No More Learning

As the tankards were re-filled, tongues were loosed, and jokes
piquant as the waters of the Scheldt flew apace.
Later, coffee, together with white bread and butter, sprinkled
with currants, was served for the ladies. The men bestirred
themselves unwillingly. Silently and solemnly they filled their
pipes and smoked, while the old gossips and white-capped young
girls chattered like magpies. The low-roofed houses of the vil-
lage, which stand at the foot of the steeple pointing upward as
the watchful finger of God, fade in the gathering twilight.
Before the bugles and violins struck up in the Golden Swan,
whither baesine Davie was longing to go with her husband, the


## p. 5213 (#385) ###########################################

GEORGES EEKHOUD
5213
(
proud Rika took him by the arm and showed him round the
Verhulsts's farm. After visiting the cowsheds, the stables, the
pig-sties, and the dairy, they climbed to the garret where Rika
used to sleep. The same little camp bed stood there, the same
broken mirror, the solitary rickety stool. A feeling of emotion,
mingled perhaps with remorse, overcame the pretty farmer's wife
at sight of the familiar objects, and she threw herself into her
husband's arms. The young farmer kissed her passionately over
and over again. Rika sat on his knee with his arms around her,
and they were oblivious to all save their love.
Below in the court-yard shrill voices called to them; it was
time for the dances.
“There is no need to hasten, is there, my Rika ? ”
Kors, my well-beloved,” Rika said at last with a sigh, after
a long and delicious silence, “do you not remember this room ? »
"What a strange question, little woman! you know this is the
first time I have crossed the threshold ! »
“Are you certain ? ”
She laughed, amused at his puzzled, half-angry, half good-
natured look.
"Have you ever lost anything, Kors ? ” she persisted.
"Be done with riddles! Rather let us go and dance,” replied
Kors, relieved for the moment by the strident tones of the music,
and the sound of dancing.
Houps! Lourelourela! Rich and poor joined in the dance,
their figures outlined like black imps against the red windows of
the Golden Swan.
One word more,” said Rika, catching hold of Kors's blouse;
“have you no recollection of a little thing which you lost one
night on a journey ? ”
“No more enigmas for me, sweet one; let us be off. My feet
itch for the dance. ”
«Must I remind you ? — look ! »
She drew Begga Leuven's knife from her pocket.
He turned and held out his hand. At touch of the knife, the
remembrance of that strange night came back to him. Again he
saw the hideous old woman who pursued him with blows; he
crossed heath and swamp, his sword caught in the brushwood; he
ran until he was breathless. But now he understood more
than he did on that morning when he told his nightmare to his
loyal friend Warner Cats, the intimate friend whom he had lost


## p. 5214 (#386) ###########################################

5214
GEORGES EEKHOUD
in consequence of his willful marriage. He recognized this
accursed garret, where he had lost the pretty knife, a present
from his first lover. Reason returned, and with it all his pure
and holy passion for Begga. She who was called baezine Davie
had won him by sorcery. To kiss her lips he forsook Begga, his
gentle comrade; later, he was deaf to the curses of his grand-
father, he was indifferent when Begga married tall Milè, and he
shed no tears at the grave of the father whose death was brought
about by his disgraceful marriage.
And she, the abominable accomplice of the sorceress, still
clung to him,- the vampire!
The pale moon had risen, and now bathed the attic in silver
rays tinged with blue.
Rika sank to the ground beneath the unrecognizing glance
of Kors; she stretched out her hands to ward off what she felt
must come.
In Black Kors's contracted, bloodless hand, the open knife
shone as on the night of the charm.
Between two harsh and vibrating strains of music which came
from the Golden Swan, a discordant burst of laughter echoed
across the silent tragic plain surrounding Verhulst Farm.
At that moment, Kors in a fit of delirium plunged the knife
into Rika's breast. . . . She fell without uttering a cry.
Did not the incantation run:-“I command thee, charmed
plant, to bring me the man who will wound me as I wound
thee"?


## p. 5215 (#387) ###########################################

5215
EDWARD EGGLESTON
(1837-)
ES
DWARD EGGLESTON was born at Vevay, Indiana, December
10th, 1837
His father was a native of Amelia County,
Virginia, and was of a family which migrated from England
to Virginia in the seventeenth century, and which became one of
much distinction in the State. A brief biography of Mr. Eggleston
lately published affords some information as to his early years.
He
was a sufferer from ill health as a child. He had repeatedly to be
removed from school for this cause, and he spent a considerable part
of his boyhood on farms in Indiana, where he
made acquaintance with that rude backwoods
life which he has described in "The Hoosier
Schoolmaster) and other stories. An import-
ant incident of his youth was a visit of thir-
teen months which he paid to his relations
in Virginia in 1854. This opportunity of
making acquaintance under such favorable
circumstances with slave society, must have
been of great value to one who was to make
American history the chief pursuit of his life.
In 1856 he went to Minnesota, and there
lived a frontier life to the great improve- EDWARD EGGLESTON
ment of his health. The accounts we have
of him show him to have had the ardent and energetic character
which belongs to the youth of the West. When not yet nineteen
years old he became a Methodist preacher in that State. Later, ill
health forced him again to Minnesota, where with the enthusiasm of
a young man he traveled on foot, shod in Indian moccasins, in winter
and summer preaching to the mixed Indian and white populations on
the Minnesota River.
Mr. Eggleston's literary career began, while he was still preaching,
with contributions to Western periodicals. Having written for the
New York Independent, he was offered in 1870 the place of literary
editor of that paper, and the following year became its editor-in-
chief. He was afterwards editor of Hearth and Home, to the columns
of which journal he contributed (The Hoosier Schoolmaster,' a story
that has been very popular. He wrote a number of other novels,
“The End of the World,' The Mystery of Metropolisville, The



## p. 5216 (#388) ###########################################

5216
EDWARD EGGLESTON
Circuit Rider,' 'Roxy,' etc. In January 1880, while on a visit to
Europe, he began to make plans for a History of Life in the United
States. ' He had always had a strong taste for this subject, a keen
natural interest in history being evident here and there in his stories.
His historical researches were carried on in many of the chief libra-
ries of Europe and the United States. A result of these studies was
the thirteen articles on 'Life in the Colonial Period published in the
Century Magazine. These, however, were but preliminary studies to
the work which he intended should be the most important of his life.
The first volume of this work, The Beginners of a Nation,' was pub-
lished in 1896.
This work does not pretend to be a particular account of colonial
history. It is an attempt rather to describe the colonial individual
and colonial society, to state the succession of cause and effect in the
establishment of English life in North America, and to describe prin-
ciples rather than details, — giving however as much detail as is
necessary to illustrate principles. The volume of 1896 contains chap-
ters on (The James River Experimentsand The Procession of
Motives which led to colonization. Book ii. of this volume is upon
the Puritan migration, and has chapters on the rise of Puritanism in
England, on the Pilgrim migration, and the great Puritan exodus.
Book iii. receives the name of Centrifugal Forces in Colony Plant-
ing,' and contains accounts of Lord Baltimore's Maryland colony, of
Roger Williams, and the New England Dispersions, by which is
meant the establishment of communities in Connecticut and else-
where. In the sketch of Lord Baltimore, the courtier and friend of
kings, we have a striking contrast with the type of men who led the
Puritan migrations. There were odd characters in those days; and a
court favorite and worldling who, after having feathered his nest, is
willing to make two such voyages to Newfoundland as his must have
been, and to spend a winter there, all out of zeal for the establish-
ment of his religion in the Western wilds, is certainly a person
worthy of study.
The play of the forces that produced emigration, and their rela-
tions to the migrations, are described very clearly by the author.
People did not emigrate when they were happy at home. Thus,
Catholic emigration was small under Laud, when English Catholics
were beginning to think that the future was theirs; just as Puritan
emigration, vigorous under Laud, dwindled with the days of the
Puritan triumph in England. We have in "The James River Experi-
ments' a good example of the writer's method. The salient and sig-
nificant facts are given briefly, but with sufficient fullness to enable
the reader to have a satisfactory grasp of the matter; and where
some principle or general truth is to be pointed out, the author sets


## p. 5217 (#389) ###########################################

EDWARD EGGLESTON
5217
this forth strongly. For instance, in describing the motives of colo-
nization in Virginia, he shows how these motives were in almost all
cases delusions; how a succession of such delusions ran through the
times of Elizabeth and James; and how colonization succeeded in the
end only by doing what its projectors had never intended to do.
The Jamestown emigrants expected to find a passage to India, to dis-
cover gold and silver, to raise wine and silk. But none of these
things were done. Wines and silk indeed were raised. It is said
that Charles I. 's coronation robe was made of Virginian silk, and Mr.
Eggleston tells us that Charles II. certainly wore silk from worms
hatched and fed in his Virginian dominions. But these industries,
although encouraged to the utmost by government, could not be
made to take root. On the other hand, a determined effort was
made to discourage the production of tobacco. James I. wrote a book
against the culture of that pernicious “weed,” as he was the first to
describe it. But the hardy plant held its own and flourished in spite
of the royal disfavor. Nor were the colonists more successful in
their political intentions. Especially interesting, in view of recent
discussions, is the account given of the communistic experiments
which belonged to the early history of the American colonies. In
Virginia all the products of the colony were to go into a common
stock. But after twelve years' trial of this plan, there was a division
of the land among the older settlers. The pernicious character of
the system had been demonstrated. Every man sharked for his own
bootie,” says a writer on Virginia in 1609, “and was altogether care-
less of the succeeding penurie. ” The two years of communism in
the Plymouth colony was scarcely more successful. Bradford, finding
that the matter was one of life and death with the colony, abolished
the system, although the abolition was a revolutionary stroke, in
violation of the contract with the shareholders.
This idea, that the outcome was to be very different from the
intentions, appears not only in the striking chapter on (The Proces-
sion of Motives,' but crops up again and again in other parts of the
book. Thus, the ill success which attended the government of the
colonies from London resulted in the almost unconscious establish-
ment of several independent democratic communities in America.
This happened in Virginia and Plymouth. The Massachusetts Bay
Colony, however, was self-governing from the start.
But although causes and principles are matters of chief interest
with Mr. Eggleston, his book is full of a picturesqueness which is all
the more effective for being unobtrusive. The author has not that
tiresome sort of picturesqueness which insists on saying the whole
thing itself. The reader is credited with a little imagination, and
that faculty has frequent opportunity for exercise. It is charmed by
IX-327


## p. 5218 (#390) ###########################################

5218
EDWARD EGGLESTON
the striking passage in which is described the delight of the emi-
grants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when, after having set sail
from England, they found themselves upon the open sea for the first
time without the supervision, or even the neighborhood, of bosses.
We know the sense of freedom which the broad and blue ocean
affords to us all; what must have been that feeling to men who had
scarcely ever had an hour of life untroubled by the domination of an
antagonistic religious authority! Every day, for ten weeks together,
they had preaching and exposition. On one ship,” says Mr. Eggles-
ton, «the watches were set to the accompaniment of psalm-singing. ”
The candor and fair-mindedness of this work is one of its special
merits. We have an indication of this quality in the author's refusal
to accept the weak supposition, common among writers upon Ameri-
can history, that the faults of our ancestors were in some way more
excusable than those of other people. He says in his Preface:- "I
have disregarded that convention which makes it obligatory for a
writer of American history to explain that intolerance in the first
settlers was not just like other intolerance, and that their cruelty and
injustice were justifiable under the circumstances. ” Other very im-
portant characteristics are sympathy, warmth of heart, and moral
enthusiasm. Nor is the work wanting in an adequate literary merit.
The style, especially in the later chapters, is free, simple, nervous,
and rhythmical.
Little has been said of Mr. Eggleston's novels in the course of
these remarks. But the qualities of his historical writing appear in
his novels. The qualities of the realistic novelist are of great use to
the historian, when the novelist has the thoroughness and the indus-
try of Mr. Eggleston. By the liveliness of his imagination, he suc-
ceeds in making history as real as fiction should be. Mr. Eggleston's
novels deserve the popularity they have attained. They are them-
selves, particularly those which describe Western life, valuable con-
tributions to history. The West, we may add, is Mr. Eggleston's
field. His most recent novel, “The Faith Doctor,' the scene of which
is laid in New York, is very inferior to his Western stories. Of
these novels probably the best is (The Graysons, a book full of
its author's reality and warmth of human sympathy; of this book the
reader will follow every word with the same lively interest with
which he reads (The Beginners of a Nation. '


## p. 5219 (#391) ###########################################

EDWARD EGGLESTON
5219
ROGER WILLIAMS: THE PROPHET OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
From The Beginners of a Nation': copyright 1896, by Edward Eggleston
L
OCAL jealousy and sectarian prejudice have done what they
could to obscure the facts of the trial and banishment of
Williams. It has been argued by more than one writer that
it was not a case of religious persecution at all, but the exclu-
sion of a man dangerous to the State. Cotton, with characteris-
tic verbal legerdemain, says that Williams was “enlarged” rather
than banished. The case has even been pettifogged in our own
time by the assertion that the banishment was only the action of
a commercial company excluding an uncongenial person from its
territory. But with what swift indignation would the Massachu-
setts rulers of the days of Dudley and Haynes have repudiated a
plea which denied their magistracy! They put so strong a press-
ure on Stoughton, who said that the assistants were not magis-
trates, that he made haste to renounce his pride of authorship
and to deliver his booklet to be officially burned; nor did even
this prevent his punishment. The rulers of “the Bay ” were
generally frank advocates of religious intolerance; they regarded
toleration as a door set open for the Devil to enter.
Not only
did they punish for unorthodox expressions, they even assumed
to inquire into private beliefs. Williams was only one of scores
bidden to depart on account of opinion.
The real and sufficient extenuation for the conduct of the
Massachusetts leaders is found in the character and standards of
A few obscure and contemned sectaries — Brownists,
Anabaptists, and despised Familists -- in Holland and England
had spoken more or less clearly in favor of religious liberty
before the rise of Roger Williams, but nobody of weight or re-
spectable standing in the whole world had befriended it. A11
the great authorities in Church and State, Catnolic and Prot-
estant, prelatical and Puritan, agreed in their detestation of it.
Even Robinson, the moderate pastor of the Leyden Pilgrims,
ventured to hold only to the toleration of tolerable opinions.
This was the toleration found at Amsterdam and in some other
parts of the Low Countries. Even this religious sufferance, which
did not amount to liberty, was sufficiently despicable in the eyes
of that intolerant age to bring upon the Dutch the contempt of
Christendom. It was a very qualified and limited toleration, and
the age.


## p. 5220 (#392) ###########################################

5220
EDWARD EGGLESTON
(
to
one from which Catholics and Arminians were excluded. It seems
to have been that practical amelioration of law which is produced
more effectually by commerce than by learning or religion. Out-
side of some parts of the Low Countries, and oddly enough of
the Turkish Empire, all the world worth counting decried toler-
ation as a great crime. It would have been wonderful indeed if
Massachusetts had been superior to the age.
“I dare aver,” say's
Nathaniel Ward, the New England lawyer-minister, “that God
doth nowhere in his Word tolerate Christian States to give tol-
erations to such adversaries of his Truth, if they have power in
their hands to suppress them. ” To set up toleration was
build a sconce against the walls of heaven to batter God out of
his chair,” in Ward's opinion.
This doctrine of intolerance was sanctioned by many refine-
ments of logic, such as Cotton's delicious sophistry that if a man
refused to be convinced of the truth, he was sinning against con-
science, and therefore it was not against the liberty of conscience
to coerce him. Cotton's moral intuitions were fairly suffocated
by logic. He declared that men should be compelled to attend
religious service, because it was better to be hypocrites than
profane persons. Hypocrites give God part of his due, the out-
ward man, but the profane person giveth God neither outward
nor inward man. ” To reason thus is to put subtlety into the
cathedra of common-sense, to bewilder vision by legerdemain.
Notwithstanding his natural gift for devoutness and his almost
immodest godliness, Cotton was incapable of high sincerity. He
would not specifically advise Williams's banishment, but having
labored with him round a corner according to his most approved
ecclesiastical formula, he said, “We have no more to say in his
behalf, but must sit down;” by which expression of passivity he
gave the signal to the "secular arm” to do its worst, while he
washed his hands in innocent self-complacency. When one scru-
pulous magistrate consulted him as to his obligation in Williams's
case, Cotton answered his hesitation by saying, “You know they
are so much incensed against his course that it is not your voice,
nor the voice of two or three more, that can suspend the sen-
tence. " By such shifty phrases he shirked responsibility for the
results of his own teaching. Of the temper that stands alone for
the right, nature had given him not a jot. Williams may be a
little too severe, but he has some truth when he describes Cotton
on this occasion as “swimming with the stream of outward credit


## p. 5221 (#393) ###########################################

EDWARD EGGLESTON
5221
and profit,” though nothing was further from Cotton's conscious
purpose than such worldliness. Cotton's intolerance was not like
that of Dudley and Endicott, the offspring of an austere temper;
it was rather the outgrowth of his logic and his reverence for
authority. He sheltered himself behind the examples of Eliza-
beth and James I. , and took refuge in the shadow of Calvin,
whose burning of Servetus he cites as an example, without
any recoil of heart or conscience. But the consideration of the
character of the age forbids us to condemn the conscientious
men who put Williams out of the Massachusetts theocracy as they
would have driven the Devil out of the garden of Eden. When,
however, it comes to judging the age itself, and especially to
judging the Puritanism of the age, these false and harsh ideals
are its sufficient condemnation. Its government and its very re-
ligion were barbarous; its Bible, except for mystical and ecclesi-
astical uses, might as well have closed with the story of the
Hebrew judges and the imprecatory Psalms. The Apocalypse of
John, grotesquely interpreted, was the one book of the New Tes-
tament that received hearty consideration, aside from those other
New Testament passages supposed to relate to a divinely ap-
pointed ecclesiasticism. The humane pity of Jesus was unknown
not only to the laws, but to the sermons of the time. About the
time of Williams's banishment the lenity of John Winthrop was
solemnly rebuked by some of the clergy and rulers as a lax
imperiling of the safety of the gospel; and Winthrop, overborne
by authority, confessed, explained, apologized, and promised
amendment. The Puritans substituted an unformulated belief in
the infallibility of "godly” elders acting with the magistrates, for
the ancient doctrine of an infallible Church.
In this less scrupulous but more serious age it is easy to hold
Williams up to ridicule. Never was a noble and sweet-spirited
man bedeviled by a scrupulosity more trivial. Cotton aptly
dubbed him “a haberdasher of small questions. ” His extant let-
ters are many of them vibrant with latent heroism; there is
manifest in them an exquisite charity and a pathetic magnanim-
ity: but in the midst of it all the writer is unable to rid himself
of a swarm of scruples as pertinacious as the buzzing of mosqui-
toes in the primitive forest about him. In dating his letters,
where he ventures to date at all, he never writes the ordinary
name of the day of the week or the name of the month, lest he
should be guilty of etymological heathenism. He often avoids


## p. 5222 (#394) ###########################################

52 2 2
EDWARD EGGLESTON
writing the year, and when he does insert it he commits himself
to the last two figures only and adds a saving clause. Thus 1652
appears as "52 (so called),” and other years are tagged with the
same doubting words, or with the Latin "ut vulgo. ” What
quarrel the tender conscience had with the Christian era it is
hard to guess.
So too he writes to Winthrop, who had taken
part in his banishment, letters full of reverential tenderness and
hearty friendship.
But his conscience does not allow him even
to seem to hold ecclesiastical fellowship with a man he honors as
a ruler and loves as a friend. Once at least he guards the point
directly by subscribing himself “Your worship's faithful and
affectionate in all civil bonds. » It would be sad to think of a
great spirit so enthralled by the scrupulosity of his time and his
party, if these minute restrictions had been a source of annoy-
ance to him. But the cheerful observance of little scruples seems
rather to have taken the place of a recreation in his life; they
were to him perhaps what bric-à-brac is to a collector, what a
well-arranged altar and candlesticks are to a ritualist.
Two fundamental notions supplied the motive power of every
ecclesiastical agitation of that age. The notion of a succession of
churchly order and ordinance from the time of the apostles was
the mainspring of the High Church movement. Apostolic primi-
tivism was the aim of the Puritan, and still more the goal of
the Separatist. One party rejoiced in a belief that a mysterious
apostolic virtue had trickled down through generations of bishops
and priests to its own age; the other rejoiced in the destruction
of institutions that had grown up in the ages, and in getting back
to the primitive nakedness of the early Christian conventicle.
True to the law of his nature, Roger Williams pushed this latter
principle to its ultimate possibilities. If we may believe the
accounts, he and his followers at Providence became Baptists that
they might receive the rite of baptism in its most ancient Ori-
ental form. But in an age when the fountains of the great deep
were utterly broken up, he could find no rest for the soles of his
feet. It was not enough that he should be troubled by the Puri-
tan spirit of apostolic primitivism: he had now swung round to
where this spirit joined hands with its twin, the aspiration for
apostolic succession. He renounced his baptism because it was
without apostolic sanction, and announced himself of that sect
which was the last reduction of Separatism. He became
Secker.
a


## p. 5223 (#395) ###########################################

EDWARD EGGLESTON
5223
Here again is a probable influence from Holland. The Seek-
ers had appeared there long before. Many Baptists had found
that their search for primitivism, if persisted in, carried them to
this negative result; for it seemed not enough to have apostolic
rites in apostolic form unless they were sanctioned by the gifts”
of the apostolic time. The Seekers appeared in England as early
as 1617, and during the religious turmoils of the Commonwealth
period the sect afforded a resting-place for many a weather-beaten
soul. As the miraculous gifts were lost, the Seekers dared not
preach, baptize, or teach; they merely waited, and in their mysti-
cism they believed their waiting to be an "upper room” to which
Christ would come. It is interesting to know that Williams, the
most romantic figure of the whole Puritan movement, at last
found a sort of relief from the austere externalism and ceaseless
dogmatism of his age by traveling the road of literalism, until
he had passed out on the other side into the region of devout
and contented uncertainty.
In all this, Williams was the child of his age, and sometimes
more childish than his age. But there were regions of thought and
sentiment in which he was wholly disentangled from the meshes
of his time, and that not because of intellectual superiority,- for
he had no large philosophical views,— but by reason of elevation
of spirit. Even the authority of Moses could not prevent him
from condemning the harsh severity of the New England capital
laws.
He had no sentimental delusions about the character of
the savages, --- he styles them “wolves endued with men's brains”;
but he constantly pleads for a humane treatment of them. A11
the bloody precedents of Joshua could not make him look with-
out repulsion on the slaughter of women and children in the
Pequot war, nor could he tolerate dismemberment of the dead or
the selling of Indian captives into perpetual slavery. From big-
otry and resentment he was singularly free. On many occasions
he joyfully used his ascendency over the natives to protect those
who kept in force against him a sentence of perpetual banish-
ment. And this 'ultra-Separatist, almost alone of the men of his
time, could use such words of catholic charity as those in which
he speaks of “the people of God wheresoever scattered about
Babel's banks, either in Rome or England. ”
Of his incapacity for organization or administration we shall
have to speak hereafter. But his spiritual intuitions, his moral
insight, his genius for justice, lent a curious modernness to many


## p. 5224 (#396) ###########################################

5224
EDWARD EGGLESTON
.
of his convictions. In a generation of creed-builders which
detested schism, he became an individualist. Individualist in
thought, altruist in spirit, secularist in governmental theory, he
was the herald of a time yet more modern than this laggard age
of ours.
If ever a soul saw a clear-shining inward light, not to
be dimmed by prejudices or obscured by the deft logic of a dis-
putatious age, it was the soul of Williams. In all the region of
petty scrupulosity the time-spirit had enthralled him; but in the
higher region of moral decision he was utterly emancipated from
it. His conclusions belong to ages yet to come.
This union of moral aspiration with a certain disengagedness
constitutes what we may call the prophetic temperament. Brad-
ford and Winthrop were men of high aspiration, but of another
class. The reach of their spirits was restrained by practical
wisdom, which compelled them to take into account the limits of
the attainable. Not that they consciously refused to follow their
logic to its end, but that, like other prudent men of affairs, they
were, without their own knowledge or consent, turned aside by
the logic of the impossible. Precisely here the prophet departs
from the reformer. The prophet recks nothing of impossibility;
he is ravished with truth disembodied. From Elijah the Tishbite
to Socrates, from Socrates to the latest and perhaps yet unrecog-
nized voice of our own time, the prophetic temperament has ever
shown an inability to enter into treaty with its environment. In
the seventeenth century there was no place but the wilderness
for such a John Baptist of the distant future as Roger Williams.
He did not belong among the diplomatic builders of churches,
like Cotton, or the politic founders of States, like Winthrop. He
was but a babbler to his own time; but the prophetic voice rings
clear and far, and ever clearer as the ages go on.
Reprinted by consent of the author, and of D. Appleton & Company, pub-
lishers, New York.


## p. 5225 (#397) ###########################################

5225
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
BY FRANCIS LLEWELLYN GRIFFITH AND KATE BRADBURY GRIFFITH
He advance that has been made in recent years in the deci-
pherment of the ancient writings of the world enables us
to deal in a very matter-of-fact way with the Egyptian
inscriptions. Their chief mysteries are solved, their philosophy is
almost fathomed, their general nature is understood. The story they
have to tell is seldom startling to the modern mind. The world was
younger when they were written. The heart of man was given to
devious ways then, as now and in the days of Solomon, — that we can
affirm full well; but his mind was simpler: apart from knowledge
of men and the conduct of affairs, the educated Egyptian had no
more subtlety than a modern boy of fifteen, or an intelligent English
rustic of a century ago.
To the Egyptologist by profession the inscriptions have a wonder-
ful charm. The writing itself in its leading form is the most
attractive that has ever been seen. Long rows of clever little pict-
ures of everything in heaven and earth compose the sentences:
every sign is a plaything, every group a pretty puzzle, and at pres-
ent, almost every phrase well understood brings a tiny addition to
the sum of the world's knowledge. But these inscriptions, so rich in
facts that concern the history of mankind and the progress of civili-
zation, seldom possess any literary charm. If pretentious, as many
of them are, they combine bald exaggeration with worn-out simile, in
which ideas that may be poetical are heaped together in defiance of
art. Such are the priestly laudations of the kings by whose favor
the temples prospered. Take, for instance, the dating of a stela
erected under Rameses II. on the route to the Nubian gold mines.
It runs:-
“On the fourth day of the first month of the season of winter, in the third
year of the Majesty of Horus, the Strong Bull, beloved of the Goddess of Truth,
lord of the vulture and of the uræus diadems, protecting Egypt and restrain-
ing the barbarians, the Golden Horus, rich in years, great in victories, King
of Upper Egypt and King of Lower Egypt, Mighty in Truth of Ra, Chosen
of Ra,' the son of Ra, Rameses Beloved of Amen, granting life for ever and
ever, beloved of Amen Ra lord of the Throne of the Two Lands )2 in Apt
1 The italicized phrases represent the principal names of the King.
2 The temple of Karnak.


## p. 5226 (#398) ###########################################

5226
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
Esut, appearing glorious on the throne of Horus among the living from day
to day even as his father Ra; the good god, lord of the South Land, Him of
Edfù? Horus bright of plumage, the beauteous sparrow-hawk of electrum that
hath protected Egypt with his wing, making a shade for men, fortress of
strength and of victory; he who came forth terrible from the womb to take
to himself his strength, to extend his borders, to whose body color was given
of the strength of Mentu? ; the god Horus and the god Set. There was
exultation in heaven on the day of his birth; the gods said, “We have begot-
ten him;) the goddesses said, He came forth from us to rule the kingdom
of Ra;' Amen spake, 'I am he who hath made him, whereby I have set Truth
in her place; the earth is established, heaven is well pleased, the gods are sat-
isfied by reason of him. ) The Strong Bull against the vile Ethiopians, which
uttereth his roaring against the land of the negroes while his hoofs trample
the Troglodytes, his horn thrusteth at them; his spirit is mighty in Nubia
and the terror of him reacheth to the land of the Kary3; his name circulateth
in all lands because of the victory which his arms have won; at his name
gold cometh forth from the mountain as at the name of his father, the god
Horus of the land of Baka; beloved is he in the Lands of the South even as
Horus at Meama, the god of the Land of Buhen,King of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Mighty in Truth of Ra, son of Ra, of his body, Lord of Diadems
Rameses Beloved of Amen, giving life for ever and ever like his father Ra,
day by day. ” [Revised from the German translation of Professor Erman. )
As Professor Erman has pointed out, the courtly scribe was most
successful when taking his similes straight from nature, as in the
following description, also of Rameses II. : -
“A victorious lion putting forth its claws while roaring loudly and uttering
its voice in the Valley of the Gazelles.
A jackal swift of foot seeking
what it may find, going round the circuit of the land in one instant,
his mighty will seizeth on his enemies like a flame catching the ki-ki plant 5
with the storm behind it, like the strong flame which hath tasted the fire,
destroying, until everything that is in it becometh ashes; a storm howling
terribly on the sea, its waves like mountains, none can enter it, every one
that is in it is engulphed in Duat. 6 »
Here and there amongst the hieroglyphic inscriptions are found
memorials of the dead, in which the praises of the deceased are
neatly strung together and balanced like beads in a necklace, and
passages occur of picturesque narrative worthy to rank as literature
1 Horus as the winged disk of the sun, so often figured as a protecting
symbol over the doors of temples.
? The coloration or configuration of his limbs indicated to the learned in
such matters his victorious career. Mentu was the god of war.
3 The southern boundary of the Egyptian empire.
4 Baka, Meama, Buhen were in Nubia.
5 The castor-oil plant (Ricinus communis).
6 The underworld.


## p. 5227 (#399) ###########################################

EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
5227
of the olden time. We may quote in this connection from the bio-
graphical epitaph of the nomarch Ameny, who was governor of a
province in Middle Egypt for twenty-five years during the long reign
of Usertesen I. (about 2700 B. C. ). This inscription not only recounts
the achievements of Ameny and the royal favor which was shown
him, but also tells us in detail of the capacity, goodness, charm, dis-
cretion, and insight by which he attached to himself the love and
respect of the whole court, and of the people over whom he ruled
and for whose well-being he cared. Ameny says:-
«I was a possessor of favor, abounding in love, a ruler who loved his city.
Moreover I passed years as ruler in the Oryx nome. All the works of the
house of the King came into my hand. Behold, the superintendent of the
gangs? of the domains of the herdsmen of the Oryx nome gave me 3,000 bulls
of their draught stock. I was praised for it in the house of the King each
year of stock-taking. I rendered all their works to the King's house: there
were no arrears to me in any of his offices.
“The entire Oryx nome served me in numerous attendances. There was
not the daughter of a poor man that I wronged, nor a widow that I oppressed.
There was not a farmer that I chastised, not a herdsman whom I drove
away, not a foreman of five whose men I took away for the works. There
was not a pauper around me, there was not a hungry man of my
time.
When there came years of famine, I arose and ploughed all the fields of the
Oryx nome to its boundary south and north, giving life to its inhabitants, mak-
ing its provisions. There was not a hungry man in it. I gave to the widow
as to her that possessed a husband, and I favored not the elder above the
younger in all that I gave. Thereafter great rises of the Nile took place,
producing wheat and barley, and producing all things abundantly, but I did
not exact the arrears of farming. ”
Elsewhere in his tomb there are long lists of the virtues of
Amenemhat, and from these the following may be selected both on
account of picturesqueness of expression and the appreciation of fine
character which they display.
«Superintendent of all things which heaven gives and earth produces,
overseer of horns, hoofs, feathers, and shells.
Master of the art of
causing writing to speak.
Caressing of heart to all people, making to
prosper the timid man, hospitable to all, escorting [travelers] up and down
the river.
Knowing how to aid, arriving at time of need; free of
planning evil, without greediness in his body, speaking words of truth.
1 The fellâhîn herdsmen of the time seem to have clubbed together into
gangs, each of which was represented by a ganger, and the whole body by a
superintendent of the gangs.
2 Corvée work for the government.
3 1. e. , he did not impress men (wrongfully ? ) for the government works,
such as irrigation or road-making.


## p. 5228 (#400) ###########################################

5228
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
Unique as a mighty hunter, the abode of the heart of the King.
Speaking the right when he judges between suitors, clear of speaking fraud,
knowing how to proceed in the council of the elders, finding the knot in the
skein.
Great of favors in the house of the King, contenting the
heart on the day of making division, careful of his goings to his equals,
gaining reverence on the day of weighing words, beloved of the officials of
the palace.
The cursive forms of writing — hieratic from the earliest times,
demotic in the latest — were those in which records were committed
to papyrus.
This material has preserved to us documents of every
kind, from letters and ledgers to works of religion and philosophy.
To these, again, “literature is a term rarely to be applied; yet the
tales and poetry occasionally met with on papyri are perhaps the
most pleasing of all the productions of the Egyptian scribe.
It must be confessed that the knowledge of writing in Egypt led
to a kind of primitive pedantry, and a taste for unnatural and to us
childish formality: the free play and naïveté of the story-teller is too
often choked, and the art of literary finish was little understood.
Simplicity and truth to nature alone gave lasting charm, for though
adornment was often attempted, their rude arts of literary embellish-
ment were seldom otherwise than clumsily employed.
A word should be said about the strange condition in which most
of the literary texts have come down to us. It is rarely that mon-
umental inscriptions contain serious blunders of orthography; the
peculiarities of late archaistic inscriptions which sometimes produce a
kind of “dog Egyptian” can hardly be considered as blunders, for
the scribe knew what meaning he intended to convey. But it is
otherwise with copies of literary works on papyrus. Sometimes these
were the productions of schoolboys copying from dictation as an
exercise in the writing-school, and the blank edges of these papyri
are often decorated with essays at executing the more difficult signs.
The master of the school would seem not to have cared what non-
sense was produced by the misunderstanding of his dictation, so long
as the signs were well formed. The composition of new works on
the model of the old, and the accurate understanding of the ancient
works, were taught in a very different school, and few indeed
attained to skill in them. The boys turned out of the writing-school
would read and write a little; the clever ones would keep accounts,
write letters, make out reports as clerks in the government service,
and might ultimately acquire considerable proficiency in this kind of
work. Apparently men of the official class sometimes amused them-
selves with puzzling over an ill-written copy of some ancient tale,
and with trying to copy portions of it. The work however was be-
yond them: they were attracted by it, they revered the compilations


## p. 5229 (#401) ###########################################

EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
5229
of an elder age and those which were written by the finger of
Thoth himself”; but the science of language was unborn, and there
was little or no systematic instruction given in the principles of the
ancient grammar and vocabulary. Those who desired to attain emi-
nence in scholarship after they had passed through the writing-school
had to go to Heliopolis, Hermopolis, or wherever the principal uni-
versity of the time might be, and there sit at the feet of priestly
professors; who we fancy were reverenced as demigods, and who
in mysterious fashion and with niggardly hand imparted scraps of
knowledge to their eager pupils. Those endowed with special talents
might after almost lifelong study become proficient in the ancient
language. Would that we might one day discover the hoard of rolls
of such a copyist and writer!
There must have been a large class of hack-copyists practiced in
forming characters both uncial and cursive. Sometimes their copies
of religious works are models of deft writing, the embellishments
of artist and colorist being added to those of the calligrapher: the
magnificent rolls of the Book of the Dead in the British Museum
and elsewhere are the admiration of all beholders. Such manu-
scripts satisfy the eye, and apparently neither the multitude in Egypt
nor even the priestly royal undertakers questioned their efficacy in
the tomb. Yet are they very apples of Sodom to the hieroglyphic
scholar; fair without, but ashes within. On comparing different
copies of the same text, he sees in almost every line omissions, per-
versions, corruptions, until he turns away baffled and disgusted.
Only here and there is the text practically certain, and even then
there are probably grammatical blunders in every copy. Nor is it
only in the later papyri that these blunders are met with. The
hieroglyphic system of writing, especially in its cursive forms, lends
itself very readily to perversion by ignorant and inattentive copyists;
and even monumental inscriptions, so long as they are mere copies,
are usually corrupted. The most ridiculous perversions of all, date
from the Ramesside epoch when the dim past had lost its charm,
for the glories of the XVIIIth Dynasty were still fresh, while new
impulses and foreign influence had broken down adherence to tradi-
tion and isolation.
In the eighth century B. C. the new and the old were definitely
parted, to the advantage of each. On the one hand the transactions
of ordinary life were more easily registered in the cursive demotic
script, while on the other the sacred writings were more thoroughly
investigated and brought into order by the priests. Hence, in spite
of absurdities that had irremediably crept in, the archaistic texts
copied in the XXVIth Dynasty are more intelligible than the same
class of work in the XIXth and XXth Dynasties.


## p. 5230 (#402) ###########################################

5230
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
In reading translations from Egyptian, it must be remembered
that uncertainty still remains concerning the meanings of multitudes
of words and phrases. Every year witnesses a great advance in
accuracy of rendering; but the translation even of an easy text still
requires here and there some close and careful guesswork to supply
the connecting links of passages or words that are thoroughly under-
stood, or the resort to some conventional rendering that has become
current for certain ill-understood but frequently recurring phrases.
The renderings given in the following pages are with one exception
specially revised for this publication, and exclude most of what is
doubtful. The Egyptologist is now to a great extent himself aware
whether the ground on which he is treading is firm or treacherous;
and it seems desirable to make a rule of either giving the public
only what can be warranted as sound translation, or else of warn-
ing them where accuracy is doubtful. A few years ago such a course
would have curtailed the area for selection to few of the simplest
stories and historical inscriptions; but now we can range over almost
the whole field of Egyptian writing, and gather from any part of it
warranted samples to set before the reading public. The labor, how-
ever, involved in producing satisfactory translations for publication,
not mere hasty readings which may give something of the sense, is
very great; and at present few texts have been well rendered. It is
hoped that the following translations will be taken for what they are
intended, -- attempts to show a little of the Ancient Egyptian mind
in the writings which it has left to us.
We may now sketch briefly the history of Egyptian literature,
dealing with the subject in periods:'-
I. THE ANCIENT KINGDOM, ABOUT B. C. 4500-3000
The earliest historic period — from the Ist Dynasty to the IIId,
about B. C. 4500 — has left no inscriptions of any extent. Some
portions of the Book of the Dead' profess to date from these or
earlier times, and probably much of the religious literature is of
extremely ancient origin. The first book of * Proverbs) in the Prisse
Papyrus is attributed by its writer to the end of the IIId Dynasty
(about 4000 B. C. ). From the IVth Dynasty to the end of the
VIth, the number of the inscriptions increases; tablets set up to the
kings of the IVth Dynasty in memory of warlike raids are found in
the peninsula of Sinai, and funerary inscriptions abound. The pyra-
mids raised at the end of the Vth and during the VIth Dynasty are
found to contain interminable religious inscriptions, forming alınost
1 An asterisk (*) attached to the title of a text indicates that a translation
of part or all of it is printed in the following pages.


## p. 5231 (#403) ###########################################

EGYPTIAN LITERATURE
5231
complete rituals for the deceased kings. Professor Maspero, who has
published these texts, states that they “contain much verbiage,
many pious platitudes, many obscure allusions to the affairs of the
other world, and amongst all this rubbish some passages full of
movement and wild energy, in which poetical inspiration and reli-
gious emotion are still discernible through the veil of mythological
expressions. ” Of the funerary and biographical inscriptions the most
remarkable is that of * Una. Another, slightly later but hardly less
important, is on the facade of the tomb of Herkhuf, at Aswân, and
recounts the expeditions into Ethiopia and the southern oases which
this resourceful man carried through successfully. In Herkhuf's later
life he delighted a boy King of Egypt by bringing back for him from
one of his raids a grotesque dwarf dancer of exceptional skill: the
young Pharaoh sent him a long letter on the subject, which was copied
in full on the tomb as an addition to the other records there. It is to
the Vth Dynasty also that the second collection of *( Proverbs in the
Prisse Papyrus is dated. The VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties have left
us practically no records of any kind.
II.
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, B. C. 3000 TO 1600
The Middle Kingdom, from the IXth to the XVIIth Dynasty, shows
a great literary developinent. Historical records of some length are
not uncommon. The funerary inscriptions descriptive of character
and achievement are often remarkable.
Many papyri of this period have survived: the * Prisse Papyrus
of Proverbs, a papyrus discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie with the
*'Hymn to Usertesen III. ,' papyri at Berlin containing a *dialogue
between a man and his soul, the * Story of Sanehat,' the Story of
the Sekhti,' and a very remarkable fragment of another story; besides
the Westcar Papyrus of Tales' and at St. Petersburg the *' 'Ship-
wrecked Sailor. ' The productions of this period were copied in later
times; the royal *( Teaching of Amenemhat,' and the worldly *( Teach-
ing of Dauf' as to the desirability of a scribe's career above any other
trade or profession, exist only in late copies. Doubtless much of the
later literature was copied from the texts of the Middle Kingdom.
There are also *treatises extant on medicine and arithmetic. Por-
tions of the Book of the Dead are found inscribed on tombs and
sarcophagi.
III. THE NEW KINGDOM, ETC.
From the New Kingdom, B. C. 1600-700, we have the *(Maxims
of Any,' spoken to his son Khonsuhetep, numerous hymns to the
gods, including *that of King Akhenaten to the Aten (or disk of the
sun), and the later * hymns to Amen Ra. Inscriptions of every kind,


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