven to avert. 
 
 I proceed to deal with the first point, and to show 
 how Pitt gave the North American continent to our 
 race and tongue. 
 
 For a whole generation before the accession of Pitt 
 to power, a fierce but intermittent struggle had been 
 carried on between the three great maritime powers of 
 Britain, France, and Spain for the trade and dominion 
 of the vast North American continent. Commerce 
 in those days of exclusive trade under the national flag 
 meant the possession of colonies, and the three Western 
 powers of Europe held the American soil in unequal 
 proportions — France on the north and extreme west, 
 England on the Atlantic seaboard as far as the 
 
254 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Alleghany mountains, and Spain in Florida and the 
 West India Islands on the south. Of the three, 
 France held the great strategical advantage of 
 encircling the British colonies by her possession of 
 Cape Breton, Acadia, Canada, and the great chain of 
 lakes on the north, by her forts along the Ohio and 
 Mississippi valleys, and her possession of the mouths 
 and coast-line of the Mississippi and the Mobile rivers. 
 Spain, though far weaker than Britain or France, was 
 firmly planted in Florida, Central America, and the 
 rich islands in the Gulf. 
 
 When Pitt became Minister at last, by the popular 
 voice and his own transcendent eloquence, in spite of 
 the jealousy of aristocratic factions and the fears of 
 a hostile monarch, the condition of England and of the 
 British colonies was indeed dark and ominous. France 
 held the dominant position, for she could sweep right 
 round our colonies over a line of at least 1500 miles. 
 She had magnificent naval bases at Cape Breton, on 
 the St. Lawrence river, lakes Champlain and Ontario, 
 and she had fortresses in Louisbourg, Quebec, Mon- 
 treal, Frontenac, Duquesne, St. Francois on the Ohio, 
 and others. She had the vast range of Canada and the 
 whole Mississippi valley on the north and west, and 
 she led and subsidised the Indian tribes over that 
 boundless area. The French fortresses were far superior 
 to the British. France had superb soldiers and a hero 
 of genius in the Marquis of Montcalm. And her 
 colonial territories were not detached and independent, 
 but under the direct control of an absolute monarch. 
 
 The British colonies lay on a long and narrow sea- 
 board, in breadth never more than 300 miles from the 
 Atlantic westward, and in New England hardly 200 
 miles across. They were continuous and not spread 
 over such vast and separate areas as the French colonies, 
 but, on the other hand, they were divided into thirteen 
 
CH. XII CHATHAM 255 
 
 self-governed and not very cordial groups, with hardly 
 any common American patriotism or sense of fellow^- 
 citizenship vi^ith each other. They were loyal subjects 
 of King George and regarded Britain as their natural 
 home and their lawful head and protector. Instead of 
 the regular troops of King Louis, the British colonies 
 for the most part were defended by an irregular and 
 ill-equipped miHtia, which had nothing of an army 
 except personal courage. 
 
 Mainly from these causes the condition of the 
 British colonies in 1756 was disastrous. Their de- 
 tached and ill-managed expeditions to break through 
 the ring wrought round them by the organised strategy 
 of the French generals had ended in defeat and ruin. 
 George Washington saved the remnant of Braddock's 
 force. Braddock was cut to pieces. Oswego on lake 
 Ontario was captured ; New York, Pennsylvania, 
 Maryland, and Virginia were harried by savage Indians 
 subsidised by France ; and on all sides the British 
 colonies seemed about to pass under the practical 
 domination of the French. They were jealous and 
 hostile, disorganised, and disheartened by a long series 
 of disasters and disputes. 
 
 In December 1756 William Pitt became practically 
 Prime Minister with almost absolute authority for war 
 and diplomacy. Within four years he had made one 
 of the most marvellous revolutions in all modern history. 
 Great Britain had expanded into a World-Empire, 
 and the whole of the North American continent 
 had been secured in effect to the English race and 
 tongue. Cape Breton and the great port and fortress 
 of Louisbourg were taken. Quebec was captured, 
 and the two French and English heroes fell almost 
 side by side. Then Montreal fell, and the control of 
 all Canada soon followed ; the French ports along the 
 Ohio and the Lakes became English, Fort Duquesne 
 
256 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 became Pittsburg — and with it the command of the 
 Western plains. By this marvellous series of combined 
 strokes within four years it was finally decided — if I 
 may repeat words of my own, which I am proud to 
 find quoted by an American woman in a book issued 
 by the " Colonial Dames " of America — " it was 
 finally decided that the English language, common 
 law, literature, and blood should be settled on the 
 continent of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico." 
 
 This was the first great service to America, which 
 justifies our remembrance of Chatham even on this 
 day that is consecrated to the memory of Washington. 
 For the details of this stupendous achievement I must 
 refer you to two recent books, neither of which were 
 issued, I regret to say, when I wrote my little sketch 
 of Chatham's Life. The book I have just cited will 
 give you a true insight into the marvellous knowledge 
 of men and things that Pitt possessed, into his 
 indefatigable power of work and concentration, into 
 his grasp of details and his practical wisdom, foresight, 
 and caution, which make him the peer of Frederick 
 and of Washington. The book is the " Correspondence 
 of William Pitt when Secretary of State with Colonial 
 Governors and MiHtary and Naval Commissioners in 
 America, edited under the auspices of the National 
 Society of the Colonial Dames of America by Gertrude 
 Selwyn Kimball, 2 vols., 8vo, New York, Macmillan 
 Company, 1906." Read those 127 letters of Pitt if 
 you desire to understand how a great man thinks out, 
 plans, and orders a vast and organic scheme which 
 creates a mighty nation. Another essay based on 
 contemporary documents in our own Record Ofiice 
 is by Mr. Herbert Hall, the learned director of the 
 Royal Historical Society. His paper is to be found in 
 the American Historical Review of 190 1. 
 
CH. XII CHATHAM 257 
 
 For the politics and the strategy ot this amazing 
 epoch we may turn to another book — England and 
 the Seven Tears* ff^ar^ a Study of Combined Strategy^ 
 by Julian Corbett, LL.M., with maps and plans, 2 
 vols. 8vo, Longmans, 1907. Here we shall find, 
 in conjunction with Captain Mahan's Sea Power^ a 
 scientific account of the vast combination of military 
 and naval strategy on a world-wide scale which gives 
 us the measure of Chatham's genius. When we con- 
 sider the enormous range of these expeditions over the 
 face of the planet, the multiplicity and variety of 
 them, their combination of joint armaments by sea 
 and by land, of maritime blockade and long marches, 
 storming parties both by sea and by land — the schemes 
 of Chatham are on a scale more elaborate than any of 
 Frederick or of Washington — indeed they surpass in 
 area even those of Napoleon — and in English history 
 can only be compared with those of Cromwell, which 
 were on a smaller and less successful scale. 
 
 I turn now to the second point where the United 
 States owe to Chatham a deep debt of reverence and 
 affection — I mean his heroic efforts to stem the torrent 
 of folly and injustice in the British Crown and Govern- 
 ment, and to defend the just claims of the American 
 colonies to self-government and freedom. This is a 
 very different picture from that of the triumphant 
 statesman we have been contemplating. No longer 
 in power, but without followers or party, almost with- 
 out friends or help, Chatham, for some ten years, 
 stoutly resisted the oppressive policy of George III. 
 and Lord North. 
 
 The story has been often told, and I do not think 
 it has ever been summed up in words more eloquent 
 than those of one who is at once an experienced states- 
 man and a brilliant historian — Sir George Trevelyan, 
 a former Secretary for Ireland, the nephew of 
 
258 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Macaulay — of a family which for at least three 
 generations has served the State. In Trevelyan's 
 monumental history of the American Revolution I read 
 this noble panegyric : — 
 
 "With his broad heart, his swift perception, 
 and his capacious intellect, Chatham knew 
 America, and he loved her ; and he was known 
 and loved by her in return. He had done more 
 for her than any ruler had done for any country 
 since William the Silent saved and made Holland ; 
 and she repaid him with a true loyalty. When 
 the evil day came, it was to Chatham that she 
 looked for the good offices which might avert" an 
 appeal to arms. When hostilities had broken 
 out, she fixed on him her hopes for an honourable 
 peace. And when he died — in the very act of 
 confessing her wrongs, though of repudiating 
 and condemning the estabHshment of that national 
 independence on which her own mind was 
 irrevocably set — she refused to allow that she had 
 anything to forgive him, and she mourned for 
 him as a father of her people." 
 
 On the first day of the Session of 1774, Chatham 
 moved in the House of Lords to withdraw British 
 troops from Boston. He denounced the plan of trying 
 to tax America. " This country," he said, " has no 
 right under heaven to tax America." When the 
 famous riot about the tea-chests took place in Boston 
 harbour, he made a grand speech denouncing the tea 
 tax as " contrary to all the principles of justice and civil 
 policy." " The day is not far distant," he said again, 
 " when America may vie with these kingdoms not only 
 in arms, but in arts also. It is an established fact that 
 the principal towns of America are learned and polite. 
 
CH. XII CHATHAM 259 
 
 and understand the constitution of the Empire as well 
 as the noble lords who are now in office." 
 
 " The cause of America was the cause of all Irish- 
 men, Catholic and Protestant, and of all true Liberals 
 in England — i.e. of every man who is not a friend to 
 arbitrary power." " The colonists were our country- 
 men, and if we persisted in treating them as aliens and 
 foes, the consequences were incalculable. It was civil 
 war." 
 
 What words of wisdom and of prophetic genius ! 
 
 Chatham was in close touch with Franklin, the 
 envoy to England and France of the United States. 
 He boldly introduced him into the House of Lords, 
 defended him there when attacked, and consulted him 
 as to the Bill of reconciliation and settlement that he 
 proposed. He said in Parliament, "If I were minister 
 I would not hesitate to call in Franklin — a man whom 
 all Europe holds in estimation for his knowledge and 
 wisdom." 
 
 Oh ! that Chatham could have retained his health. 
 His magnificent outbursts of patriotism and genius 
 were only in the occasional hours of relief from his cruel 
 and paralysing malady. Had Chatham been able to 
 return to power, to break down the foolish obstinacy 
 of King George and his viziers — if he could have 
 brought in Burke, and with him could have made a 
 settlement with Franklin and Washington — how 
 different would the history of the eighteenth century 
 have been. Britain and the United States would have 
 been in brotherhood and alliance — in a harmony which 
 it has needed nearly a century and a half to cement. 
 It was not to be. 
 
 Again, Chatham told the Lords that the resolutions 
 and addresses of Congress at Philadelphia " for solidity 
 of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclu- 
 sion under such a complication of difficulties, were 
 
26o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 surpassed by no body of men in any age or nation." 
 " The colonists," he thundered, " are our compatriots. 
 I trust that freemen in England do not desire to see 
 three million Englishmen slaves in America." 
 
 He took a step of extraordinary audacity and 
 sacrifice. His eldest son and heir, Lord Pitt, was in 
 the military service, and he had taken care to place his 
 beloved son on the staff of his ow^n friend. General 
 Carleton, who was in command in Massachusetts. 
 Chatham was intensely proud of his heir, and proud of 
 the army in which he had been an officer, proudest of 
 all of the honour of his house and his country. But 
 he could not bear to think of his boy fighting in an 
 unholy war. In 1776, as hostilities became continuous 
 and bitter, Chatham faced the contempt and indigna- 
 tion of soldiers and politicians and wrote to the General 
 that "from his fixed opinion with regard to the con- 
 tinuance of the unhappy war with our fellow-subjects 
 of America, he will withdraw his son from such a 
 service." And the young Lord Pitt had to resign and 
 return home. 
 
 We can imagine what courage, what a sense of 
 duty, what a bitter sacrifice it must have been to a 
 former Minister publicly to expose his son and heir to 
 the humiliation of refusing to face the enemies of his 
 king and country. I have myself known a father sub- 
 mitted to the same trial. During our own unhappy 
 Boer war, a friend of mine, whose whole life and 
 fortune belonged to the South African colony, who had 
 given help, advice, and a large slice of his own estate to 
 the Capetown Colony, whose own brothers were serv- 
 ing the Boer forces, found that his two sons were serving 
 with the British army. My friend suffered in silence. 
 He had not the passionate indignation which nerved 
 Chatham to sacrifice his son. 
 
 Before the war became declared, Chatham in 1774 
 
CH. XII CHATHAM 261 
 
 had written to the Sheriff in London : " What in- 
 fatuation and cruelty to accelerate the sad moment of 
 war ! Every step in America of our government 
 seems calculated to drive the Americans into open 
 resistance, vainly hoping to crush the spirit of liberty 
 in that vast continent at one successful blow ; but 
 millions must perish there before the seeds of freedom 
 will cease to grow and spread in so favourable a soil ; 
 and in the meantime devoted England herself must 
 sink under the ruins of her own fooHsh and inhuman 
 system of destruction." "I fear the bond between 
 us and America will be cut off for ever ! " 
 
 Has that bond been cut off for ever ? Your presence 
 here to-day gives the answer — No ! But it has taken 
 nearly a century and a half to rejoin the links in the 
 chain that binds together the Anglo-Saxon race. Well ! 
 time does justice at last to the honest and the true — 
 for all that they disappear under neglect and ingratitude. 
 There is a pathetic monument of Chatham still stand- 
 ing in its defacement and decay which seems to me an 
 emblem of his heroic soul. 
 
 There stands still in Charlestown the classical 
 monument erected to William Pitt by the Commons 
 of South CaroHna in 1769. The inscription records 
 that it was raised " in grateful memory of his services 
 to America," and they add that "time shall sooner 
 destroy the marble statue of the hero than it shall 
 erase from their minds their just sense of his patriotic 
 virtues." 
 
 The statue stands still erect, but it is defaced and 
 mutilated — for a British fleet bombarding Charlestown 
 struck it with cannon balls and carried away the 
 outstretched arms of the figure. What an emblem of 
 a great Hfe ! One hundred and forty years ago the 
 Commons of an American State expressed in marble 
 their grateful memory of an English statesman. His 
 
262 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 own countrymen in a spirit of infatuated tyranny 
 mutilated that figure just as they opposed and maligned 
 him in his life. But now at last Americans and 
 Englishmen join hands in two continents to rehearse 
 the memory of the patriotism and the virtues of their 
 two national heroes — Washington and Chatham — as 
 the two creators of their respective states, and certainly 
 the two greatest men of their nation and their age. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LORD ROSEBERY's ' CHATHAM ' * 
 
 This is a book full of original research, of historical 
 judgments, of brilliant eloquence and wit. Students 
 of the eighteenth century will find it a mine of new 
 MSS. memoirs ; historians will find it a gallery of life- 
 like portraits ; and the general reader will be delighted 
 with a coruscation of epigrams. 
 
 History is best written by those who have made 
 history or those who, through a long life, have been at 
 the making of history. No one is so well equipped to 
 unravel the mysteries of a great Prime Minister's 
 career as a statesman who has served in that office 
 himself. Lord Rosebery, whose own mother came of 
 the historic family closely allied to that of Chatham, 
 has had access to the private MSS. of many houses that 
 were not open to humbler scribes. And no man is so 
 well fitted to add a new volume to Horace Walpole's 
 inexhaustible collection of speaking mezzotints as our 
 greatest living master of incisive speech. Accordingly 
 scholars, historians, and the public have looked forward 
 to this volume with lively expectation — and none of 
 these will be disappointed. 
 
 Be it understood that this book is no Life of Chatham 
 
 * Chatham : His Early Life and Connections^ by Lord Rosebery. 
 London, Arthur L. Humphreys. 
 
 263 
 
264 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 — certainly not of his great Ministry. It is his early 
 life, largely his personal life, down to the year 1756, 
 and it ceases when Pitt became a mighty power in the 
 modern history of Europe and of the world. It is 
 mainly occupied in penetrating the mysterious veil 
 which Pitt chose to throw round his inner soul. It 
 casts new light upon " the great Commoner's " boy- 
 hood, youth, and desperate struggles to force his way 
 to power. But it is rather tantalising to find the 
 fascinating story break off like an Arabian Night tale 
 just as the hero is about to enter on his dazzling career. 
 Indeed, one may wonder why the book is called 
 " Chatham," seeing that it ends ten years before Pitt 
 accepted a title. It must be that this masterly study 
 is to be the first instalment of a complete "Life of 
 Chatham," which no one but Lord Rosebery is 
 qualified to give us. He tells us in the Preface that 
 the Life of Chatham "never can be written at all." 
 He now shows us that it can be written — and we feel 
 sure that it will be written — and be written by him, 
 who, by birth, experience, subtle insight, and literary 
 gift combines all the qualifications for the task. 
 
 Our time seems peculiarly rich in personal revela- 
 tions of the actors on the historic stage. We have 
 just had the Letters and Diaries of Queen Victoria, 
 the " early life " of Disraeli, the domestic life of Lord 
 and Lady Russell, and now the monumental Life of 
 Gladstone has been supplemented by his religious 
 experiences and ideas. Bismarck, Gambetta, Cavoi^r 
 continue to furnish endless biographical studies. And 
 every day we seem to get closer to the inner life of 
 the world's great men — in Lord Rosebery's phrase, 
 " to realise the humanity of the superhuman being." 
 
 We cannot accept Lord Rosebery's view that " the 
 real man," William Pitt, is not known to us, never 
 can be known. He has given us a most living portrait 
 
CH. XIII LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM' 265 
 
 of the man. Few men in our history stand out for us 
 more distinctly, and that in Pitt's abnormal idiosyncrasy, 
 and not merely in his outward show. Lord Rosebery 
 has heightened the colours and deepened the shadows 
 of that marvellous superman, whose passion and whose 
 silence, whose powers and whose impotence bewildered 
 his age and enthral our own. But the essential features 
 that have long been known are not altered. This 
 book finally reveals whatever mystery remained un- 
 probed. It shows us how a man of supreme genius 
 and heroic soul, consumed with self-will and pride, 
 was racked by hereditary disease of body and mind, so 
 that in his triumphs and in his ruin he remained an 
 abnormal portent in the annals of mankind. When 
 we comprehend "the volcanic character" and the 
 congenital diseases of "these truculent Pitts," when 
 we unloose the tragic mask and the scenic buskin 
 wherein this lonely giant chose to be seen of men, 
 then Chatham becomes to us as visible and as real 
 as Cromwell, Washington, or Napoleon. 
 
 A special advantage of this book is that Lord 
 Rosebery has had access to the unpublished Family 
 Memoir compiled in 1781 by the first Lord Camel- 
 ford, Chatham's nephew, favourite, and once his 
 intended heir. He is " the dear child " to whom Pitt 
 wrote the thoughtful and affectionate "Letters" 
 published in 1804. Lord Rosebery explains why the 
 favourite nephew took at last " a cordial aversion " to 
 his famous uncle, and wrote for his own son a char- 
 acter of the dead statesman with " aversion in every 
 sentence," and full of "violent prejudice." And yet, 
 with this bitterly hostile record before him. Lord 
 Rosebery finds little that is to Pitt's dishonour, 
 whilst it abundantly displays the strange quarrelsome 
 brood of the Pitt family. From the fierce old tyrant, 
 " the Governor," the black diamond from whom they 
 
266 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 all sprung, down to the riotous, rowdy, half-crazy 
 second Lord Camelford, Chatham's great-nephew, 
 the family had " that haughty, impossible, anomalous 
 character, distempered at times beyond the confines 
 of reason." Chatham stands out as the sweetest, rnost 
 generous, and, apart from actual seizure, the most sane 
 of that strange race. 
 
 What is quite new are these early letters of Pitt 
 as a boy, as youth, as traveller, as tepid lover, his 
 affection poured out to his wild and at last crazy sister 
 Ann, whom he loved well, and quarrelled with so 
 hotly, and many letters to his political friends or 
 enemies. We see Pitt first the generous and well- 
 behaved youth, though a very poor penman, and then 
 we see him in his battles and cabals, pompous, cumbrous, 
 obscure, and fierce. It is a psychologic curiosity that 
 our greatest orator was one of our worst writers. 
 Cicero, Burke — Lord Rosebery himself — prove that 
 there is no necessary antagonism between the two 
 arts. But Chatham, ever grand, and even grandiose 
 when on his legs, was stiff, tame, and tedious with 
 a pen in his hand. 
 
 The only parts of Lord Rosebery's book which 
 have no life are those written by Chatham himself. 
 To parody a famous epigram, we may say to a 
 reader — 
 
 Accept a miracle in place of wit, 
 
 See some dull pages by Lord Rosebery writ ! 
 
 Of course it was only Lord Rosebery*s fountain pen 
 — or his copying machine. Chatham on paper is a 
 curious mixture of pomp and commonplace. But too 
 much has been made of his poor style. I read all 
 these new letters and all the published letters, and I 
 find in their heavy Hnes a cultured, powerful mind, 
 a generous, warm, and noble spirit. 
 
CH. XIII LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM' 267 
 
 It must not be supposed that this book is entirely 
 occupied with the "early life" of Chatham — or, 
 indeed, solely with him. It is full of telling portraits 
 or "characters" of all the leading personages, as 
 brilliant and sometimes almost as cruel as those painted 
 by Horace Walpole. But, not being contemporary, 
 and so void of prejudice, and also being drawn from 
 various sources, both published and manuscript, they 
 are more balanced and without the spite — yet with all 
 the spice — of the acid Orford. A closer analogy is 
 that with the characters drawn by Macaulay in his 
 Essays and his History^ and they read as if the famous 
 Whig historian had been the model. 
 
 Chapter viii., pp. 192-201, is taken up with an 
 estimate of George II., " the best of the Georges " — 
 at least as a king. This is as masterly a judgment 
 as it is brilliant as a picture. Newcastle has often 
 been described "the most hardened of political 
 jobbers," but the real man is painted in pp. 173-175 : — 
 
 Newcastle has long been a byeword ; he was so all 
 through his protracted public life : and he has remained 
 in history a synonym for a certain jobbing and fussing 
 incapacity. . . . His ambition, such as it was, had indeed 
 an elastic but stubborn tenacity ; the ties of blood, friend- 
 ship, or principle availed nothing against it. His industry, 
 such as it was, is attested by his long tenure of office and 
 the vast mass of his correspondence. His disinterestedness, 
 such as it was, is proved by his leaving public life ;£3oo,ooo 
 poorer than he entered it. . . . To hold a crowded levee 
 of place-hunters, ecclesiastical and temporal, to thread his 
 way about it coaxing, fawning, and slobbering, embracing 
 and even kissing, promising and paying all with the base 
 coin of cozenage — this was Newcastle's paradise. But 
 it answered. It made him necessary to his party, and 
 therefore necessary to those who would govern the country ; 
 for government was restricted to his party. So all 
 
268 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 statesmen in turn scorned and employed him. "His 
 name," said Walpole, " is perfidy." But perfidy paid, and 
 Walpole kept him to the end. 
 
 Can we wonder that Lord Rosebery has striven so 
 long to reform the House of Lords ? 
 
 Admirable, too, is the account of the Grenville 
 " connection," the " cousinhood," the " Boy Patriots," 
 by whom Pitt " was adopted as one of the brotherhood 
 and choked in their embraces " ; " they were not only 
 a brotherhood, but a confraternity . . . they were 
 a political company of Jesus — who exercised so 
 singular and so baleful an influence on Pitt." 
 
 There are just and life-like portraits of Carteret, 
 Chesterfield, Walpole, Pulteney, Pelham, Lyttelton, 
 Mansfield, Hardwicke, and all the minor satellites of 
 the Walpole and Newcastle Ministries. But the most 
 effective is the character of Henry Fox, first Lord 
 Holland. It is also the most new, and drawn from 
 original sources, for Lord Rosebery has had the 
 privilege of inspecting the Holland House MSS. 
 "Fox was everything that Pitt was not. He had 
 the cordial manner, the veneer at least of good fellow- 
 ship, the frankness savouring of cynicism, which make 
 for an eminently serviceable sort of Parliamentary 
 popularity." " But Fox had one incurable flaw which 
 was wholly wanting in Pitt ; his aims were base and 
 material. . . . And besides money he had another 
 weakness. He longed to be a lord. . . . He 
 earned and he received his peerage. But he had also 
 earned a detestation rarely accorded in England to 
 a statesman." All this was a century and a half ago ; 
 but the titles remain, the descendants survive, the 
 traditions, the memories, the habits are not extinct. 
 Above all, the House is still there with the old powers, 
 the old claims, unreformed, even if curtailed. 
 
CH.xiii LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM' 269 
 
 Derby, Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury long ago 
 proved that a Prime Minister with a reputation as an 
 orator can write. And this book will show that Lord 
 Rosebery can write at least as well as he can speak. 
 The book abounds in those mordant strokes which 
 flash out in his speeches. The German princelets 
 who imitated Versailles : the Hanoverians taken as 
 odious necessities to keep out a still more odious 
 Romanist dynasty ; Walpole*s only monument was 
 " the void left by his death " ; a peerage is now the 
 impediment, if not the disquaHfication, for office ; 
 Chatham's "principal occupation was the gout"; 
 "the loves of statesmen, often ardent, and always 
 precarious " ; his own retirement " is the common 
 cant of a Minister '* ; the parasites in politics who are 
 always mistrusted and constantly taken into confidence ; 
 the Parliamentary Zoroastrians who worship the rising 
 sun ; like Professor Owen, we must reconstruct Pitt's 
 speeches out of the poor bones we have ; the promising 
 young men who fail to mature. We can almost hear 
 these touches as if they dropped from the platform to 
 a crowded hall. 
 
 The volume is sumptuously issued, in the best 
 style of Mr. Arthur L. Humphreys, as befits the 
 subject and the author. It has a good index (save 
 and except that it puts George III. for George IL) ; 
 but the twenty-two chapters have no distinct heading ; 
 there is no Table of Contents at all, no head-line to 
 distinguish the chapters ; and it is not easy to find 
 one's way about it, as it runs on without visible break 
 or label. " Connections " in the title means, of 
 course, political associates, not family relations, and 
 thus justifies the elaborate studies of so many con- 
 temporaries of Chatham. But why " Chatham," 
 when the typical story of the earldom is not mentioned, 
 and the book does not reach Chatham at all ? And 
 
270 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 why " Lord Rosebery " on the title-page ? I wonder 
 Mr. Humphreys did not put "Mr. Rosebery,*' as 
 the lordship was dropped at the London County 
 Council. The books of the Earl of Derby and the 
 Earl of Beaconsfield have the formal, and not the 
 conversational, title on their front. 
 
 The book is no regular biography. It is a collec- 
 tion of studies, of vignettes, copies of unpublished 
 documents, and commentaries thereon, and lays no 
 claim to be a work of art. Neither chronological 
 order nor unity of topic are regarded as necessary. 
 Persons die and are buried in one chapter, and are 
 quite alive again in the next. The book ends at 
 1756, but persons and things are mentioned after that 
 date. 
 
 A more serious question will be asked by those 
 who love Chatham as a man and revere his great 
 name. Cui bono — whose honour is enhanced by tales 
 of the squaHd and truculent brood of Pitts to whom 
 the first chapter is devoted ? Pitt's own letters to his 
 relations do him no discredit ; they are kindly, manly, 
 and sensible, but they are clumsy and dull. The vile 
 crew with whom Pitt had to fight, their cabals, and 
 their treacheries make up a gruesome picture. And 
 Pitt was of his age and his fellows. Lord Rosebery 
 shows him "petulant, factious, hungry, bitter." At 
 last he bursts his trammels — and there his biographer 
 stops ! 
 
 His marriage, too, "marks a new ascent in Pitt's 
 career ; love seemed to have transformed him ; always 
 powerful and eloquent, he became sublime." Yet 
 here, just as Pitt obtains a happy and beautiful home, 
 just as he is about " to inspire the policy of the 
 world," the curtain drops. No ! Lord Rosebery 
 has given us the " factious, hungry, bitter " hfe of 
 William Pitt. He must go on, and give us the noble 
 
cH.xiii LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM' 271 
 
 life of Chatham. This book is but Volume the 
 First. 
 
 In his Preface, which is as fine in psychological 
 insight as it is incisive and epigrammatic in expression. 
 Lord Rosebery puzzled us all by bluntly asserting 
 that the complete life of Chatham "never has been 
 written and never can be written," and he adds that 
 he insists on this in spite of all the numerous bio- 
 graphers from Thackeray to von Ruville. To the 
 ordinary student of history it would certainly appear 
 that we know the life of Chatham even better than 
 we know that of other public men of the time — say 
 of Marlborough, Walpole, Chesterfield, Fox, or Burke. 
 We know him better indeed, because he stands out 
 in a more personal way as the direct leader of one of 
 the most brilliant periods of English history. What, 
 then, does Lord Rosebery mean ? There is a sense 
 in which these words are exactly true. 
 
 In all that concerns Chatham's relation to the 
 general history of our country we now know all that 
 we need to know. After von Ruville's researches we 
 may rest satisfied that there is nothing of serious 
 importance to discover. The public, political life of 
 Chatham is exhaustively written in many books, and 
 latest of all in Sir George Trevelyan's last volume. 
 What Lord Rosebery means is that from the time of 
 his undertaking responsible office, Chatham, the man, 
 in his inner thoughts and nature, is not known and 
 never can be known, from want of material. This 
 is perfectly true. We never shall know Chatham and 
 his soul's history as we know the personal life of 
 Johnson or of Fox, or of Byron or Shelley. But we 
 know Chatham quite as well as we know Richelieu or 
 Turgot, or William Pitt or Sir Robert Peel. Why 
 need we know more ? 
 
 In a brilliant and most enlightening passage of his 
 
272 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Preface, Lord Rosebery has summed up the Hfe of 
 Chatham with Tacitean conciseness : — 
 
 Born of a turbulent stock, he is crippled by gout at 
 Eton and Oxford, then launched into a cavalry regiment, 
 and then into Parliament. For eight years he is groom- 
 in-waiting to a prince. Then he holds subordinate office 
 for nine years more. Then he suddenly flashes out, not 
 as a royal attendant or minor placeman, but as the people's 
 darling and the champion of the country. In obscure 
 positions he has become the first man in Britain, which he 
 now rules absolutely for four years in a continual blaze of 
 triumph. Then he is sacrificed to an intrigue, but remains 
 the supreme statesman of his country for five years more. 
 Then he becomes Prime Minister amid general acclama- 
 tion ; but in an instant he shatters his own power, and 
 retires, distempered, if not mad, into a cell. At last he 
 divests himself of office, and recovers his reason ; he lives 
 for nine years more, a lonely, sublime figure, but awful 
 to the last, an incalculable force. He dies, practically, 
 in public, as he would have wished ; and the nation, 
 hoping against hope, pins its faith in him to the hour of 
 death. 
 
 This is the true story of Chatham in a nutshell, 
 and to fill up and colour this portrait we have ample 
 matter in the various histories of England and the 
 Lives of Chatham. But from the time when this 
 proud, fierce, and distempered spirit began to play a 
 dominant part on the stage of the world's politics, in 
 sight of men in all four continents, we lack first-hand 
 information of the inner workings of this man's mind, 
 of his hopes, sorrows, yearnings, and despair. He 
 kept all this to himself as many a great soul has done. 
 He wrote formal, and perhaps guarded letters. He 
 chose to wrap himself in a certain mystery, with more 
 or less of a tragic pose. He never talked freely of 
 himself to any intimate, if he had any outside his 
 
CH. XIII LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM* 273 
 
 family ; or if he ever did talk, almost nothing is re- 
 corded. During his active official hfe, he chose to 
 show nothing but his official self. It is possible that 
 he held his purely personal life under rigid control. 
 During his non-official life, after laying down power, 
 he was a confirmed invalid, and for long spells of his 
 intermittent and obscure disease he was a man not 
 master of himself, of his brain, of his will. For these 
 reasons, of the man Chatham in his later career we 
 know little. And so Lord Rosebery groans that 
 however interesting and dramatic such a knowledge 
 would be, we have nothing " to reveal the real man." 
 
 But why need we know more ? Why pry into 
 the private life of an essentially public man ? In the 
 case of a poet, or a divine, or a moralist, there may be 
 more reason to know "the real man." We would 
 give many of his plays, as Lord Rosebery suggests, to 
 know more of Shakespeare as a man, in his private 
 meditations and habits. The life of Milton, or of 
 Goethe, or of Rousseau, or of Carlyle, is both interest- 
 ing and important ; and that, because their written 
 thoughts are thereby expanded or qualified. But why 
 need we know the habits and musings of statesmen 
 whose works are written only in the annals of nations ? 
 Their policy and their achievements in deeds are their 
 works. Perhaps the less we know of Frederick II., 
 or of Napoleon, or of Bismarck in their homes, in 
 their foibles and weaknesses, the better. The privacies 
 of Wellington, or of Peel, or of Palmerston are no 
 concern of ours. 
 
 So far as Chatham's personality really concerns us, 
 Lord Rosebery has given us an adequate account of 
 " the real man." And throughout his book we have 
 some of his happiest apophthegms and some of his 
 truest estimates. "He had to herd with political 
 jobbers ; he had to serve intriguing kinsfolk j he had 
 
274 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 to cringe to unworthy Kings and the mistresses of 
 Kings ; he is flouted and insulted by a puppet Whig 
 Hke Rockingham. Despite all this he bequeaths the 
 most illustrious name in our political history." 
 
 Lord Rosebery is particularly happy in tracing the 
 family inheritance of this " formidable race," or what 
 he calls "the volcanic character of these truculent 
 Pitts," at least down from the time of Diamond Pitt, 
 the grandfather. But the volcanic character soon 
 exhausted itself when mingled with the blood of the 
 Stanhopes. There was nothing volcanic in the second 
 Lord Chatham nor indeed in Chatham's second son ; 
 and though Lady Hester Stanhope had no small share 
 of the virus, the Stanhopes of the nineteenth century 
 were an eminently practical and judicious race. 
 
 Lord Rosebery uses — indeed over-emphasises — " the 
 priceless document" written by Lord Camelford for 
 his son, another scion of "that strange cockatrice 
 brood of Pitts." The son for whom this document 
 was written as a warning had "a turbulent, rakehelly, 
 demented existence." He revived the pranks of the 
 Mohawks, and " riots were the breath of his nostrils," 
 until he was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-nine. 
 Except to show the madness in the family, we need 
 hear no more of the male and female Pitts unless it be 
 " to trace to their source the germs of that haughty, 
 impossible, anomalous character, distempered at times 
 beyond the confines of reason, which made William so 
 difficult to calculate or comprehend." 
 
 Lord Rosebery has completely explained the bond, 
 the force, and the vice of the famous cousinhood of 
 Grenvilles — how Pitt became brother-in-law and was 
 " adopted as one of the brotherhood and choked in their 
 embraces — from this mortal entanglement he emanci- 
 pated himself too late." One of the most admirable 
 vignettes is that of Walpole — un faux bonhomme — 
 
CH. XIII LORD ROSEBERY'S 'CHATHAM' 275 
 
 whose bluff exterior concealed a jealousy of power 
 "passing the jealousy of woman and the ruthless 
 vindictiveness of a Red Indian." "Opposition or 
 rivalry he crushed with the relentless spirit of Peter 
 the Great." 
 
 The portrait of Newcastle is equally life-like and 
 equally just. 
 
 But, after all these entertaining anecdotes and the 
 serio-comic scenes of Georgian politics, we come back 
 to the "real Chatham," which is not the hero 
 struggling with incapacities and perversities, with 
 fraud and falsehood, but the statesman who created the 
 Empire. Lord Rosebery closes a book far too soon, a 
 book to be one day resumed and continued as is 
 Trevelyan's Fox^ with a fine and just sentiment which 
 tells us all that is essential of Chatham : — 
 
 "We have seen him petulant, factious, hungry, 
 bitter. And yet all the time we have felt that there 
 was always something in him different in quaHty from 
 his fellow -politicians, that there was an imprisoned 
 spirit within him struggling for freedom and scope. . . . 
 Britain is richer for his life. He bequeaths a tradition, 
 he bequeaths a son ; and when men think of duty and 
 achievement they look to one or the other. It will be 
 an ill day for their country when either is forgotten." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 VON RUVILLE's ' CHATHAM ' * 
 
 In preceding essays I have shown but scanty honour 
 for the ponderous form of histories and biographies, 
 weighted with " documents " and somniferous with 
 irrelevant details which obscure and confuse our real 
 knowledge of an age and, in effect, blurr and caricature 
 our understanding of the real man. By over-stating and 
 then misrepresenting an interminable series of trifles 
 they bury the central story under a heap of pretended 
 " new facts " and " unpublished manuscripts," or they 
 falsify the portrait of a great man by spiteful insinua- 
 tions spoken or written by a personal enemy, or in- 
 geniously improvised by the editor's acumen. These 
 are the men who, before Carlyle and Gardiner, in their 
 likenesses of Cromwell, emphasised the protuberance 
 of the wart on his brow and deepened the ruddy colour 
 of his nose. 
 
 A conspicuous example of this degradation of the 
 biographer's art may be seen in von Ruville's Chatham. 
 In some 1250 pages octavo, a German archivist has 
 undertaken to give us at last "the real Chatham." 
 These huge volumes contain an immense amount of 
 documentary evidence about Chatham and his con- 
 
 * William Pitt,, Earl of Chatham^ by Albert von Ruville (English trans- 
 lation, 3 vols. 8vo, 1907). 
 
 276 
 
CH.xiv VON RUVILLE'S 'CHATHAM' 277 
 
 temporaries over the seventy years, 1 708-1 778. It is 
 the result of rare industry, accuracy, and a meticulous 
 anxiety to reach the truth of the most insignificant 
 incident, and to record the utterance of the most casual 
 opinion. For those who feel it a duty to themselves 
 and their country to study every paper that may have 
 passed between public men : — why Newcastle behaved 
 like a tricksy booby, or what was behind Bute's petty 
 intrigue, the labours of von Ruville may give some 
 fresh information. But to those to whom every turn 
 in the wrigglings of British politicians in the Georgian 
 times is not a matter of supreme interest, the new dis- 
 coveries in the Record Office and private muniment 
 rooms are simply waste paper. Far from adding to 
 our soHd knowledge of European history, they blind us 
 with scribbled stuff and stun us with a Babel of con- 
 fused recriminations. They tend to deaden historical 
 knowledge. And when it comes, as in this case, to 
 cover with distorting blots the living portraiture of a 
 hero, to insinuate mean motives against a man of 
 lofty soul, to reduce his intellect to narrow and ordinary 
 limits — then the labour of the most industrious bio- 
 grapher ends in being an active nuisance and not 
 merely the blunder of a pedant. 
 
 Von Ruville opens his book with a pretentious 
 paragraph which I quote as a monument of perverse 
 misconception. 
 
 "The subject of our narrative rises amid the 
 history of England as a rock, mighty and strong, 
 not, however, opposing the course of development, 
 or directing the stream of progress into new 
 channels, a type of character often to be found in 
 English history, but rather as a dominating land- 
 mark, weather-worn on either side by the nature 
 of preceding and subsequent periods, and yet form- 
 ing a self-contained and uniform whole." The 
 
278 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 historian adds that Chatham contributed to the 
 progress of the nation, " although no actual 
 change of natural development was due to him." 
 
 It would not be easy to find words which could 
 better express what is the exact contrary of the real 
 truth. This passage condemns the whole book as a 
 learned blunder. 
 
 Every word in this exordium is wrong. How 
 comic to describe Chatham as " a rock " — one of the 
 most torrential forces in our history — a man of im- 
 pulse, violence, and new inspiration, a statesman who 
 continually flung aside party, professions, obstacles, 
 who ever hurled himself into fresh adventures, and was 
 ever devising novel combinations. A rock indeed ! 
 One might as well call Julius Cassar, Peter the Czar, 
 Frederick of Prussia, or Mirabeau a " rock." 
 
 It seems that English history has often shown a 
 type of character "opposing the course of develop- 
 ment," or one " directing the stream of progress into 
 new channels " — but Chatham, we are told, is not one 
 of these numerous English politicians j he is neither a 
 Strafford nor a Cromwell, nor a Pitt nor a Burke. 
 He is a " rock." The truth is that in different ways, 
 and at various times, Chatham was eminently one who 
 opposed the course of development to autocracy, and 
 also one who directed the stream of progress into the 
 new channels of an oversea Empire. Chatham, along 
 with Walpole, was the greatest of those who substi- 
 tuted a Parliamentary for a monarchic system of govern- 
 ment. And he was not only the greatest, but the sole 
 founder of the British Empire. And yet to this 
 German pedant Chatham is a " landmark " — one, it 
 seems, who stood between two periods but neither 
 formed nor represented either period. Can the mis- 
 reading of history go beyond this ? 
 
 Chatham, says von Ruville, is a "landmark, 
 
cH.xiv VON RUVILLE'S 'CHATHAM* 279 
 
 weather-worn on either side by the nature of preced- 
 ing and subsequent periods " — that is, apparently, but 
 slightly affected by the political movements before him 
 nor much affecting those after him. If Chatham is 
 in any sense a landmark, it is that he marks the close 
 of an era of dynastic and cabinet despotism and opens 
 an era of government by the House of Commons which 
 his son established. But he did this not by being a 
 " rock " or " a dominating landmark," but by being a 
 dominant force which, during his time of health and 
 ascendancy. King, Cabinets, and magnates were im- 
 potent to resist. In the hands of the two Georges and 
 their favourites, the government of England bid fair to 
 settle into that of the French Louis. Chatham was 
 the one man who, through the House of Commons 
 and the nation, could defy the tendency to court 
 autocracy. 
 
 On the other hand, he did direct the course of pro- 
 gress into new channels by creating an Empire over 
 seas in four continents. He did develop in the most 
 conspicuous degree the naval ascendancy of Britain, 
 and by his American, Indian, and African conquests 
 he changed the whole character of English history 
 and the national ideals of our people. He is really 
 the most direct creator of "Greater Britain" of any 
 name in our history. Neither the Plantagenet kings, 
 nor Burleigh, nor Marlborough, nor Pitt, nor Welling- 
 ton did so much to make a new England as did 
 Chatham. Even Cromwell did this in a way far more 
 indirect and partial. The only creators of Britain who 
 can be compared with Chatham are Alfred the 
 Conqueror, Edward I., and the Long Parliament 
 statesmen and soldiers. And of all Englishmen, down 
 from Tudor times until our own, Chatham was the 
 man who made the most extensive, the most rapid, 
 and the most decisive change in the destinies of Britain. 
 
28o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 By his own piercing genius and his tremendous will, 
 this rock, this landmark did all this. We do not 
 think of Richelieu, Peter, or Frederick, or Napoleon 
 as " rocks." Yet these are the statesmen whose work 
 is best compared with Chatham's. 
 
 The most discreditable part of von Ruville's book 
 is the attempt to belittle the moral character of 
 Chatham by mean insinuations based on paltry details 
 which are perversely misread. Thus Chatham's bad 
 health is said to be caused in part by the hereditary 
 gout, but partly by intemperance and even immoralities 
 in early life, either at Oxford or during his continental 
 travels. For this insulting and gratuitous suggestion 
 there is not a word of evidence. But our author finds 
 it in " revelations " contained in letters to his nephew 
 Thomas, whom he warns not to give way to indolence 
 or any vicious courses in the fine letters which have 
 been separately printed. So if an elderly uncle writes 
 goody-goody letters to his nephew at college, we are 
 to assume that the uncle really left the University with- 
 out taking a degree in consequence of his own vices. 
 
 Another curious fact comes out from these letters 
 to Thomas Pitt, the future Lord Camelford. Pitt's 
 religion, at least at first, was "principally ethical"; 
 he failed "to grasp the essence of Christian Doctrine, 
 the redemption, and spiritual communion with God, 
 which is the only source of true Christian morality ; 
 to this an intellectual system of ethics is related like 
 the shadow to the object which casts it " ; " he did 
 not possess the spiritual confidence," etc. Chatham 
 must have undergone "the change which is effected 
 in the inner man by conversion or regeneration," etc. 
 Now nothing comes out more clearly from the 
 voluminous Correspondence as published than that 
 Chatham all through his life was a simple, sincere, 
 manly Christian believer, as free from bare conventional 
 
CH.xiv VON RUVILLFS 'CHATHAM' 281 
 
 orthodoxy, or agnostic ethicism, as he was free from 
 fanatical Calvinism. Yet this Lutheran historian 
 speaks of him as if he were a Baptist expounder of 
 personal salvation by faith. 
 
 Nothing, again, is more certain than Chatham's 
 genuine hatred of political corruption and his determina- 
 tion to suppress it whatever it cost him personally. 
 But to this foreign unmasker of the " real Chatham " 
 "in this, as in all cases, his objects were eminently 
 practical and selfish," he thought that the path to 
 success was "a lofty and disinterested attitude upon 
 sordid questions of ways and means." So, Chatham 
 was a Pecksniff who traded on the "appearance of 
 high moral character." When Chatham refused to 
 avail himself of the traditional practice of making a 
 profit out of the sums in the paymaster's office, or of 
 receiving a commission on granting subsidies to foreign 
 governments, this scrupulous honesty was not sincere 
 virtue at all, von Ruville declares, but a part of 
 Chatham's art to curry favour with the public by 
 parading his incorruptibility. Always a stage-player 
 in the nation's eye, he was now able to pose in the 
 character of the " inexorable Fabricius." 
 
 A more monstrous charge of venal treachery is that 
 which pervades von Ruville's book when he tries to 
 prove that Chatham's political action was inspired by 
 his expectation of a legacy from Sarah, Duchess of 
 Marlborough. As the great Earl of Chesterfield was 
 included with Pitt in her will, it seems ridiculous to 
 suppose that either of them were bought by pecuniary 
 bequests. The charge is a rank insinuation worthy of 
 a party pamphlet and unworthy of serious refutation. 
 And a similar charge of political tergiversation is again 
 urged in the matter of Sir WilHam Pynsent's noble 
 gift to the statesman whom he and his west-country 
 neighbours held in honour and trust. 
 
282 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 A comic point of the foreign biography is that 
 Chatham's celebrated power as an orator depended on 
 physical — not at all on intellectual resources. His 
 voice, look, and theatrical tricks produced an im- 
 pression, however barren were his arguments and vapid 
 his warnings and denunciations. Chatham, we are 
 now told on the authority of a great specialist in 
 documentary evidence, was "especially deficient in 
 depth of thought and clearness of perception." His 
 arguments were borrowed from others : his intellect 
 and his knowledge were far inferior to his energy and 
 will. As an administrator he was a failure. His 
 ascendancy was due to his imposing force as a keen 
 critic and debater. Everything we find in con- 
 temporary reports proves that the very contrary of all 
 this is true. Such is the verdict of Research as ex- 
 pounded in the latest official method as "made in 
 Germany." 
 
 Not only was Chatham's oratory a thin, borrowed, 
 and theatrical affair, but, instead of being the self- 
 willed despot he was thought to be, he was really 
 "the tool of others." When he acts with his political 
 friends Chatham is "a tool." But what is even worse, 
 he is the hireling of a spiteful woman. The real key 
 to an important part of Chatham's political conduct 
 is now revealed by " contemporary documents " and 
 penetrative Research. The great, the haughty, the 
 domineering Chatham became " dependent upon the 
 old Duchess" of Marlborough. His action in 
 Parliament, his speeches, his silences were prompted 
 by his hopes of succeeding to this vicious old harridan's 
 money. Chatham, alas, like Fielding's Tom Jones 
 became the " kept man " of an ill-natured beldame — 
 not, of course, to serve her lust, but to glut her hatred 
 of a minister who had excluded her from St. James's 
 Park, and to ventilate her spite in public debate. 
 
cH.xiv VON RUVILLE'S 'CHATHAM' 283 
 
 When at last Chatham comes into power (vol. ii.), 
 it was by his " mob-oratory," and his clever way of 
 presenting as infallible his own very doubtful schemes. 
 Chatham, in fact, was the real demagogue— the masses 
 are incapable of judgment — it mattered not to them 
 what were his measures, nor how far he broke with all 
 his former principles. All they asked was that the 
 new man should give them some success ; the different 
 classes and interests, merchants, clergy, soldiers, and 
 sailors, all hoped to get something for themselves out 
 of the favourite demagogue. Cleon was to bring back 
 the Spartans. Strange to relate, Cleon did bring back 
 the Spartans to Athens. History, as they say, repeats 
 itself. And demagogues do have their triumphs — for 
 an hour. 
 
 The more trustworthy parts of von Ruville's book 
 will be found in his third volume when he is treating 
 of Chatham's second ministry, of his title, and reasons 
 for retiring to the House of Lords, his mysterious 
 illness, and his own domestic Hfe. In all these the 
 Prussian archivist is accurately informed, and may be 
 read with profit. In the unclouded happiness of his 
 marriage it would be difficult to go wrong. It may 
 be that the new biographer adds almost nothing which 
 is not already common knowledge. But it is well to 
 have British judgments confirmed by independent 
 testimony. The pathetic story of Chatham's long- 
 drawn failure under the pressure of a cruel malady and 
 impracticable conditions is well and faithfully described 
 by von Ruville — though it seems to us strange how 
 the last page of this elaborate work should describe 
 Chatham as great only " in action " — for his " great- 
 ness did not lie in his home or foreign policy." We 
 must all live and learn. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 
 1909 
 
 Ten years have passed since I made bold to claim for 
 Tennyson a special rank of his own among our 
 English poets : one without rival during the long 
 Victorian era, and during the amazing period of his 
 creative work, which was prolonged for sixty years. 
 It is twenty years since he published the last of these 
 fascinating volumes, and we may now judge his place 
 in the glorious roll of our island singers free from the 
 glamour of his melody, without favour, partisanship, 
 or fear of offence. 
 
 Again I make bold to insist that Tennyson still 
 reigns in our hearts as alone the peer of Byron, Shelley, 
 Keats, and Wordsworth. No others since Words- 
 worth's death in 1850, since his long silence for many 
 previous years, can pretend to stand beside these four 
 in the first half of the nineteenth century -, and, in the 
 second half of the century, Tennyson alone is of their 
 rank. To-day, in this centenary of his birth, I wish 
 to consider two questions : What is Tennyson's place 
 in relation to these four earlier poets ? What is his 
 place in the roll of all our poets since Chaucer ? 
 
 Sound judgment insists that poets, Hke all writers 
 (except perhaps the moral philosophers), have to be 
 284 
 
CH. XV CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 285 
 
 judged by their successes, not by their failures — by 
 their splendid triumphs rather than by any calculable 
 average or sum total of their product. All our poets 
 (except Milton and Gray) published poetry that v^^e 
 can well do without, and, with the exception of 
 Milton, for I will not disown Paradise Regained^ they 
 have all left poems which are sadly inferior to their 
 own best. This, alas, is true even of Chaucer and 
 of Spenser — nay, even of Shakespeare himself ; at least, 
 of some plays which bear his name. As to Byron, 
 Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth (not to speak of 
 Dryden or of Pope and their schools and imitators; 
 to say nothing of Cowper and Crabbe, their imitators 
 and their schools), they have all left us poems which 
 have truly irritating defects. 
 
 Byron, who, with all his sins, was our greatest 
 poetic force since Milton, was the worst offender 
 against the form of poetry, with his incurable habit of 
 breaking out into ragged doggerel and conventional 
 rhetoric. Shelley, again, who is conspicuously free 
 from these crimes, too often becomes so vague, trans- 
 cendental, and impalpable that one must be an esoteric 
 illuminis.t to absorb the rays from so distant a star. 
 Matthew Arnold for once quite broke his divining rod 
 of criticism when he called Shelley an "ineffectual 
 angel." But we do feel sometimes that Shelley was a 
 truant angel who had lost his way, or rather was lost to 
 human ken in the far-off empyrean. Nor had Shelley, 
 with all his radiant light, the Titanic fire of Byron. 
 
 Poor Keats died prematurely before he had brought 
 to full ripeness his matchless gifts, and they still 
 unearth and reissue stuff of his which were raw 
 experiments, or which should never meet the public 
 eyes. Then, dear old Wordsworth, who in his best 
 hour could wing his way beside Milton himself, would 
 drone on for days and months together in insufferable 
 
286 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 commonplace. Yet, for all their misfires, Byron, 
 Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth were glorious poets. 
 In judging poetry we must not weigh it by the ton as 
 if it were a cartload of bricks ; nor must failures be 
 allowed to detract from successes. We must take 
 account of nothing but the best. 
 
 Now, it is the peculiar distinction of Tennyson 
 that, in spite of his immense product, as great as that 
 of Byron or of Wordsworth, he is never ragged, 
 obscure, raw, or tiresome. His consummate taste 
 and refined ear saved him from ever sinking into 
 vulgarity, commonplace, or a cloudland of melodious 
 words, which were the favourite sins of Byron, of 
 Wordsworth, of Shelley, and of Keats. 
 
 We might even say more than this, if we could 
 only blot out some Primrose League catches and the 
 monstrous sixteen-syllable Hnes of his decline. But 
 for these we might say that Tennyson shares with 
 Milton the high privilege of never committing 
 / himself to verses which have no trace of poetic form. 
 Of all our poets Milton alone can be said never to have 
 published lines unworthy of a poet — lines having 
 neither melody, distinction, nor grace. We may say 
 this of Shelley, if we grant that a poet may be cryptic 
 or cloying at his own sweet will. In all this 
 Tennyson ranks with Milton and Shelley, who alone 
 of poets never stumble into uncouth prose. It is a 
 great distinction to have produced some 60,000 Hnes 
 all of which have been polished with uniform 
 judgment. 
 
 This is a rare distinction, but its value must not 
 be overstated. In our estimate of poetry we must 
 avoid the reckoning up blunders such as examiners 
 score with blue pencil and use to subtract marks. 
 If we did, loose-tongued, hot-headed Byron would 
 be left at the bottom of the list. We have to take 
 
CH. XV CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 287 
 
 into account the sum of the truly fine things given 
 us by the poet, the amount, variety, and range of the 
 fine things, the permanent harvest of beauty, power, 
 and insight contained in them, of a kind which is 
 independent of place, time, or fashion. And in 
 weighing it in this measure we have to admit that 
 uniform grace and polish do not constitute in them- 
 selves a claim to the highest rank of poetry. If so, 
 Gray would stand next after Milton. In the Day 
 of Judgment, they tell us, gross offences may be 
 forgiven for the sake of transcendent merits, which 
 will outweigh a long life of decorous virtue such as 
 needs no expiation. 
 
 For this reason the polished perfection of 
 Tennyson's vast product could not raise him to a rank 
 above that of Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth, 
 and almost to a par with Milton, unless his best work 
 were greater than their best. In the heyday of his 
 popularity with aesthetic graduates of both sexes, and 
 with the hot zealots of Church and State, this 
 perfection of polish was thought to raise him to a 
 trio with Shakespeare and Milton. And he himself, 
 perhaps, would not have very stoutly resented such 
 homage. But the time is past for such ephemeral 
 adulation. Tennyson will hold rank with the best 
 poets of the nineteenth century ; but he is certainly 
 not in any class above them. 
 
 Turn first to Byron. Byron's best lovers ruefully 
 admit that he had a tempestuous way of throwing off 
 his thoughts roughcast — that he always wrote at a 
 white heat, and too often left his first drafts un- 
 corrected 5 that he sometimes descended to rant, 
 jingle, and ribaldry. It is a grievous fault — and 
 grievously has Byron answered it. His whole immense 
 output was made not in sixty but in little more than 
 fifteen years. For four or five years he poure4 out 
 
288 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 poems at the scandalous rate of some hundreds of 
 lines each day. This is no sort of excuse for a poet's 
 indifference to poetic form. And if he had never 
 done justice to his gifts, it would be decisive against 
 Byron's claim to be a great poet. But it is not so. 
 He often did do justice to his genius, in form as well 
 as in thought. Many parts of Childe Harold^ of 
 Don Juan^ of Manfred^ of the lyrics, even of the 
 early romances, are as full of metrical charm as of 
 noble imagination. If we were to sacrifice two- 
 thirds of his hasty work, we should still have a rich 
 volume of fine poetry. 
 
 In his hours of true inspiration Byron proved 
 himself to be a master of poetic form, in pure lyrics, 
 in lyrical drama, in romantic, picturesque, passionate, 
 and satiric verse. But his claim to high poetic rank 
 lies in the imaginative power of the man. Those 
 who will not admit him to be a poet at all admit 
 the magnetism of his personal force. He had that 
 rare creative genius which belongs to those who have 
 stirred whole ages and diverse races. There is a 
 curious French phrase which hits off this quality : 
 "he had fire in his belly." With all his ribaldry and 
 pose, Byron had flashes of that fire which burned in 
 King David, in ^schylus, in Dante, and in Milton. 
 He had the power which created new epochs in 
 Greece, in Italy, which still, after nearly a hundred 
 years, continues to resound in France, in Germany, 
 in Scandinavia, in Russia, and in America. He literally 
 created Greece as a nation ; and he must be counted 
 as one of the founders of Italian independence. 
 Manfred has in it a sort of Dantesque vision of Man 
 and Destiny which lifts it above any similar English 
 poem of the nineteenth century, and places it beside 
 Faust^ as Goethe so justly and generously felt. Tens 
 of thousands of cultivated men and women in Europe 
 
CH. XV CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 289 
 
 and in America delight in Byron, while they never 
 heard of Keats and never read a line of Wordsworth 5 
 and some fastidious critics tell us that is because 
 Byron is " obvious." Byron is obvious in the sense 
 of not being obscure ; indeed, Horace or Pope is not 
 more perfectly intelligible and direct. But it is not 
 poetic mastery to be able to construct enigmas in 
 verse ; and it is one of the fads of our time to vaunt 
 the industrious interpretation of metrical cryptograms. 
 
 Byron, after nearly a hundred years, is known 
 throughout the civilised world. He is even a national 
 poet both in Italy and in Greece. He has spoken to 
 the hearts as well as to the imagination of whole 
 races : he strikes light and heat out of everything he 
 touches : he moves the thought and warms the spirit 
 as only an original genius can. It is affectation to 
 tell us that the man who does this is not a poet 
 because he flung off a good deal of scrambling stuff 
 which he ought to have burnt. 
 
 It is an ancient jest that Childe Harold is only 
 Baedeker in rhyme, and that his Greek lyrics are 
 artificial heroics. Why, half the sense of mysterious 
 antiquity and poetic colour which the nineteenth 
 century felt for Italy — all the passion it felt for the 
 Alps — was due to Byron, who did for the English and 
 for Americans what Goethe did for Germans and 
 Madame de Stael and Rousseau did for the French. 
 As to love of the sea, no verse has ever done so much 
 as Byron's. Greek patriotism is literally the creation 
 of Byron, for to every Hellene Byron is what Burns 
 is to every Scot. This power of Byron to fuse his 
 ideas into whole races places him as the first in 
 rank, as he is the first in time, of the poets of the 
 nineteenth century. In this palpable historic force, 
 neither Shelley, nor Keats, nor Wordsworth approach 
 Byron. Their reputation is strictly English : Byron's 
 
 u 
 
290 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 is European. They are read only by the cultivated, 
 Byron by all. Now, we cannot assign to Tennyson 
 either the European vogue or the universal popularity 
 which for nearly a hundred years Byron has possessed. 
 
 We must not be misled by Swinburne's spasmodic 
 reviling of Byron. His mouthing in praise of Marlowe 
 and in abuse of Byron is a type of that ill-balanced 
 partisan criticism which does so much harm. Never 
 trust a poet to judge a poet, nor a painter to judge a 
 picture. They have loves and hates of their own 
 manner or pet fancy. Now, Morley's estimate of 
 Byron is far more broad and just. Swinburne had 
 an exquisite sense of melody, albeit of a somewhat 
 languorous and monotonous note. Indeed, he often 
 indulged in what schoolboys call " nonsense verses " — 
 lines which would scan but mean nothing. Our age 
 is too prone to value the grace and music of mere 
 words rather than thought, passion, and vision. It is 
 a sign of a pedant's affectation to take Swinburne to 
 be a greater poet than Byron. And for the same 
 reason we must not allow Tennyson's exquisite form 
 to blind us to the mass, the variety, the electric shock 
 of Byron's thunder-peal. 
 
 When w^e weigh Byron in this scale — taking 
 account of his mass, variety, and fire, and, above all 
 his power over men of different race and language — it 
 is impossible to place Tennyson above him. Tenny- 
 son is purely, permanently English — nor do Scotland, 
 Wales, Ireland, much less the Alps, the Apennines, 
 Rome, Venice, Athens, the Atlantic, or the ^gean, 
 ever wring from him a cry of love and joy. Can we 
 suppose that a century hence Englishmen will chant 
 their Tennyson as Scots chant Burns, or as Italians 
 and Greeks still worship Byron ? Byron, Shelley, and 
 Keats lived in worlds of antique mystery and passion, 
 of broadly European nature, of the manifold humanity 
 
cH.xv CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 291 
 
 common to all men of any tongue who care for 
 imaginative work. Tennyson's " measured language " 
 and "sad mechanic exercise," however beautiful and 
 enchanting, belong exclusively to English homes, 
 rectories, colleges, and cathedral closes — are eminently 
 local, insular, and academic. No, it is only in the 
 Fellows' common-room and in country parsonages 
 that Tennyson is still held to be the typical poet of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 Nor can any true lover of poetry rank Tennyson 
 above Shelley. For, in the first place, Shelley has a 
 polish of form at least equal to that of Tennyson, if 
 we allow for the accidents of Shelley's text. And the 
 true lover of poetry finds in Prometheus^ in Hellas^ in 
 the West Wind^ in the Skylark a melodious thrill such 
 as not only Tennyson never sounded, but no English 
 poet save Shakespeare and Milton alone. It is true 
 that there is a great deal of Shelley which is too subtle 
 and too ethereal for "the general," and perhaps will 
 ever remain the privilege of the cultured few, and for 
 the most part of English race. 
 
 Shelley has no small measure of Byron's human and 
 social enthusiasm, of his passion for the splendour and 
 majesty of Nature, of that trumpet-note of humanity, 
 of that vision of a regenerate future, which in Byron 
 redeem his many sins against true taste. If Shelley 
 did not impose his personality upon his age as did 
 Byron, he was undoubtedly a far more consummate 
 master of his poetic instrument. And in this he must 
 be counted as even superior to Tennyson j whilst it 
 would be difficult to produce any important addition 
 to English poetry in the veteran Victorian poet which 
 we could not match in the earlier Georgian poet, cut 
 off in his prime. To rank Tennyson above Shelley 
 would be to rank him also above Byron. And yet, 
 with all his faultless metrical resources, Tennyson 
 
292 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 wants the intellectual force of Byron and the intellectual 
 distinction of Shelley. 
 
 The case is different with Keats ; for Keats himself 
 is only a promise, and his small volume of poems is 
 itself but a fragment. We must never forget that 
 what we prize of Keats was written before he was 
 twenty-four — at an age before Milton had written 
 Lycidas or Shakespeare had written Venus and Adonis. 
 As I said once, Keats was " an unformed, untrained, 
 neuropathic youth of genius whose whole achievement 
 came earlier in life than that of almost any other man 
 recorded in our literature, indeed in any literature." 
 It is rather irritating to find some neuropathic critics 
 of our decadence asserting that Keats's really magical 
 gift for poetic form — a gift that reminds us of that of 
 Sappho or Theocritus — was enough to constitute him 
 a poet of the first rank. Keats will always be to us a 
 great "Perhaps" — one who might have been one knows 
 not what — s'l qua fata aspera rumpat. Yet, whatever 
 the wonderful promise of the hapless youth, neither 
 his range of vision, nor his force, nor his intellect were 
 such as to place him in the foremost rank. The large 
 achievement, the serious thought, and the inexhaustible 
 fancy of Tennyson are of an altogether different order 
 and appeal to a far maturer mind. , 
 
 We more easily compare Tennyson with Words- 
 worth. Both had very longlife, wholly and solely devoted 
 to the poetic art ; they were essentially poets of Nature ; 
 both given to meditation, moral and religious musing 
 rather than to action ; both have exercised a permanent 
 influence over the poetic ideal of their age. Words- 
 worth carried his love of solitary musing and of rustic 
 simplicity to a point where they often degenerated 
 into tiresome reiteration and even laughable banality ; 
 whilst Tennyson's unerring taste kept him free from 
 such vexatious commonplace. The most ardent 
 
CH. XV CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 293 
 
 Words worthians agree to leave out of account no 
 small part of Wordsworth's immense product ; whilst 
 no loyal Tennysonian would imitate their example. 
 Though Tennyson published much which is not 
 equal to his best, he never wearies us with truly un- 
 readable prosing as does Wordsworth. Yet Words- 
 worth's best is of an order quite as high as is Tennyson's 
 best. To say the truth, I turn more often to the 
 Excursion than to In Memoriam ; and there are 
 sonnets, odes, and lyrics of Wordsworth which I 
 would not sacrifice even to save the Idylls^ Maud^ and 
 lyrics of Tennyson's early and best manner. 
 
 Neither Coleridge, nor Scott, nor Burns, nor Camp- 
 bell, nor Landor belong to the first rank as poets, 
 however ardent be our delight in their special triumphs. 
 The Ancient Mariner^ Christabel^ and a few lyrics and 
 hymns are a joy for ever ; but the sum of Coleridge's 
 muse is neither full enough nor powerful enough to 
 place him beside Byron, Shelley, or Tennyson. Burns 
 is so exclusively national, and Scott is so entirely the 
 romancist, that we do not count either as in the fore- 
 most roll of English poetry, with all the exquisite 
 ring of their lovely songs and ballads. And Campbell, 
 Landor, and some others who have left us memorable 
 things have not given us enough in measure and in 
 power to place them amongst the greatest names of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 The twentieth century will adjudge this rank to 
 Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats, and beyond 
 question Tennyson will be held to be their peer. 
 Their peer, I say, not their superior ; or, if superior 
 to any one of the four, to Keats, on the ground that 
 his work is fragmentary and immature. But I cannot 
 believe that any other poet of the second half of the 
 century will permanently be placed beside the great 
 men of the first half. Our beloved Robert Browning 
 
294 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 belongs in a sense to the first as well as to the second 
 half of the nineteenth century ; and, though he 
 touches at times on Byron's and on Shelley's themes, 
 he must be counted rather of the later Victorian 
 world. By the " later Victorian world " I mean that 
 of subtle, psychologic, analytic conception, of elaborately 
 minted phrase, and daring metrical experiments. 
 
 Browning had rare genius, a keen and broad view 
 of life, masculine philosophy, creative power ; and in 
 these gifts he was more akin to Byron than was 
 Tennyson. We need not deny the contention 
 of ardent Browningites that his mental force was 
 both deeper and more robust than that of Tennyson. 
 But a poet needs not only mental force but unique 
 form, melody, grace, the inevitable and unforgettable 
 word which gives wings to his thought. Browning 
 has given us now and then a ballad and a lyric of 
 glorious music, apparently to show us that he could 
 write musical verse when he deigned to humour us. 
 But a great poet does hot bury profound ideas in 
 cryptograms that we have to unravel as if they were 
 puzzle - locks, nor does he twist and torture the 
 King's English into queer vocables that raise a 
 smile. 
 
 We have just lost two men of genius, both of 
 whom were typical examples of the later Victorian 
 world — though in quite opposite veins. Meredith 
 was a brilHant novelist rather than a poet ; and all he 
 had to say in poetry — and he had the poetic soul 
 — would have been more truly said in prose. Nature 
 had denied him an ear for music in verse, to which 
 he seems insensible, just as Beethoven's deafness never 
 permitted him to hear his own magnificent symphonies. 
 For all its subtlety and originality, Meredith's verse 
 is unreadable by reason of its intolerable cacophony. 
 I doubt if he ever wrote a piece which would have 
 
CH. XV CENTENARY OF TENNYSON 295 
 
 satisfied Tennyson's infallible sense of harmonious 
 rhythm. 
 
 Swinburne, on the other hand, with a singular 
 gift for harmonious rhythm, seemed to regard this 
 quality as the be-all and end-all of poetry. For my 
 part, I cannot feel that he ever added much after he 
 first burst upon the world with the splendid promise 
 of his Atalanta in 1865, though for more than forty 
 years he continued to publish poems. His marvellous 
 metrical agility, the melodious piping in honied words 
 "long-drawn-out," the apparently inexhaustible foun- 
 tain of harmonies at his command, all this for a time 
 is fascinating. But ere long the flow of meUifluous 
 epithets and of haunting rhymes begins to pall on us. 
 The verse lives in a tarantula of alliteration, assonance, 
 consonance, and artful concatenation of sounds. It 
 is very beautiful ; but at last it becomes monotonous, 
 cloying, a mannerism. And what does it all come^ 
 to in the end ? What is there to think out ? What 
 does it mean ? For what is all this passion ? And 
 why do these interminable sonatas never end — or_j 
 why, indeed, should they end ? Only in the 
 decadence of a silver age could Swinburne be placed 
 in a rank with Tennyson. 
 
 If neither Browning nor Swinburne will hereafter 
 take rank with Tennyson, surely no others of his 
 contemporaries or successors will do so. Let us have 
 done with cliques, and schools, and fads ! For my 
 part I honour and enjoy them all in turn ; but I 
 will not let my honour or my delight blind me to 
 defects in those I love ; nor will a balanced judgment 
 suffer me to exalt a favourite for some conspicuous 
 charm. Shakespeare and Milton stand apart in a 
 world of their own, without rival or peer — hors 
 concours — for they are the poets not of English 
 literature but of all literature. Chaucer and Spenser 
 
296 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 are more honoured than read ; the men of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are more read 
 than honoured. And we now feel sure that Tennyson 
 will hold an honoured place with the great names of 
 the nineteenth century — not above them, hardly 
 below them, but finally enrolled in their glorious 
 company. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THYSIA 
 
 1908 
 
 There lately came to my hands, from one wholly 
 unknown to me even by name, a tiny volume of 
 thirty-five sonnets, which I hold to be of exquisite 
 quality and of origin quite unique. They are the 
 groans of a bereaved husband for the loss of a beloved 
 wife — written day by day in presence of her last illness, 
 of her dead body, of her burial, and the first desolation 
 of his old home. There is in these daily devotions a 
 poignant ring, a vivid reality, an intense realism, which 
 mark them ofF from all literary elegies of any kind. 
 And as being the consecration of married love in rare 
 form, I judge them to have a truly unique origin. 
 To my ear their language has a melody and a purity 
 such as few living poets surpass. 
 
 The intensity of passion felt on such a bereavement 
 by a sensitive nature is unhappily far from rare. And 
 perhaps many a cultivated spirit has sought to express 
 such grief in words. But the world has not seen 
 these outpourings of soul j or they have been composed 
 when years have passed to veil the keenness of sorrow. 
 The elegies which live in immortal poetry record a 
 friend, a lover, a genius, or a hero, as do the undying 
 lines of Dante or of Petrarch, of Shelley or of Tennyson. 
 297 
 
298 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 When Milton in his dream saw his " late espoused 
 Saint brought to him like Alcestis from the grave," he 
 unluckily reminded us of Admetus, who was not an 
 heroic husband. Indeed, since the lovely sonnets 
 of Rossetti, I cannot recall any poem written by a 
 bereaved husband in the very presence of the coffin 
 and the grave of an adored wife, in which he has so 
 laid bare the extremity of his despair. 
 
 Now, the quality of these sonnets which stirred me 
 before I had read three of them was their directness of 
 stroke, the simplicity of speech, scorning the least 
 concession to literary colour. Without ornament, 
 trope, image, or any artificial grace, they have that 
 pathos inscribed on marble in the best Greek epitaphs. 
 They remind me of that wailing elegy on Atthis of 
 Cnidos — also by an unknown author — could the author 
 be any but her husband ? — 
 
 *Ayva, 7rovXvy6r]T€, ri Trevdu/xov virvov laveis 
 dvSpbs dirh crTcpviov ov7roT€ Oeta-a Kapa 
 
 Geiov iprjjJLoycracra tov ovkgtl ' aol yap es "AiSav 
 -^XOov 6/JLOv ^(j)ds ikirtSes a/ACTC/oas.^ 
 
 Had these reiterating dirges of a present sorrow — 
 ringing slowly with the monotone of a funeral bell — 
 had they been less simple, direct, and chiselled in form, 
 they would have been painful. We should shrink from 
 being in the presence of such agony, in touch with a 
 living soul so broken, so hopeless, face to face with all 
 the realities of such a fate. But the words in their 
 stern self-restraint, their dignified self-abandonment, in 
 their quiet disdain of art, seem to me to have a true 
 art of their own. 
 
 1 It is Epitaph LI. in Mr. Mackail's beautiful collection. " Atthis, 
 holy one, much bewept, how is it that thou art sleeping the sad sleep, 
 thou who never yet pillowed thy head away from the bosom of thy 
 husband, thou who hast left desolate thy Theius to a living death ? For 
 with thee all hope of my living has passed into outer darkness." 
 
CH. XVI THYSIA 299 
 
 Nor could we endure to have these elegies prolonged ; 
 for the very note of them is to avoid all thoughts 
 extraneous to the ever-present sense of bereavement and 
 loneliness. But in a very short collection of sonnets 
 the sense of continuous and abiding grief is deeply 
 impressive. When I received a copy of these poems 
 — I know not from whom — I wrote through the 
 publisher to the author to express my interest, and to 
 urge him to complete and revise the series. This he 
 has now done and has issued them in an enlarged edition. 
 They now form forty-five sonnets, each of fourteen 
 lines. Nearly all belong to the few months past 
 since the grave was closed.^ The author insists on 
 keeping his personality strictly undisclosed. 
 
 The close of the first sonnet sounds the theme of 
 the requiem music which is extended in the order of an 
 elaborate ^^a^ : 
 
 O love, my love long since, my love to be, 
 
 O living love, for evermore my own, 
 Mine in the spaces of eternity, 
 
 Mine in the worlds that circle round God's throne. 
 Mine by dear human love's sealed benison, 
 And mine by His vast love in whom all love is one. 
 
 In the Prelude (No. ii.) the poet replies to one who 
 doubted if so sombre a monotone were not to place 
 bonds on art. His heart is with the nightingale — not 
 with the lark. He feels the glory of the morning bird 
 on high — but his own song is attuned to the songster 
 of the night : 
 
 Twin songs there are, of joyance, or of pain j 
 One of the morning lark in midmost sky. 
 
 When falls to earth a mist, a silver rain, 
 A glittering cascade of melody ; 
 
 1 T/iysia : An Elegy. New Edition, by Morton Luce. Enlarged. 
 (George Bell & Sons, 1908. izmo.) 
 
300 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 And mead and wold and the wide heaven rejoice, 
 
 And praise the Maker ; but alone I kneel 
 In sorrowing prayer. Then wanes the day ; a voice 
 
 Trembles along the dusk, till peal on peal 
 It pierces every living heart that hears. 
 
 Pierces and burns and purifies like fire ; 
 Again I kneel under the starry spheres, 
 
 And all my soul seems healed, and lifted higher, 
 Nor could that jubilant song of day prevail 
 Like thine of tender grief, O Nightingale. 
 
 The whole series of poems belongs to the solitary 
 voice that " trembles along the dusk." 
 
 To the world which is so prone to look for 
 enjoyment he says : 
 
 Even as a bird when he has lost his mate 
 
 Fills all the grove with his melodious wrong. 
 
 So I, who mourn a grief more passionate, 
 To you, O world, address my harsher song ; 
 
 Yet scorn it not ; sing with me, if ye will ; 
 My sorrow is your sorrow — yours my hope. 
 
 It was in the spring of last year that the signs of 
 mortal illness were too plain to be denied. She still 
 lived (Sonnet v.) : 
 
 Her one poor hand holds a resplendent prize 
 The one white violet I digged at morn. 
 
 As the year grew, the summer brought back the 
 rose to her cheek, and to the husband's heart the hope 
 that the bitterness of death was past : 
 
 Near where the violets grew, as days went by, 
 I found a budding hope, and bore it home. 
 
 The end came on the 27th of November (Sonnet 
 vii.) : 
 
 I watch beside you in your silent room ; 
 
 Without, the chill rain falls, life dies away. 
 The dead leaves drip, and the fast gathering gloom 
 Closes around this brief November day. 
 
CH. XVI THYSIA 301 
 
 First day of holy death, of sacred rest — 
 
 Dear heart, I linger but a little space, 
 
 Sweet wife, I come to your new world ere long. 
 
 Between death and funeral the stricken man cries 
 out : 
 
 Relentless Death, could you not spare me this ? 
 
 Could you not strike at me — your happiest stroke ? 
 
 I only live, where all is yours, O Death. 
 
 On the last day of November comes the funeral 
 (Sonnet ix.) : 
 
 The sun sinks with a visage of despair, 
 
 And freezing vapours like a nightmare fall 5 
 
 Death on the earth beneath, Death in the air. 
 Where the bell tolls, and heaven is one vast pall. 
 
 He returns home to his " barren house left desolate " 
 to feel himself now indeed Alone (Sonnet x.) : 
 
 The bier, the bell, the grave, silence, and night 
 And you are laid in that cold ground, and gone ? 
 
 But over it the affrighted stars will shiver, 
 
 And the world weep, and the wind moan for ever. 
 
 Weeks pass, and Christmas Day arrives, but it 
 brings no joy nor rest : 
 
 No Christmas bells I hear ; one slow bell rings 
 Its monotone of death within my breast. 
 
 He seeks change of scene by the seashore : 
 
 ^^ 8' oLKeoyv TTapa Olva 7ro\vcf}XoL(T/3oio OaXdarcrqs^ 
 
 but he wanders " back to the Httle home he left 
 forlorn," his '' weary feet turn from the sullen 
 sea." 
 
 There is a cruel picture of The Deserted Home 
 (Sonnet xii.) : 
 
302 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 I watch within your silent room once more ; 
 
 Without, the dead leaf shivers in the blast ; 
 Your broken comb, your glove are on the floor, 
 
 The cold clouds see them, and they shudder past, 
 Startled they look upon the empty bed, 
 
 The vacant chair, the couch lert desolate, 
 The dying flowers that saw you lying dead. 
 
 And me, who bow beneath my sorrow's weight, 
 Who only hear that bell's sad monotone — 
 " Alone, alone, for evermore alone." 
 
 The wedding day comes round, but only adds a 
 new pang (Sonnet xiii.) : 
 
 My voice but tears, my music but a moan. 
 And my last wish in your lone grave to sleep. 
 
 He unexpectedly discovers her portrait : 
 
 I kiss your silent lips, sad, sad relief, — 
 
 Ah ! God, for those sweet words they used to say. 
 
 The New Year has no message of relief (Sonnet 
 xvi.) : 
 
 Comes the New Year ; wailing the north winds blow ; 
 
 In her cold, lonely grave my dead love lies ; 
 Dead lies the stiffiened earth beneath the snow, 
 
 And blinding sleet blots out the desolate skies. 
 I stand between the living and the dead ; 
 
 Hateful to me is life, hateful is death. 
 
 Sorrow grows only more real by time (Sonnet 
 xviii.) : 
 
 Weeks pass : I stand beside your grave again j 
 
 Yet is my agony not less, but more. 
 And like a river widening to the main. 
 
 Deeper it flows, if calmer than before. 
 
 Two snowdrops lift their white heads from the clay ; 
 They come like ghosts of buried memories. 
 
CH. XVI THYSIA 303 
 
 It is again Early Spring (Sonnet xxi.) : 
 
 Alone I wander forth in early spring, 
 
 And tell my sorrow to each tender flower j 
 
 By that dear bank where the white violets grew, 
 The violets slept beneath, as she sleeps now. 
 
 The first part of the collection, entitled Death and 
 Love — the strictly funeral part — closes with Sonnet 
 xxv.j inscribed Our Grave. I must cite it entire 
 from its simple purity of thought, and to my ear an 
 exquisite melody in the minor key : 
 
 Where the bird warbles earliest, and new light 
 
 Wakes the first buds of spring ; where breezes sleep 
 Or sigh with pity half the summer night, 
 
 While the pale loving stars look down to weep, 
 There lies our grave ; a slender plot of ground 
 
 'Tis all of earth we own ; no cross ; no tree. 
 Nothing to mark it, but a little mound ; 
 
 But there my darling stays ; she waits for me, 
 The lily in her hand j and when I come 
 
 She will be glad to greet me, and will say, 
 " Your lily, dearest, gives you welcome home." 
 
 But ah ! dear Lord, I hunger with delay ; 
 Tell me, blest Lord, shall I have long to wait ? 
 For I must haste, or she will think me late. 
 
 To the first part of the poem there is now added 
 a second part — the utterance of a grief more chastened 
 and at last lighted up with sure hope of bHssful reunion 
 in the world to come. For this writer is profoundly 
 saturated with reHgious faith in a future Hfe. He is 
 now sure that the parting will not be for long : 
 
 So listen, love, to this sad threnody, 
 
 This song of death by one who soon must die. 
 
 He continues to dwell in memory on the loving 
 nature of her whom he has lost — "thy way was 
 sweet self-sacrifice" — he revisits the grave and 
 
304 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 " marvels at the summer flowers " which surround 
 it. He recalls their wedding and the first rapture 
 of their married life, the incidents of their existence 
 in one soul, and the anniversaries of each birthday, 
 wedding day, and journeys together. In early summer 
 her birthday is come ; he will rise and gather once 
 again 
 
 The summer posy that she knew so well. 
 
 He calls aloud to her favourite flowers : 
 
 So, orchis, come, and woodbine, as of old ; 
 
 Come to my darling, each fair flower that blows ; 
 Cowslip and meadow-cress, and marigold, 
 
 The last sweet bluebell and the first sweet rose. 
 
 Then the flowers listen and answer joyfully : 
 
 We come, we come : O lead us to our Queen, 
 But the sad poet replies : 
 
 Nay, gentle flowers, my weary steps must rove, 
 And lay you on the grave of her you love. 
 
 He meditates on the full meaning of the maxim 
 to which the lives of both were devoted : 
 
 There's nothing we can call our own but Love. 
 
 He realises more fully than ever that in mutual 
 love alone can the true path of life be found, as also 
 the essential power of true religion : 
 
 Love is self-giving ; therefore love is God. 
 
 This meditation leads the poet on to a fine sonnet 
 on immortality, beginning : 
 
 Hear, O Self-giver, infinite as good, 
 
 The series of sonnets then passes into a strictly 
 devotional tone — on the spiritual meaning of a sacred 
 
CH. XVI THYSIA 305 
 
 sorrow, on the regenerating power of such trials of 
 the heart : 
 
 Hope humbly, then, sad heart, through all thy pain j 
 Yea, choose thy sorrow as thy chiefest gain. 
 
 He acknowledges at last 
 
 By pain alone is wisdom perfected. 
 
 He now dedicates his verses to Truth^ Sorrow^ 
 Faith^ Hope. Even a sleepless night has its message 
 to the soul as he gazes on the spangled sky and 
 notes 
 
 The tranquil march of heaven's majesty, 
 
 •and so the constellations above suggest an unlimited 
 and unending aspiration of good to be : 
 
 Yea, like the night, my dream of infinite good 
 Is beautiful with stars in multitude. 
 
 But, at last, as the poem closes, hope, and the just 
 resolution to work out the appointed time of life, take 
 the place of despair and the hunger for death. And 
 in the final sonnet — addressed To the Lord God — the 
 poet manfully declares that he " will not rest before 
 the grave " : 
 
 Let me fight on ; teach me to choose Thy way. 
 
 And find eternal peace in her dear love and Thine. 
 
 As will have been observed, the forty-five sonnets 
 are all cast in the familiar English form — not in the 
 lovely, but for us impossible, Italian type. It is the 
 scheme of Shakespeare's sonnets ; and clearly that is 
 the rhythm which the poet has kept before him as his 
 ideal. One who has read the brief extracts in this 
 paper will have seen the rare gift of melody which 
 
3o6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. n 
 
 they show. It was his fine sense of music which 
 arrested my own attention when the humble volume 
 first came into my hands. But I will cite one or 
 two detached lines which to my ear ring with a true 
 poignant thrill. 
 
 Take these lines of autumn season : 
 
 Hark ! how it mourns around the empty folds, 
 Or sighs amid the ruined marigolds. 
 
 To my mind the sonnet entitled Vespers (xxvi.) 
 opens with a quatrain of exquisite modulation : 
 
 I love to watch the sunset gold grow dim 
 On the lone peak of some enchanted fell, 
 
 To catch the murmur of a vesper hymn. 
 Or far-off lullaby of vesper bell. 
 
 What time the bird of woe through deepening shade, 
 Flutes his wild requiem o'er the buried sun. 
 
 And a stronger clarion is heard in the sonnet 
 entitled Woman (xxvii.), which opens thus : 
 
 Why do the ages celebrate in song, 
 
 Man, or the deeds of man, crowning with bays 
 
 The warrior, the oppressor, and the wrong, 
 And leave unsung woman's diviner praise ? 
 
 Of his own verses the poet speaks : 
 
 Like soft, recurrent moanings of the dove. 
 
 Or, again, his wreath of song is 
 
 The first to wither on the grave of Love. 
 
 It is too much the fashion of our day to require 
 in poetry a subtle involution of thought, cryptic 
 parables, the " curious felicity " — or rather the laborious 
 " curiosity " — of precious phrase, such as may rival the 
 ambiguity of a double acrostic in a lady's journal. 
 
CH. XVI THYSIA 307 
 
 There are some who will hardly count anything poetry 
 unless it need many a re-reading to unravel its inner 
 connotations. And for the sake of this subtlety, or 
 rather as a hall-mark of this superfine " mentality," as 
 they call it in their jargon, they desiderate an un- 
 couthness of diction, or at least a sputtering cacophony 
 of strident discords, that would 
 
 have made Quintilian stare and gasp. 
 
 For my part, I have no taste for conundrums 
 rhymed or un-rhymed. I will read no poetry that 
 does not tell me a plain tale in honest words, with 
 easy rhythm and pure music. The true pathos ever 
 speaks to us in simple utterance, not in tortured tropes 
 and mystical allusions, as Dante's 
 
 that day we read no more, 
 
 or Wordsworth's 
 
 and never lifted up a single stone. 
 
 I find this simple directness of speech in this un- 
 known poet. Every line has a meaning entirely 
 obvious and definite. It needs no commentary, no 
 second reading to unriddle it, no special society to 
 discover and to unfold its beauties. And its music is 
 that of Beethoven's Adela'ida^ or of Gluck's Orfeo — 
 Che farl senxa Eur i dice ? 
 
 It is sad — yes, it is bitterly sad — cruel in its fate ; 
 and yet how common, almost universal, in its bereave- 
 ment ! The world, I know, shrinks to-day from 
 anything that is sad. With ostrich-like folly it turns 
 its eyes away from what is painful. I know no worse 
 sign of moral weakness and childish frivolity than its 
 artificial shudder at all that is sad and tragic. 
 
 By pain alone is wisdom perfected. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE LIFE OF RUSKIN * 
 191 1 
 
 The enormous amount and variety of Ruskin's 
 writings, and the multiplicity of his undertakings, 
 made it inevitable that a full and authoritative Life 
 should be composed ; and it was also as entirely 
 right that the task should be entrusted to Mr. E. T. 
 Cook, Ruskin's pupil, friend, interpreter, and Editor 
 of the mighty "Library Edition" of his works in 
 thirty -eight volumes, with illustrations, facsimiles, 
 and masses of explanatory notes. 
 
 A hasty view might suggest that with the immense 
 amount of autobiographic and biographic matter 
 scattered through these thirty-eight volumes — to say 
 nothing of the thousand and one Lives, estimates, 
 criticisms, bibliographies, and illustrations of Ruskin 
 already before the world, there would be no place, and 
 perhaps no demand, for any new Life. It is certainly 
 not so. The fact that all this biographic material 
 about one of the most brilliant writers in English 
 literature — and certainly about an extraordinary genius 
 in the Victorian age — was so large and dispersed over 
 so many volumes made it necessary to put it all into 
 
 * The Life of Ruskin, by E. T. Cook. George Allen & Sons. 
 
CH. XVII THE LIFE OF RUSKIN 
 
 309 
 
 one book. The work had to be done — and no living 
 man but Mr. Cook could fitly do it. 
 
 There is another -quality which makes this book 
 both new and indispensable. For the first time the 
 biographer has had access to the Diaries and Letters 
 to his family and friends which Ruskin left behind 
 him. These no outside biographer or critic has ever 
 seen. Now, Ruskin's Diaries are unlike any known 
 diaries whatever. They contain some of the most 
 magnificent passages of eloquent prose that he ever 
 wrote. And, together with the unpublished Auto- 
 biographic Notes which he intended to use in future 
 books, and in the heaps of intimate revelations of his 
 spirit and his thoughts which he poured out in letters 
 to his relatives and his friends, they bring us nearer 
 to the real man than even the works in thirty-eight 
 volumes. The Diaries indeed are almost unique in 
 literature. Written for no eye but his own, without 
 a thought of publication, it would seem mainly to 
 disburden his soul of its troubles, its joys, or its hopes ; 
 they contain some of his most gorgeous descriptions 
 of nature and art ; and more than that, they put into 
 burning words the yearnings of his heart, in a way 
 that reminds us of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 
 or the Confessions of Saint Augustine. Armed with 
 these materials Mr. Cook has given us the complete 
 and final Life of Ruskin. 
 
 Now that we have this standard portrait of 
 Ruskin as writer, as thinker, and as man, the question 
 arises, if it has in any way altered or enlarged our 
 previous conception of his character and his influence. 
 It has deepened and vivified our conception, but it 
 has neither varied nor displaced it. The Ruskin of 
 191 1 is the "Graduate" of 1843, °^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ 
 in i860, of Praeterita in 1889. The twenty-two 
 years of research and all the revelations in the new 
 
310 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Diaries^ Notes^ and Letters^ of to-day have not at all 
 changed the Ruskin whom we knew. They only 
 make our memory of him more vivid, more complete. 
 The thoughtful reader of Mr. Cook's two volumes 
 should now be able to understand the mind, the 
 imaginings, the sorrows, the difficulties, the tempests, 
 the passions, the magnanimity, the loving heart, and 
 heroic temper of John Ruskin in a way perhaps more 
 intimate than of any other man of his crowded age. 
 
 This I make bold to say, being one of the few 
 living men who knew him and his father in i860 
 at Dulwich, and thenceforth down to his last years 
 at Brantwood, having written his Life, and sundry 
 Essays and Estimates, yet being wholly detached from 
 the inner circle of his disciples. My own short book 
 is an Estimate quite as much as a Life. Mr. Cook's 
 is a true biography, and if it touches on any judgment, 
 it is by way of explanation or defence. We who are 
 not esoteric followers may wish that all this had been 
 less evident ; but it is really a quite minor element 
 in the book, and much of it was clearly inevitable 
 in a devoted pupil and friend. 
 
 In a fine chapter Mr. Cook at last sums up his 
 conclusions as to the influence of Ruskin upon the 
 English and the foreign world, as art-critic, as social 
 reformer, and as moralist and prophet. I cannot 
 agree with an eminent critic who holds that the 
 biographer exaggerates and at times misconceives 
 Ruskin's influence both literary and social. For my 
 part, and I am indeed an impartial witness, seeing 
 that Ruskin was an unsparing opponent to the 
 school of thought in which I was bred, I find almost 
 the whole of Mr. Cook's judgments to be just and 
 instructive. He strikes the fundamental note of 
 Ruskin's career when he tells us that it proves a 
 close connection between his aesthetic and his economic 
 
CH. XVII THE LIFE OF RUSKIN 311 
 
 work. In a fine passage (ii. 579), Mr. Cook says 
 that it has been "a main theme of his Biography to 
 illustrate their intimate connection, both in Ruskin's 
 thought and in his deeds. It is this which gives 
 consistency to his life, system to his thought, and the 
 distinctive character to his writings. Art not for 
 art's sake, but art in relation to life ; art as the 
 exponent of individual and of national character j 
 life without industry as guilt, but industry without 
 art as brutality ; beauty in a world governed by 
 social justice : these are ideas implied in all Ruskin's 
 books." 
 
 There are a few points of a very intimate kind 
 wherein the new Biography adds to our knowledge — 
 at least it does so to me who knew Ruskin at home, 
 was in touch with him for nearly forty years, and 
 who has studied all he ever wrote. These points 
 are his personal affections, his religious history, and 
 his agonies of soul. We knew how Ruskin's parents 
 misunderstood and hampered him. We now know 
 that he felt it deeply himself, and even told his father 
 just before his death, that they had "thwarted him 
 in all the earnest fire of passion and life." We have 
 now also disclosed the true story of Ruskin's only 
 love. Allowing for the fact of a man of fifty loving 
 and proposing marriage, under his conditions, to a 
 beautiful girl of twenty, there is here the tale of a 
 real love and crushing sorrow lasting over a large part 
 of his life. 
 
 As to the course of his religious opinions, we 
 knew generally that he had passed through three 
 stages — early Puritan orthodoxy, vague scepticism, 
 and back to sincere, but mystical, faith. We now 
 have the precise colour of these transitions recorded 
 in private diaries and intimate letters. They are 
 personally interesting ; exactly what might be 
 
312 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 expected from his entourage and the nature of his 
 mind ; but from a philosophical point of view, quite 
 unimportant. One was aware of the "slough of 
 despond" into which Ruskin fell at times — but the 
 new letters and diaries reveal the intense agony he 
 endured, even in seasons of health, active work, and 
 pleasant surroundings. He was thirty -three and 
 enjoying Chamouni when he wrote : " It is so strange 
 to me to feel happy that it frightens me." " I feel 
 as if I were Hving in one great churchyard, with 
 people all round me clinging feebly to the edges of 
 open graves," he wrote at forty-eight. At fifty-seven, 
 after the death of his beloved Rose, he is oppressed by 
 "a quite terrible languor," to be soon followed, as 
 we know, by violent cerebral attacks. What else 
 could be the issue with a man who had seven books 
 in hand at once, and at fifty tells a friend of ten 
 separate tasks on which he was working ? " I have 
 too many irons in the fire," he said. Alas ! that 
 was the tragedy of his life. 
 
 One of the chief things we wish to learn about a 
 great writer is the way in which he worked ; and the 
 meticulous care of the biographer now makes it 
 perfectly clear. We all knew that Ruskin was one 
 of the most profuse writers recorded in literature ; 
 and it was natural to suppose that these perennial 
 floods of grand and passionate appeal on everything 
 in heaven or earth were improvised in haste and 
 thrown to the world in that spontaneous form. I 
 devoted a separate Essay to the study of Ruskin's 
 mastery over the genius of prose and his wonderful ear 
 for melody and cadence. Mr. Cook shows us from 
 letters and autograph manuscripts that this perfection 
 of form was the result of long and scrupulous study. 
 It makes the story of his style still more amazing. 
 What a lesson to some of us amateurs who tumble 
 
CH. XVII THE LIFE OF RUSKIN 313 
 
 out what we want to say just as it comes, and hardly 
 have the patience to correct a proof. The facsimile 
 of Ruskin's "copy" (i. 362) shows elaborate 
 revisions and erasures, and as to proofs, the printer 
 told his father that the bill for " corrections " would 
 absorb the profits. He revised Modern Painters as 
 Virgil revised the Mneid^ "Hcking the lines into 
 form as a she-bear licks her cubs." 
 
 Even to those who know the thirty-eight volumes 
 there will be found here many new things. At 
 first he was " disgusted " with St. Peter's, and 
 apparently with Rome and the Sistine. At Abbeville 
 he wrote : " I seem born to conceive what I cannot 
 execute, recommend what I cannot obtain, and mourn 
 over what I cannot save." He loves fish, " because 
 they always swim with their heads against the stream." 
 He was for a graduated income tax, and a super-tax. 
 He had an "utter loathing" for Maudle*s aesthetic 
 movement. To be without hope of a future life 
 "makes one braver and stronger" (1861). He is 
 "no Misanthrope, only a disappointed philanthropist." 
 His " religion is to be old Greek " — " it is entirely 
 certain, which is an immense comfort." His religion, 
 writes Mr. Cook (about 1874), "had become 'the 
 religion of humanity.'" In 1887 (age sixty-eight), 
 he was " a Christian Catholic in the wide and eternal 
 sense." To that intensely sensitive, imaginative, 
 humane spirit, all things spiritual and material were 
 passing to and fro as in an ever-moving panorama. 
 
CHAPTER XVIIl 
 
 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 
 1827-I908 
 
 As one of the surviving friends in England who knew 
 Eliot Norton for nigh upon half a century, having 
 been his host on more than one occasion in this 
 country, and also twice his guest in the home in which 
 he was born and in which he died in Massachusetts, I 
 venture to offer to all those whom he left to regret 
 him, both here and there, a few words of affectionate 
 remembrance. 
 
 I shall limit myself to my personal memories and 
 regard for the man ; for his varied writings and his 
 dominant literary influence have been so fully described 
 by others that it needs now no further praise. It is of 
 the man himself I wish to speak. For as friend, as 
 interpreter of movements and ideas, as host or as guest, 
 as an intellectual link between two continents as well 
 as between two nations, as for two generations a centre 
 of Anglo-American thought — Norton held a position 
 which, at least in the twentieth century, he came to 
 hold absolutely alone. 
 
 In old Greece there used to be at Athens, and other 
 republics, a citizen of high standing who was known 
 
 314 
 
CH. XVIII CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 315 
 
 as the Proxenos of some foreign State, whose duty it 
 was hospitably to welcome, advise, and assist foreign 
 visitors to Athens. The simple Proxenos held an 
 honorary, unofficial, friendly function, something 
 between that of a modern consul and an ambassador. 
 Now Norton came at last to be recognised as a sort of 
 volunteer minister for American literature in Europe, 
 and still more distinctly as Proxenos, or Consul- 
 General for British literature and men of letters in his 
 native State in America. 
 
 I had met Norton as a young man during his early 
 visits to England. But when he passed some months 
 at Keston, in Kent, it chanced that I was his neigh- 
 bour in the country. In 1859 ^"^ thenceforward until 
 my own marriage I lived with my father between 
 Beckenham and Bromley in Kent. Eden Parle then 
 stood in a beautiful and quiet woodland country, before 
 railways and villas had made it a suburb of London. 
 The house, since destroyed, had some historic associa- 
 tions, for it was occupied in the eighteenth century by 
 Lord Auckland, and it was there that the youthful 
 William Pitt made his first (and only) proposal of 
 marriage to Miss Eden, Lord Auckland's daughter. 
 It was a house in which Gibbon had stopped on his 
 way to Lord Sheffield at Uckfield ; and, years later 
 on, Louis Philippe stayed there in the days of his 
 wanderings in exile. Eden was within a walk of 
 Hayes Place, where Lord Chatham lived and died, 
 and also within a drive of Keston and of Down, the 
 home of Darwin. 
 
 It was from Keston Rectory that Norton, with his 
 wife and family, visited us at Eden. It is now quite 
 forty years ago ; but I well remember the impression 
 produced on me and on us all by the quiet, serious, and 
 sympathetic American, who knew so many famous 
 people and had seen so much. The somewhat slow and 
 
3i6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 emphatic speech (as it sounded in the rattle of London 
 society), the guarded and balanced criticism of men 
 and things, the detachment of spirit and the freedom 
 from all traditional and conventional formulas — all this 
 was as conspicuous in Norton at the age of forty as it 
 was at eighty. 
 
 But the young Mrs. Eliot Norton charmed us all 
 by her beauty, her grace, and her distinction. Forty 
 years ago there were not so many beautiful and dis- 
 tinguished American women in England as there are 
 now. Mrs. Norton had many of the best char- 
 acteristics of her husband. She had the same refined 
 taste, the same gentleness, sympathy, and love of 
 learning. And, beyond that, she had the unmistakable 
 cachet of a woman's elegance. No one would have 
 taken her for an Englishwoman, with the suppleness, 
 elasticity, and dolcezza of manner which we associate 
 with a south European. And yet no one could take 
 her for French, Italian, or Spanish. She was" far too 
 distinctly Anglo-Saxon for that, as indeed she looked. 
 No ! she was American, and American of the best 
 type — the type which combines hearty frankness and 
 independence with perfect suavity and simplicity of 
 bearing. 
 
 Mrs. Norton the elder, the widowed mother of our 
 friend, 'was quite as striking a type of the New 
 England matron of the Pilgrim Fathers school — serious, 
 stately, placidly observant and courteous, but unbend- 
 ing in every matter that had come as a tradition from 
 her forbears, intellectual, moral, or spiritual. 
 
 I remember Norton as my guest at the Reform 
 Club in London when I collected a small party of 
 poHtical and literary friends. He interested them all, 
 rather perhaps because he was so different from the 
 familiar club oracle than by his imposing himself and 
 his opinions on us. The perfectly open mind, ready 
 
CH. XVIII CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 317 
 
 to weigh any new view, political, social, or artistic, 
 and yet not at all ready to pronounce judgment without 
 a probing kind of criticism all his own, the staid 
 demeanour that to us Londoners had something of the 
 Puritan air, the cosmopolitan tone of the man, who as 
 a youth had travelled far and wide, from extreme West 
 to extreme East, who was no opinionated Yankee and 
 yet no sentimental slave to European culture — all this 
 was a combination quite uncommon in Pall Mall forty 
 years ago. 
 
 I saw him at intervals and had some correspondence 
 in the intervening years, but I pass to a later period of 
 his life, when in his seventy-fifth year I visited him at 
 his house at Cambridge, near Boston. He was then 
 distinctly a veteran who had resigned his professorship 
 for some years past, and was living in quiet ease with 
 his three daughters in his ancestral home, within a 
 walk of his beloved college of Harvard. All his world- 
 famous friends were at that time gone — Emerson, 
 Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Carlyle, and Ruskin. 
 He himself was bright and active, was still doing some 
 editing and occasional studies, but was not, I think, 
 engaged on any continuous work of importance. He 
 was leading a life of literary retirement, as a sort of 
 Emeritus Professor of the Best Thought in our two 
 races. 
 
 I venture to call his residence at Shady Hill, near 
 Cambridge, his ancestral home, because from the 
 American point of view this is really true. I 
 remember, when he received me at my first visit and 
 showed me over the house and grounds, he said, " I 
 am one of the few Americans who in old age still live 
 in the house of my father in which I was born." 
 That is of course in the twentieth century a very rare 
 thing. The enormous scale of the cities and districts 
 in the United States, the incredible rapidity of growth in 
 
3i8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 everything round the industrial centres, the mobility 
 and facilities for change of place and life, interest and 
 occupation, the sudden increase of wealth and social 
 position common to most active citizens, however 
 born, make it most unusual for the American, at the 
 end of a long life, to find it convenient, or even 
 possible, to live in the house in which he was born. 
 
 This Norton did, as also did one or two famous 
 Bostonians. But in such a city as New York the 
 only person I ever heard of as living in his family 
 house was Abram Hewitt, once mayor and eminent 
 philanthropist. Norton dearly cherished his own 
 Shady Hill, and he had ample cause to do so. The 
 property was what we call a small park and homestead, 
 with fine timber plantations and shrubberies, standing 
 on a modest hill within an hour's drive of Boston. 
 The house is a roomy half-timber erection of the old- 
 world New England type, with verandahs and outdoor 
 shelters about it, having pleasant woodland views, and 
 standing in its own plantations and lawns, entirely 
 shut ofF from the wilderness of new villas and tram-car 
 avenues which crowd the suburbs of Boston. It looks, 
 what it is, a relic of Old Massachusetts, swept round 
 but not engulfed in the torrent of the modern industrial 
 progress which, in a hundred years, has hemmed it in 
 and partially snatched it away. To compare a small 
 and simple thing with a great and magnificent thing, 
 Shady Hill in its old woodland recess stands as Holland 
 House still stands, hke an oasis of antique repose in 
 the roaring labyrinth of modern Kensington. There 
 seemed to me, coming fresh from New York and 
 Chicago, a graceful pathos about Shady Hill, a bit of 
 Puritan New England which had stood unchanged for 
 a hundred years, that was in curious harmony with the 
 nature and life of its venerable owner. 
 
 There Norton showed a true New England hospi- 
 
CH.xviii CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 319 
 
 tality to one whom he had known as a tiro in politics 
 and letters forty years ago, one who had known some- 
 thing of his great English and also of his American 
 friends. I met under his roof not a few leaders of 
 Boston literature and science, as well as professors and 
 students of Harvard College. We had at dinner Mr. 
 J. Ford Rhodes, the learned and indefatigable historian 
 of the United States since the Civil War, now a 
 standard work in his own country and in ours. We 
 had Colonel Charles F. Adams, son of the late Minister, 
 and since President of the Massachusetts Historical 
 Society, Professor Lawrence Lowell, the learned author 
 of The Government of England^ and Judge Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. And with these came eminent 
 Harvard men ; though unfortunately, during the 
 period of my two visits to Cambridge, the President, 
 Dr. Eliot, a cousin of Norton's, was away in the south. 
 At a reception in the evening Norton collected a large 
 and distinguished company from Cambridge, Harvard, 
 and Boston. To every English student who had the 
 good fortune to be known to him, Norton threw open 
 his home as if it were a sort of literary embassy for a 
 foreigner on a tour. 
 
 This reception and an introduction to so many 
 eminent men in America remains one of the pleasantest 
 memories of my life. But there was nothing excep- 
 tional in this, nor did I suppose that I personally 
 deserved such a welcome j for I am well aware that 
 many an English visitor to Boston has had a similar 
 experience, and it was one that Norton was always 
 ready to extend to every Englishman, who he thought 
 would really value such a kind of hospitality. To any 
 traveller from home, indeed from Europe, who had any 
 serious place in literature or in science, to be received 
 by Eliot Norton was to have a passport into the best 
 academic world of the United States. 
 
320 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Among the other pleasures of a visit to Shady Hill 
 was to be shown by Norton through his collection of 
 books, drawings, autographs, and photographs. His 
 library, valued, as we were publicly told, at 4000/., was 
 especially interesting from its variety and the origin of 
 many of its volumes and treasures. As the intimate 
 friend and to a great extent the colleague of such men 
 as Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Curtis, Lowell, in 
 America, of Darwin, FitzGerald, Carlyle, Clough, 
 Ruskin, in England, as literary executor of Lowell 
 and of Ruskin, Norton had necessarily amassed an 
 almost unique collection of volumes, manuscripts, 
 notes, and autographs. These, together with his in- 
 exhaustible reminiscences of such men as Darwin, 
 Carlyle, Ruskin, and Stephen, made a quiet evening 
 with him over his fireside in the library a thing not to 
 be forgotten. If his home was a kind of literary 
 consulate, his library was a kind of literary museum. 
 
 More important, perhaps, than his library treasures, 
 with its portraits, curios, views, and manuscripts, were 
 the invaluable estimates of men and things in America 
 which he would offer to the new-comer. For my 
 part, I arrived in the United States having a few 
 American friends, but with a moderate understanding 
 of parties, movements, politicians, and authorities. 
 Norton was ready to explain, estimate, and criticise 
 them all. Of course I knew that he was an old 
 stalwart of the anti-slavery, anti-aggression, peace, and 
 industrial reform parties. And it was not for me, an 
 independent foreign observer, to pledge myself to 
 either side in questions of purely domestic concern in 
 the States. But as being an earnest opponent of the 
 war against the South African Republics, of all forms 
 of Imperial extension, as an old defender of the 
 emancipation of labour without Socialism, I found 
 myself in principle heartily with Norton. 
 
CH. XVIII CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 321 
 
 I began my Life of Ruskin in the year of my 
 American visit ; and, as one who had already written 
 several studies on Ruskin, whom I had visited at 
 Brantwood shortly before his death, I found with 
 Norton inexhaustible topics of common interest. I 
 need not go into the well-known story of Norton's 
 intimacy with Ruskin, extending over forty-six years. 
 He was eminently aware of the weaker side of Ruskin's 
 intellect and of his character, and perhaps Norton was 
 the one man who ever could have corrected Ruskin's 
 vagaries and given solidity to his effervescent im- 
 agination. It would have been well if Norton had 
 been not only Ruskin's transatlantic correspondent 
 and literary executor, but his elder brother, his tutor, 
 and counsellor through Hfe. 
 
 As to Carlyle, of course, Norton, who was a whole 
 generation younger, and had never known the Prophet 
 of Chelsea until he was an old man with his life-work 
 completed, could only receive and not give, much less 
 guide. But he did excellent service in making Carlyle 
 understood and accepted in America, in spite of the 
 monstrous heresies of the " Hero-King," the " millions, 
 mostly fools," and pro-slavery doctrines. When 
 Froude's volumes of CarlyWs Reminiscences and the 
 Life had done much to shake faith in Carlyle's good 
 faith and good feeling, Norton went far to restore 
 the credit of Carlyle by reprinting a correct version 
 of the Letters^ which Froude had so strangely 
 distorted and misunderstood. In the Nineteenth 
 Century^ April 1889, I wrote a short review of the 
 new version of the Letters, The extraordinary 
 discrepancies between Carlyle's authentic writings as 
 shown by Norton and the garbled form in which 
 Froude had presented them to the world almost 
 amounts to one of the curiosities of modern literature. 
 When Norton published the genuine Letters^ it was 
 
 Y 
 
322 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 seen that Froude's version "alters the punctuation, 
 words, and phrases ; drops out whole sentences, para- 
 graphs, and pages ; rewrites passages in other words, 
 and tacks together bits of passages into new sentences." 
 Norton continued to defend Carlyle's character by 
 means of documents and information supplied by 
 Carlyle's niece. Instead of the famous saying of 
 Carlyle's mother that he was ill to live with, it turned 
 out that what the old lady said was that he was hard 
 to deal with. We all knew that. 
 
 Norton's friendship for Leslie Stephen was quite a 
 memorable example of what a literary intimacy may 
 be, and may do, between men for long periods separated 
 by 4000 miles. It began in Boston in 1863, and 
 only ended forty years afterwards with Stephen's 
 death, in 1904. Stephen's letters to Norton are set 
 out in full in many a fascinating page of Professor 
 Maitland's Life. The whole series tells us almost 
 as much of Norton as of Stephen ; and until we have 
 Norton's letters before us, we in England can get no 
 better glimpse into Norton's mind, interests, and 
 nature than in the letters addressed to him by his 
 English friend. The two, with all their points of 
 difference, and these were many, were well matched. 
 Both were essentially critical by temperament. Both, 
 by slow and severe thought, had freed themselves, like 
 Carlyle, from the strict Puritanism in which they had 
 been born and reared. They had "come out of 
 Houndsditch," as Carlyle said in his violent way ; but 
 both would be loth to use any such phrase of contempt. 
 For, unlike Sartor, Stephen and Norton were intensely 
 full of sympathy, and, as all fine critics do, they both 
 found much to respect in the men and the ideas with 
 which they had parted. Norton, like his English 
 friend, had an ardent confidence in Progress as an end 
 and in the future of the People in their respective 
 
CH. XVIII CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 323 
 
 countries. And if Norton had no such immense 
 literary activity as Stephen, and no such extended 
 influence over the field of letters and the whole 
 academic world, Norton had a passionate love of art, 
 of poetry, of medieval devotion and charm which was 
 almost a closed book to Stephen. 
 
 To bring to an end these brief reminiscences, if we 
 tried to sum up in a phrase Norton's special gift, it lay, 
 I think, in his power of discriminating sympathy. 
 Norton's genius was at once critical and yet appreci- 
 ative, incisive and enthusiastic. To combine both 
 temperaments in equal force is rare. Many men are 
 keen judges, able to probe errors and defects. Not a 
 few are ardent lovers of causes and ideas. But sympathy 
 is too often ready to cover failings, as criticism is too 
 prone to exaggerate them. Norton was not easily 
 satisfied, and he was far from being a friend of every 
 one who pleased him, or a believer in every cause 
 wherein he saw faith and hope. The sensitive nature 
 of Ruskin exactly described the incalculable benefit 
 he derived from intimacy with Norton. Ruskin wrote : 
 " To me his infinitely varied and loving praise became 
 a constant motive to exertion and aid in effort ; yet he 
 never allowed in me the slightest violation of the laws 
 either of good writing or social prudence without 
 instant blame or warning." 
 
 Many a man can say how Norton's loving and yet 
 discriminating praise became to him a motive to action 
 and aid in effort. When he saw real ground to 
 encourage a political worker or a literary movement, 
 his sympathetic cheer acted as an inspiration. For 
 my own part, I remember how, about the time of 
 the first Trades Union Commission in 1867, when a 
 few of us were struggling against general and bitter 
 opposition to have the claims of labour fairly heard, it 
 was Norton's sympathy in letters to me which made 
 
324 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 me feel that our cause was not hopeless, that we were 
 not facing obloquy in vain. And in many a battle on 
 behalf of justice, peace, and free thought, it was 
 Norton's clear voice of Onward that made us work, 
 trust, and hope. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 RODIN 
 
 I912 
 
 In Art, as indeed in not a few other things, a 
 powerful man of genius who invents a new type 
 is a fatal snare to susceptible youth. He starts a 
 reaction against some current form of which the age 
 has grown weary j and forthwith in art, in books, or 
 music, in collars, games, or slang — the young rush in 
 to imitate the novelty, just as a flock of lambs will follow 
 a bell-wether into a sunk ditch. The watch-word 
 of the twentieth century is Unrest — Journalism, 
 Politics, Literature, and Art ring with one cry — " All 
 change here ! " Not that it is often change for any 
 definite gain. It is " change for the sake of a change," 
 the thirst to get out of our old life, habits, thoughts, 
 and pleasures, to get into new lives, new selves. It 
 runs round England, Europe, America, Asia, and the 
 World, like the dancing mania in the Middle Ages. 
 We are all whirled along, thrust onward by the vast 
 restless crowd, ever calling out for " something fresh " 
 — " something up-to-date " — for the " last thing out ! " 
 Omnes eodem cogimur. 
 
 Even in former ages, before the universal thirst 
 for change set in, the impulse of a potent genius 
 often had a disastrous effect on his own art. What 
 
 325 
 
326 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 academic mannerism followed the ideal compositions 
 and bewitching poses of Raphael. As I write there 
 stands before my eyes — it has stood so continuously 
 since 1850 — Volpato's fine engraving of Raphael's 
 " School of Athens " in the Vatican Stanze. It has 
 always been to me the perfect type of artful grouping 
 of grand figures-^the symbolic Olympus of antique 
 thought — and yet by its very grace, by its symmetry, 
 its severe dignity, equal to a drama of Sophocles, it 
 heralds a long era of vapid elegance. 
 
 Michael Angelo, a far greater mind and a bigger 
 nature, had an even more ruinous effect upon those 
 who tried to obtain his power by copying his 
 exaggeration. It took the French stage a century 
 and a half to shake off the tragic traditions of 
 Corneille and Racine ; as it took English verse a 
 century to recover from Pope and English prose fifty 
 years to recover from Johnson and Gibbon. Victor 
 Hugo's sensationalism ran to seed in Monte Christo^ 
 and Walter Scott's glorious romances led on to Bulwer 
 and James. In music we got so cloyed with Mozart's 
 melodies and Chopin's dulcimer tones that many flew 
 to Wagner's crashing discords, as if robustious recitatives 
 were a new avatar of Blood and Iron. Scott, Bulwer, 
 Dickens, and Thackeray were voted to be both slow 
 and longwinded ; and then the smart world would 
 read nothing but short stories about adultery and gold- 
 bugs, or, it might be, a scrambling trip in a new 
 Panhard. ^uisque suos patimur Manes — i.e. every 
 great man brings his bogey with him. 
 
 The new craze under which we are now suffering 
 is the Cult of the Foul, or, to put it in Greek, it 
 may be dubbed Aischrolatreia — worship or admiration 
 of the Ugly, the Nasty, the Brutal. Poetry, Romance, 
 Drama, Painting, Sculpture, Music, Manners, even 
 Dress, are now recast to suit popular taste by adopting 
 
CH. XIX RODIN 347 
 
 forms which hitherto have been regarded as unpleasing, 
 gross, or actually loathsome. To be refined is to be 
 " goody-goody " ; gutter slang is so " actual " ; if a 
 ruffian tramp knifes his pal, it is "so strong"; and, 
 if on the stage his ragged paramour bites off a rivaFs 
 ear, the half- penny press screams with delight. Painters 
 are warned against anything " pretty," so they dab 
 on bright tints to look like a linoleum pattern, or they 
 go for subjects to a thieves' kitchen. The one aim 
 in life, as in Art, is to shock one's grandmother. 
 And when the Society wpman dances in bare legs, 
 the up-to-date girl can dress herself like a stable-lad. 
 
 A debasement so general and so violent must 
 needs have an originating cause ; and this will be 
 found in two reasons — first, in the legitimate reaction 
 against mawkish conventions ; secondly, in the 
 imitation of powerful examples. Both of these 
 exist in a high degree. It is true that for about the 
 second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, 
 the dominant tone retained a strain of dull convention. 
 It is ridiculous to call it Victorian — because it was 
 more or less common to Europe and America, and 
 in literature, drama, painting, sculpture, music, and 
 certainly in dress, it was rather more French than 
 EngHsh. Our good Lady who stiffly declined to be 
 "fast," or even "smart," in anything had very little 
 to do with it. Things were decorous, refined, and 
 conventional, because it was an age of serious, decent, 
 unimaginative men and women with a turn for science, 
 social reform, and making things comfortable. 
 
 In the latter part of the nineteenth century several 
 men of original genius made their influence felt over 
 Europe — all of them more or less anarchic souls. 
 About two generations after the death of Scott and 
 of Goethe in 1832, the world of literature and art 
 began to be stirred by Ibsen, Tolstoi, Zola, Gorkhi, 
 
328 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Wagner, Dore, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, d'Annunzio. 
 All repudiated conventions and drove their scalpels deep 
 dovv^n into the vitals of humanity. The Scandinavian 
 and Mongol imagination revels in horrors, unnatural 
 crimes, de-sexed vv^omen, and depraved and abnormal 
 degenerates. The Latin races tend more to 
 obscenity and gore. The world agrees that all those 
 just named above vv^ere men of pow^erful genius, who 
 have enriched their age with permanent masterpieces. 
 The question remains if they have not encouraged 
 weaker imitators to drag the type of Art down to the 
 world of the crude, the cruel, the morbid, and the 
 loathsome. 
 
 Foremost among the men of genius who are 
 creating a new school in Europe stands Augustin 
 Rodin, the author of that wonderful invention — Im- 
 pressionist Sculpture. Rodin is a man of original 
 genius, and most judges would call him the greatest 
 living sculptor in Europe, and he is the leader of the 
 most popular school of sculpture. He has certainly 
 produced some works of marvellous power. His 
 courage, his originality, his intelligence make him 
 the idol of the younger artists, who see in him a 
 new Michael Angelo. Not only do we note his 
 influence in every art gallery in Europe, but he has 
 formulated his canons of art in dogmatic and literary 
 form. Like Leonardo, Buonarroti, and CelHni, he 
 is not only a great artist, but a writer of distinction, at 
 least his utterances are now embodied in books. One 
 of these is UArt^ interviews recorded by Paul Gsell — 
 a fine quarto volume with numerous photographs.'^ 
 
 Without attempting to offer any opinion about 
 M. Rodin's fantasies in marble, as one of the plain 
 people who cannot always grasp the mysticism under 
 these veiled ibauches in plaster or stone, I can quite 
 
 * Paris, B. Grasset, 1911. 
 
CH. XIX RODIN 329 
 
 follow the doctrines laid down in the trenchant words 
 of U Art ; for Rodin, who so often carves men and 
 women as if they were seen in a fog, or behind a 
 semi - transparent curtain, speaks with a clear and 
 masterful voice which all can understand. The 
 book altogether is exceedingly interesting, full of true 
 and striking maxims, rich with apposite illustrations, 
 and alive throughout with daring paradox. It 
 enables us to know the man as well as his creations. 
 And if it shows him to be a man of great original 
 power, it explains the source of his gross extravagances, 
 his caricatures which are called portraits, his love- 
 dreams, and the crapulous nightmares he sometimes 
 eternises in solid stone. 
 
 In the first chapter of U Art Rodin expounds the 
 key of his system. He opens with true and forcible 
 protests against all kinds of academic pose. He 
 simply seizes a spontaneous movement which he 
 sees in his model. He does not place him or dictate 
 any set attitude. Very good, but not quite true ; for 
 the Dana'td^ the Last Appeal^ and the Ugolino (pp. 
 29, 32, 209) are certainly not casual and spontaneous 
 attitudes. He goes on to say that he does not reproduce 
 the external surface of what he sees, but the inner 
 spirit of what he imagines beneath the surface. A 
 cast will only give the outside form. Rodin moulds 
 the underlying truth. " / accentuate those lines which 
 best express the spiritual state which I am interpreting.^^ 
 That is an exact description of the caricaturist. Rodin 
 proclaims himself to be a systematic caricaturist. 
 " Take my statue of the Last Appeal^'' he says, " here 
 I overstrain the muscles which denote distress. Here 
 and there I exaggerate the tension of the tendons 
 which mark the spasm of prayer." The average eye 
 sees the things within its vision. "The artist reads 
 deep into the bosom of Nature." 
 
330 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. n 
 
 Of course the real artist sees much that the 
 ordinary eye does not see. But he does not see that 
 which is not — and cannot be — there. He sees more 
 than the vulgar eye can see. This, of course, is the 
 meaning of all great portraiture. The most exact 
 photograph reproduces the minutest mark or trait on 
 a face, but it does not reproduce the expression in its 
 highest significance. No photograph of the hving 
 Monna Lisa would have given us all that Leonardo 
 saw in that mystical and unfathomable smile. But 
 Leonardo did not paint what no eye ever saw or 
 could have seen in the living Monna Lisa, in order 
 to express his own views of the lady's private character. 
 Leonardo painted what was there, and showed the 
 world what they might see if they had an artist's eye. 
 
 It is a quite different thing when we come to the 
 sculptor's art, and are dealing with representations of 
 the nude human body. One who puts into marble 
 the appearance of the nude torso and limbs of man 
 has no right to mould on his marble surface that 
 which never was, and never could be, on the living 
 skin. In vain he tells us that he brings out and 
 stamps upon the surface or skin of his figure's torso 
 and Hmbs the " spiritual state " inside the organs, " the 
 interior truth " which he takes to be covered up in 
 the outside show. Sculpture is an art of surfaces as 
 painting is not. A statue is the exact facsimile of a 
 human figure — made motionless, rigid, and self- 
 coloured, so that by a stage device a living person 
 can be mistaken for a statue. A statue professes to 
 be the exact copy of a living figure in everything 
 but movement and colour. The sculptor who 
 moulds on his surface what does not exist on any 
 living surface is a caricaturist. 
 
 This doctrine of presenting the " spiritual truth " 
 in sculpture, not the visible realism, is carried out 
 
CH. XIX RODIN 331 
 
 in Rodin's figures where he "exaggerates muscles," 
 " overstrains tendons " in order to express ideas which 
 are latent and not visible in fact. The Last Appeal 
 is a youth on his knees " torn with anguish," and the 
 arms flung upwards and backwards in convulsions, as 
 they might be in epilepsy, or in the horrible surgical 
 study of Opisthotonos in Sir Charles Bell's book, The 
 Anatomy of Expression^ Essay VII. Again, in the 
 Ugolino^ perhaps the most ghastly subject which could 
 be chosen for sculpture, the emaciated father is bend- 
 ing down to gnaw his dead son, like a famished 
 beast. One fails to see where the " spiritual truth " 
 comes in with this bestial group. Then, the Danaid 
 is turning a somersault in a mud-bath, apparently 
 presenting the nates for surgical examination. All of 
 these not only reek with morbid exaggeration, but 
 are morally and physically loathsome. 
 
 Being loathsome enough to shock any grandmother, 
 indeed almost loathsome enough to make a decent 
 person sick, and being full of profound anatomical 
 learning, and also of glyptic genius, these novelties 
 are hailed as a new revelation by the youthful enthusiast 
 who would be " up-to-date." Bestiality seems to be 
 carried to its highest limit in the statue called La 
 Vieille Heaulmiere^ of which a photograph is given 
 at p. 40. The name, a word not current in French, 
 is adopted from a ballad of that fifteenth - century 
 jail -bird, Villon, and means The Old Strumpet. 
 Well ! She is represented as an emaciated and 
 diseased hag looking down on her mummified body, 
 shrivelled limbs, and draggled dugs, with shame and 
 horror. M. Rodin's gushing friend sets out the 
 beastly Httle poem of Villon, and says that the sculptor 
 has even surpassed the poet — oculis suhmlssa fidelihus — 
 by the horrible realism of this shrunken nudity. He 
 goes into raptures over " the knotted limbs," " the pen- 
 
332 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. n 
 
 dant teats," "the scarred abdomen," and the "wrinkled 
 skin, dropping in shreds Hke bits of parchment." " No 
 artist," he says, " ever yet showed us a naked hag with 
 a crudity so ferocious." Probably not ; but those 
 who care for such a spectacle might visit a dissecting 
 table in a surgery or a riverside mortuary in the 
 East End. He could there find some such pitiable 
 human wreck, and might discover for himself the 
 " spiritual truth," " the inner moral " of it all, without 
 the help of M. Rodin. The lesson of debauchery 
 ending in corruption is one for morals, religion, 
 science — not for Art. The Heaulmihe as a statue 
 is the last word of moral, physical, artistic degradation. 
 
 M. Rodin has certainly parted with conventional 
 prettiness — your Venus, Cupids, and Apollos — but 
 surely in too violent a rebound. He would be in- 
 valuable to illustrate a scientific work on morbid 
 anatomy — where even "exaggeration" and the "inner 
 truth" might be useful to students. In that most 
 interesting book by Sir Charles Bell, The Anatomy 
 and Philosophy of Expression (my copy is the sixth 
 edition, 1872), there are some striking plates with 
 the great surgeon's types of violent passions, agonies, 
 and disease. These are Weeping, Laughter, Pain, 
 Convulsions, Hydrophobia, Terror, Despair, Rage, 
 and Madness. These powerful designs express what, 
 from the point of view of anatomy and surgery, 
 these distortions of the human countenance are in 
 real fact. They are instructive to students of 
 medicine, and indeed to students of art. But they 
 are not art, for they give not pleasure but disgust. 
 Rodin's distortions, for all his exaggerations, are not 
 nearly so real and true as the surgeon's work, but 
 they are sufficiently true to disease and debasement 
 to be horribly loathsome. 
 
 To answer this charge which his admirer repeats, 
 
CH.xix RODIN 333 
 
 Rodin says equitihus cam! — ue. My work is for 
 connoisseurs — and he then argues with truth and 
 eloquence that a great artist, Hlce a great poet, can 
 transfigure the ugly and the horrible into grand works 
 of art. And he cites Velazquez, Michael Angelo, 
 Donatello, and Millet, Dante, Shakespeare, and Racine. 
 No one denies the terrible power of the Sistine frescoes, 
 of the Z^^c^^w, of Botticelli's illustrations to the Inferno. 
 As to poetry, and even painting, the conditions are 
 different from those of sculpture. Michael Angelo's 
 sublime frescoes or his ISlotte may have a terrible 
 element, but they are grand, and not disgusting. 
 Donatello's Magdalene is pathetic, and not loathsome. 
 And as to Millet's Angelus^ or his Glaneuses^ they are 
 full of the most subtle and exquisite grace. The 
 Peasant with the Hoe is a composition as full of 
 dignity as of simplicity. Yes ! Millet's work really 
 transforms the plainest and rudest labourers into figures 
 radiant with the glory of simple Nature. That is the 
 magic of true art. But Rodin's coarse types remain 
 ugly brutes. And his Old Strumpet is nothing but a 
 naked hag. 
 
 Great as Rodin is as sculptor, he often in this 
 book appears even as literary critic rather than artist, 
 sometimes almost as poet. He says some fine, true, 
 and useful things. But when he handles his clay and 
 begins to put his ideas of Nature into form, the craze 
 for the ugly, the grotesque, and the morbid seems to 
 overpower his sense of beauty, and with all his genius, 
 his power, and his superb technical gifts, he produces 
 too often caricatures not masterpieces. No judge of 
 art, whether he sits in the ranks of the " Knights " or of 
 the Plebs in the pit, denies that an artist can make a 
 beautiful work out of the plainest and the commonest 
 themes. Murillo and Velazquez did. Millet did, 
 Israels did. But he must issue in beautiful and noble 
 
334 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 works of art, not in facsimiles of what is repulsive and 
 nauseous. Now the John the Baptist of Rodin is an 
 over-trained and coarse-limbed boxer in an ungainly- 
 attitude. The feet and hands may be "true,'* but 
 they are unsightly ; the Prophet's head is fine, but 
 sits oddly on a stark-naked athlete. The Burghers of 
 Calais has some powerful figures, and from the literary 
 point of view it is an original and telling conception. 
 And men of letters who know nothing of sculpture 
 as an art are telHng us it is a masterpiece. But one 
 or two of the figures are in grotesque and ludicrous 
 attitudes. Perhaps when they came before Edward 
 the Third with halters round their necks they did not 
 look graceful. But we trust they did not look absurd. 
 Rodin has exerted his powers of caricature in making 
 them ungainly mummers fit to make a crowd laugh. 
 
 Rodin, the romancer a la Hugo, is constantly 
 carrying away the imagination of Rodin the sculptor. 
 Unnatural monstrosities, nightmares, and Zolaesque 
 and Dore-esque fantasies crowd his fertile brain — for 
 he is a real poet — and they seize his hand when he 
 begins to model. Blake was like this — but Blake was 
 more the poet than the artist ; Leonardo even had a 
 love of grotesque. But there is nothing either laugh- 
 able or disgusting in Leonardo or in Blake, whatever 
 monstrosity crossed their brain ; and they were 
 painters, not sculptors. But Rodin's Female Centaur 
 is monstrous, and ugly, and laughable all at once. 
 His Faun and Nymph is coarse and absurd. Whatever 
 of the monstrous, the unnatural, the morbid is possible 
 in literature, even in painting, sculpture, with its 
 definite solidity, its objective fixity, its tangible 
 permanence, rejects such horrors from its sphere. We 
 can imagine in poetry Satans, Apollyons, Minotaurs, 
 Dragons, and Ghosts, and even may have them on 
 canvas or in etchings, but they are impracticable and 
 
CH. XIX RODIN 335 
 
 silly when fashioned in the objective solidity of marble. 
 The bloody sockets of CEdipus or the snaky tresses of 
 the Furies would not be tragic in stone. And even 
 Rodin's genius could hardly convince us if he tried to 
 make a statue of Banquo's ghost. It is a fatal snare 
 when a man of genius in more than one domain loses 
 all sense of the motives, limits, and conditions of the 
 different arts. 
 
 The radical sophism on which much of Rodin's art 
 is built is that which infects some things of Ibsen, 
 Zola, Gorkhi, at times even of Tolstoi, and the small 
 fry of the brutalising Decadence. It is the dogma 
 that there is nothing in Nature — nothing visible — 
 which is not a fitting subject for art, that when the 
 artist presents in vivid words or form what he has 
 seen, or can see, it is for the world to admire, and no 
 one can complain. The most repulsive, unnatural, 
 unmentionable act or sight, when represented with 
 striking truth, becomes, they say, a work of art, and, 
 according to Rodin, beautiful by its artistic power. 
 This is an absurd sophism. Every hour of every day, 
 in every street, or house, or room, with every man, 
 woman, child, or animal, in every hospital, prison, 
 mortuary, or battle-field, are infinite sights which 
 cannot be shown in art. Of all the arts, that of 
 sculpture is the art least tolerant of anything obscene 
 or loathsome. A great poet in a lofty spirit of idealism 
 can typify in verse almost anything. Michael Angelo 
 and Correggio have in painting idealised the myths of 
 Leda and of Ixion, and both experiments have been 
 much condemned. But one may defy Rodin himself 
 to make marble groups which should literally represent 
 — say the last Hne of Canto XXI. of the Inferno or 
 line 500 of the fourth book of Paradise Lost. 
 
 Any one who tries to work it out can see that tens 
 of thousands of things which in Nature are common, 
 
336 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 familiar, inevitable, and secret, cannot be expressed in 
 permanent marble shape, and the nearer the sculptor 
 gets to them, the nearer he is to that which disgusts. 
 Rodin sometimes tries to get as close as he dare, and 
 so do others of the decadent schools of literature and 
 art. But he has not the courage of his convictions, 
 and he has not yet literally carved any really bestial 
 act or sight. Being a man, like Cellini, of brilliant 
 literary power, he professes to be absolutely free of all 
 conventions. But he is not free. He does not go 
 far enough to practise his own theories. Feeling — 
 and very wisely feeling — how lifeless a study is the 
 model, rigidly posed upon a stand, he causes both male 
 and female models to move about his studio nude 
 and in spontaneous action, so that he can observe them 
 in continual movement. That is very well, and is 
 the source of the vitality of so many of his studies. 
 But it is not enough. If he could get his nude models 
 to run, leap, wrestle in sunlight on an open sward, to 
 play quoits, football, golf, and a tug-of-war, as the 
 Greeks did in the arena, M. Rodin would have in- 
 credible opportunities for study, and would be true to 
 his own maxims. But unfortunately, modern con- 
 ventions make all this practically impossible, and they 
 bind Rodin as much as any one. 
 
 If M. Rodin had less imagination, not such a flow 
 of literary and poetic originality, he would be a greater 
 sculptor. He would restrain his exuberant fancy 
 within the inevitable limits of his own special art. 
 He insists that what he can imagine, or dream, or 
 recall in memory, he can carve in stone. He will not 
 obey the maxim — segnius irritant animos demissa per 
 aurem — things we can bear to read of in words cannot 
 be borne face to face fixed in cold and solid stone. 
 Milton can create a Satan ; Shakespeare a Caliban ; 
 Shelley a Prometheus — but Satan, Caliban, or Prome- 
 
CH. XIX RODIN 337 
 
 theus would be grotesque in marble. Rodin seems to 
 live in a dreamland, and not always in a sane dream- 
 land, for his dreams are often nightmares, and ghoulish 
 abominations. But since dreams are vague, shadowy, 
 evanescent, they can only be put into plastic form by 
 being blurred, half-shown, sketched in the rough, as 
 if just begun. The objective, tangible definiteness of 
 statuary makes any attempt to carve a dream a foolish 
 paradox. You might as well try to keep a verse of 
 poetry ringing in your ears for hours together. 
 Dreams and marble statues are incommensurable — not 
 in part materia. You might as well try to put a 
 sonata of Beethoven in a glass case for exhibition, or 
 to carve one of Turner's sunsets in stone. 
 
 And then the portraits — diabolically clever, but 
 rank caricatures. M. Rodin's way to make the portrait 
 of a famous man is to twist his features up into a look 
 which seems to suggest the character he attributes to 
 his sitter. He knows perfectly well that the unlucky 
 victim of his joke never did, or could, look like that. 
 But it symbolises the inner nature of the man j or, 
 Hke a nickname, it suggests the trait of character that 
 is imputed to him. That is pure caricature ; it is 
 what Sir Francis Gould does with us, and what Caran 
 d'Ache did in France. Having got the clay bust into 
 a general resemblance of the features, the cheeks are 
 pinched up and puffed out as if after a prize-fight, and 
 gobbets are stuck on to the forehead and nose to re- 
 present scars, seams, wrinkles, and varicose veins. The 
 sitter may have some such marks in his face, but these 
 the sculptor magnifies to double or treble. They " give 
 character" — and are caricature. Where clothes are 
 shown they have to be carved as if they were sackcloth 
 daubed with tar. Naturally, Puvis de Chavannes did 
 not like his bust ; and the Balzac Committee repudiated 
 the Guy-Fawkes mannikin which was offered to them. 
 
338 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 One hopes that Dalou, Falguiere, and Laurens took it 
 meekly. When Rodin began on a sitter, he Hkened 
 him to some animal, and impressed on him that type. 
 Falguiere was " a little bull with an eruptive character, 
 a grumbhng moustache, and a visage seamed with 
 furrows." So his bust appears in the photograph ; but 
 the illustrious sculptor looks like a boxer. Rodin 
 seems to associate intellect with pugilism. His famous 
 Penseur is the gladiator of the Municipal Museum of 
 Rome ; and the Victor Hugo is a sort of Hercules 
 preparing to overthrow Antaeus. All this is excellent 
 caricature, but it is not true art. 
 
 Morbid exaggeration is the unerring mark of 
 decadence, just as the Pergamenian or Rhodian schools 
 of Hellenistic art exaggerated the athletic type of 
 Lysippus. The example of this is the Farnese Hercules 
 at Naples, which is now recognised as false art, in 
 spite of its anatomical science. And Rodin pushes 
 the decadence of the Hellenistic sculpture till it 
 becomes grotesque. 
 
 Augustin Rodin is a man of rare genius, of original 
 imagination, a poet, an orator, a critic — a great 
 sculptor. He has done some grand, some beautiful 
 things, many stimulating things. But with all his 
 audacity and his powers, he has a morbid love for that 
 which is either repulsive or impossible. And he must 
 exert a fatal influence on those who are carried away 
 by his genius and seek to imitate his brilHant gifts. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 CENTENARIES 
 1909 
 
 In this age of Centenaries is not a laudable custom 
 in danger of being overdone ? This annus mirabilis^ 
 1909, brings us round to the birthdays of four great 
 Englishmen — Darwin, Tennyson, Johnson, Gladstone 
 — to say nothing of others, such as Calvin and Paine, 
 who have been commemorated by their respective 
 admirers. What with aviation "records," rival 
 Budgets, and Halley's Comet, we can hardly live up to 
 the incessant sensations which race across our thoughts 
 like flying men at Brookwood in a gale. I see more 
 centenaries coming along soon — Charles Dickens, 
 Thackeray, to be followed by Shakespeare himself. 
 Now I have a proposal to offer which will greatly 
 mitigate this stormburst of centenaries, which pelt us 
 like November meteors — coming and going before we 
 have recovered breath. 
 
 In one word, my suggestion is to limit our com- 
 memorations to the centenary only of the death, not of 
 the birth, of our worthies. This would reduce the 
 number of these festivals by two-thirds at least, besides 
 being more truly historic and rational. Centenaries 
 are being preposterously multiplied. And the com- 
 
 339 
 
340 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 memoration of the birth of any but of supernatural 
 beings is illogical from the point of view of sound 
 sociology. 
 
 It is obvious that, if w^e celebrate only the death, 
 but never the birth, of our great men, we at once 
 strike ofF one-half of these occasions. But we should 
 strike off many more. If we wait till a hundred years 
 have passed since our great man went from us, we 
 should find sometimes that posterity would not judge 
 the occasion quite so memorable. Two-thirds of these 
 centenaries would answer themselves, as Napoleon said 
 his letters did when he locked them in his cabinet for 
 a month. They might have local, or special, but not 
 national commemoration. By all means let Little 
 Pedlington and Little Bethel glorify their former 
 mayor or pastor, if his memory keeps green a hundred 
 years after his decease. But the nation would not be 
 roused into enthusiasm by orations, and dunned with 
 subscription lists week after week. 
 
 Celebrate only the hundredth anniversary of a 
 memorable death, and we should not have superior 
 persons cynically sneering at a noble custom. It is the 
 miscellaneous and interminable recurrence of these 
 occasions which calls out the irony of Culture. In 
 this age of longevity the centenary of the birth of our 
 hero follows too closely upon the actual date of his 
 death. We have hardly recovered from the emotions 
 of a grand national funeral, with various local celebra- 
 tions, as the fashion is to-day, before we are asked to 
 renew our lyrical elegies and our epideictic eulogies. 
 The funeral bak'd words do coldly furnish forth the 
 centenary feast. Why ! the other day dear old Garcia in 
 person attended the centenary festival of his own birth ! 
 It reminded me of Darwin's old Patagonian woman, 
 whom he saw walk in procession to her own funeral. 
 This wet year we have been surfeited with lamenta- 
 
CH. XX CENTENARIES 341 
 
 tions or jubilees of the mighty dead. One might 
 think the angels in chorus had been raining tears 
 upon our island. 
 
 Take the case of the three great Englishmen who 
 were born in 1809. Many of us knew them in the 
 flesh, have talked with them, eaten with them, seen 
 them, and heard them for years, and finally, but a few 
 years ago, saw them all laid to rest in the Abbey. 
 They are as present to us in memory as our own 
 fathers. We heard all that had to be said of their 
 achievements but a few years since j we exhausted 
 our own sympathies about them and their work ; we 
 have nothing fresh to say, nothing more to learn of 
 them ! And lo ! before those living pages of our 
 memory are turned, we find a fresh, and somewhat 
 belated, commemoration thrust upon us. When a 
 hundred years shall have passed from their respective 
 deaths — in 1982, 1992, 1998 — Darwin, Tennyson, 
 Gladstone will be duly honoured by a generation which 
 never saw them, knew them only by books, and can 
 judge them more clearly through the illuminating halo 
 of an entire century. But for all of us to-day who are 
 long past middle life, it is too early to ask us to treat 
 as ancient history the men whom we have known in 
 life as friends, associates, teachers, and prophets. 
 
 From the point of view of scientific history, it is 
 always the death, not the birth, of a great genius 
 which concerns after ages. At their birth absolutely 
 nothing happened ; no man observed anything ; no 
 one was in the least degree affected. The world 
 rolled round without a shadow of change, except that 
 one more helpless infant was added to its millions of 
 possible men and women. There was no special 
 reason, unless it were a Royal prince, to mark the 
 place, or the day, or the surroundings of the birth 
 of another child, which in most cases was perfectly 
 
342 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 ordinary, and sometimes obscure. Did heaven ring 
 and earth shake when a rather thriftless tradesman at 
 Stratford, in April 1564, had a third child ? The very- 
 day is still not quite certain. Did England rejoice, 
 or Whitehall groan, when, in April 1599, a quiet 
 gentleman at Huntingdon had born to him the fifth 
 of his ten children? Even little Huntingdon was 
 not stirred by the event. But on September 3, 1658, 
 the three kingdoms were shaken to their inmost depth 
 — nay, all Europe drew a long breath. 
 
 In the evolution of a nation, of the human race, 
 the birth of a great man is nothing. It is the end of 
 his life, the close of his career, his posthumous 
 influence which the generations to come need treasure 
 in their mind. The centenary of birth in many cases 
 follows so closely upon the actual death that the 
 interval is too short, and often the facts are still too 
 little known, to make any true judgment of the man 
 and his work clear beyond doubt or dispute. The 
 hundredth anniversary of Mr. Gladstone's birth will 
 have to be commemorated, alas ! in the midst of a 
 fierce conflict still raging between his own friends, 
 colleagues, rivals, opponents, within but eleven short 
 years since he was buried in the Abbey by the nation, 
 whilst the fires that he lighted up are still blazing 
 round us, and hot words are still bandied about over his 
 half-closed grave. Were it not better that the cen- 
 tenary should wait until 1998, when all that England, 
 Scotland, and Ireland owes to him can be recorded 
 in the dry light of historic time ? 
 
 One sees how the hundredth anniversary of birth 
 came to be commonly accepted as the memorable date. 
 Christendom dates everything naturally from the 
 Nativity. Anno Domini is to us the familiar almanac 
 for all events. Romans dated from the birth of their 
 city ; and monks often dated from the Creation of 
 
CH. XX CENTENARIES 343 
 
 the world. Divine, supernatural, mythical births 
 stand on a different ground. When the " Heav'n- 
 born childe " lay in the manger, Nature was in awe 
 and " Kings sate still, with awfuU eye." That was 
 indeed an event. But even to Christians Easter 
 comes with far more reality as a religious power than 
 does Christmas. The birth of the Heir to a Throne 
 may partake of this national importance. For all 
 others it is death, not birth, which really counts. 
 
 May I add that no man values more than I do 
 myself the adequate commemoration of a great man's 
 life ? Few men have laboured more earnestly in the 
 various celebrations of our time. For ten years I 
 worked to secure, and finally, in 1 901, we achieved, 
 the millenary of Alfred. I have taken active part in 
 the centenaries of Cromwell, Chatham, Tennyson, 
 Ruskin, and many others. Our own small body for 
 thirty years continuously celebrated the centenaries of 
 the worthies in our calendar. In the volume of bio- 
 graphies of 558 heroes of all ages and races we have 
 sought to bring home to contemporaries what they owe 
 to the genius and the services of the men of old time. 
 Humanity owes reverence to its ancestors as a social 
 and even as a religious duty. But it is only when 
 posterity can calmly weigh the entire posthumous 
 influence of their lives as a whole. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 MY REISEBILDER — OLD AND NEW 
 I9II 
 
 I AM now an old traveller, for my experience of 
 Continental cities began sixty-seven years ago, when 
 there were no railways between Paris and the coast, 
 when Rome, Florence, and Vienna were walled cities 
 under reactionary rulers. Those were the days of Pio 
 Nono, Ferdinand the First, Louis Philippe, and the 
 Grand Dukes. In 1845, 1846, and 1847, I spent the 
 autumn in Picardy and Normandy, living with French 
 families in the old Provincial days, and driving about 
 the country from village to village, and from farm to 
 farm. And in 1851 I travelled through Belgium, up 
 the Rhine, and thence across South Germany, all 
 through Switzerland, and then by North Italy, and 
 home by Dijon and Paris, mainly by road in each 
 country. Since 1851 there have been few years in 
 which I have not spent a month or more in France, 
 Germany, Austria, and Italy, and of later years in the 
 North seas, or in Holland, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. 
 These sixty or seventy years cover the enormous 
 changes that have taken place from the development of 
 steam by rail and ship, the vast social and industrial 
 revolution that set in after the year of political revolu- 
 tion in 1848, and the portentous rise of Germany to 
 
 344 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 345 
 
 the hegemony of Europe. When I first knew France 
 under Louis Philippe, Guizot and Marshal Soult, the 
 opponent of Wellington in Spain, were in power ; Louis 
 Napoleon was a prisoner at Ham ; the Emperor 
 Napoleon's widow, and his brother Jerome, were still 
 living ; and his body had only just been restored to 
 France. In things visible, and to some extent in 
 things political and social, France was much as it had 
 been at the Restoration of Louis the Eighteenth 
 in 1 8 15. The only means of locomotion was by 
 diligence, post-chaises, or the ponderous hooded gig. 
 Each department, almost each village, had its local 
 costumes and manners ; the old provincial life as 
 described by Balzac, Hugo, Erckmann-Chatrian, was 
 in full career with its markets, fairs, pardons, and 
 pilgrimages. The churches and cathedrals were still 
 undefiled by the hand of the restorer, and they were 
 full of honest worshippers. 
 
 Sixty years ago every village was a new picture, 
 a fresh romance. Ah ! the dour picturesque fisher-folk 
 of Calais, Dieppe, Boulogne, Havre, Honfleur, and all 
 the ports along the coast of Picardy and Normandy. 
 Trouville was a rude seaside camp where I saw men 
 and women who walked from their cottages straight 
 into the sea and tramped about the sands till they were 
 dry ; Cannes was a pretty fishing village, with a couple 
 of villas on the hills ; Nice and Mentone were old 
 Italian towns, and Monte Carlo was an orange-garden. 
 What delicious picnics we had on the Liane and the 
 Orne, then like the Cherwell and the Isis, now defiled 
 with furnaces and chimneys belching forth poisonous 
 fumes. The markets of Boulogne or Caen, Bayeux or 
 Rouen, were glowing and moving panoramas of quaint 
 costume, manners, and appliances, such as Prout and 
 Turner loved to paint, and B^ranger to sing of. We, of 
 those unsophisticated days, saw foreign parts as Byron 
 
346 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 saw them, or Heine, or young Ruskin, as Sterne and 
 Goldsmith, Thackeray and Hawthorne and Landor, 
 once knew them, in their warm glow and infinite 
 variety of colour and form. The glow, the variety, the 
 local colour, are all gone ! Railroads, factories, steam, 
 electricity, the Press, the density of population, the 
 growth of cities, the change from rural to urban life, the 
 closing up of the earth, the crowding out of clear and 
 open spaces, the assimilation of European peoples to a 
 common type, a commonplace type, have taken the 
 charm and the freshness out of foreign travel. We 
 are told now, if we want a change of scene in a holiday, 
 we should "try Uganda," gallop round the globe in 
 sixty days, or risk our lives in an airship. 
 
 When I first tramped the Alps in 1851, we passed 
 through Belgium, visited Cologne and the Rhine cities, 
 flung away a crown at the gambling casino of Baden- 
 Baden, drove through the Black Forest, crossed the 
 mountain-chains of the Oberland and the Pennines, 
 descended into the Lombard valleys and round Mont 
 Blanc, back to Geneva, and thence over the Jura into 
 Burgundy. These six countries had different languages, 
 coinage, laws, habits, costumes, and religions. It was 
 a perpetual joy to find new ways and scenes in each, 
 and a general air of peace and goodfellowship. There 
 had then been no European war for thirty-six years, 
 and there was a vague sense that war between nations 
 was a thing of the past. The turmoil of 1848-49, 
 when retrograde thrones had fallen, was then quieted 
 down. There was no sense of bitterness between 
 nations which was apparent to a traveller. Half-a- 
 dozen different languages could be heard in a public 
 carriage, and German, French, Swiss, Italian, and 
 English chatted pleasantly side by side in the long tables 
 d'hote, and compared their experiences or discussed the 
 scenery and the local habits. 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 347 
 
 Both the peace and the contrasts have now ceased. 
 Men of different nations keep to their fellow- 
 countrymen. PubHc and national questions are never 
 discussed in public ; the table d'hote has been 
 replaced by the separate tables, from which those of 
 different nations or different class stare coldly at each 
 other. The same stale, faked imitations of Paris 
 Boulevard menus are dished up to us at German baths, 
 Alpine Grand Hotels, Riviera Mitropoles — on the 
 slopes of Vesuvius, in sight of the Golden Horn, or 
 under the shadow of the Pyramids. We can never 
 get away from the dreary round of food, furniture, 
 dress, habits, and amusements which the caterers and 
 traders impose on us alike on the Thames, the Seine, 
 the Elbe, the Danube, the Neva, or the Nile — amidst 
 the majesty of the Alps, and the loveliness of Italy, 
 the solitude of the desert, or the poetry of Hellas. 
 
 Coelum — non victum — mutant qui trans mare currunt. 
 
 Europe has been standardised — brought to one 
 dull conventional pattern — and that although each 
 nation is watching the others as showmen watch 
 their performing lions and tigers. We are all made 
 to look as much alike and to live as much alike one 
 another as if we came out of the same family, and 
 all the while we suspect the foreign man as a possible 
 enemy or rogue. It is nonsense now to talk about 
 a tour abroad being "a change." We see just what 
 we see at home — rather more so, perhaps — folk 
 rather smarter, rather less vulgar, not quite so 
 Cockney, but otherwise life is much the same at 
 Homburg as at Harrogate, at Scarborough as at 
 Naples. If we had all grown into a millennial 
 brotherhood it might be a thing to be proud of. 
 But to have settled into one dull regulation fashion, 
 whilst being full of suspicion at heart, is not so noble 
 
348 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 a result. In my old age I retain my love of foreign 
 travel, but I like to be spared the eternal scramble 
 for a new room night after night, the bore of packing, 
 catching trains, and registering baggage. I have 
 taken to these cruising yachts w^hich are growing 
 into fashion, so that one can visit many cities on 
 the coast without changing one's room for a month. 
 Of late years I have been in Spain to Cadiz, 
 Gibraltar, Granada, and Malaga ; in Portugal to 
 Lisbon and Cintra ; in Turkey and Greece to 
 Constantinople, Smyrna, and Brusa, to Athens and 
 Corinth ; and round the great cities of the 
 Mediterranean. And this year I took the run up to 
 the capitals of the North — Amsterdam, Christiania, 
 Stockholm, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg. Most 
 of the Mediterranean, French, and Dutch cities I 
 have long known well, and am now mainly interested 
 in revisiting museums, churches, and ancient buildings. 
 In a short cruise of the kind one gathers little but 
 general impressions — snap-shots at the outside of 
 things. But even snap-shots over a great and varied 
 series of scenes have a certain value of their own. 
 And I proceed to note a few of these. 
 
 First and foremost is the universal levelling-up of 
 all European peoples — the adoption of common habits 
 and dress. Men and women engaged in hard manual 
 labour still retain some minor differences of local 
 costume ; although even these are small now, and 
 unobtrusive. But in every country of Europe the 
 middle-class people, down to those just above manual 
 crafts, have uniform style of dress and nearly the 
 same habits of life. If you want to find national 
 costumes in the well-to-do persons in the streets, 
 they must be looked for north of Christiania, St. 
 Petersburg, or south-east of Buda-Pesth and Athens. 
 Anywhere south of St. Petersburg or west of Athens 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 349 
 
 there is little to denote nationality, at any rate among 
 people of the class of lower shopkeepers, clerks, and 
 smaller business occupations. Of course the richer, 
 cultured, and highly-educated people of all European 
 nations conform to French standards, if women, and 
 to English, if men. That fact has long been familiar 
 to us all, whether we travel or meet foreigners at 
 home. But the assimilating process has now com- 
 pletely absorbed all classes in all countries down as 
 far as the workmen and their wives. A sempstress, 
 a shop-girl, a teacher, will now look much the same 
 in Paris, in London, in Christiania, in Naples, in 
 Amsterdam, in Athens, or in St. Petersburg. A 
 typist, violinist, art student, or milliner will have the 
 precise cut of skirt, collar, sleeve, and hat which the 
 Daily Mirror or the New Tork Herald assures us 
 pictorially to be essential to the man or woman who 
 respects himself or herself. A "general" maid of 
 housework, whether in Copenhagen or in Lisbon, 
 will get as near to a hobble-skirt or a picture-hat as 
 her wages and her avocations permit. This identity 
 of dress may seem a petty, unimportant detail, but 
 it is the outward and visible sign of a great assimilation 
 of life and ideas underneath the surface. It implies 
 a curious similarity of interest, education, manners. 
 This results mainly from the enormous diffusion and 
 activity of the Press, the simultaneous exchange of 
 information through the telegraph, the rapid locomotion 
 caused by infinite railroads and steam -vessels. As 
 our planet has been closed up, shrunk in extent, and 
 unified within two generations, so has Europe been 
 brought into common life. Whatever happens at 
 one end of it is known to the man in the street in a 
 few hours all over the continent. Politically, nations 
 may be as wide apart as ever. Indeed, some of them 
 are fiercely suspicious and hostile. But for social. 
 
350 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 economical, and industrial purposes, Europe is getting 
 to be one population. 
 
 The immediate and decisive result of this is what 
 abroad they call the solidarity of Labour. Social and 
 industrial movements — what they name "unrest" by 
 a convenient euphemism — fly round Europe, and 
 indeed America, without any regard to national 
 frontiers. For some years now we have seen this 
 growing, and we are likely to see it grow. The 
 working classes have a different influence on their 
 respective governments in different nations. But 
 in all nations, at least of Western and Northern 
 Europe, they have the same aspirations and opinions, 
 and are more and more learning to act in concert. 
 The reason is that by the enormous development of 
 means of locomotion and of information, they can 
 easily pass from place to place, and are daily supplied 
 with the same news. For some purposes the Roman 
 Empire made one people from the Euphrates to the 
 Tyne. And for economic and industrial purposes, 
 the Press, the rail, the steam-ship, and the telegraph 
 have made Europe one. 
 
 In our recent cruise, when we landed in the 
 capitals of five different nations, we found everywhere 
 the tale of Labour strikes and "unrest," either 
 actually present, or in recent experience, or in 
 probable outlook. At Christiania or in Stockholm, 
 the men on the quays knew what was doing on the 
 Thames or the Tyne quite as fully as men knew 
 on the Clyde or the Mersey. What with Marconi- 
 grams, telegrams, the post, and the Press, we on board 
 ship never got behind the news of the day. We 
 might be out of sight of land in the North Sea or the 
 Baltic, but we never lost touch with Europe or 
 Britain. The " wireless " report every noon kept us 
 well up to date. At St. Petersburg the local daily 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 351 
 
 paper gave us all the essential facts known throughout 
 Europe to within the hour of " going to press " ; and 
 on the third day we read the dailies published in 
 London. As in mid-ocean one has nothing to do 
 but to read and amuse oneself, some of us had more 
 time to study the news than when we were busy at 
 home. 
 
 In my early days, no doubt, I could not have 
 submitted to so superficial a mode of travelling abroad 
 as that of touching at five capitals in a few weeks. 
 But in my old age, when my object is to revisit 
 well-known scenes and museums, or to compare a 
 variety of impressions, the cruising system satisfies 
 my idea of a holiday. I have always loved the south 
 more than the north. Years ago I had planned a 
 trip to the Fjords of Norway ; but bad weather and 
 the late season turned me southwards, and, in fact, 
 when the day to start came, I went to Florence. As 
 one great end of travelling is to find the beautiful, the 
 picturesque, the historic, the sublime in nature and 
 in art, this preference is instinctive and has ample 
 justification. 
 
 If one sails from the Thames north-east into 
 Scandinavia and the Gulf of Finland, the sense of 
 things beautiful seems to fade away with a perpetual 
 diminuendo. Belgium and Holland are countries 
 rich with ancient memorials and great art, glowing 
 with colour and picturesque incidents at every corner, 
 with five or six centuries of memorable achievement 
 — part of the great European movement since the 
 Middle Ages. Van Eyck, Rubens, Vandyke, 
 Rembrandt, F. Hals, Cuyp, and Wouwermans, the 
 ancient churches, town halls, palaces, and castles, 
 seem indigenous and spontaneous products. They 
 fill the mind and delight the eye even of those who 
 know best France, Italy, and Spain. But as we 
 
352 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 pass up by sea from the continent into Scandinavia, 
 the Danish islands, and the Baltic, the historic 
 tradition seems to grow thinner and more recent. 
 It is a world which, for all we see to-day, seems to 
 have begun with the seventeenth century. Beauty 
 of scene and of art, colour, and grace fade away 
 together. Bleak rocks, crude ornaments, ungainly 
 edifices are too common and look native and un- 
 improvable. 
 
 Copenhagen, it is true, stands on a noble range 
 of islets and has grand sea-channels, and the genius 
 of Thorwaldsen seems to have stamped upon it 
 a classical tradition. Its new museum and the 
 Glyptothek are really amongst the great collections 
 of Europe. Copenhagen, with its beautiful site, its 
 picturesque streets, and its new Attic halls, does 
 something to carry on the charm of Holland — longo 
 intervallo — with rather recent traditions and art. But 
 as we pass farther north there comes a cold and 
 scanty look over the landscape, a monotony of foliage, 
 a flatness of coast, and a crudity of ornament which, 
 like any barbarous art, seeks quaintness, not grace ; 
 intricacy, not harmony ; glaring tones, not rest and 
 mellowness. The eastern coasts of Norway and of 
 Sweden have neither beauty nor character ; and the 
 northern coasts of Russia seem to be nothing but 
 monotonous and dreary steppes. One fancies that 
 the flat, dull, melancholy aspect of Holy Russia 
 accounts for the sad cheerless air of the poorer folk, 
 who look as if they carried on a life-long struggle 
 to get food, air, and rest. 
 
 One of the most interesting facts in modern 
 development is the way in which the genius of 
 Thorwaldsen has stamped itself on the art of modern 
 Denmark, for one must count the New Glyptothek 
 as due to the impulsion to high art given by the 
 
CH.xxi MY REISEBILDER 
 
 353 
 
 famous Dane. Of course, the vogue of the neo- 
 classic sculpture is on the wane, and I fear that a 
 visit to the singular museum vv^here the sculptor lies 
 in his tomb, surrounded by his works, in some 
 degree explains this. The idea of a great artist 
 lying entombed in what is at once a vast mausoleum 
 and also a gallery of his whole life achievements, 
 promises to be both original and magnificent. In 
 cold truth the impression is not at all what one could 
 hope. The sarcophagus standing in an exaggerated 
 Etruscan tomb, a sort of Doric temple, is surrounded, 
 not by a careful selection of his best work and not 
 by marble originals, but by a miscellaneous collection 
 of all his works indiscriminately, and the great 
 majority of them in plaster casts. Thorwaldsen, like 
 almost every artist who became popular and fashionable, 
 often turned out from his studio and pupil-room works 
 very much below his best, and unfortunately we see 
 his tomb surrounded by some of his best and much 
 of his worst. Besides this, every one knows how 
 much replicas, copies, and casts deaden the impression 
 left by the original marble. The Theseus of 
 Phidias or the Aphrodite of Melos fail to enchant 
 us in plaster. Now, most of us who care for sculpture 
 have seen a good many of Thorwaldsen's best in the 
 original marble, and it is disappointing to see beside 
 his bones so many of his worst in copies and casts. 
 
 On the other hand, to those who follow out the 
 history of modern art it is deeply interesting to find 
 collected in a single museum the entire product of 
 an artist of extraordinary fertility, who undoubtedly 
 exercised an immense influence on his country and his 
 age. One sees how a noble genius became more or 
 less infected by his own success, a fate which overtook 
 Vandyke, Reynolds, and even Raphael himself — in our 
 own age Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 The serene genius of Athene subsides into memorials 
 to grandees, church decoration, and orders that pay 
 well. 
 
 But, after all, Thorwaldsen is a noble figure in 
 modern art. His reliefs, at any rate, justify the 
 enthusiasm which they once aroused in Europe. If 
 Canova's fame did him harm in the end, Thorwaldsen's 
 earher work will stand in the forefront of modern art. 
 With our own Flaxman, he is one of the restorers of a 
 sense of antique purity of conception. Those who 
 care most for the true antique best know how far short 
 of Phidias and Praxiteles was Thorwaldsen even at his 
 highest. But he deserves study now that the art of 
 sculpture is rudely invaded by the craze for brutal 
 realism — sculpture which of all the arts is the most 
 antipathetic to realism in any case. Photography, 
 democracy, and a morbid passion for what is gross, 
 common, obscene, or loathsome are poisoning poetry, 
 romance, painting, music, and now even sculpture. 
 Those who go into raptures over the " literal truth " of 
 a hag with pendant dugs scratching her nude back, may 
 stand beside the grave of Thorwaldsen and watch his 
 Mercury^ his Jason^ his Night and Morning^ and feel 
 the air a little sweeter and less mephitic. 
 
 The influence of Thorwaldsen's art must have in- 
 spired the noble gift of the Glyptothek Museum — one 
 of the most splendid benefactions in modern Europe. 
 Would that some of our own brewers would imitate 
 the munificence of Carl Jacobsen ! The collection 
 with which his taste and public spirit have enriched his 
 country is as valuable in its way as any in modern 
 Europe. In its best form it is not long completed. 
 It would justify a visit to Copenhagen to those who 
 have not been to that city in recent years. With the 
 fine new National Museums this Glyptothek places 
 Copenhagen almost in the front rank of European 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 355 
 
 collections. For myself, I do not hesitate to claim 
 the internal arrangement of the classical works in 
 the Glyptothek, where statues are placed between the 
 columns, as the very best gallery in which works of 
 antique art can be properly seen and judged. Except- 
 ing our Parthenon Hall in the Museum and the Greek 
 Museum at Athens, there is nothing so effective as the 
 Glyptothek central hall either in London, Paris, 
 Munich, Berlin, Naples, or Rome. This is a real 
 triumph for a small northern country such as Denmark. 
 
 Copenhagen, indeed, like Stockholm and Christiania, 
 has many splendid points of view and striking and 
 most interesting buildings. But to those who know 
 the ancient cities of Europe and the palaces and cathe- 
 drals of France, Italy, South Germany, and Spain, all 
 three northern capitals have an air of being at once 
 modern and exotic. In all these cities the picturesque 
 qjd boat or carriage service is now replaced by new 
 launches, steam-tenders, trams, and motor taxis. The 
 great buildings are more or less recent imitations of 
 European styles. There is almost nothing of import- 
 ance that takes one's mind back to anything mediaeval. 
 Here and there we are reminded of Vikings and old sea- 
 kings ; but, on the whole, Denmark, Norway, and 
 Sweden seem only to have emerged into national life at 
 earliest in the second half of the sixteenth century. 
 There is little whatever that is P re-Reformation, and 
 all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 they called in foreign architects from France, Italy, or 
 Germany, and adopted some fantastic variety of later 
 Renascence or even hybrid Rococo art. 
 
 The noble city of Stockholm is so deeply saturated 
 with its worship of the heroic Gustavus and his 
 followers and successors that one sees almost no trace 
 of any earlier history. One grand mediaeval church 
 does indeed remain, and serves to deepen the impres- 
 
356 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 sion of the modernity of the rest of the city. The 
 " Knight's House " Church, with its early-pointed 
 arches and pure Gothic aisles, survives as a pathetic 
 memorial of the past, and links up the present with 
 distant ages. The Westminster Abbey of Stockholm 
 is indeed a tomb worthy of the Swedish heroes. 
 
 But if Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania look 
 quite recent and rather exotic to the historian and the 
 traveller, how much more recent and exotic is the 
 capital of Russia. As Peter's mighty creation of 
 the seat of his Empire is only just two hundred years 
 old, it could not possibly offer us a single stone of the 
 older world or the faintest memorial of the past. And 
 of all the cities of the world St. Petersburg, I suppose, 
 is the one most thoroughly the work of alien artists 
 and is imitated from foreign art. Its grandiose scale 
 and gorgeous palaces tell us of little but vicious taste 
 and arrogant ostentation. Hardly a monument or ^a 
 building, public or private, but recalls a foreign design, 
 or some attempt to copy, to outbid, and often to 
 vulgarise, a French or an Italian edifice. Now and 
 then, the foreign artist has served his patron well, and 
 has been suffered to erect a fine building ; but too often 
 the result is a pompous jumble of baroque ornamenta- 
 tion. Modern Tsars, like modern Sultans, seem to 
 have thought that these sham Aladdin Palaces would 
 fill their own subjects with admiration and awe, and 
 strike the foreigner with envy and fear. 
 
 But the imperial ambition and boundless resources 
 of the later Tsars have enriched Europe with two 
 possessions of unique value — the Hermitage collections 
 and the Isaac Church — both, except for raw material, 
 wholly non-Muscovite. The statues and the paintings 
 of the Hermitage are too well known to need another 
 word, except that it is well worth a voyage of two 
 thousand miles to see them. But in the unique col- 
 
CH. XXI MY REISEBILDER 357 
 
 lection of Greek art in the Kertch gallery, a dominant 
 thought comes into the mind. We are too apt to 
 think of Greek art in terms of its temples and its 
 statues ; and even in the museums of London, Paris, 
 Rome, or Athens we are mainly absorbed in pedi- 
 ments, marbles, vases, and terra-cottas. A careful study 
 of the Hellenic remains found in Russian territory and 
 now^ in the Hermitage, in gold, ivory, wood, bronze, 
 and the most trifling implements of daily use, brings 
 home to us the familiar details of Greek life, and 
 impresses on us the truth that the architecture and the 
 statuary of Greece were simply the mountain tops of 
 an aesthetic genius which surrounded with its halo and 
 aroma the life of every Hellene from the cradle to the 
 grave, in his rising up and in his lying down, in the 
 most trivial and most common act of existence. Greek 
 temples and statues were great art, because every 
 Greek, man, woman, or child, lived in minor art, by 
 art, and for art. How touching in its simple grace — 
 simplex munditiis — is the little engraved wooden comb, 
 a birthday gift to a soldier on a campaign from his 
 sister, inscribed "a sister's gift." With such a comb 
 we may fancy the Spartans of Leonidas sate in the 
 pass of Thermopylae " combing their long hair," as 
 Herodotus relates. Alas ! it makes one tingle, in 
 poring over these Crimean relics, to remember the 
 savage destruction of the old Kertch museum in 1855, 
 when the town was occupied by British troops, as 
 described by Sir William Russell and by Dr. Duncan 
 Macpherson. 
 
 To my mind an even greater glory of St. Peters- 
 burg than the Hermitage is to be found in the vast 
 Isaac Church. Of all the domed edifices of the world, 
 it is the only one that reaches perfection — at least in 
 its elevation, external and sky aspect, and for its 
 exterior. I have long ago contended that the dome 
 
358 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 was the grandest discovery in architecture ever made 
 by man, has been the most prolific of all elements of 
 the building art, and lastly, that the dome must be the 
 essence, centre, and soul of every great domed building, 
 and not a mere adjunct or ornament. The oldest and 
 the greatest of domed buildings — the Pantheon at 
 Rome and Santa Sophia at Constantinople — fulfil this 
 axiom ; but neither of these has any adequate exterior, 
 and both have been diverted to other uses by successive 
 creeds. It is the exterior aspect of St. Isaac's v^^ith 
 w^hich I am novv^ concerned. 
 
 The domes of Brunelleschi at Florence, of Michael 
 Angelo at Rome, of Wren at St. Paul's, are tacked 
 on to Latin Cruciform churches vv^ith long naves to 
 the west, which utterly ruin the effect of the dome as 
 seen from the front approach, and greatly lessen its 
 majesty when seen from within. The same is to some 
 degree the case with the Pantheon and the Invalides 
 in Paris, and perhaps every domed church in Western 
 Christendom. In spite of the protests of Michael 
 Angelo and of Wren, the Latin churches deliberately 
 destroyed the symmetry of their fanes by insisting on 
 long western naves. The dome of the Capitol at 
 Washington is merely an adjunct to the huge lateral 
 colonnades. The Kaiser's new cathedral in BerHn is 
 happily avoiding the fatal blunder of crowding out a 
 central dome by a long Latin cross ; but the Greek 
 Church naturally placed its dome on a Greek or 
 equilateral cross. 
 
 This is the only way in which a dome can be seen 
 to advantage, and to my mind the exterior of the Isaac 
 Church, as seen from the garden on the north, or from 
 the Neva, is far the most successful of all the domed 
 buildings in Europe — indeed, it is the most sym- 
 metrical of all recent buildings. The stupendous 
 portals of granite monoliths on the four sides of the 
 
cH.xxi MY REISEBILDER 359 
 
 square church make a magnificent base to the dome, 
 which is admirably carried up by the four belfry towers 
 and the minor domes around. All this is proportioned 
 with a sense of symmetry and of reserve which are 
 quite Greek in spirit and do high honour to their 
 French designer. Grand, simple, and harmonious as 
 is this consummate pile, it has nothing Russian about 
 it except its superb granite and marble. I count these 
 tremendous monoHths of polished pink granite from 
 Finland — forty-eight of them, ordered with consum- 
 mate judgment in two double colonnades of sixteen 
 each on north and south, and two single colonnades of 
 eight each on east and west — as being the principal 
 triumphs of modern architecture. A monolith column 
 is an emblem always of might, majesty, and solidity. 
 In our islands we have never seen and cannot realise 
 the sublimity of monolith columns more than fifty feet 
 high and more than six feet in diameter. The mind 
 reels when one tries to conceive the incalculable labour 
 involved in the quarrying, hauling, and polishing of 
 these colossal granite pillars. I love to stand beneath 
 them by the hour, filled with the same sense of awe 
 with which I have gazed up at the dome of the Pan- 
 theon or of Justinian's temple of Santa Sophia. They 
 enable us to recall in imagination what that portal of 
 Agrippa was at its best. 
 
 Inside and out, St. Petersburg abounds in lovely 
 marbles and colossal stones. To my mind, the Kazan 
 Cathedral is not equal to the Isaac, but it has even 
 more monolith columns. This is the one great glory 
 of Muscovy. Enormous natural resources and un- 
 limited manual labour it has — and when these are 
 placed in the hands of French or Italian artists of 
 genius, a great and rare triumph is the result. 
 When the Muscovite falls back on native art, it is 
 barbarous, baroque, gaudy, and discordant, like the 
 
360 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 blazonings of a negro potentate. On the Kazan 
 Church they have hung bronze replicas of Ghiberti's 
 exquisite gates in the Baptistery, and near them are 
 coarse imitations of modern work. Everything 
 Russian is mammoth, as if bigness could mean beauty, 
 or costliness could spell art. It is astonishing that the 
 people who possess so exquisite a type of all that is 
 sublime in architecture, as is the Isaac Church, could 
 endure the barbaric trumpery and gaudy colours of the 
 new Expiatory Church of the Resurrection. But so 
 it is. It recalls the antique traditions of the Kremlin, 
 and that is enough in Holy Russia. There never 
 was, and never will be, any pure art in the slough of 
 such obstinate superstition and ignorant pride. The 
 North may be, as the poet says, " Dark, and true, and 
 tender," but for beauty, gaiety, and grace, let us wend 
 our steps toward the South. 
 
 Note. — Since this was written, it has been publicly stated that 
 the foundations of the Isaac Church are giving way. That does 
 not destroy the credit of the architectural design. 
 
 It has also been asserted that the columns are not true 
 monoliths. This I refuse to believe, unless it refers to small 
 local restoration of injuries. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 firth's * CROMWELL'* 
 
 1900 
 
 This is an excellent book, a fascinating book, a 
 decisive book. It tells the life-history of our mighty 
 Puritan hero with all the fulness and accuracy which 
 so many years of original research have made the 
 privilege of the writer. It tells the story with a lucid 
 vigour which must hold the interest of every reader, 
 and it will pass with historians as the final estimate of 
 the character and achievements of the Protector. It 
 is a book to study, a book to enjoy, a book to live. 
 
 The outside public, which had heard of Mr. Firth 
 mainly through his Hves of Cromwell and the other 
 Civil War leaders and notables in the Dictionary of 
 National Biography^ his Clarke papers and other 
 original documents edited by him for the Camden 
 Society and the Royal Historical Society, might have 
 supposed that a new life of Oliver, based on his 
 Dictionary article and his other studies of docu- 
 ments, would bear more traces of the learned archivist 
 than of the popular historian. The book before us 
 
 * Oli'ver Cromivell and the Rule of the Puritans in England^ by Charles 
 Firth, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford j in " Heroes of the Nations," 
 edited by Evelyn Abbott, M.A. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.) 
 
 361 
 
362 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 justifies the belief of all the friends and colleagues of Mr. 
 Firth, that he was quite able to combine vivid narrative 
 and living portraiture with inexhaustible research and 
 thorough scholarship. The result is a monograph in 
 five hundred pages which must satisfy the expectations 
 of the student no less than the curiosity of the 
 public. 
 
 The distinctive point about the book is this : Mr. 
 Firth for the first time combines a full and detailed 
 narrative of Cromwell's entire career with exhaustive 
 research into all the original sources. One or two 
 very learned students of the documents have edited 
 these, and have supplied us with admirable elucidations 
 and sketches of the man and his times. There are 
 also perhaps a score of lives of Cromwell, of greater or 
 less merit, bulk, and research, which are not the result 
 of a long first-hand study of all the available material, 
 whether manuscript or printed. Carlyle laboured on 
 the original papers and memoirs, and gave us an 
 invaluable commentary, but not a real biography. 
 Mr. S. R. Gardiner's monumental history, with all the 
 mountains of research that he has condensed into five 
 volumes, has not yet reached the close of the Protector- 
 ate ; and his two short studies of Oliver, however 
 valuable as estimates, are neither of them a complete 
 biography. Mr. J. L. Sandford, Mr. F. A. Inderwick, 
 Q.C., and others have published special studies and 
 useful documents, but they have not written anything 
 like continuous narratives. On the other hand, the 
 many writers in England and in America who have 
 published substantive biographies of more or less 
 industry and skill — some suggestive, some eloquent, 
 some dull, and many of them worthless — have not 
 professed to base their histories on such exhaustive 
 study of manuscript and contemporary authorities as 
 Carlyle and Gardiner have done. Mr. Firth, with a 
 
CH. XXII FIRTH'S ' CROMWELL ' 363 
 
 first-hand knowledge of the whole extant material 
 certainly not less than that of either Carlyle or Gardiner, 
 has for the first time written an ample history of the 
 man and his comrades, every line of which bears the 
 stamp of original research. 
 
 The question as to which the reader will first desire 
 to be satisfied is certainly this : What is Mr. Firth's 
 general estimate of the character and achievement of 
 the Protector on the whole ? He has left us in no 
 sort of doubt. 
 
 Mr. Firth's Oliver is by no means the divinely 
 inspired hero who can do no wrong, and whose 
 commands mere men are bound to obey without reason- 
 ing or delay, as he appears to Carlyle and to some 
 Puritan zealots in England and America. Mr. Firth 
 shows us the defects of the Protector's great quahties, 
 his inevitable Hmitations, his slow enlargement of 
 purpose, and his anxious hesitations and changes of 
 mind. On the other hand, he proves Oliver to have 
 been a consummate soldier, a profoundly conscientious 
 spirit, and a born statesman above all statesmen of his 
 age, if not in our English history. Mr. Firth does 
 not, like Carlyle, exult in Cromwell's part in regicide, 
 in the Irish massacres, in his Scottish conquest, in his 
 trampling on constitutional law and personal liberties. 
 He faces all these problems squarely, not witl\ 
 Machiavellian scorn, but with historical insight into 
 the temper and moral standards of the time ; and he 
 shows us how to weigh the great Puritan in the Hght 
 of his surroundings and his ideals. On the other hand, 
 he does not, like Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Morley, over- 
 emphasise Cromwell's indecisions, illegalities, failures, 
 and arbitrary violence. 
 
 In a well-reasoned epilogue Mr. Firth sums up 
 his general estimate of Cromwell. Though not 
 myself accepting it without sundry qualifications 
 
364 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 and "surrebutters,'* as lawyers say, I will endeavour 
 to give the sense of this interesting chapter. 
 
 Either as a soldier or as a statesman Cromwell was far 
 greater than any Englishman of his time ; and he was 
 both soldier and statesman in one. We must look to Caesar 
 or Napoleon to find a parallel for this union of high political 
 and military ability in one man. Cromwell was not as 
 great a man as Caesar or Napoleon, and he played his part on 
 a smaller stage ; but he " bestrode the narrow world " of 
 Puritan England "like a Colossus." As a soldier he not 
 only won great victories, but created the instrument with 
 which he won them. Out of the military chaos which 
 existed when the war began he organised the force which 
 made Puritanism victorious. (P. 467.) 
 
 Cromwell inspired his men not only with con- 
 fidence in himself, but with his own high enthusiasm. 
 He created an army, said Clarendon, "whose order 
 and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, whose 
 courage and success made it famous and terrible over 
 the world." " What remains clear," says Mr. Firth 
 (p. 473), "is that Cromwell could adapt his strategy 
 with unfaiHng success to the conditions of the theatre 
 in which he waged war and to the character of the 
 antagonists he had to meet. His military genius 
 was equal to every duty which fate imposed upon 
 him." 
 
 Turning to the problem of his character, Mr. 
 Firth shows us how uniformly down to 1845 
 Cromwell was spoken of as a hypocrite and a self- 
 seeker. Carlyle, says Mr. Firth, " effectually dispelled 
 the theory of Cromwell's hypocrisy. 'Not a man 
 of falsehoods, but a man of truths,' was Carlyle's 
 conclusion, and subsequent historians and biographers 
 have accepted it as sound." Though Cromwell was 
 not a " fanatic " in Hume's sense, " religious rather 
 
cH.xxii FIRTH'S 'CROMWELL' 365 
 
 than political principles guided his action, and his 
 political ideals were the direct outcome of his creed " 
 
 (p. 476). 
 
 Cromwell's conception of his duty to his Maker 
 and to his people was to do God's will — " to do that 
 which is the will of God." The puzzle was 
 to find out what, in things political, this • will 
 was, what it enjoined men to do. Some of 
 Cromwell's comrades professed to have this revealed 
 to them by their own personal convictions. 
 "Cromwell never did so. 'I cannot say,' he 
 declared in a prayer-meeting where such revelations 
 had been alleged, ' that I have received anything that 
 I can speak as in the name of the Lord ' " (p. 477). 
 Cromwell believed in "dispensations" rather than 
 "revelations." He sought to extract the purpose 
 of God from the visible trend of events ; that is to 
 say, he was a religious opportunist. His habit of 
 waiting upon Providence till the providential design 
 was clear was in effect a statesmanlike survey of all 
 the conditions and surroundings. There never was 
 so systematic an opportunist. This made him often 
 so very slow to make up his mind and so willing to 
 change it, even if he had to make a complete volte- 
 face. Along with this went his fiery passion to execute 
 his purpose when once he had finally resolved on 
 action. This is the key to Cromwell's nature and 
 career, his inconsistencies, his cautiousness, and his 
 occasional furies. 
 
 This ingrained temper of watching the develop- 
 ment of events explains the apparent want of sincere 
 principle with which he was so unjustly charged, and 
 explains also the mistakes into which his zeal in 
 action sometimes led him. He never pretended to 
 look very far ahead. "These issues and events, 
 he said in 1656, have not been forecast, but were 
 
366 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 sudden providences in things'* (p. 479). Cromwell 
 himself owned that he sometimes made too much of 
 "outward dispensations" — i.e. of the finger of God 
 in passing events. He sometimes mistook the 
 ulterior meaning of facts, but he did not misunderstand 
 the present importance of facts. He judged facts 
 as they were. " If the fact be so, he said, why should 
 we sport with it ? " It was this made Cromwell 
 more practical and less visionary than other statesmen 
 — more open-minded and better able to adapt his 
 policy to changing circumstances and needs. He 
 had no programme, no formulas, no doctrines. Forms 
 of government were not good or bad per se ; all 
 depended on the conditions of the time, the temper 
 of parties, and the ultimate success of the cause. 
 He varied his means, but his ends remained the same. 
 His end always was, to strengthen the rehgious spirit 
 of the English nation. That was the Cause. 
 
 Hence to Cromwell " religious freedom was more 
 important than political freedom " (p. 483). He 
 always held that spiritual interests must take the 
 lead over civil liberty. And he clung to this, not- 
 withstanding that the majority of the English people 
 did not believe this view, and he knew that he was 
 leader of only a godly minority for the time being. 
 He was no democrat — but neither was he a tyrant. 
 
 Cromwell wished to govern constitutionally. No 
 theory of the divine right of an able man to govern the 
 incapable multitude blinded his eyes to the fact that self- 
 government was the inheritance and right of the English 
 people. He accepted the first principle of democracy, 
 the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, or, as he 
 phrased it, " that the foundation of supremacy is in the 
 people and to be by them set down in their representatives." 
 More than once he declared that the good of the governed 
 was the supreme end of all governments, and he claimed 
 
CH. XXII FIRTH'S ' CROMWELL ' 367 
 
 that his own government acted " for the good of the 
 people, and for their interest, and without respect had to 
 any other interest." But government for the people did 
 not necessarily mean government by the people. " That's 
 the question," said Cromwell, "what's for their good, 
 not what pleases them," and the history of the Protectorate 
 was a commentary on this text. (Firth, p. 484.) 
 
 This, however, is not, as Mr. Firth seems to think, 
 "the first principle of democracy." It is the cardinal 
 idea of Whiggism, or rather of the whole scheme of 
 our Parliamentary government, under Whigs, Tories, 
 Conservatives, or Radicals, from the time of the Revolu- 
 tion of 1689 down to our generation. Our own 
 generation, it seems, adopts the pure democratic 
 ticket, as understood at Athens, Geneva, or Chicago 
 — What do the electors wish ? not What is good for 
 the people .? This latter principle was the principle 
 of Cromwell, as it was of Walpole, Chatham, Pitt, 
 Canning, and Peel. Like theirs, Cromwell's rule 
 was to lead the nation, not to follow it. In so 
 understanding his duty to God and the People, he 
 was not a tyrant, but a Conservative English states- 
 man. 
 
 Cromwell felt confident that his own good and 
 strong government would in the end convince the 
 people that it was their true interest to accept his 
 temporary dictatorship in the trust of his gradually 
 instituting constitutional government. The present 
 writer still holds that this might have been possible 
 if Cromwell could have lived twenty years more, and 
 had introduced in time the inevitable modifications 
 and rearrangements that circumstances and the nation 
 required. Mr. Firth thinks the hope fallacious, for 
 the enthusiasm of Puritanism was spent. But 
 Cromwell, though entering on his career as a Puritan 
 zealot, was also one of the most teachable, patient, 
 
368 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 and conciliatory of statesmen. And being a consum- 
 mately practical man, who, almost alone in history, 
 is the one statesman who succeeded in all his 
 enterprises, it is permissible to think that he might 
 have founded a stable constitution had he been twenty 
 years younger, and lived to develope from a Puritan 
 chief into a national hero of the type of Alfred, or 
 perhaps a dictator such as William the Silent. 
 
 This is not the view of Mr. Firth. But in 
 estimating the final result of Cromwell's career, he 
 amply vindicates it from the charge of ultimate nullity 
 to which Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Morley seem too 
 much inclined to lean. Mr. Firth does not make 
 so much of the fact that Cromwell's institutions did 
 not last. He points out that the failures were more 
 apparent than real. This is his final estimate : 
 
 So the Protector's institutions perished with him, and 
 his work ended in apparent failure. Yet he had achieved 
 great things. Thanks to his sword, absolute monarchy 
 failed to take root in English soil. Thanks to his sword, 
 Great Britain emerged from the chaos of the Civil Wars 
 one strong state instead of three separate and hostile 
 communities. Nor were the results of his action entirely 
 negative. The ideas which inspired his policy exerted 
 a lasting influence on the development of the English 
 state. Thirty years after his death the religious liberty 
 for which he fought was established by law. The union 
 with Scotland and Ireland, which the statesmen of the 
 Restoration undid, the statesmen of the eighteenth century 
 effected. The mastery of the seas he had desired to gain, 
 and the greater Britain he had sought to build up, became 
 sober realities. Thus others perfected the work which 
 he had designed and attempted. (P. 486.) 
 
 But this amounts to saying that Cromwell was the 
 real founder of modern England in the two centuries 
 and a half that have passed. It would be as true 
 
CH. XXII FIRTH'S ' CROMWELL ' 369 
 
 to say that Charlemagne or William the Silent 
 left nothing behind them as to say this of Oliver 
 Cromwell. 
 
 Mr. Firth gives no support to the criticism that 
 Cromwell was too often the creature of circumstances, 
 not the founder of any policy, but the waiter on 
 events. Few statesmen recorded in history, unless 
 it were William the Silent or Queen EHzabeth, were 
 more anxious watchers of the present facts, more 
 ready to tack and turn at each change of breeze, than 
 was the Protector. But, as Mr. Firth paints his 
 career, that is no sign of mental indecision or slowness 
 of apprehension. It is the mark of the practical 
 genius, of indomitable vigilance, and alertness of mind. 
 Nor is the failure of Cromwell's institutions any 
 proof that he was without constructive and original 
 power. He never designed his stop-gap institutions 
 to be permanent. No permanent institutions could 
 have been founded in 1653. ^^^ Protector spoke 
 of himself as the constable set there to keep order — to 
 prevent the return to anarchy or the restoration of 
 the Stuarts. The permanence of Cromwell's work 
 consisted in the revival and ultimate establishment 
 of the great ideas for which he fought with sword 
 and with voice. These ideas — liberty of conscience, 
 suppression of absolute monarchy and feudal aristocracy, 
 union of the three kingdoms, mastery of the seas — 
 were all made the real and permanent bases of English 
 policy within a few generations. Cromwell, it is 
 true, did not conceive any of these ideas out of his 
 own brain as things new and original. But he saw 
 how to make them prevail as solid facts in the political 
 sphere. The originality of the man of action consists 
 in making the winning ideas dominant realities in the 
 practical world. 
 
 Mr. Firth's account of Cromwell's early life down 
 
 2 B 
 
370 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 to the Civil War is a clear summary of the few certain 
 facts, to which he does not seem to have added any 
 new item. He makes no allusion to the story about 
 the brewery. His picture of the arbitrary rule of 
 Charles in the time of Strafford and Laud is a telling 
 indictment of disordered and vacillating tyranny. 
 " Absolutism," he says, " was with Strafford a political 
 creed, with Laud an ecclesiastical necessity. Each 
 needed the same tool ; one to realise his dream of a 
 well-governed Commonwealth, the other to shape a 
 Church that had grown half Calvinistic into con- 
 formity with the Anglican ideal" (p. 27). As to 
 Charles, whom Mr. Firth judges severely, "his poHcy 
 was a series of intrigues which failed, and a succession 
 of bargains in which he asked much, offered little, and 
 got nothing. As it was purely dynastic in its aim, and 
 at once unprincipled and unsuccessful, it left him with 
 no ally in Europe " (p. 24). 
 
 It is when Mr. Firth reaches the Civil Wars that 
 we find his immense knowledge of the contemporary 
 literature, printed and manuscript, come fully into 
 action. Mr. Firth's campaigns and battles are, perhaps, 
 the most effective parts of his book. He has thoroughly 
 exhausted the materials, added some new points, 
 unknown even to Mr. Gardiner, and has given plans 
 of the principal battles and campaigns, differing, as he 
 tells us in the preface, from the received accounts in 
 some respects. It is an annoying slip that, in the plan 
 of Naseby (p. 128), the engraver has reversed the 
 positions of the Parliamentary and Royalist forces, 
 which are stated accurately in the text. By the way, 
 should not the cut on p. loi be described as the 
 Cromwell coat-of-arms and crest, and not simply as 
 the " Cromwell crest," seeing that a shield with seven 
 quarterings is displayed ? And, as the " Cromwell 
 coat-of-arms" on p. 325 entirely differs both in 
 
CH. XXII FIRTH'S 'CROMWELL' 371 
 
 tinctures and charges from the Cromwell coat on 
 p. lOij some explanation of the various quarterings 
 should be given. The Cromwell coat proper [sable^ 
 a lion rampant^ argent) is the same on both shields, but 
 the remaining six are all different from the corre- 
 sponding quarters. 
 
 Mr. Firth traces, with great care and abundant 
 learning, the process by which Cromwell, civilian, 
 farmer, and Puritan as he was, made himself a 
 consummate soldier. It is thought that, before war 
 broke out, he was saturated with accounts of the 
 campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus, then very popular 
 in England, and was imbued with clear ideas of the 
 tactics and military principles of that great commander. 
 Cromwell, who never saw a squadron till he was forty- 
 three, learned how to fight by constant fighting, and 
 having a natural genius for command, and an intense 
 interest in the art of war, he ripened fast by practice 
 and what Marvell calls his "industrious valour," into 
 the most consummate tactician who ever fought on 
 British soil. Mr. Firth's account of the battles of 
 Marston Moor and of Dunbar differs in some particulars 
 from the received views, for reasons which he has him- 
 self explained in the " Royal Historical Society's Trans- 
 actions." His new explanation of the battle of Dunbar 
 is particularly interesting and lucid. 
 
 Mr. Firth's account of the King's trial and execution 
 will be read with keen appreciation, though he does 
 not seem to have added any new point, nor to differ 
 from the judgment of our best historians. He accepts 
 it as the work of the army and its partisans alone, 
 by them regarded as a just expiation of crime with 
 which God must be pleased. Blood, they said, defiled 
 the land, which could not be cleansed save by the 
 blood of him that shed it. Cromwell, according to 
 Mr. Firth, entirely adopted this view. 
 
372 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 He had been one of the last men of his party to believe 
 the King's death a necessity, but having persuaded himself 
 that it was a just and necessary act, he saw no reason for 
 remorse. It seemed to him that England had freed itself 
 from a tyrant "in a way which Christians in after times 
 will mention with honour, and all tyrants in the world 
 look at with fear." (P. 231.) 
 
 The famous scene of the dissolution of the Long 
 Parliament is told with equal brilliancy and detail. 
 Here, again, Cromwell acted as the instrument of the 
 army and its party, without a shadow of legal right. 
 As between the faction at St. Stephen's and the army, 
 legalities were equally shadowy ; but, in Mr. Firth's 
 opinion, the constitutional shadow in the remnant of 
 a Parliament was destined in the long run to baffle 
 the Protectorate. As to the Protectorate, Mr. Firth 
 abundantly justifies its claim as the most efficient, most 
 liberal, most tolerant government that England had 
 known, hampered by its initial want of any legitimate 
 authority, and by the incurable irreconcilability of the 
 Parliamentary notables, but able, honest, patient, and 
 full of good purposes and rational reforms. 
 
 Mr. Firth's review of Cromwell's foreign policy, in 
 Chapter xviii., should be studied with special care, 
 having regard to recent discussions and criticisms. 
 He sums it up thus : — 
 
 Three aims guided Cromwell's foreign policy : the first 
 was the desire to maintain and spread the Protestant 
 religion ; the second, the desire to preserve and extend 
 English commerce ; the third, the desire to prevent the 
 restoration of the Stuarts by foreign aid. The European 
 mission of England, its material greatness, and its political 
 independence were inseparably associated in his mind, and 
 beneath all apparent wavering and hesitation, these three 
 aims he consistently pursued. 
 
cH.xxii FIRTH'S 'CROMWELL' 373 
 
 In spite of the tangle of foreign complications left 
 by Stuarts and the Long Parliament, Oliver achieved 
 each of these ends in triumph. He made advantageous 
 peace with the Dutch, with Sweden, with Denmark, 
 with Portugal. These treaties not only broke up any 
 prospect of foreign coalition, but effectually secured 
 British commerce, which now advanced " by leaps and 
 bounds." Thereupon the two great powers of the 
 continent, France and Spain, were bidding against each 
 other for a British aUiance. Long did Oliver hesitate 
 which to accept. Both were Catholic, both our rivals, 
 both presented possible dangers. The vacillation 
 which has been imputed to the Protector was really 
 statesmanHke foresight. His changes of policy were 
 due to extraordinary difficulties in the situation. At 
 last, under the hostile attitude of Spain, Cromwell allied 
 himself with France, and gained Dunkirk. Mr. Firth 
 is not prepared to condemn his policy of preferring a 
 French to a Spanish alliance. It was impossible at 
 that time to foresee the coming decadence of Spain, 
 the overweening ambition of Louis XIV., and the folly 
 and servility of the Stuarts of the Restoration. 
 
 Of the success of Cromwell's colonial policy Mr. 
 Firth has an even higher estimate. 
 
 Cromwell was the first English ruler who systematically 
 employed the power of the government to increase and 
 extend the colonial possessions of England. His colonial 
 policy was not a subordinate part of his foreign policy, but 
 an'independent scheme of action, based on definite principles 
 and persistently pursued. 
 
 All the English colonies grew up during the life- 
 time of Cromwell, and during the Protectorate these 
 were extended and consoHdated into what might be 
 called the nucleus of the Empire. Mr. Firth thinks 
 Cromwell had at one time the idea of emigrating, and 
 
374 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 all through his life he had the keenest interest in New 
 England. Ever since 1643 he was officially connected 
 with the government of the colonies. These American 
 colonies exercised great influence on the development 
 of democracy and independency in England. " The 
 imperial purpose which had inspired the colonial policy 
 of the Commonwealth found its fullest expression in 
 the actions of the Protector " (p. 393). In the internal 
 affairs of the colonies, Cromwell interfered very little. 
 But he waged war zealously to extend the British 
 colonies on the American continent, whether against 
 French, Dutch, or Spaniards. In spite of the failure 
 of Penn and Venables in Hispaniola, the capture of 
 Jamaica laid the foundation of British West Indies. 
 
 In reality it was the most fruitful part of his external 
 policy, and produced the most abiding results. . . . Thus 
 the colonial policy which Cromwell and the statesmen of 
 the Republic had initiated became the permanent policy of 
 succeeding rulers, and it became so because it represented 
 not the views of a particular party, but the aspirations and 
 the interests of Englishmen in general. (P. 404.) 
 
 It must be taken as a plain truth of history that 
 Cromwell is the first consistent and systematic architect 
 of British Imperialism. As such he has been, and he 
 will be, praised or blamed by those who glory in or 
 those who condemn the huge structure which has been 
 built up on those foundations. But those who deplore 
 that such barbarous excrescences on the glorious roll of 
 English history should be finked with the memory of 
 so pure a name, do not forget that the Protector of the 
 middle of the seventeenth century must not be judged 
 by the canons of any school in the end of the nineteenth 
 century ; that the standard we use must be relative, not 
 absolute j that Cromwell, however wise and just, could 
 
CH. XXII FIRTH'S ' CROMWELL ' 375 
 
 not rise above the best ideals of his age, beyond the 
 only religion conceivable to a Bible Christian. 
 
 In parting v^^ith the book of Mr. Firth we feel that 
 at last WG have a full and conclusive estimate of our great 
 Puritan statesman, v^hich, whilst it is based on a learn- 
 ing and research greater than any other biography of 
 Cromw^ell in our language, is certainly second to none 
 other in lucidity, literary art, and sound judgment. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 TWO CORONATIONS 
 1838, I9II 
 
 ^znd June 191 1 
 
 To those who remember the Coronation of Victoria 
 and have witnessed also that of her grandson the 
 contrasts of near three-quarters of a century seem 
 big with inexhaustible meanings. Seventy-three years 
 ago I was placed in Parliament Square to see the 
 young Queen pass to the Abbey — with Wellington 
 and his soldiers in the long war, and Melbourne and 
 Russell, and the public men of the thirties. And 
 to-day from Whitehall I saw King George and the 
 new men in the second decade of the twentieth 
 century. I ask myself — can the history of England 
 in any period of three generations show changes so 
 enormous and growth so portentous ? And yet 
 withal in much it seems my boyish impressions all 
 repeated — the same, nay greater, popularity of the 
 Monarchy, the same, nay greater, enthusiasm for 
 Army and Navy, the same love of historic traditions, 
 the same resolve to make politics a fair and square 
 Constitutional fight. 
 
 Wealth, population. Empire, Army, Navy, in- 
 376 
 
CH. XXIII TWO CORONATIONS 377 
 
 ventions, mechanical appliances, resources, habits — all 
 have been trebled and enlarged beyond the bounds of 
 a fairy tale. And yet 1 have seen to-day, in 1911, 
 just v^hat I saw in 1838 — amplified in volume, but in 
 substance the same. 
 
 In the year 1831 (when I was born) — the year of 
 the Coronation of William IV. — the population of 
 London, including the suburbs, was less than one 
 million and a half. That of the next five cities in 
 the kingdom did not make up half a million. There 
 were no railways out of London at the Coronation of 
 Victoria j and our family drove up easily in the 
 morning the ten miles or so from the beautiful quiet 
 village on the northern hills where I lived as a child 
 and boy. There were crowds in the streets, and bunt- 
 ing, and troops and police, and illuminations, and the 
 same anxiety to be in the Abbey, where the ceremony 
 was almost the same as it was to-day. Few persons 
 seem to understand that the essential parts of that 
 ceremony are as old as Justinian and Constantine 
 Porphyrogenitus. To me the wonder is that such 
 vast material expansion and such incalculable novelties 
 in life have made so small an alteration in the essentials 
 of our national life, and even in the ideals of English 
 patriotism. 
 
 There were new sights, fresh thoughts, in to-day's 
 show no doubt. In 1838 the idea of bringing Indian 
 troopers. Cavalry from Canada, Australia, New 
 Zealand, would have seemed absurd. To bring soldiers 
 from the Punjab or from Australasia would have cost 
 a million and required a year for the double journey. 
 The spectacle of 19 11 is the visible representation 
 of the Overseas Dominions and the fact of their 
 hearty welcome by the pubHc. Whenever an Asiatic 
 or a Colonial trooper passed, the cheers were spon- 
 taneous and warm. Those who have magnificent 
 
378 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 hopes of the Empire, as well as those whose dreams are 
 of nightmares, equally admit that to the man in the 
 street the unity of the King's Dominions is a real and 
 a potent interest. Putting my impressions side by 
 side, I was struck to-day by proof that the Monarchy 
 is personally more popular than it was at the Accession 
 of Victoria, and I think the bitterness of class antagon- 
 ism is far less evident than it was in the hot days of 
 the thirties. The candid observer everywhere recog- 
 nised that the medieval pageantry, the persons and 
 families of the Sovereigns, and even the equipages and 
 the valetaille of the heraldic Peers, were well received 
 and met with nothing but cheers. I speak simply of 
 the crowd in the street. I was entirely outside all 
 official or society interests. I went solely to see the 
 people, and I came away with a belief that the people 
 enjoyed the sight. 
 
 The people indeed to-day have been admirable. 
 There is no doubt there has been in the last generation 
 a great and general elevation of tone. The crowd 
 behaved with a good temper, a cheerful tone, a discipline 
 and patience which could not be surpassed by gentle 
 Florentines or stolid Hollanders. Much of this blessed 
 change must be put down to our school training and 
 the immense improvement in the masses of Labour. 
 There is no European capital which could show such 
 a spectacle of popular freedom combined with orderly 
 conduct. This is a point which is striking to those 
 who know European masses. Our English people are 
 getting to enjoy their holiday pleasures more gaily and 
 more brightly than in the Georgian era. We cannot 
 match the French or Italians or Austrians in art, in 
 colour, in abandon^ and verve ; but the visible difference 
 between the streets in 191 1 and in 1838 is this — our 
 people and their teachers have been abroad, have 
 learned the graces of life and the charm of art, and call 
 
cH.xxiii TWO CORONATIONS 379 
 
 for humane and artistic forms of public enjoyment. 
 There is far too much of Early Victorian horrors and 
 drab conventions still, but London is looking less like 
 a big bazaar, and St. James's Street and Whitehall 
 were certainly on the right road. It is melancholy to 
 think of the tawdry rubbish they call "decorations" 
 and the stupid gas stars and garters they call " illumina- 
 tions." The least village on an Italian coast or lake 
 can do better. But I confess that 1838 things were 
 worse — far worse. 
 
 Next to the sight of the new gaiety, culture, and 
 comfort of the people, the fact of this day was the 
 triumphant organisation of the enormous spectacle and 
 masses, by military and civil authorities alike. No 
 accident, or even hitch, met my eyes or has reached 
 my ears as I write to-night. The world has never seen 
 so many millions crowded together in a city so vast, 
 and for eighteen hours continually marshalled, patrolled, 
 fed, and amused, to witness one of the most elaborate 
 military and Royal pageants that ancient or modern 
 history could parallel. Nothing of the kind, since 
 Trajan and Aurelian, could have been possible. It 
 reached over the whole globe, which for twenty-four 
 hours seemed to concentrate in a single city specimens 
 of its races, costumes, and arms. Few can conceive the 
 tremendous responsibilities of such a gathering. And 
 the least observant and the most envious must admit 
 that it was a feat of civil and mihtary organisation of 
 the very first order. The boundless extension of the 
 British Empire and the incredible scale of London and 
 its population would be mere chaos without adequate 
 power to organise both. And George V. and his 
 chiefs have shown the world that England still has 
 powers of command. 
 
 No man who has been for twelve hours in the 
 midst of this popular panorama can attempt in an hour 
 
38o AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 to trace all the impressions it has forced on his mind. 
 Amongst the obvious points of interest that I noticed 
 specially was the hearty and spontaneous welcome 
 given to the German Crown Prince, who was recog- 
 nised and cheered even when he made an unofficial 
 and surprise inspection in his motor. And it seemed 
 to me next that the French and the American Envoys 
 were the most popular, and to some extent the Prince 
 from Japan. I shall He down in bed to-night with 
 better hopes of the immediate future of our country, 
 and, indeed, of the continued peace of the civilised 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY 
 JUNE 191 I 
 
 At the Jubilee of Queen Victoria several of us 
 interested in history or in art made indignant protest 
 against the risk to the Abbey and the disfigurement of 
 its venerable aisles with the barbarous booths by which 
 its structure was menaced and its beauty was defiled. 
 I wish to put on record our disgust at the vulgar 
 abomination which was renewed at the recent Coro- 
 nation. 
 
 I am not making any criticism either of Monarchy 
 or Coronation as a national and historic ceremonial. 
 Sensible men of all parties regard the Crown not only 
 as a useful, but at the present day as an indispensable 
 institution. As to Coronation, with its historic 
 meaning as a national declaration of mutual trust by 
 ruler and ruled, it goes along with the Crown. And in 
 the normal state of Sociocracy, the public investiture of 
 the Head of the State would be treated as a Sacrament. 
 If prelates and officials find they can perform on the 
 " theatre " of our Abbey the Byzantine ritual of the 
 Porphyrogeniti without laughing in each other's faces, 
 as did the Roman Augurs, I do not at all wish to smile 
 at a scene which would do honour to Sir Herbert Tree. 
 
 381 
 
382 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. n 
 
 So, for my part, I am quite in favour of a solemn and 
 even religious investiture of the Crown. 
 
 What I complain of is something quite different. 
 It is, first, that the most sacred Church in all Christen- 
 dom was for six months converted into a builder's 
 workshop, and night and day remained in hourly 
 danger of utter destruction, whilst minor injuries to 
 the fabric and tombs were done by carpenters and 
 scene-shifters. Secondly, I complain that for six 
 months the grandest monument in Europe was 
 turned into a St. Martin's Lane CoHseum, or a mere 
 Olympia Horse Show, where the first thing considered 
 was "the seating accommodation" for so many 
 thousands. These two things, the risk of fire and the 
 disfigurement of the church, were quite separable from 
 the Coronation. There was no real need to seat noble 
 Backwoodsmen and the busybodies and touts of society. 
 There was no need to build a huge green-room, a 
 restaurant, and dressing-rooms for Royalty, as if the 
 crowning were another Shakespeare costume ball. If 
 the tedious ceremonial could not be abridged, and all 
 this "quick-change costumery" was a necessity of 
 kingship, there was no need of tawdry booths stuck 
 on to the Abbey which were only fit for the Crystal 
 Palace or Earl's Court. The Abbey communicates 
 with the Deanery, Cloisters, and an immense range of 
 buildings in which there was ample room for robing, 
 rest, refreshment, and every other incidental purpose. 
 It was wanton vulgarity to plaster the Abbey with 
 side-shows which suggested " Old Westminster " ; 
 entrance, is., and 6d. 
 
 As to the huge scaffolding under which the exquisite 
 arcades and transepts were submerged, they were even 
 more needless and wanton. The ordinary seats in 
 the Abbey would hold quite as many persons as should 
 be there, and the pathetic old remnant of Feudal 
 
CH. XXIV WESTMINSTER ABBEY 383 
 
 Catholicism would have looked far more noble if it 
 had been left in its ordinary form. Who could better 
 that ? Why need every pushing speculator who has 
 paid for his honour be seated in the grand circle or 
 stalls whilst M.P.s were skied behind distant columns ? 
 It was no doubt well to have various estates, orders, 
 interests, and societies represented at the ceremony. 
 These might have been selected in equal numbers — 
 say ten from each by ballot, as was done at the clubs. 
 A thousand persons were quite enough to represent 
 the forty millions, most of whom would have been glad 
 to be present. If the crowning had taken place in 
 the Abbey as it appeared last Christmas Day, in the 
 presence of about a thousand persons selected by 
 ballot out of about a hundred different orders, it 
 might have been a fine and typical representation of 
 the kingdom. The desperate effort to cram in society 
 notables reduced the whole thing to a farcical pageant, 
 reeking with snobbery and bad taste. 
 
 As to the so-called decorations — which many of 
 us call the desecrations (I mean the upholstery, 
 curtains, and blazonry) — no doubt they were not so 
 bad as usual, and some people evidently found them 
 entrancing, A few really antique tapestries, or carpets, 
 or banners may not have been out of place ; but to go 
 beyond this, to conceal the lovely traceries, to box off 
 the monuments, to trample upon the tombs, and to treat 
 the Abbey as if it were Covent Garden or Drury Lane 
 Theatre — this was to desecrate the House of God and 
 the sleeping place of so many heroes. No good colour 
 scheme could atone for this vandalism. His Grace 
 the Earl Marshal and his prelates would not have 
 suffered it to be done to their new cathedral at 
 Westminister. It was the very irony of politics 
 that it was superintended by our own good friend 
 the Lord President of the Council, who was actually 
 
384 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 engaged in the task of ending or mending the House 
 of Lords. 
 
 Let us be thankful that he did not end the Abbey, 
 and I am sure he cannot mend it. But until the 
 last plank of the booths and sheds is carted away, I 
 shall not be easy that the risk of fire is over. I 
 remember how at the Jubilee a late Dean told me 
 with tears in his eyes that if the Abbey did catch fire 
 he prayed that he might be burned with it. But 
 when fire risk is over there will remain the memory 
 of much sordid pandering to vulgar tastes. And 
 whenever in the distant future another Coronation 
 may be held, let us trust that the public may be 
 spared the inane transformation of the Abbey into a 
 theatre or a music-hall. 
 
 I suggest that if the historic ceremony of Conse- 
 cration by Anglican Prelates has to be made in the 
 Abbey, there should be on the next or following day, 
 an installation of a far more truly lay, popular, and 
 representative sort in St. Paul's, which would easily 
 hold 10,000 persons without any disfigurement and 
 where by a ceremonial perambulation his Majesty 
 might pass into the immediate presence of delegates 
 chosen from every interest in the Nation and in the 
 Empire. To cram real representatives into the Abbey 
 along with nameless busybodies and parasites, is to 
 debase and endanger our ancient fame. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE LONDON LIBRARY SUBJECT INDEX 
 1909 
 
 The Subject Index of the London Library, upon 
 which the Librarian, Dr. Hagberg Wright, and a 
 special staff have been engaged for nearly five years, 
 is nov^^ published. Considering the vast mass of 
 literature that it covers, its completeness of reference, 
 and the services it v^^ill offer to readers of all classes, 
 it will be judged as a work having no rival with 
 which it could be compared, at any rate in England. 
 It is a catalogue of some 250,000 volumes carefully 
 selected by experts from the literature of all ages and 
 countries, which has been classified in alphabetical 
 order of their subjects, under an elaborate system of 
 subsidiary groups. 
 
 The scale of the work immensely surpasses that of 
 any similar index, except that of the British Museum, 
 and those of one or two national libraries, which fill 
 many volumes. This Index is in one manageable 
 quarto of 1254 pages in triple column, and it contains 
 no less than 18,000 different headings, with the 
 titles, dates, and authors* names of some 166,000 
 works. For the purpose of the Index fiction was 
 not included. It is obvious that any detailed classi- 
 385 2 C 
 
386 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 fication of works of fiction, unless so far as language 
 or epoch may go, would be hardly practicable and was 
 certainly not requisite. 
 
 As the London Library is not at all a miscellaneous 
 collection, but has been selected by literary experts 
 over a period of the last seventy years, this Index will 
 serve readers of all kinds as a handy bibliography, or 
 guide to useful books. But, as it is a catalogue of 
 the books actually on the shelves of one institution, 
 and yet not at all confined to a particular building, 
 but circulating amongst the members, it is a classified 
 list of the books which can be used by the reader 
 in his own home. 
 
 The practical difference between a bibliography 
 and a library catalogue is obvious. A mere biblio- 
 graphy is a select list of books of value on different 
 subjects ; and it may range in scale from Lord 
 Avebury's Best Hundred Books to the elaborate 
 guides to books of W. S. Sonnenschein or some 
 American compilations. But, however good and 
 complete such a list may be, the books it mentions 
 are, of course, not available in any actual collection 
 or library ; and the works needed will have to be 
 found by the reader in some public library or acquired 
 for his own. 
 
 On the other hand, a library catalogue, whether 
 of Authors or of Subjects, is the list of books 
 contained in a particular building and accessible 
 within its rooms, or it may be, to be taken away 
 from it. The books catalogued in such a list can be 
 seen, or can be sent for, and taken away by any reader 
 entitled to use the volumes. 
 
 The Subject Index of the London Library has 
 both characters. It is a real working bibliography, 
 inasmuch as it is a collection of books, specially 
 selected by experts, and arranged in careful classification 
 
cH.xxv THE LONDON LIBRARY 387 
 
 by subject, age, and country. As such, it may be 
 used by any reader in any part of the world, whatever 
 be the library to which he may have immediate 
 access. This new index, from its size and complete- 
 ness, must soon become a manual of reference to 
 all students at home and abroad, without regard to 
 their being members of the London or any other 
 lending library. 
 
 On the other hand, the. new Index will serve to 
 indicate to every member of the I/ondon Library the 
 specially selected books on any subject which he wishes 
 to study ; and he can see the book wanted on the 
 shelves in St. James's Square, or may write to the 
 Librarian to forward it to him. 
 
 There are several elements which may constitute 
 the usefulness of any subject index — or may lessen it. 
 A vast miscellaneous library, from its very bulk, 
 makes any complete subject index of its contents 
 practically impossible — and if it were made, it would 
 be unworkable except by special students under limited 
 conditions. To make a complete subject index of 
 every volume in the British Museum or in one of the 
 great University Libraries would be a task of enormous 
 labour and cost ; and, if made, it would be an encyclo- 
 paedia or a library in itself, in a great number of bulky 
 volumes, ten or twenty times that of this single volume. 
 The British Museum, which is worked with con- 
 spicuous industry and skill, publishes a Subject Index 
 of the modern works added to it, in sectional periods of 
 ten and of five years. At present we have indexes of 
 the modern works added to the British Museum in the 
 years 1881-1905 in four volumes of about lOOO pages 
 each. That is to say, the index of four years requires 
 more than 1000 pages. The Index of the London 
 Library, for books issued during four centuries, goes 
 in one manageable volume of 1254 pages. 
 
388 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 A subject Index of a vast miscellaneous library, even 
 if made, would be useless as a bibliography, or guide to 
 books. Mole ruit sua. The really useful books would 
 be swamped in rubbish, for a State Library, or one 
 established by Statute, cannot select, and its shelves 
 have to take books as they are issued. Our Museum 
 Library, which is so admirably organised, does its best 
 to deal with this flood of matter, and it offers its 
 ordinary readers in one great hall an invaluable selec- 
 tion of current books of reference, carefully arranged 
 in convenient groups and tabulated in special cata- 
 logues. But then this most serviceable collection 
 amounts only to a few thousand works. The London 
 Library Index tabulates some 250,000 volumes. And 
 these have been carefully chosen by men of letters 
 from Thomas Carlyle down to Sir Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Thus, a subject index of a library of 2,000,000 
 books would be useless from its unmanageable dimen- 
 sions to any but learned students. One of no more 
 than 5000 books would be too limited to be of use to 
 them. The ideal scale for a working index would be 
 a range not exceeding 250,000 volumes, and these the 
 result of systematic expert selection. Indexes, like 
 dictionaries, which run into many volumes are often 
 troublesome, as those who have to pass up and down 
 the Museum catalogues well know. A subject index 
 in four volumes, which only covers the publications of 
 fifteen years ending 1905, has manifold uses, but it is 
 not what the general reader often wants. The very 
 book he needs might have been published in 1880 or in 
 1906, and would not be in the index. Now, the new 
 London Library Index in one volume deals with 
 literature of all ages and countries ; it ranges from fac- 
 similes of the Gospels or of Shakespeare's poems to 
 publications of the present year. 
 
 There are many excellent subject indexes of special 
 
CH. XXV THE LONDON LIBRARY 389 
 
 sciences and of particular collections. Count Btinau 
 published at Leipzig in 1750-56 a classified catalogue 
 of his own library of 42,000 volumes. Dr. Watt 
 published a bibliography of some 40,000 works (Edin- 
 burgh, 1824) 5 but as the authors' names are not 
 given in the subject index, and the books are not in 
 any particular library, the value of these catalogues, 
 after eighty-five years have passed, is simply historical. 
 The London Institution, various pubHc departments, 
 and some American libraries have issued subject cata- 
 logues of much usefulness. But all of these are of 
 special periods, of special subjects, or of a limited 
 number of books, so that they belong to a wholly 
 different order from the Index under consideration. 
 
 What the ordinary student or the general reader 
 wants to know is this — What are the titles, authors' 
 names, and dates of works of authority of any age or 
 language in the particular subject of study he has on 
 hand ? No special catalogue, no special period, no 
 single language or nation would serve his turn. Biblio- 
 graphies may tell him of a book he may buy or seek, 
 but they do not help him to know where the book is. 
 Subject catalogues without authors' names are usually 
 misleading ; if they state authors' names but omit the 
 titles they mislead again : if they omit the date they 
 may give endless trouble. Almost all subject cata- 
 logues fail in one or other point. The new Index 
 invariably gives title, name, and date of no less than 
 250,000 volumes, under no less than 18,000 subject 
 headings. 
 
 One must not overlook the very valuable publica- 
 tions of W. S. Sonnenschein, which have helped so 
 many readers. His excellent bibliography of standard 
 books has been brought down to the year 1901. It 
 deals with about 50,000 works, chiefly EngHsh. It 
 is, of course, " a guide to books," not the catalogue of 
 
390 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 any existing library. They are not to be found in any 
 particular place or institution, and, of course, they 
 cannot be used by the reader at home. Again, the 
 list does not cover the immense range of the literature 
 of foreign nations, all those of Europe, and some 
 Oriental. Whatever test we take, it will be found 
 that the new Index combines every quality of useful- 
 ness that is needed in a classified catalogue of trust- 
 worthy authorities on every possible subject and of 
 every age and kind of Hterature. 
 
 The indispensable conditions of usefulness to the 
 average reader are a single handy volume, being a 
 guide to general literature, with precise description 
 of the books to be found in a very large selected 
 library. 
 
 Down to the present time the London Library had 
 no classified index but that of 1888, issued by Mr. 
 Robert Harrison. It was in about 100 pages, and had 
 about 5000 sub-headings. The new Index has 1254 
 pages and more than 18,000 headings of subjects. 
 The index of 1888 gave neither title nor date of any 
 work, but only the first word of each entry in the 
 authors' catalogue. For instance, under " Natural 
 History" it gives these names : — "Adams, Aelian, 
 Aldrovandus, Allman, Anderson, Animal World, 
 Annales, Aristotle, Astruc, Atkinson, Bacon, Baird, 
 Bates," and 102 other names, ending with " Yarrell." 
 It is obvious that a bare list of 1 1 5 names, in which 
 Aristotle, Bacon, and Darwin figure with Goldsmith 
 and " Monkeys " would not be of much use to the 
 student or to the general reader. 
 
 In the new Index Natural History occupies nine 
 columns of print, with some 30 sub-headings, dis- 
 tinguishing the various branches, epochs, and countries 
 of this science. In each case the title, scope, author, 
 and date are given. These particulars are obviously 
 
CH.xxv THE LONDON LIBRARY 391 
 
 essential to anything that pretends to be a guide to the 
 300 works grouped under " Natural History." 
 
 In the classified subject catalogue of a great Hbrary 
 it is obvious that its usefulness depends on the com- 
 pleteness and scientific arrangement of its subdivisions. 
 To lump together a thousand vsrorks under a general 
 heading v^^ould, of course, be no classification at all. 
 Turn in the new Index to the title " Law." It 
 occupies some 36 columns, which give nearly 1500 
 references to various works. These are classified 
 under no less than 150 sub-headings, carrying the 
 subject into special details, such as Chaldean, 
 Kaffir, Maltese, Welsh, Law. And besides this, 
 the student will find under " Law " some thousands of 
 cross-references. 
 
 We turn, for example, to the heading " Libraries." 
 We have under this more than 50 sub-headings, with 
 about 400 references. These are classified into 
 countries of Europe, America, Asia, and Africa ; 
 Ancient, Modern, Private, Public, and so forth ; 
 Library Architecture, Management, Catalogues, Con- 
 ferences, Legal, Cathedral, Subscription, Societies, 
 Clubs, &C.J ending with Library Classification, and 
 above 40 other cross-references. Suppose a reader 
 desires to ascertain what is the law governing libraries 
 in France. It is probably a matter about which 
 a learned English lawyer might hardly know where 
 to look. He turns to the new Index — heading 
 "Libraries — France"; then in column 3, page 651, 
 he finds at a glance the sub -heading "Law of 
 Libraries," and he is at once referred to "Gautier 
 (Jean), Nos biblioth^ques, leur situation legale, &c., 
 8vo, 1903." A student turned into a vast pubHc 
 library, without an adequate index, might waste a 
 morning before he alighted upon a useful book such as 
 that of "Jean Gautier." In the old Index of 1888 
 
392 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 he would find no classification under " Libraries," but 
 only about thirty names of authors. 
 
 The secret of the usefulness of the new Index lies 
 in the singularly minute detail into which the 1 8,000 
 headings allow the references to be carried. As 
 specimens of this detail one may turn to the sub- 
 headings — "Kiowa Indians," "Kissing, etiquette of," 
 "Japanese Music — Libraries — Calendars," "Children's 
 Games," "Street- cleaning," " Portiuncula," "Tus- 
 kegee Institute." The Index, in short, is an "En- 
 cyclopaedic Bibliography." No attempt has been 
 made to frame a hard-and-fast classification of books, 
 according to an abstract scheme of topics, about which 
 men of letters and philosophers might debate for years. 
 The object has been to use as headings the working 
 title under which a reader of average learning and 
 intelligence would in practice begin his search. 
 
 The preface to the new Index gives a complete 
 history of the undertaking. It was originally suggested 
 by Sir Leslie Stephen when he was President of the 
 London Library in 1893, ^^ succession to Lord 
 Tennyson. The new Authors' Catalogue had first to 
 be made. This was not completed until 1903, when 
 it was issued as a quarto volume in 1626 pages of 
 double column. In that year a small sub-Committee 
 was formed to consider the form and plan of a new 
 subject index. Sir Leslie Stephen was chairman, and 
 Mr. Sidney Lee, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Austin 
 Dobson, Dr. W. Hunt, and Mr. H. R. Tedder, with 
 the present writer, were members. Dr. Hagberg 
 Wright, the secretary, was charged to organise a 
 special staff and to direct the work, which was begun 
 on May i, 1905, and has been continued without 
 interruption down to 1909. 
 
 Apart from the grouping of some 18,000 headings, 
 the practical difficulties were great. The London 
 
CH. XXV THE LONDON LIBRARY 393 
 
 Library is not a stationary reference library, but has a 
 constant circulation of some 15,000 or 16,000 volumes 
 away in the hands of members. As the new Index 
 was invariably compiled from actual inspection of the 
 books catalogued and not from any existing catalogue, 
 special devices were required to avoid the entering any 
 book more than once and the possibility of any book 
 being overlooked. These precautions and the entire 
 system of classification were the work of Dr. Hagberg 
 Wright personally. Several experts in bibliography 
 confidently pronounce the system to have been a 
 masterpiece of organisation. 
 
 The London Library, be it remembered, has been 
 formed gradually since 1841 by a committee on which 
 a long succession of well-known scholars in every 
 department of literature and science have served. The 
 collection has every claim to be regarded as one in 
 which nothing of any importance has been overlooked. 
 It has had the advantage of receiving regularly the 
 publications of a great number of public societies and 
 institutions at home and abroad. Though it has no 
 specialist character, it has an adequate selection of 
 scientific works. It is particularly strong in foreign 
 literature of all kinds, both European and Oriental, 
 including Russian, Scandinavian, Dutch, Arabic, 
 Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese. 
 
 In preparing the Index the Librarian has had the 
 assistance of a number of special scholars in many 
 subjects, such as Professor J. B. Bury, Sir Frederick 
 Pollock, Sir Courtenay Ilbert, the late Sir Robert 
 GifFen, Mr. Ingram Bywater, Dr. A. W. Ward, and 
 very many other eminent writers. In revising the 
 index of special subjects attention was continually 
 drawn to some lacuna^ or book which had been over- 
 looked and was not in the library. These omissions 
 were filled up by purchase and catalogued in due course. 
 
394 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 The printing of a book having some 200,000 
 references, nearly all of them in abbreviated form, 
 with scrupulous uniformity, accuracy, and condensation 
 was a tour de force in itself. It has been carried through 
 by Messrs. Spottiswoode & Co. (Limited), employing 
 a special staff of printers and readers, with astonishing 
 rapidity and accuracy. It was accomplished in nine 
 months beginning in February 1909, and was kept up 
 without intermission at the rate of forty pages a week. 
 The reading each week of forty pages of proof, each 
 page containing 250 lines of print — the print often 
 being such as this — (Guilhermy {h. R de) Inscr. de la 
 Fr., 5 — 18.S., t. I — 5, 1873-83) — was in itself a severe 
 strain on compositors, readers, as well as on the 
 Librarian. He had the assistance in reading the 
 proofs of several members of the committee, including 
 Mr. H. R. Tedder, the distinguished librarian of the 
 Athenaeum Club. 
 
 The members of the London Library and those 
 who purchase its Index have now offered to them a 
 work which has had the assistance of a great body of 
 men of learning, and which will make a mark in the 
 history of English bibliography. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 
 
 {First published, 1886; revised, 191 2) 
 Preface 
 
 In October 1851 Auguste Comte published a list 
 of books for general reading, which he called The 
 Positivist Library in the Nineteenth Century. It con- 
 sists of about 270 distinct compositions, by about 
 140 authors. His purpose was, "to guide the more 
 thoughtful minds among the people in their choice of 
 books for constant use." He thought that intellect 
 and moral character suffer grievously from ill-directed 
 reading ; and his aim was to present, within limits 
 accessible to all educated men, a collection of works of 
 permanent value for habitual use. In this, as through- 
 out the whole of his teaching, may be seen his leading 
 idea, that all intellectual training sho uld ^ lave a 
 ^ntheticC-haracter, and should sgrve t g Cultivate the 
 whole_.nature^ It was designed as one of the instru- 
 ments by which education might be ultimately re- 
 organised. — — — — _ 
 
 The conditions of such a sketch should always be 
 borne in mind. It was avowedly provisional ; it was 
 meant for the nineteenth century ; and it was liable 
 to revision. Moreover, it is now sixty years old, and 
 
 395 
 
396 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 the time for which it was designed has passed. It was 
 not directly intended for any one European nation ; 
 and it has no literary, no special character. Lastly, 
 the author warns us that it is not meant to exclude, 
 but rather to suggest. It is no part of his object to 
 stereotype literature, or to interfere with the develop- 
 ment of any special knowledge. 
 
 A collection of this kind, a Library of general 
 education, must be confined to moderate limits, and it 
 necessarily omits many books of supreme beauty and 
 value. Thus each nation in turn may miss many of 
 its most popular and characteristic works. But one of 
 the objects of the author was tp couateract the ex- 
 Qlusi ve s pirit gf natinnaliiy-affdi-hppn grossing interest 
 of modern times. An acquaintance with our national 
 an(J"liTDdern authors is often purchased at the cost 
 of entire ignorance of the noblest works of other ages 
 and other languages. It was the main idea of this 
 selection to awaken attention to the typical works of 
 other nations and times, so as to bring out the essential 
 elements that each has contributed in the life of 
 Humanity. The Library^ like the Calendar^ of ComtgJ 
 is thoroughly representative ; it seeks to impress on | 
 the mind of our age the characteristic qualities of 
 various types of civilisation and of human energy and ; 
 thought. " ''•• 
 
 The standard of choice is not the absolute one of 
 literary merit. Many an admirable work of genius 
 is omitted, either because its place is otherwise filled 
 or because, like Pantagruel^ Gulliver^ and Don Juan^ 
 it cannot be held to work for edification. On the 
 other hand, some books are included, although not of 
 the first rank of literary excellence, since they present 
 us something indispensable and not otherwise found, 
 or they conveniently collect a useful set of observations. 
 It would have been contrary to the first object of a 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 
 
 397 
 
 collection, European in character and popular in its 
 design, either to include books of mere local celebrity, 
 or to omit the typical books of any leading nation. 
 
 The works in the first and the fourth sections only, 
 the Poets and the Philosophers, retain permanent hold 
 on mankind. Even in those sections the progress 
 of literary culture may possibly modify judgments 
 formed in Paris sixty years ago, especially in the 
 department of the primitive poetry of Europe and of 
 the East. Manuals of science and history, several 
 of which appear in the second and third sections, are 
 naturally in course of constant improvement ; some of 
 those mentioned in the list are already superseded by 
 better, and others are quite obsolete. Scientific and 
 historical text-books belong to special countries and 
 separate generations and are easily found. But in the 
 system of Comte the earliest works on science and 
 history have a value of their own, as recording progress 
 and keeping in sight the elements of the subject. It 
 is the habit of our age to attach a rather exaggerated 
 value^ to the " la tesTHovelty in research. Geometry, 
 astronomy, physics, and chemistry are not really re- 
 constructed anew every few years ; and the editing of 
 some neglected manuscripts does not amount to a 
 revolution in historical knowledge. 
 
 It will be seen by those who take the trouble to 
 study the now obsolete manuals which are found in 
 the sections of Science and History, that they have a 
 comprehensive and synthetic character which is very 
 rarely met with in our analytic and specialising 
 methods of study to-day. Books such as those of 
 Fischer on Physics^ of Richerand on Physiology^ of 
 Dum6ril on Natural History^ or, again, Malte-Brun's 
 Geography^ Heeren's Manuals^ and the like, though 
 not now in use, and in many respects obsolete, are 
 based upon systematic conceptions of their respective 
 
398 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 subjects which are not often found in the modern 
 text-books presenting an immense accumulation of 
 special details. 
 
 Such a list as that of Comte would cease to have 
 any use, it would indeed be full of mischief, if it were 
 taken in any absolute or intolerant spirit. It appears 
 from the Calendar and other writings of Comte, that 
 the Library is not designed as a comparative judgment 
 of authors, or as necessarily condemning those who 
 are not included. The Calendar contains the names 
 of more than ninety poets, of whom little more than 
 fifty are found in the Library. The names of 
 Euripides and Lucretius appear in the Calendar^ as do 
 those of Boccaccio, Chaucer, Rabelais, Bunyan, Swift, 
 Lessing, Schiller, and Sterne ; but for various reasons 
 their works are not recommended for constant perusal. 
 Catullus is certainly superior as a poet to Tibullus, 
 and Lucretius to Ovid ; but th^L^subject and manner 
 of those great, poets^may- ^obably have seemed less 
 suitable for general reading^ Coiiite, it is clear, 
 placed the highesT value on the philosophic work of 
 
 ^^latQ--4f|iiina«;^ Rr>hhp«;^ Virn^ Mnnf-pgqinVii^ r.Pi'KnJf?, 
 
 Kanty and Adam S mith ; and in science on that of 
 
 Kepler, G^l 11 f^j Rarvpy^ "NTpwtnn^ cinH n'Alpmbprt j 
 
 . but ^herejirg^good— f casans why their writings, how - 
 ever jn dispensable to human — thettgj^ should not 
 he jncluded in any edllCtltinml 1ift» On the Other 
 ^Kand, compilations like those of Malte-Brun, Rienzi, 
 Heeren, Richerand, Dumeril, Fischer, Meckel, Carr, 
 and Graham have no great merit, nor any permanent 
 value. 
 
 The Catalogue as a whole is intended as a type of 
 what a synthetic view of education requires, and as a 
 summary of the best that exists in various languages 
 and ages. Few men living would feel themselves 
 competent to prepare a selected Library in all depart- 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 399 
 
 ments of science and literature, of all ages and 
 languages. M. Pierre Laffitte has declined to revise 
 or complete the list ; and the present editor has no 
 intention of undertaking the task. A few explanatory 
 notes, with remarks as to translations and editions, 
 have been added. The editor has received a consider- 
 able body of information from M. Laffitte, the friend 
 and disciple of Comte, as to the works which he 
 mainly had in view where the name of a voluminous 
 author is given alone. Many notes and memoranda 
 in Comte's handwriting exist in his library, and from 
 these in some cases the selections have been given 
 here. In other cases the authority is the recollection 
 of M. Laffitte, or his own behef, derived from his 
 continual intercourse with Comte, of what it was his 
 intention to recommend for habitual use. 
 
 Note 
 
 The following list is taken from the fourth volume 
 of Comte's Politique Positive^ 1854. ^^ ^^ the only 
 Hst published by Comte himself. In the editor's notes 
 will be found such additions or omissions as were 
 introduced after Comte's death from memoranda left 
 by him. The books indicated were in some cases 
 described by Comte under a general title. In this 
 edition a translation of the actual title has been given. 
 In the third section, that of History, for some un- 
 known reason, the works were given in inverse 
 chronological order, although in the other parts of 
 the Library^ in the Calendar^ ^nd in all of Comte's 
 historical writings, the chronological order is observed. 
 It has been restored in this translation. Comte's own 
 view of the Library is set forth in Pos. Pol. iv. 236, 
 351-353. This, and all other references to the 
 
400 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Positive Polity^ are taken from the English translation, 
 4 vols. (Longmans)j 1875. 
 
 When the date of a book is given, it is the date of 
 the first publication. Where several dates are given, 
 they indicate the editions and translations. 
 
 " Far. Edr (Various editions) means that the book 
 is common and has been often reprinted. ^^ Rare"*"* 
 means comparatively rare to the ordinary reader, or 
 not to be obtained w^ithout search. Of the older 
 books and translations, copies can only be occasionally 
 met vs^ith, often at very low prices. But nearly all 
 the books in this list are commonly to be seen on the 
 shelves of the book-dealers in London and Paris. The 
 date vv^ill usually indicate the probability of finding a 
 book in ordinary circulation. 
 
 The w^ell-known series of Bohn's Libraries (G. 
 Bell & Sons) contains nearly all of these works, 
 mostly translations. 
 
 The series of the Chandos Classics (Warne & Co. ) 
 contains very many of the works. 
 
 Many of the others will be found in the Globe 
 series (Macmillan), and in the cheap Libraries issued 
 by Messrs. Cassell, Ward & Lock, Dent, and 
 Routledge, by the Oxford and Cambridge Universities, 
 and very many other series, as in Lord Avebury's 
 collection of the Best Hundred Books. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 401 
 
 AUGUSTE COMTE'S POSITIVIST LIBRARY FOR 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 {Published in 185 1) 
 Part I. Poetry and Fiction 
 
 Homer. The Iliad, and the Odyssey, 
 
 ^scHYLUs. The Seven Tragedies, 
 
 Sophocles. The King (Edipus. 
 
 Aristophanes. The Comedies. 
 
 Pindar. The Triumphal Odes, 
 
 Theocritus. The Idylls. 
 
 LoNGUs. The Daphnis and Chloe. 
 
 Plautus. The Comedies. 
 
 Terence. The Comedies. 
 
 Virgil. The Poems complete. 
 
 Horace. Selections — (The Odes), 
 
 LucAN. Pharsalia. 
 
 Ovid. {Metamorphoses, and Fasti.) 
 
 TiBULLUs. The Elegies. 
 
 Juvenal. The Satires. 
 
 Tales of the Fabliaux du Moyen Age, by Legrand 
 
 Middle Ages. d'Aussy. 
 
 Dante. {^Divina Commedia.) 
 
 Ariosto. {Orlando Furioso.) 
 
 Tasso. {Gerusalemme Liberata.) 
 
 Petrarch. Selections — (The Sonfiets). 
 
 Metastasio. a Selection from the Dramas, 
 
 Alfieri. a Selection from the Dramas. 
 
 Manzoni. The Betrothed {Promessi Spost). 
 
 Cervantes. Don Quixote. 
 
 The Exemplary Novels. 
 
 2D 
 
402 
 
 AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 PT. II 
 
 Spanish Dramas. 
 
 The Cid. 
 Spanish National 
 
 Ballads, 
 corneille. 
 
 MOLI^RE. 
 
 Racine. 
 Voltaire. 
 La Fontaine. 
 La Motte. 
 Florian. 
 Le Sage. 
 Madame de la 
 
 Fayette. 
 Bernardin de 
 
 Saint Pierre. 
 Chateaubriand. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 Milton. 
 De Foe. 
 Goldsmith. 
 Fielding. 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 Byron . 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 The Arabian Nights 
 
 (A Collection of Twenty Dramas by 
 Calderon, Lope de Vega, and 
 others. Coleccion ^electa del 
 Antiquo Teatro Espanol^ by Jos6 
 Segundo Florez. Paris, 1854.) 
 
 (The national Epic of old Spain.) 
 
 (A Selection.) 
 
 A Selection from the Dramas. 
 
 The Comedies complete. 
 
 A Selection from the Dramas. 
 
 A Selection from the Dramas. 
 
 Fables in Verse, 
 
 Some selected Fables. 
 
 Some selected Fables. 
 
 Gil Bias. 
 
 The Princess of Cleves. 
 
 Paul and Virginia. 
 
 The Martyrs, The Last of the Aben- 
 
 cerages. 
 A Selection from the Dramas. 
 Paradise Lost, the Lyrical Poems. 
 Robinson Crusoe. 
 The Vicar of Wakefield. 
 Tom Jones. 
 Ivanhoe, Quentin Durzvard, Fair Maid 
 
 of Perth, Legend of Montrose, Old 
 
 Mortality, Heart of Mid-Lothian, 
 
 The Antiquary. 
 Selected Poems, excluding Don Juan. 
 Selected Poems. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 
 
 403 
 
 Part II. Science 
 
 CONDORCET. 
 
 The Art of Calculating {Arithmetic). 
 
 Clairaut. 
 
 Algebra, and Geometry. 
 
 Lacroix, or 
 
 Trigonometry. 
 
 Legendre. 
 
 
 Descartes. 
 
 Geometry. 
 
 A. COMTE. 
 
 Analytic Geometry. 
 
 POINSOT. 
 
 Statics, and Memoirs on Mechanics, 
 
 Carnot. 
 
 Infinitesimal Calculus. 
 
 Navier. 
 
 Transcendental Analysis (Polytechnic 
 
 
 School). 
 
 
 Course of Mechanics (Polytechnic 
 
 
 School). 
 
 Carnot. 
 
 Principles of Equilibrium and of 
 
 
 Motion. 
 
 Lagrange. 
 
 Theory of Analytic Functions, 
 
 A. CoMTE. 
 
 Popular Astronomy. 
 
 FONTENELLE. 
 
 The Plurality of Worlds. 
 
 Fischer. 
 
 Physics, translated and annotated by 
 
 
 BlOT. 
 
 J. Carr. 
 
 Synopsis of Practical Philosophy. 
 
 Lavoisier. 
 
 Elements of Chemistry. 
 
 Berthollet. 
 
 Statical Chemistry. 
 
 T. Graham. 
 
 Elements of Chemistry. 
 
 Meckel. 
 
 Manual of Anatomy. 
 
 Bichat. 
 
 On Life and Death. 
 
 
 General Anatomy. 
 
 Blainville. 
 
 On the Organization of Animals. Vol. I. 
 
 RiCHERAND. 
 
 Physiology, annotated by Berard. 
 
 Cl. Bernard. 
 
 Physiological Researches. 
 
 Segond. 
 
 Systematization of Biology. 
 
 
 General Anatomy. 
 
 Barthez. 
 
 New Elements of the Science of Man. 
 
 
 (Second edition, 1806.) 
 
 Lamarck. 
 
 The Philosophy of Zoology. 
 
 Dumeril. 
 
 Elements of Natural Science. 
 
404 
 
 AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 PT. II 
 
 BUFFON. 
 
 Hippocrates, 
 hufeland. 
 
 CORNARO. 
 
 Broussais. 
 
 fontenelle ] 
 and 
 
 CONDORCET. 
 
 Natural History of Animals. 
 On Airs, Waters, and Places. 
 Art of Prolonging Human Life. 
 On a Sober Life. 
 Notes on Questions of Pathology. 
 History of Chronic Inflammations, 
 
 Estimates of Men of Science, 
 
 Part III. History 
 
 Malte-Brun. 
 
 RiENZI. 
 
 Cookj^- 
 
 Chardin. 
 
 Barthelemy. 
 
 Heeren. 
 
 Herodotus. 
 
 Thucydides. 
 
 Arrian. 
 
 C-ffi:sAR. 
 
 Tacitus. 
 
 Plutarch. 
 
 WiNCKELMANN. 
 
 Gibbon. 
 
 Fleury. 
 
 Hallam. 
 
 Heeren. 
 
 Hume. 
 
 Robertson. 
 
 ascargorta. 
 
 Denina. 
 
 BOSSUET. 
 
 p. de comines. 
 Benvenuto Cellini. 
 L. DA Vinci. 
 Cromwell. 
 
 Universal Geography. 
 
 Geographical Dictionary. 
 
 Three voyages round the World, 
 
 Travels in the East. 
 
 Travels of Anacharsis. 
 
 Manual of Ancient History, 
 
 History. 
 
 History of the Peloponnesian War, 
 
 Life of Alexander. 
 
 Commentaries, 
 
 Complete Works. 
 
 Lives, 
 
 History of the Art of Antiquity'. 
 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 
 Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 Middle Ages in Europe. 
 
 Political System of Europe, 
 
 History of England. 
 
 History of Charles V. 
 
 Short History of Spain. 
 
 The Revolutions of Italy, 
 
 History of France, 
 
 Memoirs. 
 
 Memoirs of his Life, 
 
 Treatise on Painting, 
 
 The Life of. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 
 
 405 
 
 Richelieu. 
 Madame de Motte- 
 
 VILLE. 
 
 Voltaire. 
 
 Gr^try. 
 
 Mignet, 
 
 Political Testament. 
 Memoirs {from 161 5-1666). 
 
 Age of Louis XIV. 
 Memoirs on Music. 
 History of the French Revolution. 
 
 Part IV. Philosophy and Religion 
 
 Aristotle. 
 The Bible. 
 The Koran^^ 
 St. Augustin. 
 
 St. Bernard. 
 Thomas a Kempis. 
 Corneille. 
 
 BOSSUET. 
 
 Pouget. 
 Bacon. 
 Descartes. 
 Diderot. 
 Pascal. 
 
 Vauvenargues. 
 Madame de Lam- 
 bert. 
 BossuET. 
 Condorcet. 
 
 BoSSUET. 
 
 De Maistre. 
 Diderot. 
 
 Hume. 
 Adam Smith. 
 
 The Politics and the Ethics, 
 
 Complete. 
 
 Complete. 
 
 The City of God. 
 
 The Confessions. 
 
 Treatise on the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 On the Love of God {De Diligendo Deo). 
 
 The Imitation of Christ, 
 
 Paraphrase in Verse of the Imitation 
 
 of Christ. 
 The Doctrine of the Catholic Church. 
 History of Protestant Divergencies. 
 The Montpellier Catechism. 
 Novum Organum. 
 Discourse on Method. 
 Interpretation of Nature. 
 The Thoughts. 
 The Reflexions. 
 
 Advice of a Mother to her Son. 
 Advice of a Mother to her Daughter. 
 Sketch of Universal History. 
 Progress of the Human Understanding. 
 Policy drawn from Scripture. 
 The Pope. 
 
 Letter on the Blind. 
 Letter on the Deaf and Dumb. 
 Essays. 
 Philosophical Reflections on the History 
 
 of Astronomy. 
 
4o6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Diderot. 
 
 The Beautiful. (Article Le Beau in 
 
 
 the Encyclopaedia.) 
 
 Barthez. 
 
 The Theory of the Beaut fuL 
 
 Cabanis. 
 
 Relations of the Physical and the 
 
 
 Moral in Man. 
 
 Leroy. 
 
 Letters on Animals. 
 
 Gall. 
 
 The Functions of the Brain. 
 
 Broussais. 
 
 Irritation and Madness. (First 
 
 
 edition.) 
 
 A. COMTE. 
 
 Positive Philosophy. (Translated and 
 
 
 condensed by Miss Martineau.) 
 
 
 Positive Polity. 
 
 
 Positivist Catechism. 
 
 COMMENTARY BY FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 {Published in 1886) 
 Part I. Poetry and Fiction 
 
 This section includes Poetry and Fiction, both 
 ancient and modern. It is arranged in languages — 
 Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, and 
 German — apparently in order of time. It embraces 
 epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, besides fables and 
 romances. 
 
 The list of the ancient authors includes nearly all 
 those of first-rate merit. In the Calendar we find also 
 the names of the ancient poets, Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, 
 Sappho, Anacreon, Euripides, ^sop, Menander, 
 Phaedrus, Lucian, Ennius, and Lucretius. Euripides 
 is probably ^ omitt ed from the Library.^ in spite of his 
 popularity, as inlerior to Sophocles, and still more to 
 ^schylus, but mainly as_^the_fiTStof_th^e^ 1^^ 
 literary sceptics__ or revolutionis ts^.Pgj-. Pg/. iii. 239. 
 The unbounded admiration that Comte felt for Homer, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 407 
 
 ^schylus, and Virgil is expressed Pos. Pol. iii. 235- 
 239, 315. Of these three he recommends the entire 
 surviving works. Pindar represents the entire lyric 
 poetry of Greece, and Aristophanes its comedy. The 
 Daphnts and Chloe^ by Longus in the fifth century, 
 represents the immense persistence of Greek religion 
 and poetry, even under the official establishment of 
 Christianity. In spite of its erotic character, it retains 
 some of the pure quahties of the Greek idyll ; and its 
 immense popularity at the Renascence in Europe gives 
 it a special historical importance in the history of 
 poetry. It connects the modern v^^ith antique romance, 
 through the old French translation by Amyot in 1559. 
 
 In Latin poetry the entire vs^orks of Virgil are 
 recommended. It is believed that of Ovid the works 
 intended are the Metamorphoses and the Fasti^ which 
 illustrate so profoundly the religion of Polytheism j of 
 Horace, the Odes^ his chief masterpiece. Lucretius, 
 who is now recognised as in the first rank of poetic 
 genius, is probably omitted from^this fist from the 
 metaphysical and scepticaFTpjrit which pervades the. 
 extraordinary work of thi& great man, and which may 
 ^gfJUJigfii t^d for rnnsfRnf-readili g of a popular kin d . 
 No reason is known for the exclusion of Catullus and 
 the admission of Tibullus, whom modern criticism 
 recognises to be quite inferior to Catullus. The 
 omission is perhaps owing to this, that Catullus was 
 but imperfectly understood in France sixty years 
 ago, when modern research had not yet explained 
 the obscurities or settled the text of these exquisite 
 lyrics. 
 
 Of the early mediaeval romances and epics, the Cid 
 is the only one that appears in this list, except so far 
 as fragments of others are found in the Fabliaux of 
 Legrand d'Aussy. The Nibelungen^ Roland^ the Fox^ 
 Beowulf^ and Arthur were comparatively unknown 
 
4o8 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 when the list was framed. Comte read and quoted the 
 Decameron of Boccaccio, who has a place in the 
 ^ICalendar with the Troubadours and Chaucer ; but he 
 /has not placed their works in the Library. The 
 Fabliaux du Moyen Age^ short tales in verse, giving 
 a satirical picture of society in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries, were collected, condensed, and 
 translated into modern French prose by Legrand 
 d'Aussy in 1779. The augmented edition of 
 this, with other mediaeval romances, by Renouard 
 (1829), 5 vols. Svo, is expensive and not easily 
 found. It has the misfortune to be classed with 
 what collectors call facetia. A new edition, in the 
 original old French verse, has recently been edited by 
 MM. A. de Montaiglon and G. Raynaud (6 vols., 
 Paris, 1872-86). Some of the tales have been 
 translated into English verse by Way and ElHs, 1796- 
 1800. There is a prose version of select tales by 
 W. Carew Hazlitt, 1873. 
 
 Of the modern poets and romancists the following 
 
 -? appear in the Calendar^ but not in the Libra ry^ viz. 
 
 Py Y ^^ B occaccio, Chau cer, Rabelais, Swift, Camoens^ Spens er, 
 
 \p Ts^yiK^ §y-nX%^> Burns, Shelle y, Klopstock, Gessner, Lessing, 
 
 yr)> Otway, vondel, Schiller, Sterne, Richardson, J^Iiss 
 
 ^j^' A Edgfisvorth, Madame de Stael, Elisa Mercoeur, 
 
 \py^ Fenimore Cooper. 
 
 It is believed that Comte intended to indicate of 
 Dante the Divina Commedia^ of Ariosto the Orlando 
 Furioso^ of Tasso the Gerusalemme Liberata^ and of 
 Petrarch the Sonnets. Comte's own daily reading 
 consisted of passages from the Imitation^ and from 
 Dante, his estimate of whom is to be found Fos. Pol. 
 iii. 460. His estimate of Ariosto and Tasso is in Fos. 
 Fql. iii. 485. There is now a complete and admirable 
 version of the Divine Comedy into literal English prose ; 
 the Hell, by Dr. John Carlyle (1849, 1867) ; the Hell, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 409 
 
 the Purgatory^ and Paradise^ by A. J. Butler (1880, 
 1885) ; also the Purgatory by W. S. Dugdale (Bohn) ; 
 and very many others in prose and verse. There is 
 also a complete translation into archaic French prose 
 by Lamennais (1856), and a crowd of verse translations, 
 amongst w^hich C^ry (18 14) still retains the pre- 
 eminence, in spite of the merits of many others. 
 
 Ariosto and Tasso are now little read in England ; 
 but it may be remembered that Hallam says, " Ariosto 
 has been, after Homer, the favourite poet of Europe ; " 
 and again, "The Jerusalem is the great epic poem of 
 modern times." Both have been translated in the 
 seventeenth, and again in the eighteenth century. 
 Metastasio, who is now little read, was called by 
 Rousseau " the one poet of the heart ; " his immense 
 popularity contributed not a little to the classical 
 enthusiasm of the eighteenth century. It is probable 
 that the dramas to which Comte directs our attention 
 were chiefly the attempts to idealise Roman history, 
 such as Clelia^ Regulus^ Scipio^ Cato^ TituSy Hadrian^ 
 Aetius. Metastasio is frequently cited by Comte, who 
 in the Calendar prefers him to Alfieri, apparently on 
 the ground of his superior tenderness and deeper social 
 interests. Of the plays, the Clemency of Titus^ trans- 
 lated by Hoole, is the most famous and the most 
 important. The dramas of Alfieri intended are 
 probably those concerned with ancient history and 
 legend, such as Antigone^ Alcestis^ Timoleon^ Virginia^ 
 Octavia^ Rosmunda. The Betrothed of Manzoni was 
 regarded by Comte as an idealisation of the better type 
 of the Catholic priesthood. It has enjoyed an enormous 
 popularity in Italy, and has been frequently translated. 
 
 Of the Cidy the national poem of Spain, there is an 
 excellent translation into French prose by Damas 
 Hinard, Paris, 4to, 1858 (rare), and a condensed trans- 
 lation in verse in a little volume by John Ormsby 
 
410 
 
 AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 PT. II 
 
 (1879). Lockhart's Spanish Ballads is a common 
 and well-known book, and also Southey's combined 
 prose version of the Chronicle^ Poem^ and Ballads 
 of the Cid. There is a similar French version of the 
 three separately by St. Albin, Paris, 2 vols. (1865). 
 There is also an excellent little tolume of the Cid 
 Ballads by G. Dennis (1845). 
 
 Comte's estimate of Don ^ixote may be seen 
 Pos. Pol. iii. 345, 486. The new translation by 
 J. Ormsby, 4 vols. 8vo (1885), is the first critical 
 edition and version of this great work. Now also by 
 Fitzmaurice Kelly (1896). 
 
 The collection of Spanish Dramas in this list is a 
 volume pubHshed by J. S. Florez, Paris (1854), Coleccion 
 Selecta^ etc. The selection was made by Comte him- 
 self. The volume contains twenty dramas by eleven 
 poets. The complete list of its contents is as follows : — 
 
 Teatro Espanol Escojido. (Garni er Freres, Paris.) 
 
 Calderon. 
 
 Lope de Vega. 
 
 Alarcon. 
 
 TiRso DE Molina. 
 
 ROJAS. 
 
 Moreto. 
 
 Guillen de Castro. 
 
 Guevara. 
 
 A secreto agravio secreta venganxa. 
 
 El Alcalde de Zalamea. 
 
 La Vida es sueno. 
 
 No siempre lo peor es cierto. 
 
 M ananas de abril y mayo. 
 
 La Nave del mercader. 
 
 La Vina del Senor. 
 
 Las flores de Don Juan. 
 
 El perro del hgrtolano. 
 
 Los locos de Valencia. 
 
 La Verdad sospechosa. 
 
 Las Paredes oyen. 
 
 La Prudencia en la Muger. 
 
 Garcia del Castanar. 
 
 El valient e 'Justiciero. 
 
 Los mal casados de Valencia. 
 
 Reinar despues de morir. 
 
cH.xxvi THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 411 
 
 MoNTALVAN. No hay vida como la honra, 
 
 Matos Fragoso. El carbonero de Toledo. 
 
 MoRATiN. El Si de las Ninas. 
 
 Of these plays, the second and the third of Calderon's 
 have been admirably translated into English. 
 
 The following lists of the selected dramas of 
 Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire are taken from the 
 MSS. memoranda left by Comte. The plays are 
 apparently chosen for -their historical interest : — 
 
 Corneille. Thirteen dramas, viz. : — Le Cid^ 
 
 Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, Pompee, 
 Rodogune, Heraclius Empereur, 
 Nicomide, Pertharite, (Edipe, 
 Sertorius, Othon, Pulcherie. 
 
 Racine. Seven dramas, viz. : — Andromaque, 
 
 Les Plaideurs, Britannicus, 
 Bajazet, Iphigenie, Ph^dre, 
 Athalie. 
 
 Voltaire, Nine dramas, viz. : — Brutus, Zaire, 
 
 Alzire, Merope, SemiramiSy 
 Oreste, Rome Sauvee, VOrphelin 
 de la Chine, Tancride. 
 
 Many of these are probably selected, not so much for 
 their poetic value, as to render familiar^yerse nafional 
 types and historical personages. 
 
 """ Of Moli^re the entire range of the comedies is 
 included expressly. For the French poets, see Pos. 
 Pol. iii. 486. 
 
 On the art of Fables Comte placed a very high 
 estimate, see Pos. Pol. iii. 234. No reason is assigned 
 for the omission of the ancient masters of this art. 
 iEsop, Phaedrus, and Pilpay are all in the Calendar. 
 The European reputation of La Fontaine makes him 
 the representative of this school ; Florian and La 
 Motte are little know^n out of France. They are, 
 
412 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 with B. de St. Pierre, the only writers in this section 
 whose names do not appear in the Calendar, Paul 
 and Virginia has enjoyed a world-wide reputation, 
 though it is little to our present English taste. The 
 Princess of Cleves^ by Madame de la Fayette (1678), 
 had an extraordinary effect in the seventeenth 
 century, and was repeatedly translated. It was no 
 doubt the original source of the romance of the feel- 
 ings, and of that " women's poetry " in roma nce 
 which in our day^ has been so[prolific. Chateaubriand 
 and Manzoni, whoTolTiTs are completely overshadowed 
 by Scott, represent for Catholicism, and for France and 
 Italy, the same growth of the historical romance 
 which Scott represents for Protestantism and England. 
 Pos. Pol. iii. 527. 
 
 The plays of Shakespeare intended by Comte are, 
 according to his MSS. memoranda, the following 
 eleven dramas : — 
 
 Shakespeare. Tempest, Twelfth Night, Merchant of 
 
 Venice, Winter^s Tale, Macbeth, 
 Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, 
 Othello, Coriolanus, Henry VIII. 
 
 This selection is evidently based on the estimate that 
 
 we find in Pos. Pol. iii. 486. He regards Shakespeare's 
 
 historical dramas as inadequate presentations of the 
 
 past. They are in almost all instances inferior to the 
 
 dramas of character and passion, and they are not the 
 
 result of any genuine historical interest or knowledge. 
 
 Julius C^sary the most impressive of them, is obviously 
 
 nomitted by Comte as being based on a view too 
 
 Stfavourable to the murderers and to an act which 
 
 \ Comte uniformly treats as "an unparalleled crime," 
 
 Pos. Pol. iii. 328. He inserts the far inferior play of 
 
 Coriolanus^ as being more true to Roman history. No 
 
 explanation is given for the admission of the doubtful 
 
CH.xxvi THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 413 
 
 play of Henry VIII. Comte possibly regarded it as 
 a faithful idealisation of the remarkable historical 
 movement which he describes, Pos. Pol. iii. 473 — 
 the subjection of the Spiritual to the Temporal Power 
 in Europe. See to the same effect, Schlegel, Dramatic 
 Literature. Any complete list of Shakespeare's master- 
 pieces would include Measure for Measure^ Js you 
 Like It^ Henry IV. ^ A Midsummer Night's Dream^ and 
 Cymbeline. The rest we value chiefly for their ex- 
 quisite scenes, and their magnificent passages and 
 incomparable creations, but not as perfect and com- 
 plete dramas, such as Hamlet^ Lear^ and Othello are. 
 
 Milton's great poem was regarded by Comte " as 
 the highest measure yet reached of our poetic powers," 
 although this " inimitable poem " was produced under 
 most unfavourable conditions, Pos. Pol. iii. 487. 
 The " Lyrical Poems " probably include Lycidas^ II 
 Penseroso^ U Allegro^ and, possibly, Comus. 
 
 The romanc es of Scott are evidently chosen from 
 the' ^Hjstorical j)oi nt of vie w, and are arranged in strict 
 chronological order, see Pos. Pol. i. 245 ; iii. 527. 
 All editions of the Library published by Comte him- 
 self give ^entin Durward as the second on the list. 
 Later, he thought it unjust to the memory of Louis 
 XL, who holds so high a place in the Calendar^ and 
 he suggested in MS. the substitution of Waverley, 
 He seems to have omitted the exquisite Bride of 
 Lammermoor^ on the ground that Lucy Ashtori^etrays 
 a weakness of character unwortEy~of heFsex. Comte 
 'always regarded Scott as one of the great creative 
 minds of the world, and as the last of those of the 
 first rank. 
 
 No selections have been found as to the poems 
 of Byron and Goethe intended by Comte. The 
 references to Byron, Pos. Pol. i. 239, 274, etc., etc., 
 apparently point to Childe Harold and the Dramas^ 
 
414 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 especially Manfred and Cain. Don Juan^ Byron's 
 distinctive literary work, is speci ally excluded .^ not only 
 ior its immoral tendency^ but for its deliberate aim to 
 dishQnoiir the h^'g he st attributes of Man and of 
 Woman. This is a thing quite different from the 
 animalism of Longus and Theocritus, or the grossness 
 of Aristophanes, the Fabliaux^ or Tom Jones. It is a 
 cy nical attem pt to n'diriile virtue. And this exclusion 
 forms a _signal example of Comte's TiaBiT^ to m ake 
 
 Hterary geniussubordmate to religiouS^ pfurpose;^ - 
 
 Of Goethe the pieces intended~afe~i772/j/, certainly 
 and mainly, and some of the historical plays, probably, 
 viz. Goetz^ Egmont^ Tasso^ Iphigeneia. Goethe re- 
 presents in Germany much of the same movement 
 towards true historical ideaHsation that Scott intro- 
 duced into England, Chateaubriand into France, and 
 Manzoni into Italy. But in the Calendar he precedes 
 Calderon ; and this undoubtedly points to Faust as 
 his typical work. Schiller, who in the Calendar holds 
 the same position with regard to Corneille, along with 
 Racine, Voltaire, and Metastasio, does not appear in 
 the Library, 
 
 Part II. Science 
 
 Most of the books in this class are well known and 
 quite common ; their chief value is as illustrating the 
 history of the sciences. Some few of them, like 
 Descartes' Geometry and Guglielmini on Rivers^ are 
 rare ; some of the manuals are quite obsolete, and 
 others are old text-books long ago superseded. The 
 following will be found only after a search in London 
 or Paris : The Analytic Geometry of Comte, the 
 Geometry of Descartes (1634) in French, the works of 
 Navier, Carnot, Lavoisier, Segond, Lamarck, Gugliel- 
 mini. The compilations of Fischer, Carr, Graham, 
 Meckel, Richerand, and Dumeril, useful manuals forty 
 
cH.xxvi THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 415 
 
 years ago, are now practically obsolete, and will only 
 be met with occasionally on bookstalls. 
 
 It will be remembered that Comte was a philosopher, 
 and not, except in mathematics, a scientific specialist. 
 He did not continue the study of the special sciences 
 after the publication of the third volume of his Positive 
 Philosophy in 1838. The Hst in Part II., therefore, 
 necessarily represents in the main the state of physical 
 knowledge about seventy years ago. Since that date, 
 entire new departments of special science have been 
 created. Such are Electrology, Molecular Physics, 
 Acoustics, Spectrum Analysis, Embryology, and the 
 whole of the discoveries relating to the Persistence of 
 Energy and to Physical Evolution. At that date, the 
 discoveries of none of the following were published : 
 Darwin, Helmholtz, KirchhofF, Dumas, Pasteur, or 
 Sir W. Thomson. This part of Comte's catalogue, 
 therefore, has a philosophical and historical value, not 
 one strictly scientific. For a summary of the present 
 state of scientific knowledge we must have recourse to 
 a totally different set of books, and to recent compila- 
 tions in current use. It will, however, be a useful 
 hint to select current text-books which most nearly 
 correspond to the scheme of those here mentioned. 
 
 On the other hand, many of the books in this part 
 contain the original thoughts of some of those who 
 have most influenced their respective sciences. Others, 
 again, were excellent rksumh of scientific laws of 
 a general kind before they were overladen with special 
 observations. It is clear from Comte's general writings 
 that he attached permanent value to the works of the 
 following, all of whom are in the Calendar^ viz. 
 Descartes, Fontenelle, Lagrange, Lavoisier, Bichat, 
 Condorcet, Lamarck, Blainville, Buffon, Broussais, 
 Berthollet, Clairaut, and Hippocrates. These have 
 not only an historical, but a philosophical value. 
 
4i6 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Translations into English may be found of most of 
 the works in this Part. The Art of Counting by Con- 
 dorcet and the Geometry of Clairaut have been recently 
 translated by Dr. Kaines. Thomas Carlyle translated 
 Legendre's Trigonometry (1824). Dr. Burnell printed 
 in 1881 the Treatise of Hippocrates on Airs^ Waters^ 
 and Places^ with the Greek text, and Latin, French, 
 and English versions in parallel columns. The works 
 of Navier, Fischer, Lagrange, Blainville, Segond, 
 Lamarck, Barthez, and Dumeril, do not appear to be 
 accessible in English. The Estimates of Men of Science 
 {Eloges des Savants\ by Fontenelle and Condorcet, 
 from 1699 to 1770, form the first and second volumes 
 of the collected works of Fontenelle, and the second 
 and third of the works of Condorcet. They were also 
 published separately. 
 
 In the editions of the Library published after 
 Comte's death, we find the Physiology of Claude 
 Bernard omitted, no general work with that title 
 having ever appeared ; the work of Guglielmini On the 
 Nature of Rivers (1697) and the Aphorisms of Hippo- 
 crates are added. 
 
 The progress of modern science has not equally 
 affected all the text-books and manuals in this section. 
 Those on Mathematics, Mechanics, and Astronomy 
 practically retain their value ; those on general and 
 comparative Anatomy do so to some extent, and the 
 descriptive Zoology slightly. But Electricity, Mole- 
 cular Physics, and Embryology are practically unrepre- 
 sented altogether. The Chemistry, the comparative 
 and microscopic Biology, and the Theory of Physio- 
 logical Development, are necessarily out of date. To 
 those who will compare the manuals in Physics, 
 Chemistry, and Biology here given with the most 
 recent editions of manuals such as those of Ganot, 
 Roscoe, Ramsay, Foster, Clerk-Maxwell, and others, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 417 
 
 and with such treatises as those of Sir W. Thomson 
 on Natural Philosophy^ Professor Williamson on 
 Chemistry^ Sir R. Owen's Comparative Physiology^ CI. 
 Bernard On the Nervous System^ Charles Darwin on 
 Species^ and similar works, it will be at once obvious 
 that new realms have since been added to science. 
 The Elements of Chemistry^ by Thomas Graham, 
 published in 1 850-1 858 (revised edition), was a book 
 of great value at that date. The Synopsis of Practical 
 Philosophy (1828) was a manual of tables for the use of 
 engineers, and is now seldom seen. It is not at first 
 sight apparent what is intended by " Les di scours sur la 
 nature des animaux^ par Buffon." That is the title of 
 the brilliant introductory chapter to BufFon's Natural 
 History of ^adrupeds. M. Laffitte considers that 
 what was intended is a selection of descriptions of 
 animals from the Histoire Naturelle^ such as that 
 pu Wished by Didot, Paris, 1859, i2mo. 
 
 Part III. History 
 
 Of the historical section, something of the same 
 kind must be said as of the scientific section. Of the 
 manuals several are obsolete ; some of the histories are 
 already superseded ; and the list does not give the 
 means even of obtaining a continuous summary of all 
 periods. The compilations of Malte-Brun and Rienzi 
 are obsolete. The works of Heeren, Hallam, Winckel- 
 mann, and Gretry are not on the level of our present 
 knowledge. And the histories of Mignet, Voltaire, 
 Davila, Denina, Ascargorta, and Hume represent little 
 more than lucid accounts of the principal events. 
 
 In the choice of histories, literary excellence has 
 not been the guide. The object is evidently to select 
 plain unvarnished narratives, as far as possible free from 
 all prejudice of party, school, or religion. The 
 
 2E 
 
AMONG MY BOOKS 
 
 PT. H 
 
 scheme of Social Dynamics contained in the fifth and 
 sixth volumes of the Pos. Phil.^ and in the third 
 volume of the Pos. Pol.^ states the theory of historical 
 evolution generally, as i^ w^as conceived by Comte. 
 The historical selection, there^re, is fnterTded^iinipry 
 to convey a general idea of the past as a connected 
 whole, and for this 4mrjiQS£-_ Lhe physical consti tution 
 of the plan et, the variety of rarps and in^fiftifjopg^ 
 manners, and the^rts,_ar£ equally considere d. There 
 is reason to suppose that Comte attached permanent 
 value to the works of the following : De Comines, 
 Bossuet, Robertson, Gibbon, Tacitus, Thucydides, 
 Herodotus, Plutarch, Caesar, and Arrian, all of whom 
 are placed by him in the Calendar^ as are also Cook, 
 Benvenuto Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Cromwell, 
 and Richelieu. 
 
 We should now use for manuals of geography such 
 books as those of Guyot, Reclus, Freeman, Johnston, 
 ^Spruner, etc. Rienzi's Dictionary has disappeared from 
 use. Cook's Voyages eviden tly represent the Oceanic 
 Wid Fetichlst f orm of civilisatiori ; Cl^ardin's Travels 
 Ttranslaled in Pmkerton's collection) cepreseJlirtlie 
 Asiatic and Mahometan form. It will be observed 
 TEHat" the catalogue was complete before the appearance 
 pf the following works, which would probably now 
 better serve the purposes of an English reader : 
 Milman's Latin Christianity^ Rawlinson's Manual of 
 Ancient History^ Green's Short History of England^ 
 Duruy's History of France^ Guizot's Life of Cromwell^ 
 Gardiner and Firth on the Civil War, Meri vale's General 
 History of Rome^ Freeman's Historical Geography, 
 Most of the modern standard historical works are on 
 a scale that is not compatible with such a Hst as the 
 present. The following works, out of this part, are 
 in Bohn's Library in Enghsh : Herodotus, Thucy- 
 dides, Caesar, Tacitus, De Comines, Cellini, Mignet, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 419 
 
 Da Vinci. All the works in this part, except those 
 of Ascargorta and Gr^try, are accessible in English. 
 In the editions published after Comte's death, we find 
 added Davila's History of the Civil Wars in France 
 (1630), a contemporary work of great and permanent 
 value. 
 
 Part IV. Philosophy and Religion 
 
 The books in this Part may be divided into four 
 classes : — 
 
 I. Theology, in its three main forms, Biblical, 
 Mahometan, and Catholic. The rise and develop- 
 ment of the Catholic faith is particularly represented. 
 
 II. The rise and development of Sociology in its 
 two forms. Statical and Dynamical. 
 
 III. The rise and development of Ethics, ancient 
 and modern. 
 
 IV. The synthesis proposed by Positivism. 
 Comte's estimate of these various philosophical and 
 
 religious movements will be found fully set forth in 
 the third volume of the Polity^ in passages too numerous 
 to be cited usefully. They can be easily found in the 
 Table of Contents and in the Index. 
 
 The Part opens with the Ethics and Politics of 
 Aristotle as the true foundation of scientific Sociology 
 and Ethics {Pos, Pol, iii. 259-261). These are 
 immediately followed by the Bible and the Koran 
 entire, representing in the sum the Hebrew and the 
 Islamic theology. 
 
 It will be observed that Christianity is represented 
 only in its Catholic, not in its Protestant form. Pro- 
 testantism, which in poetry and in history has full 
 justice done to it both in the Library^ the Calendar,^ 
 and other writings of Comte, was looked -on by him, 
 from t he purely religious point of view^ as a destructive 
 
420 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 and revolutionary movement ^ an ^jJljflerely Qjitk al 
 
 y^ ' and_^'f;Y!^].l '<"'V>n?irv efForts have no~place either in the 
 
 "library or Calendw^ Hence rrotestantism, ^s a 
 
 basis of soc ial synthesis , is only represented by a work 
 
 avowedly hostile, the Variations of Bossuet. 
 
 Catholicism is fully represented from the first 
 conception of the Church as an organised society in 
 the City of God of St. Augustin, to its highest point of 
 development in the era of St. Bernard, and down to 
 its decline in the epoch of Bossuet. 
 
 Descartes, Bacon, Diderot, and Condorcet represent 
 the rise of the Positive method as applied first to 
 physical, and ultimately to social, science. 
 
 The rise and germs of Sociology as a distinct 
 science are represented by Bossuet's and Condorcet's 
 two sketches of universal progress from the opposite 
 points of view of the Catholic and the Revolutionary 
 doctrines. 
 
 The works of Diderot, Leroy, Cabanis, Broussais, 
 and Gall represent the foundation of moral and social 
 science on the basis of a rational biology. It will be 
 noticed that Gall's work on the Functions of the Brain 
 is placed in this Fourth Part, as Philosophy, not in the 
 Second Part, as Science. Comte regarded it, not as 
 a work on Physiology, much less on Phrenology, but 
 as a philosophical analysis of the moral and mental 
 faculties of man. 
 
 In the editions published after Comte's death we 
 find added the Moral Refections of Cicero, Epictetus, 
 and Marcus Aurelius. This represents the rise of 
 Ethics as a distinct science amongst the ancients. Of 
 Cicero the treatise De Officiis^ On Moral Duty^ may 
 be principally intended. We also find added Duclos' 
 Considerations on the Manners of his Age (1750), which 
 he thought valuable as combining the idea q f moral 
 with social progress. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 421 
 
 It will be remembered that the leading aim of the 
 collection in this part is to familiarise the modern 
 world with the history "ofrrian^s moral and social 
 _development^___and. especially with the ~1 wo " great 
 schemes anterior t o jhfi. Positive — the Catholic and 
 the Mat erialistic . In advising study of their worlcs, 
 he recommends the theories of the one as little as the 
 other ; those of Bossuet and De Maistre, as little 
 as those of Diderot and Cabanis. The Montpellier 
 Catechism is not imposed on us any more than the 
 Koran. A knowledge of^ the gre at factors in the 
 develop meirr'oF'reirgiorris^TrrdTsp^^^ to progr ess. 
 
 Tositivism professes to reconcile and harmonise them 
 
 air- ■ 
 
 EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS 
 Part I. Poetry and Fiction 
 
 Homer. Iliad. [Verse.] 
 
 Chapman, 1 596-161 1, var. ed., and 1857, 1875, * vols. 
 
 8vo. 
 Pope, 1720, var. ed., and in Chandos Classics. 
 Cowper, 1 79 1, var. ed. 
 
 Lord Derby, 1864, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed,, and 1867, 
 2 vols. i2mo. 
 [Prose.] 
 Lang, Leaf, E. Myers, 1883, i2mo. 
 
 Odyssey. [Verse.] 
 Chapman, 1 61 5, var. ed., and 1857, 1875, ^ vols. 
 
 i2mo. 
 P. Worsley, 1861, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Cozuper, 1 79 1, var. ed, 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Butcher and Lang, London, 1879, i2mo. 
 
422 AMONG MY BOOKS .pt.ii 
 
 iEscHYLus. [Verse.] 
 
 E. D. A, Morshead. The House of Aire us, London, 
 1 88 1, 1 2 mo; Agamemnon, Libation- Bearers, and 
 Furies, i88i. 
 The Suppliant Maidens, London, 1883, 12 mo. 
 Miss Swanwick. Tragedies, 1873, 2 vols. 8vo ; also 
 
 var. ed.f and Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Milman. The Agammenon, 1865, 8vo. 
 R. Browning. Do. ^^TJy 8vo. 
 
 L. Campbell, 1890. 
 [Prose.] 
 
 A. W. Verrall, 1893. 
 Sophocles. (Edipus King. [Verse.] 
 
 E. D. A. Morshead, 1885, i2mo. 
 
 Prof. Campbell, 1883 ; G. Murray, 19 10. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Jebb, 1883. 
 Aristophanes. [Verse.] 
 
 Frere. Five Comedies, 1839, '"^^"^ 5 ^^^ ^^ collected 
 works, 2 vols. 8vo, 1872, rare. Acharnians, 
 Knights, Birds, Frogs, Peace. 
 T, Mitchell, 1820, 2 vols., rare. Acharnians, Knights, 
 Clouds, Wasps. 
 
 B. B. Rogers, 1867-78, 191 2. 
 
 Cumberland, 1812. Clouds, Plutus, Frogs, Birds, 
 {Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusce, not in verse.) 
 Pindar. [Prose.] 
 
 Ernest Myers, 1874, ^^^' 
 
 F. A, Paley, 1868, 8vo. 
 
 [Verse.] 
 Cary, 1844, 8vo. 
 
 A. Moore, 1822, 8vo, and see Bohn CI. Libr. 
 T. C. Baring, 1875. 
 
 Theocritus. [Prose.] 
 
 Andrew Lang, 1880, 8vo. 
 [Verse.] 
 
 C. S. Calverley, 1869, 8vo ; 2nd cd., 1883, 8vo. 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 423 
 
 LoNGus. Daphnis and Chloe, 
 
 Jmyot, 1559 (French), amended and revised by Paul 
 Louis Courier, 1810 ; var. ed., published by Glady, 
 in London, 1878, rare. 
 Rev. R. Smith (English), Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Plautus. Comedies. [Verse.] 
 
 Bonnell Thornton and Colman, 1767, rare, 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Terence. Comedies. [Verse.] 
 
 Colman, 1765, 410, rare \ var, ed., 18 10, 1 841, 
 i2mo. 
 [Prose.] 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Virgil. [Verse.] 
 
 Dryden, 1697, var. ed. ; 1873, 1877, Chandos CI. 
 Conington. jEneid^ 1870, 8vo, var. ed. 
 Wm. Morris. Do. 1875, 8 vo. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Conington, 1880 ; J. W. Mackail, 1885. 
 Lonsdale and Lee., 1882, 8vo, Globe Editions. 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Horace. [Verse.] 
 
 Sir T. Martin, i860, 2 vols. 8vo ; var. ed., 1881. 
 Conington, 1869, i2mo. 
 Francis, 1756, var. ed. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Lonsdale and Lee, 1873, Globe Editions. 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 LucAN. Pharsalia. [Verse.] 
 
 Marlowe, 1600, Book I., var. ed. 
 Rowe, 1 71 8, var. ed. 
 Pharsalia. [Prose.] 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Ovid. Metamorphoses. [Verse.] 
 
 Dr. Garth, 17 17, var. ed. ; H. King, 1871. 
 
 Elegies. 
 Marlowe, 1597, var. ed. 
 Dry den, 1679, var. ed. 
 
424 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Ovid. Metamorphoses. [Prose.] 
 
 Bohn CI. Libr. 
 TiBULLus. [Verse] 
 
 Cranstoun, 1872, 8vo. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Bohn CI. Libr, 
 Juvenal. [Verse.] 
 
 Dry den, 1693, var. ed. 
 
 Gifford, 1802, var. ed., and Bohn. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Far. ed., and Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Legrand D'Aussy. Fabliaux du Moyen Age, 1779-81, 
 4 vols. 8vo, 1781, 5 vols. i2mo, var. ed. 
 JDo. by Renouard, 1829, 5 vols. 8vo, rare, 
 
 [English Verse.] Way and Ellis, 1796- 1800, var, ed. 
 [English Prose.] W. Carew Hazlitt, 1873 (con- 
 densed). 
 Dante. Divina Commedia. [Verse.] 
 Gary, 18 14, var. ed., Bohn. 
 Longfellow, 1867, 3 vols. 8vo, var. ed, 
 Wright, var. ed., Bohn. 
 Sir F. Pollock, 1854, 8vo. 
 Cay ley, 185 1, 3 vols, izmo, var. ed. 
 
 [Prose.] 
 Hell, by Dr. J. Carlyle, 1849, ^^^7^ 8vo, Bohn. 
 Do. by A. J. Butler, 1902. 
 Purgatory, by A. J. Butler, 1880, 8vo. 
 
 Do. by Dugdale, Bohn. 
 
 Paradise, by A. J. Butler, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 [Prose, French.] 
 Lamennais, Paris, 1856, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 Ariosto. Orlando Furioso. [Verse.] 
 
 Sir J. Harrington, 1 591, var, ed., rare. 
 Hoole, 1773, var. ed. 
 
 Rose, 1823, var. ed., Bohn Ul. Libr., 2 vols. 
 Tasso. Gerusalemme Liberata. [Verse.] 
 Fairfax, 1600, var. ed., 1844, i2mo. 
 Hoole, 1763, var. ed. 
 Wiffen, Bohn III. Libr, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 425 
 
 Petrarch. Sonnets. 
 
 C,B. Cay/ey, 1879, 8vo. 
 Ed. T. Campbell^ var. ed.y Bohn III Libr. 
 Metastasio. Hoole^ 2 vols. i2mo, 1777, and var. ed. 
 
 Titus, Demophoon, Hypsipele, Artaxerxes, Demetrius, 
 Olympias. 
 Alfieri. E. Bowring, Bohn St. Libr. 
 Manzoni. Promessi Sposi, 1827, var. ed. 
 
 The Betrothed, 1 844, var ed., in Standard Novels, Bentley. 
 Ten English translations, and Bohn Nov. Libr. 
 CiD. Poem, 1207 (3740 lines), Spanish and French, by 
 Damas Hinard, Paris, 1858, 4to, rare. 
 French translation by St. Albin, Paris, 1865, 2 vols. 
 
 1 2 mo. 
 [English Verse.] Fragment in Frere^s Works, vol. ii. 
 
 7. Ormsby, 1879. 
 [English Prose.] Southey, var. ed., and in Chandos CI. 
 (No complete English translation.) 
 Spanish Ballads. Lockhart, 1823, var, ed., and Chandos CI. 
 Sir J. Bowring, 1834, 8vo. 
 
 [French Prose.] St. Albin, Paris, 1865, 2 vols. i2mo. 
 Cervantes. Don Quixote. English translations by Jervas, 
 Motteux, Smollett, var. ed. 
 J. Ormsby, 1885, 4 vols. 8vo. (New critical version.) 
 J. Fiizmaurice Kelly, 1896. 
 Bohn St. Libr., 2 vols. 
 
 Exemplary Novels, var. ed., translated Bohn St. Libr. 
 Calderon. Dramas, circa 1640, var. ed. 
 
 The Mayor of Zalamea, \ [In English verse.] E. Fitz- 
 Life is a Dream, j gerald, 1853, 1872, i2mo. 
 
 The latter by Trench, 1856, i2mo. 
 Do. do. by McCarthy, 1873, 8vo. 
 (N.B. — For the eleven dramatists in the Teatro 
 Espanol, see Ticknor's Spanish Literature^ 
 Corneille, Racine, Voltaire. Dramas, var. ed. (No 
 
 adequate English translation.) 
 Moli^re. Comedies. [English transl.] Van Laun, \%']^y 
 4 vols. 8vo. 
 Wall, Bohn St. Libr., 3 vols. 
 
426 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 La Fontaine. Fables^ 1 668, var. ed. 
 
 [English Verse.] E. Wright, Bohn St. Libr. 
 Florian. Fables, 1787, var. ed. 
 La Motte. Fables, 1720, var. ed. 
 Lesage. Gil Bias, 171 5, var. ed. 
 
 [English transl.] Smollett, Bohn III. Libr., also in 
 
 Chandos CI. 
 Van Laun, 1886, 3 vols, (etchings). 
 Madame de la Fayette. Princesse de Cleves, 1678, var. 
 ed. ; 1878 (Quantin), rare. 
 [English transl.] 1729, 1772, rare. 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre. Paul et Virginie, 1787, var. ed. 
 
 Paul and Virginia [English transl.], var. ed. 
 Chateaubriand. The Martyrs, 1809, var. ed. 
 [English transl.] 18 19, rare. 
 
 Adventures of the Last of the Abencerages, 1830, var. ed. 
 [English transl.] in Standard Novels, Bentley, also 
 1870. 
 Goethe. Faust, 1806-31, var. ed. 
 
 [English transl.] by Sir T. Martin, Miss Swanwick 
 {Bohn St. Libr.), Hayward, Blackie, Anster, B. 
 Taylor, var. ed. 
 Goetz von Berltchingen, by Sir Walter Scott, Bohn St. 
 
 Libr. 
 Egmont, Iphigeneia, Tasso, by Miss Swanwick, etc., 
 Bohn St. Libr. 
 
 Part IL Science 
 
 Condorcet. Moyens d^apprendre a compter surement et avec 
 faciliti. Posthumous work, publ. Paris, 1801, 
 1854, var. ed. 
 Translated by Dr. Kaines, Condor cefs Arithmetic, 
 London, 1882, i2mo. 
 Clairaut. Elements d^Algebre, Paris, 1746, var. ed. 
 Elements de Geometric, Paris, 1741, var. ed. 
 Translated by Dr. Kaines, London, 1881, i2mo. 
 Legendre. Elements de Geometric, etc., 1794, 2nd ed., 
 1824, var. ed. (obsolete). 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 427 
 
 Legendre — continued. 
 
 Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry, edited by Sir 
 D. Brewster, Edinburgh, 1824.. Translated by 
 Thomas Carlyle, rare. 
 Lacroix. Traite elementaire de Trigonometrie, 1798, "^^f' 
 
 ed. (obsolete). 
 Descartes. Geometric (French ed.), 1637, original, very 
 rare (to be reprinted by the Positivist Society, Paris). 
 Geometria (Latin ed.), 164.4, '^^^' ^^' » ^^^- ^^•» +^° 
 edition of Works. 
 CoMTE. Geometrie Analytique, Paris, 1843, 8vo, rare. 
 PoiNsoT. Elements de Statique, Paris, 1803, 8vo, var. ed., 
 and recent. 
 Statics [English transl.], Cambridge, 1847, rare. 
 Mimoire sur Vequilibre et le mouvement, etc., Paris, 
 
 1806, rare. 
 Theorie de la rotation des corps, Paris, 1834, ^^^' ^^' 
 Carnot. Principes fondamentaux de Vequilibre et du mouve- 
 ment, Paris, 1803, 8vo, var. ed. 
 Rifiexions sur la Metaphysique du Calcul infinitisimal, 
 
 Paris, 1797, 8vo, var. ed. 
 Infinitesimal Calculus. English translation by Rev. 
 W. R. Browell, Oxford, etc., 1832, 8vo, rare. 
 Navier. Resume des Lemons de Mecanique donnees a VEcole 
 Poly technique, Paris, 1841, 8vo, rare. 
 Resume des Lemons d^ Analyse donnees a VEcole Poly- 
 technique, Paris, 1840, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 Lagrange. Thecrie des Fonctions analytiques, 1797, 1813, 
 
 1 847, 4to, rare. 
 CoMTE. Astronomie Populaire, Paris, 1844, 8vo, rare. 
 FoNTENELLE. Pluraliti des Mondes, 1686, var. ed. 
 
 Plurality of Worlds, tr. by Gardiner, London, 1737, 
 i2mo, rare. 
 Fischer. Physique Mecanique; edition Biot, Paris, 18 16 
 
 (obsolete). 
 J. Carr. Synopsis of Practical Philosophy, by the Rev. 
 J. Carr, Trin. Coll. Camb., London, 1828, 8vo ; 
 also Weale's Series, London, 1843 ; 2nd ed. i2mo 
 (obsolete). 
 
428 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. u 
 
 Lavoisier. Traite element aire de Chimie, 1789, 3 vols. 
 8vo, var. ed. 
 Elements of Chemistry, translated by R. Kerr, Edin- 
 burgh, 1790, Svo, var. ed., rare. 
 
 Berthollet. Essai de Statique Chimique, Paris, 1803, 
 
 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 Statical Chemistry, translated by B. Lambert, London, 
 1804, 2 vols. 8vo, rare. 
 
 Thomas Graham. Elements of Chemistry, 2nd ed., entirely 
 revised, London, 1850, 2 vols. 8vo, z>ar. ed. 
 "The Elements of Chemistry form two admirable 
 volumes where the kernels of thought could be 
 obtained free from shell, and where the student 
 was led up to the newest opinions. As a text-book, 
 however, time has removed much of its value." — 
 Dr. Angus Smith, 1875. (Now practically 
 obsolete.) 
 
 Meckel. Manual of Anatomy, German, 181 6, var. ed. \ 
 French edition by Jourdan and Breschet, Paris, 1825, 
 
 3 vols. Svo, var. ed. 
 American translation, 1832. 
 
 English translation by Dr. Doane, 1837, ^ vol. 8vo, 
 
 var. ed. (practically obsolete). 
 BiCHAT. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort, 
 
 Paris, 1800, 8vo, var. ed. 
 Edited by Magendie, 1829; by Dr. Cerise, Paris, 
 
 1862, i2mo, var. ed. 
 English translation, London, 18 15, rare. 
 Anatomie Generale appliquee a la Physiologie et a la 
 
 Medecine, Paris, 1801, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 Edited by Beclard, 1821, and by Blandin, Paris, 1830, 
 
 4 vols. Svo, var. ed. 
 
 English translation by CofFyn and Calvert, London, 
 1824, 2 vols. Svo, rare. 
 Blainville. V Organisation des animaux, ou principes 
 d^ anatomie comparee. 
 Vol. I., Morphologie et Aistesologie (no other published), 
 Paris, 1822, Svo, var. ed. (1845). 
 RiCHERAND. Nouveaux Elements de Physiologie, Paris, 1801, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 429 
 
 var. ed.\ loth edition, augmented by Berard, Paris, 
 1833, 3 vols. 8vo, var. ed. English translation by 
 Dr. Lys, London, 1820, 8vo, rare \ 2nd ed., 1829, 
 rare (obsolete). 
 
 Claude Bernard. Lemons de physiologie experimentale, Paris, 
 1855-56, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 The physiologie (?) of Claude Bernard has been 
 omitted from the editions since Comte's death. 
 It must be remembered that nearly all Claude 
 Bernard's important discoveries and works are later 
 in date than the publication of the Library. Now 
 see Cours, 1858 and 1878, and Michael Foster, 1899. 
 
 Second. Histoire et Systematisation de la Biologie, Paris, 
 1 85 1, i2mo, rare. 
 Anatomie Generale^ Paris, 1854, 8vo, rare. 
 
 Barthez. Nouveaux Elements de la Science de Phomme, 
 Paris, 2nd ed., 1806, 2 vols. 8vo ; 3rd ed., 1858, 
 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 Lamarck. Philosophic Zoologique, Paris, 1 809, 2 vols. 8vo, 
 var. ed. 
 
 DuM^RiL. Elements des Sciences Naturelles^ 3rd edition of 
 work originally called Traite elementaire d^ Histoire 
 Naturelle, Paris, 1803, 8vo ; 3rd ed., Paris, 1825, 
 2 vols. 8vo ; 4th ed., 1846; 5th ed., Paris, 1848, 
 2 vols. i2mo (obsolete). 
 
 GuGLiELMiNi. Delia Natura de* Fiumi, trattato fisico- 
 matematico, Bologna, 1697, 4to, very rare; also 
 1739, rare. 
 Latin translation, Bologna, 1739, 4to, rare. 
 Works, Geneva, 171 7, rare. 
 
 "This original work produced a great impression. 
 Mantua, Cremona, and other cities called in the 
 famous hydraulic engineer, whose greatest achieve- 
 ment was in constructing the levees of the Po." — 
 Fontenelle, Eloges. 
 
 BuFFON. The Discourse on the Nature of Animals forms the 
 general introduction to the Natural History, vol. i. 
 of the series of Quadrupeds, Paris, 1749-67, 410, 
 var. ed. 
 
430 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. n 
 
 Bu FFON — continued. 
 
 Selections from the Natural History are very common 
 
 in French, and in English. 
 English translation by Smellie, 1785, 9 vols. 8vo. 
 Do. do. enlarged by Wood, 18 12, 20 
 
 vols. 8vo. 
 HuFELAND. Jrt of Prolonging Human Life (German), 
 
 Berlin, 1796, var, ed, 
 English translations very common; London, 1859, 
 
 i2mo. 
 Hippocrates. On Airs, Waters, and Places, var. ed. 
 
 Translated into French by Dr. Coray, and by Littre, 
 
 var. ed. 
 Translated into English by Dr. Clifton, 1734, var.ed. 
 Do. do. by Dr. Adams, 1 849 (Syden- 
 
 ham Society). 
 In Greek, Latin, French, and English by Dr. Burnell, 
 
 London, 1881, 8vo (Quaritch). 
 Aphorisms, var. ed. 
 English translation by Sprengel, 2nd ed., 1735, 
 
 var. ed. 
 
 CoRNARo. Discorsi della vita sobria, Padua, 1558, var. ed. 
 
 French translation by Saint Marc, etc., var. ed. 
 
 English translation, London, 1768, 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 Broussais. Commentaire des Propositions de Pathologie, 
 
 Paris, 1829, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Histoire des Phlegmasies chroniques, Paris, 1808, 1826, 
 
 3 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 English translation by Dr. Hays and Dr. Griffith, 
 
 Philadelphia, 1832, 8vo, rare. 
 FoNTENELLE and Condorcet. Eloges des Savants, Estimates 
 
 of Men of Science, by the perpetual secretaries of 
 
 the Academy. 
 From 1 699- 1 744 by Fontenelle (published 1708, 
 
 1719, 1742, 1766). 
 From 1744-70 by Condorcet (published 1799). 
 Printed in the w^orks of Fontenelle and Condorcet, 
 
 var, ed. 
 Also printed separately, var. ed. 
 
cH.xxvi THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 431 
 
 Part III. History 
 
 Malte-Brun. Geographic Universelle, Paris, 18 10, 8 vols. 
 8vo, var, ed. (quite obsolete). 
 Many editions, abridgments, and continuations. 
 English translation, Edinburgh, 1822, 8 vols. Svo. 
 Trait e elementaire de Geographie, Paris, 1830, 2 vols. 
 8vo, an abridgment and continuation by Balbi, etc. 
 English translation, 1851, i vol. Svo, Bohn III. Libr. 
 (obsolete). 
 DoMENY DE RiENzi. DtcHonnaire de Geographic^ Paris, 
 
 1846, 1856, var. ed. (obsolete). 
 J. Cook. Voyages^ 1773-84, 5 vols. foL, var. ed.^ see 
 
 Pinkerton's Collection^ vol. xi. 
 Chardin. Voyages en Perse et en Orient^ 167 1-17 11, 1686, 
 4to, rare^ var. ed., 171 1, 1723, 1735, etc., Paris, 
 181 1, 10 vols. Svo. 
 English version, London, 1687, rare, var. ed., and see 
 Pinkerton's Collection of Travels, vol. ix. 
 Barthelemy. Voyages du jeune Anacharsis en Grice, Paris, 
 1788, 1799, 4 vols. 4to, 6 vols. Svo, 7 vols. i2mo, 
 var, ed. 
 English translation, London, 1791, 7 vols. Svo, var. ed. 
 Herodotus. Translated and annotated by Rawlinson, 
 London, 1858, 4 vols. Svo, var. ed. 
 Also in Bohn CI. Libr., and many other translations, 
 var. ed. 
 Thucydides. Translated and annotated by Jowett, 
 Oxford, 1 88 1, 2 vols. Svo. 
 Also in Bohn CI. Libr., and many other translations, 
 var. ed. 
 Plutarch. Lives, translated by Stewart and Long, London, 
 1880, 4 vols. l2mo. 
 Also translations by Langhorne, Clough, etc., var. ed. 
 Arrian. History of Alexander the Great, translated by 
 Rooke, 1729, var. ed. 
 
432 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 CiESAR. Commentaries^ translated by Duncan, Dr. Clark, 
 
 etc., var. ed. Also in Bohn CI. Libr. 
 Tacitus. The Works of, translated and edited by 
 Church and Brodribb, London, 1868-77, 3 vols. 
 8vo. 
 Bohn CI. Libr., and many other translations, var. ed. 
 Heeren. Manual of Ancient History, Gottingen, 1808 
 (obsolete). 
 Translated, Oxford, 1829, i vol. 8vo, rare. 
 WiNCKELMANN. History of Ancient Art, Dresden, 1764, 
 var. ed. 
 French translation by Huber, 1781, 3 vols. 4to, 
 
 var. ed. 
 English translation, abridged, by Lodge, 1850, 1881, 
 
 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776- 
 1788, 6 vols. 4to, var. ed. 
 With Notes of Guizot, Milman, etc., by Dr. Smith, 
 
 1854, 8 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 New ed. by Prof J. B. Bury, 191 2. 
 Bohn St. Libr., 7 vols. 
 Fleury, Abbe. Histoire EccUsiastique, Paris, 1 691-1722, 
 20 vols. 4to ; also 36 vols. 4to, 40 vols. l2mo, 
 Paris, 1830, 6 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 " His History of the Church is the best that has ever 
 been written ; and the introductory essays are even 
 better than the history." — Voltaire. 
 English translation of vols, i.-iii., London, 4to, 1727- 
 
 1729, by Herbert and Adams, rare. 
 English translation of vols, iv.-vi. (4th and 5th 
 centuries), by Cardinal Newman, Oxford, 1842-43, 
 
 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Hallam. The State of Europe during the Middle Ages, 
 London, 18 18, 2 vols. 8vo, 3 vols. i2mo, and 
 var. ed. 
 Philippe de Comines. Memoires, 1523, var. ed. 
 
 English translations, London, 17 12, 1823, 2 vols. 
 
 8vo, and var, ed. 
 Bohn St. Libr. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 433 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci. Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on 
 Painting). Died I 5 19, published 1651 ; Bologna, 
 1786, folio, with large plates, var. ed. 
 English translation by Rigaud, R.A., London, 1802, 
 
 var. ed. 
 Numerous translations and editions, London, 1721, 
 
 1796, 1835, etc. 
 Bohn Art. Libr. 
 Hume. History of England, London, 1754-61, 8 vols. 
 8vo, var. ed. 
 Bohn St. Libr. 
 Robertson. History of the Emperor Charles V., London, 
 
 1769, 4 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 BossuET. Abrege de PHistoire de France — from Pharamond 
 to Charles IX. — 1670, 3 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 English translation, Edinburgh, i762,4vols. i2mo,r^r^. 
 AscARGORTA. Historia de Espana, Madrid, 1806, 8vo, var. 
 ed., Paris, 1861, 8vo. 
 French translation, Paris, 1823, 8vo, var. ed, 
 Denina. Rivoluzioni d^ Italia, 1771-75, 3 vols. 8vo, var.ed. 
 
 French translation, var. ed. 
 Davila. Storia delle Guerre Civili di Francia, 1630, 6 vols. 
 8vo, var. ed. 
 French translation, 1757, var. ed. 
 Civil Wars in France, English translation, var. ed. 
 
 Do. by Ellis Farneworth, London, 1758, 
 2 vols. 4to. 
 Civil Wars in France, by Ellis Farneworth, Dublin, 
 1760, I vol. fol., rare. 
 Cromwell. Life of, edition not indicated in 1852. 
 
 Letters and Speeches, by T. Carlyle, London, 1845, 
 
 var. ed. 
 See Gardiner, Morley, Firth, Harrison. 
 Guizot, The English Revolution (1827-54), var. ed., 
 French and English. 
 Richelieu. Political Testament, i^^t^, i2mo. The exact 
 authorship of this work in its actual form is not 
 certain, var. ed. 
 English translation, 1695, i2mo, rare. 
 
 2 F 
 
434 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Madame de Motteville. Memoirs^ 1615-66, publ. 
 Amsterdam (Paris), 1723, 4 vols. i2mo, var. ed. 
 English translation, 1725, 5 vols., rare. 
 Voltaire, ^ucle de Louis XIV ^ 1752, "var. ed. 
 
 English translation, 1752, 2 vols. 12 mo, var. ed. 
 Heeren. History of the Political System of Europe^ Gottingen, 
 1809, var. ed. 
 Translated into English from the 5th ed., Oxford, 
 1834, 2 vols. 8vo, rare. 
 MiGNET. Histoire de la Revolution Frafi(aise, 1789-1814, 
 Paris, 1824, 2 vols, 8vo, var. ed. 
 English translation, Bohn St. Libr. 
 Gretry. Memoires^ ou Essais sur la Musique, Paris, 1797, 
 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Part IV. Religion and Philosophy 
 
 Aristotle. Politics^ by Richard Congreve, with Intro- 
 duction, Essays, and Notes, London, 1855, 8vo. 
 
 By Benjamin Jowett, Translation, Essays, and 
 Commentary, Oxford, 1885, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 By Bishop Welldon. 
 
 Also in Bohn CI. Libr. 
 
 Ethics, edited by Sir Alexander Grant, 2nd ed., 1866, 
 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Translated by Robert Williams, London, 1869, 8vo. 
 
 By Bishop Welldon. 
 
 Also in Bohn CI. Libr., and various translations. 
 The Koran. Translated by Sale, London, 1734, 4to, 
 var. ed. Chandos CI. 
 
 New translation by Rodwell, London, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 Critical version, by E. H. Palmer, Oxford Press, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 St. Augustin. De Civitate Dei {The City of God), 2 vols. 
 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 French translation by Saisset, Paris, 1855, var. ed. 
 
 English translation by M. Dods, London, 1 871, 
 2 vols. 8v^o, Clark's Theol. Libr, 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 435 
 
 St. Augustin — continued. 
 
 Confessions, var. ed., var. transL, by Dr. Pusey, Oxford, 
 
 1843, 1875, i2mo. 
 Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, translated by 
 
 Archbishop Trench, 1851, izmo, Clark'' s Theol. 
 
 Libr. 
 St. Bernard. De Diligendo Deo (On the Love of God), 
 
 var. ed. 
 English translation by Mrs. Coventry Patmore, 
 
 London, 1881, i2mo. 
 Thomas a Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. First 
 
 published at Augsburg, i486. The authorship 
 
 is still a matter of literary discussion ; see Pos. Pol. 
 
 iii. 460. The editions and translations exceed 
 
 2000. 
 CoRNEiLLE. Paraphrase of the Imitation of Christ in verse, 
 
 Rouen, 1651 (ist ed.), very rare ; also var, ed. 
 Leyden, 1653 ; complete edition, Rouen, 1656, 
 
 4to ; Rouen, 1658, 4to, these very rare. 
 With the original, by St. Albin, Paris, 1857, i2mo. 
 Dr. Pouget. he Catechisme de Montpellier, Paris, 1702, 
 
 4to, var. ed. Drawn up by order of Bp. Colbert. 
 
 A standard summary of Catholic Theology. 
 Translated into English, 1723, rare, and Glasgow, 
 
 1851. 
 Bossuet. Exposition de la Doctrine de P Eglise Catholique, 
 
 Paris, 1 67 1, var. ed. 
 English translations, London, 1841, 8vo, 1848. 
 Discours sur VHistoire Universelle, Paris, 1681, var. ed. 
 
 "The greatest effort of his wonderful genius." — 
 Hallam. 
 English translations, 1684, 1778, 18 10, 18 19, var.ed. 
 Politique tiree des propres paroles de P Ecriture Sainte, 
 
 Paris, 1709, 4to, var. ed. 
 English translations, 1826, 1842, var. ed. 
 Histoire des Variations Protestantes, Paris, 1688, 2 
 
 vols. 4to, var ed. 
 English translations, 1829, 1836, var. ed., and Dublin, 
 
 1845, 2 vols. i2mo. 
 
436 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 Bacon. Novum Organum, 1620, folio, var. ed. and transl. 
 
 Translated by Basil Montagu, London, 1834, 8vo, 
 
 and 1850, i2mo, var. ed. {Bohn Sc. Libr.). 
 
 Descartes. Discours de la Methode pour bien conduire sa 
 
 raison, et chercher les v iritis dans les sciences, etc., 
 
 Leyden,. 1637. 
 
 Also published in Latin, Amsterdam, 1644, var. ed. 
 
 and transl. 
 Translated by Prof. Veitch, 1850, izmo, var. ed. 
 Diderot. Pensies philosophiques sur Pinterpritation de la 
 Nature, Paris, 1754, i^mo, var. ed. Works, by 
 Naigeon, vol. iii. ; by Assezat, vol. ii. 
 Essai sur le Beau. Article Beau in the Encylopcedia, 
 
 Paris, 1752 ; Works, Assezat, vol. x., var. ed. 
 Lettre sur les Aveugles a Pusage de ceux qui voient, 
 
 Paris, 1749, var. ed. (Assezat, vol. i.). 
 Lettre sur les Sourds et Muets a Pusage de ceux qui 
 entendent et qui parlent, Paris, 175 1, var. ed. 
 (Assezat, vol. i.). 
 English transl. of the Letter to the Blind, etc., 
 London, 1750. 
 Cicero. Moral Essays, transl. by G. Long, etc., var. ed. 
 
 {Bohn Libr.). 
 Epictetus. Thoughts, transl. by G. Long, etc., var. ed. 
 
 {Bohn Libr.). 
 M. Aurelius. Thoughts, transl. by G. Long, etc., var. ed. 
 
 {Bohn Libr.). 
 Pascal. Pensees, Paris, 1658, var. ed. 
 
 Thoughts, English translations, 1835, 1849, 185 1, 
 1878, var. ed, 
 Vauvenargues. Riflexions, Paris, 1746, 8vo and i2mo, 
 
 var. ed. 
 Madame de Lambert. Avis d^une Mire a sa Fille, Paris, 
 1734, 1 2 mo, var. ed. 
 Avis d'une Mire a son Fils, Paris, 1734, i2mo, var. ed, 
 English translation by Rowell, 1749 ^^^ I7^9» 1781, 
 2 vols. i2mo. 
 DucLos. Considirations sur les Mceurs de ce Stick, 
 Amsterdam (Paris), 175 1, i2mo, var. ed. 
 
CH. XXVI THE POSITIVIST LIBRARY 437 
 
 CoNDORCET. Esquisse historique dcs Progres de Pesprit 
 Humain, I794> '^^^' ^d. ; in Works, by O'Connor, 
 vol. viii. 
 English translation, 1794, rare. 
 American translation, 1796, rare. 
 De Maistre. Le Pape, Lyons, 18 19, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 
 English translation, i860. 
 Hume. Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, London, 
 
 1742, 8vo and 12 mo, var. ed. 
 Adam Smith. Philosophical Inquiry as Illustrated by the 
 History of Astronomy, published in Works, 1790, 
 8vo and 12 mo, var. ed. 
 Barthez. Theorie du Beau dans la Nature et dans les Arts, 
 
 Paris, 1807, 8vo, rare. 
 Cabanis. Rapports du physique et du moral de Phomme, 
 Paris, 1802, 2 vols. 8vo, var. ed. 
 Edited by Dr. Cerise, Paris, 1855, 2 vols. l2mo. 
 G. Leroy. Lettres sur les Animaux, 1762-81, var, ed. 
 Edited by Dr. Robinet, Paris, 1862, i2mo. 
 English translation. The Intelligence and Perfectibility 
 of Animals, London, 1870, i2mo (by Mrs. 
 Congreve). 
 Gall. Fonctions du Cerveau, Paris, 1822, 6 vols. 8vo, 
 rare. 
 English translation by W. Lewis, London, 1835, 
 6 vols. i2mo, rare. 
 Broussais. De P Irritation et de la Folie, Paris, 1828, 2 
 vols. 8vo ; 2nd ed., Paris, 1839, ^ ^°^^' ^^°> rare. 
 English translation, by Dr. Cooper, London, 1833, 
 8vo, rare. 
 Auguste Comte. Philosophie Positive, ist ed., Paris, 1830- 
 1840, 6 vols. 8vo, rare ; 2nd ed., Littre, 1864, rare. 
 Translated and condensed by Miss Martineau, 
 
 London, 1853, 2 vols. 8vo ; 2nd ed., 1880. 
 Politique Positive, Paris, 1851-54, 4 vols. 8vo. 
 Positive Polity, translated by Dr. Bridges, F. Harrison, 
 Prof. Beesly, Dr. Congreve, R. H. Hutton, and 
 others, London, 1875-77, 4 vols. 8vo (out of 
 print). 
 
438 AMONG MY BOOKS pt. ii 
 
 AuGUSTE CoMTE — Continued. 
 
 Catechisme Positiviste, Paris, 1852, i2mo, and 1877, 
 
 izmo. 
 Positivist Catechism, translated by Dr. Congrcve, 
 London, 1858, 12 mo, var. ed. 
 
 Note. — The whole of the foregoing collection of works, 
 excepting a few scientific manuals, practically obsolete, 
 or introuvable, are now in the Positivist Libraries at 
 P^ris, and in London and elsewhere. But it will be 
 observed that a very considerable proportion of the books, 
 especially of the translations, are not now in circulation, 
 and can only be met with (often at very low prices) on 
 the bookstalls. The dates of the publication given in 
 the foregoing text will usually indicate whether any book 
 can still be had without some search — " rare " means that 
 it cannot be had of the first bookseller, or ordered as a 
 work in circulation. Some of the older scientific and 
 historical works would only be met with by chance, and 
 have a merely historical interest. If the entire series 
 cannot be immediately obtained, the real difiiculty will 
 always consist, not in finding the books, but in reading 
 and inwardly digesting them. 
 
 F. H. 
 
 St. Augustin, 98. z'jth May 1886. 
 
 I. Dante, 124. 15M July 1912. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Pointed hy R. & R. Clark-, T>imited, Edinhurgh. 
 
WORKS BY FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
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