Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M.
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M.
Lucian
The arrival of a famous rhetorician to lecture was
one of the important events in any great city's annals; and Lucian's
works are full of references to the impression these men produced, and
the envy they enjoyed. He himself was evidently consumed, during his
youth and early manhood, with desire for a position like theirs. To
him, sleeping with memories of the stick, appeared two women,
corresponding to _Virtue_ and _Pleasure_ in Prodicus's _Choice of
Heracles_--the working woman _Statuary_, and the lady _Culture_. They
advanced their claims to him in turn; but before _Culture_ had
completed her reply, the choice was made: he was to be a rhetorician.
From her reminding him that she was even now not all unknown to him,
we may perhaps assume that he spoke some sort of Greek, or was being
taught it; but he assures us that after leaving Syria he was still a
barbarian; we have also a casual mention of his offering a lock of his
hair to the Syrian goddess in his youth.
He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities
like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of
rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled
him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a
great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates
in _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, of studying exhaustively the old
Attic orators, poets, and historians.
He was at any rate successful. The different branches that a
rhetorician might choose between or combine were: (1) Speaking in
court on behalf of a client; (2) Writing speeches for a client to
deliver; (3) Teaching pupils; (4) Giving public displays of his skill.
There is a doubtful statement that Lucian failed in (1), and took to
(2) in default. His surviving rhetorical pieces (_The Tyrannicide,
The Disinherited, Phalaris_) are declamations on hypothetical cases
which might serve either for (3) or (4); and _The Hall, The Fly,
Dipsas_, and perhaps _Demosthenes_, suggest (4). A common form of
exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let
them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an
impromptu oration upon it.
Whatever his exact line was, he earned an income in Ionia, then in
Greece, had still greater success in Italy, and appears to have
settled for some time in Gaul, perhaps occupying a professorial chair
there. The intimate knowledge of Roman life in some aspects which
appears in _The dependent Scholar_ suggests that he also lived some
time in Rome. He seems to have known some Latin, since he could
converse with boatmen on the Po; but his only clear reference (A Slip
of the Tongue,) implies an imperfect knowledge of it; and there is not
a single mention in all his works, which are crammed with literary
allusions, of any Latin author. He claims to have been during his time
in Gaul one of the rhetoricians who could command high fees; and his
descriptions of himself as resigning his place close about his lady's
(i. e. Rhetoric's) person, and as casting off his wife Rhetoric because
she did not keep herself exclusively to him, show that he regarded
himself, or wished to be regarded, as having been at the head of his
profession.
This brings us to about the year 160 A. D. We may conceive Lucian now
to have had some of that yearning for home which he ascribes in the
_Patriotism_ even to the successful exile. He returned home, we
suppose, a distinguished man at thirty-five, and enjoyed impressing
the fact on his fellow citizens in _The Vision_. He may then have
lived at Antioch as a rhetorician for some years, of which we have a
memorial in _The Portrait-study_. Lucius Verus, M. Aurelius's
colleague, was at Antioch in 162 or 163 A. D. on his way to the
Parthian war, and _The Portrait-study_ is a panegyric on Verus's
mistress Panthea, whom Lucian saw there.
A year or two later we find him migrating to Athens, taking his father
with him, and at Athens he settled and remained many years. It was on
this journey that the incident occurred, which he relates with such a
curious absence of shame in the _Alexander_, of his biting that
charlatan's hand.
This change in his manner of life corresponds nearly with the change
in habit of mind and use of his powers that earned him his
immortality. His fortieth year is the date given by himself for his
abandonment of Rhetoric and, as he calls it, taking up with Dialogue,
or, as we might say, becoming a man of letters. Between Rhetoric and
Dialogue there was a feud, which had begun when Socrates five
centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric
appeals to the emotions and obscures the issues (such had been
Socrates's position); the way to elicit truth is by short question and
answer. The Socratic method, illustrated by Plato, had become, if not
the only, the accredited instrument of philosophers, who, so far as
they are genuine, are truth-seekers; Rhetoric had been left to the
legal persons whose object is not truth but victory. Lucian's
abandonment of Rhetoric was accordingly in some sort his change from a
lawyer to a philosopher. As it turned out, however, philosophy was
itself only a transitional stage with him.
Already during his career as a rhetorician, which we may put at
145-164 A. D. , he seems both to have had leanings to philosophy, and to
have toyed with dialogue. There is reason to suppose that the
Nigrinus_, with its strong contrast between the noise and vulgarity of
Rome and the peace and culture of Athens, its enthusiastic picture of
the charm of philosophy for a sensitive and intelligent spirit, was
written in 150 A. D. , or at any rate described an incident that
occurred in that year; and the _Portrait-study_ and its _Defence_,
dialogues written with great care, whatever their other merits, belong
to 162 or 163 A. D. But these had been excursions out of his own
province. After settling at Athens he seems to have adopted the
writing of dialogues as his regular work. The _Toxaris_, a collection
of stories on friendship, strung together by dialogue, the
_Anacharsis_, a discussion on the value of physical training, and the
_Pantomime_, a description slightly relieved by the dialogue form, may
be regarded as experiments with his new instrument. There is no trace
in them of the characteristic use that he afterwards made of dialogue,
for the purposes of satire.
That was an idea that we may suppose to have occurred to him after the
composition of the _Hermotimus_. This is in form the most philosophic
of his dialogues; it might indeed be a dialogue of Plato, of the
merely destructive kind; but it is at the same time, in matter, his
farewell to philosophy, establishing that the pursuit of it is
hopeless for mortal man. From this time onward, though he always
professes himself a lover of true philosophy, he concerns himself no
more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that
perhaps comes next, _The Parasite_, is still Platonic in form, but
only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged,
as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between
subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of
satire with dialogue.
One more step remained to be taken. In the piece called _A literary
Prometheus_, we are told what Lucian himself regarded as his claim
to the title of an original writer. It was the fusing of Comedy and
Dialogue--the latter being the prose conversation hat had hitherto
been confined to philosophical discussion. The new literary form,
then, was conversation, frankly for purposes of entertainment, as in
Comedy, but to be read and not acted. In this kind of writing he
remains, though he has been often imitated, first in merit as clearly
as in time; and nearly all his great masterpieces took this form. They
followed in rapid succession, being all written, perhaps, between 165
and 175 A. D. And we make here no further comment upon them, except to
remark that they fall roughly into three groups as he drew inspiration
successively from the writers of the New Comedy (or Comedy of ordinary
life) like Menander, from the satires of Menippus, and from writers of
the Old Comedy (or Comedy of fantastic imagination) like Aristophanes.
The best specimens of the first group are _The Liar_ and the
_Dialogues of the Hetaerae;_ of the second, the _Dialogues of the
Dead_ and _of the Gods, Menippus_ and _Icaromenippus, Zeus
cross-examined;_ of the third, _Timon, Charon, A Voyage to the lower
World, The Sale of Creeds, The Fisher, Zeus Tragoedus, The Cock, The
double Indictment, The Ship_.
During these ten or more years, though he lived at Athens, he is to be
imagined travelling occasionally, to read his dialogues to audiences
in various cities, or to see the Olympic Games. And these excursions
gave occasion to some works not of the dialogue kind; the _Zeuxis_ and
several similar pieces are introductions to series of readings away
from Athens; The _Way to write History_, a piece of literary criticism
still very readable, if out of date for practical purposes, resulted
from a visit to Ionia, where all the literary men were producing
histories of the Parthian war, then in progress (165 A. D. ). An
attendance at the Olympic Games of 169 A. D. suggested _The Death of
Peregrine_, which in its turn, through the offence given to Cynics,
had to be supplemented by the dialogue of _The Runaways. The True
History_, most famous, but, admirable as it is, far from best of his
works, presumably belongs to this period also, but cannot be
definitely placed. The _Book-fancier_ and _The Rhetorician's Vade
mecum_ are unpleasant records of bitter personal quarrels.
After some ten years of this intense literary activity, producing,
reading, and publishing, Lucian seems to have given up both the
writing of dialogues and the presenting of them to audiences, and to
have lived quietly for many years. The only pieces that belong here
are the _Life of Demonax_, the man whom he held the best of all
philosophers, and with whom he had been long intimate at Athens, and
that of Alexander, the Asiatic charlatan, who was the prince of
impostors as Demonax of philosophers. When quite old, Lucian was
appointed by the Emperor Commodus to a well-paid legal post in Egypt.
We also learn, from the new introductory lectures called _Dionysus_
and _Heracles_, that he resumed the practice of reading his dialogues;
but he wrote nothing more of importance. It is stated in Suidas that
he was torn to pieces by dogs; but, as other statements in the article
are discredited, it is supposed that this is the Christian revenge for
Lucian's imaginary hostility to Christianity. We have it from himself
that he suffered from gout in his old age. He solaced himself
characteristically by writing a play on the subject; but whether the
goddess Gout, who gave it its name, was appeased by it, or carried him
off, we cannot tell.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS
The received order in which Lucian's works stand is admitted to be
entirely haphazard. The following arrangement in groups is roughly
chronological, though it is quite possible that they overlap each
other. It is M. Croiset's, put into tabular form. Many details in it
are open to question; but to read in this order would at least be more
satisfactory to any one who wishes to study Lucian seriously than to
take the pieces as they come. The table will also serve as a rough
guide to the first-class and the inferior pieces. The names italicized
are those of pieces rejected as spurious by M. Croiset, and therefore
not placed by him; we have inserted them where they seem to belong; as
to their genuineness, it is our opinion that the objections made (not
by M. Croiset, who does not discuss authenticity) to the _Demosthenes_
and _The Cynic_ at least are, in view of the merits of these,
unconvincing.
(i) About 145 to 160 A. D. Lucian a rhetorician in Ionia, Greece,
Italy, and Gaul.
The Tyrannicide, a rhetorical exercise.
The Disinherited.
Phalaris I & II.
_Demosthenes_, a panegyric.
Patriotism, an essay.
The Fly, an essay.
Swans and Amber, an introductory lecture.
Dipsas, an introductory lecture.
The Hall, an introductory lecture.
Nigrinus, a dialogue on philosophy, 150 A. D.
(ii) About 160 to 164 A. D. After Lucian's return to Asia.
The Portrait-study, a panegyric in dialogue, 162 A. D.
Defence of The Portrait-study, in dialogue.
A Trial in the Court of Vowels, a _jeu d'esprit_.
Hesiod, a short dialogue.
The Vision, an autobiographical address.
(iii) About 165 A. D. At Athens.
Pantomime, art criticism in dialogue.
Anacharsis, a dialogue on physical training.
Toxaris, stories of friendship in dialogue.
Slander, a moral essay.
The Way to write History, an essay in literary criticism.
The next eight groups, iv-xi, belong to the years from about 165 A. D.
to about 175 A. D. , when Lucian was at his best and busiest; iv-ix are
to be regarded roughly as succeeding each other in time; x and xi
being independent in this respect. Pieces are assigned to groups
mainly according to their subjects; but some are placed in groups that
do not seem at first sight the most appropriate, owing to specialties
in their treatment; e. g. _The Ship_ might seem more in place with vii
than with ix; but M. Croiset finds in it a maturity that induces him
to put it later.
(iv) About 165 A. D.
Hermotimus, a philosophic dialogue.
The Parasite, a parody of a philosophic dialogue.
(v) Influence of the New Comedy writers.
The Liar, a dialogue satirizing superstition.
A Feast of Lapithae, a dialogue satirizing the manners of
philosophers.
Dialogues of the Hetaerae, a series of short dialogues.
(vi) Influence of the Menippean satire.
Dialogues of the Dead, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Menippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy.
Icaromenippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy and religion.
Zeus cross-examined, a dialogue satirizing religion.
_The Cynic_, a dialogue against luxury.
_Of Sacrifice_, an essay satirizing religion.
Saturnalia, dialogue and letters on the relation of rich and poor.
The True History, a parody of the old Greek historians,
(vii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: vanity of human wishes.
A Voyage to the Lower World, a dialogue on the vanity of power.
Charon, a dialogue on the vanity of all things.
Timon, a dialogue on the vanity of riches.
The Cock, a dialogue on the vanity of riches and power,
(viii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: dialogues satirizing
religion.
Prometheus on Caucasus.
Zeus Tragoedus.
The Gods in Council.
(ix) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: satire on philosophers.
The Ship, a dialogue on foolish aspirations.
The Life of Peregrine, a narrative satirizing the Cynics, 169 A. D.
The Runaways, a dialogue satirizing the Cynics.
The double Indictment, an autobiographic dialogue.
The Sale of Creeds, a dialogue satirizing philosophers.
The Fisher, an autobiographic dialogue satirizing philosophers.
(x) 165-175 A. D. Introductory lectures.
Herodotus.
Zeuxis.
Harmonides.
The Scythian.
A literary Prometheus.
(xi) 165-175 A. D. Scattered pieces standing apart from the great
dialogue series, but written during the same period.
The Book-fancier, an invective. About 170 A. D.
_The Purist purized_, a literary satire in dialogue.
Lexiphanes, a literary satire in dialogue.
The Rhetorician's Vade-mecum, a personal satire. About 178 A. D.
(xii) After 180 A. D.
Demonax, a biography.
Alexander, a satirical biography,
(xiii) In old age.
Mourning, an essay.
Dionysus, an introductory lecture.
Heracles, an introductory lecture.
Apology for 'The dependent Scholar. '
A Slip of the Tongue.
In conclusion, we have to say that this arrangement of M. Croiset's,
which we have merely tabulated without intentionally departing from it
in any particular, seems to us well considered in its broad lines;
there are a few modifications which we should have been disposed to
make in it; but we thought it better to take it entire than to
exercise our own judgment in a matter where we felt very little
confidence.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME
M. Aurelius has for us moderns this great superiority in interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it. ' M.
Arnold, _Essays in Criticism, M. Aurelius_.
The age of M.
Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes. ' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It
is neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance
here [Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given,
however, describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at
both epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which
witnessed the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have
been missed by very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance
with the general facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a
competent historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of
the present day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy,
though in some respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find
mystical philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some
process of logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and
amiable and intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old
mythology could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation--
whether in regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine
weather; and philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart
from the ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves,
while hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and
politicians, conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped
by the decay of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore
attempting the impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a
semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind. '--
_The Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893. ];
all that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached
way to readers of Lucian.
The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of
its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose,
it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day
questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the
questioners. Of what played the part then that the Christian religion
plays now, the pagan religion was only one half; the other half was
philosophy. The gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the
educated, but not perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content
to be without any guide through the maze of life, had taken to
philosophy instead. Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a
form this could take in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen
in the _Thoughts_ of M. Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is
not what form it takes in a virtuous mind, but what effects it
produces on those of another sort. Lucian applies the test of results
alike to the religion usually so called, and to its philosophic
substitute. He finds both wanting; the test is not a satisfactory one,
but it is being applied by all sorts and conditions of men to
Christianity in our own time; so is the second test, that of inherent
probability, which he uses as well as the other upon the pagan
theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even apart from
their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time. Our
attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.
Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The
Liar_, he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every
street' of the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All
the winners. ' We think of palmists and spiritualists in the
police-courts as we read of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting
the impostor Alexander. This sentence reads like the description of a
modern man of science confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an
occasion for a man whose intelligence was steeled against such
assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect
the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain
that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an
impossibility. ' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's
readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud
applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like
that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian
bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom
words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,'
we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of
whom Lucian may have been thinking ('The family of Herod, at least
after it had been favoured by fortune, was lineally descended from
Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern _carriere ouverte aux
talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord. There are the
elements of a socialist question in the feelings between rich and poor
described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand, the fact
of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_ is an
illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_ which
is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of other
classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden--lewd, dull, and
insipid. ' The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of
humour and insight; and we make no apology for translating most of
them. Lastly, a generation that is always complaining of the modern
over-production of books feels that it would be at home in a state of
society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.
As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.
The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.
If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity--a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second
is the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_--the
indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy
his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His
successors, the 'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn
bumble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were
commoner in Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in
Fielding, and Macaulay, and Thackeray.
Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but
the waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some
things which were then visible.
A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show
the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in
proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we
cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by
insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of
palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the
Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but
one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be
assumed that every one would like the mere sound of him.
We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them
from the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER
With all the sincerity of Lucian in _The True History_, 'soliciting
his reader's incredulity,' we solicit our reader's neglect of this
appreciation. We have no pretensions whatever to the critical faculty;
the following remarks are to be taken as made with diffidence, and
offered to those only who prefer being told what to like, and why, to
settling the matter for themselves.
Goethe, aged fourteen, with seven languages on hand, devised the plan
of a correspondence kept up by seven imaginary brothers scattered over
the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The
stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose
some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht.
The rector was always found with one book open before him--a
well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and
the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what
struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament
narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely amused,
had fits of mingled coughing and laughter, but made little attempt at
solving his pupil's difficulties, beyond ejaculating _Er narrischer
Kerl! Er narrischer Junge_! He let him dig for solutions, however, in
an English commentary on the shelves, and occupied the time with
turning the familiar pages of his Lucian [Footnote: _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_, book iv. ]. The wicked old rector perhaps chuckled to think
that here was one who bade fair to love Lucian one day as well as he
did himself.
For Lucian too was one who asked questions--spent his life doing
little else; if one were invited to draw him with the least possible
expenditure of ink, one's pen would trace a mark of interrogation.
That picture is easily drawn; to put life into it is a more difficult
matter. However, his is not a complex character, for all the irony in
which he sometimes chooses to clothe his thought; and materials are at
least abundant; he is one of the self-revealing fraternity; his own
personal presence is to be detected more often than not in his work.
He may give us the assistance, or he may not, of labelling a character
_Lucian_ or _Lycinus_; we can detect him, _volentes volentem_, under
the thin disguise of _Menippus_ or _Tychiades_ or _Cyniscus_ as well.
And the essence of him as he reveals himself is the questioning
spirit. He has no respect for authority. Burke describes the majority
of mankind, who do not form their own opinions, as 'those whom
Providence has doomed to live on trust'; Lucian entirely refuses to
live on trust; he 'wants to know. ' It was the wish of _Arthur
Clennam_, who had in consequence a very bad name among the _Tite
Barnacles_ and other persons in authority. Lucian has not escaped the
same fate; 'the scoffer Lucian' has become as much a commonplace as
'_fidus Achates_,' or 'the well-greaved Achaeans,' the reading of him
has been discountenanced, and, if he has not actually lost his place
at the table of Immortals, promised him when he temporarily left the
Island of the Blest, it has not been so 'distinguished' a place as it
was to have been and should have been. And all because he 'wanted to
know. '
His questions, of course, are not all put in the same manner. In the
_Dialogues of the Gods_, for instance, the mark of interrogation is
not writ large; they have almost the air at first of little stories
in dialogue form, which might serve to instruct schoolboys in the
attributes and legends of the gods--a manual charmingly done, yet a
manual only. But we soon see that he has said to himself: Let us put
the thing into plain natural prose, and see what it looks like with
its glamour of poetry and reverence stripped off; the Gods do human
things; why not represent them as human persons, and see what results?
What did result was that henceforth any one who still believed in the
pagan deities might at the cost of an hour's light reading satisfy
himself that his gods were not gods, or, if they were, had no business
to be. Whether many or few did so read and so satisfy themselves, we
have no means of knowing; it is easy to over-estimate the effect such
writing may have had, and to forget that those who were capable of
being convinced by exposition of this sort would mostly be those who
were already convinced without; still, so far as Lucian had any effect
on the religious position, it must have been in discrediting paganism
and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv. ]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.
The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the
fallen angels
reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost,
these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions
can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus
cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_.
He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be
left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering
questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent,
sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because
he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor
when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken
in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The
Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the
_Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain
point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods,
and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except
consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of
getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an
ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know
where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase,
'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of
direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy--a
rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long
run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the
great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being
able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without
expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book
vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of
'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get
the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot
tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to
do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and
_The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a
translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge)
of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and
how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the
philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of
_Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the
whimsical extravagance (as it strikes a modern) of the _Pantomime_, or
in the triumph permitted to the Cynic (against 'Lycinus' too) in the
dialogue called after him? In one of his own introductory lectures he
compares his pieces aptly enough to the bacchante's thyrsus with its
steel point concealed.
With his questions and his irony and his inconsistencies, it is no
wonder that Lucian is accused of being purely negative and
destructive. But we need not think he is disposed of in that way, any
more than our old-fashioned literary education is disposed of when it
has been pointed out that it does not equip its _alumni_ with
knowledge of electricity or of a commercially useful modern language;
it may have equipped them with something less paying, but more worth
paying for. Lucian, it is certain, will supply no one with a religion
or a philosophy; but it may be doubted whether any writer will supply
more fully both example and precept in favour of doing one's thinking
for oneself; and it may be doubted also whether any other intellectual
lesson is more necessary. He is _nullius addictus iurare in verba
magistri_, if ever man was; he is individualist to the core. No
religion or philosophy, he seems to say, will save you; the thing is
to think for yourself, and be a man of sense. 'It was but small
consolation,' says _Menippus_, 'to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest for truth. ' _Vox populi_ is no _vox dei_ for him;
he is quite proof against majorities; _Athanasius contra mundum_ is
more to his taste. "What is this I hear? " asked Arignotus, scowling
upon me; "you deny the existence of the supernatural, when there is
scarcely a man who has not seen some evidence of it? " "Therein lies my
exculpation," I replied; "I do not believe in the supernatural,
because, unlike the rest of mankind, I do not see it; if I saw, I
should doubtless believe, just as you all do. "' That British
schoolboys should have been brought up for centuries on Ovid, and
Lucian have been tabooed, is, in view of their comparative efficacy in
stimulating thought, an interesting example of _habent sua fata
libelli_.
It need not be denied that there is in him a certain lack of feeling,
not surprising in one of his analytic temper, but not agreeable
either. He is a hard bright intelligence, with no bowels; he applies
the knife without the least compunction--indeed with something of
savage enjoyment. The veil is relentlessly torn from family affection
in the _Mourning_. _Solon_ in the _Charon_ pursues his victory so far
as to make us pity instead of scorning _Croesus_. _Menippus_ and his
kind, in the shades, do their lashing of dead horses with a
disagreeable gusto, which tempts us to raise a society for the
prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession? ' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride. . .
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_. '
Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system. The external characteristics of the
philosophers, the absurd stories current about them, and the popular
misrepresentations of their doctrines--it is in these that philosophy
consists for him. That he had read some of them there is no doubt; but
one has an uneasy suspicion that he read Plato because he liked his
humour and his style, and did not trouble himself about anything
further. Gibbon speaks of 'the philosophic maze of the writings of
Plato, of which the dramatic is perhaps more interesting than the
argumentative part. ' That is quite a legitimate opinion, provided you
do not undertake to judge philosophy in the light of it. The
apparently serious rejection of geometrical truth in the _Hermotimus_
may fairly suggest that Lucian was as unphilosophic as he was
unmathematical. Twice, and perhaps twice only, does he express hearty
admiration for a philosopher. Demonax is 'the best of all
philosophers'; but then he admired him just because he was so little
of a philosopher and so much a man of ordinary common sense. And
Epicurus is 'the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and been
in solitary possession of truth'; but then that is in the _Alexander_,
and any stick was good enough to beat that dog with. The fact is,
Lucian was much too well satisfied with his own judgement to think
that he could possibly require guidance, and the commonplace test of
results was enough to assure him that philosophy was worthless: 'It is
no use having all theory at your fingers' ends, if you do not conform
your conduct to the right. ' There is a description in the _Pantomime_
that is perhaps truer than it is meant to pass for. 'Lycinus' is
called 'an educated man, and _in some sort_ a student of philosophy. '
If he is not a philosopher, he is very much a moralist; it is because
philosophy deals partly with morals that he thinks he cares for it.
But here too his conclusions are of a very commonsense order. The
Stoic notion that 'Virtue consists in being uncomfortable' strikes him
as merely absurd; no asceticism for him; on the other hand, no lavish
extravagance and _Persici apparatus_; a dinner of herbs with the
righteous--that is, the cultivated Athenian--, a neat repast of Attic
taste, is honestly his idea of good living; it is probable that he
really did sacrifice both money and fame to live in Athens rather than
in Rome, according to his own ideal. That ideal is a very modest one;
when _Menippus_ took all the trouble to get down to Tiresias in Hades
via Babylon, his reward was the information that 'the life of the
ordinary man is the best and the most prudent choice. ' So thought
Lucian; and it is to be counted to him for righteousness that he
decided to abandon 'the odious practices that his profession imposes
on the advocate--deceit, falsehood, bluster, clamour, pushing,' for
the quiet life of a literary man (especially as we should probably
never have heard his name had he done otherwise). Not that the life
was so quiet as it might have been. He could not keep his satire
impersonal enough to avoid incurring enmities. He boasts in the
_Peregrine_ of the unfeeling way in which he commented on that
enthusiast to his followers, and we may believe his assurance that his
writings brought general dislike and danger upon him. His moralizing
(of which we are happy to say there is a great deal) is based on
Tiresias's pronouncement. Moralizing has a bad name; but than good
moralizing there is, when one has reached a certain age perhaps, no
better reading. Some of us like it even in our novels, feel more at
home with Fielding and Thackeray for it, and regretfully confess
ourselves unequal to the artistic aloofness of a Flaubert. Well,
Lucian's moralizings are, for those who like such things, of the right
quality; they are never dull, and the touch is extremely light. We may
perhaps be pardoned for alluding to half a dozen conceptions that have
a specially modern air about them. The use that Rome may serve as a
school of resistance to temptation (_Nigrinus_, 19) recalls Milton's
'fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that
never sallies out and seeks her adversary. ' 'Old age is wisdom's
youth, the day of her glorious flower' (_Heracles_, 8) might have
stood as a text for Browning's _Rabbi ben Ezra_. The brands visible on
the tyrant's soul, and the refusal of Lethe as a sufficient punishment
(_Voyage to the lower World_, 24 and 28), have their parallels in our
new eschatology. The decision of _Zeus_ that _Heraclitus_ and
_Democritus_ are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go
together (_Sale of Creeds_, l3)--accords with our views of the
emotional temperament. _Chiron_ is impressive on the vanity of
fruition (_Dialogues of the Dead_, 26). And the figuring of _Truth_ as
'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (_The Fisher_,
16) is only one example of Lucian's felicity in allegory.
Another weak point, for which many people will have no more
inclination to condemn him than for his moralizing, is his absolute
indifference to the beauties of nature. Having already given him
credit for regarding nothing that is human as beyond his province, it
is our duty to record the corresponding limitation; of everything that
was not human he was simply unconscious; with him it was not so much
that the _proper_ as that the _only_ study of mankind is man. The
apparent exceptions are not real ones. If he is interested in the
gods, it is as the creatures of human folly that he takes them to be.
If he writes a toy essay with much parade of close observation on the
fly, it is to show how amusing human ingenuity can be on an unlikely
subject. But it is worth notice that 'the first of the moderns,'
though he shows himself in many descriptions of pictures quite awake
to the beauty manufactured by man, has in no way anticipated the
modern discovery that nature is beautiful. To readers who have had
enough of the pathetic fallacy, and of the second-rate novelist's
local colour, Lucian's tacit assumption that there is nothing but man
is refreshing. That he was a close enough observer of human nature,
any one can satisfy himself by glancing at the _Feast of Lapithae_,
the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_, some of the _Dialogues of the Gods_,
and perhaps best of all, _The Liar_.
As it occurs to himself to repel the imputation of plagiarism in _A
literary Prometheus_, the point must be briefly touched upon. There
is no doubt that Homer preceded him in making the gods extremely, even
comically, human, that Plato showed him an example of prose dialogue,
that Aristophanes inspired his constructive fancy, that Menippus
provided him with some ideas, how far developed on the same lines we
cannot now tell, that Menander's comedies and Herodas's mimes
contributed to the absolute naturalness of his conversation. If any,
or almost any, of these had never existed, Lucian would have been more
or less different from what he is. His originality is not in the least
affected by that; we may resolve him theoretically into his elements;
but he too had the gift, that out of three sounds he framed, not a
fourth sound, but a star. The question of his originality is no more
important--indeed much less so--than that of Sterne's.
When we pass to purely literary matters, the first thing to be
remarked upon is the linguistic miracle presented to us. It is useless
to dwell upon it in detail, since this is an introduction not to
Lucian, but to a translation of Lucian; it exists, none the less. A
Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but in
that of five or six centuries before, and he does it, if not with
absolute correctness, yet with the easy mastery that we expect only
from one in a million of those who write in their mother tongue, and
takes his place as an immortal classic. The miracle may be repeated;
an English-educated Hindu may produce masterpieces of Elizabethan
English that will rank him with Bacon and Ben Jonson; but it will
surprise us, when it does happen. That Lucian was himself aware of the
awful dangers besetting the writer who would revive an obsolete
fashion of speech is shown in the _Lexiphanes_.
Some faults of style he undoubtedly has, of which a word or two should
perhaps be said. The first is the general taint of rhetoric, which is
sometimes positively intolerable, and is liable to spoil enjoyment
even of the best pieces occasionally. Were it not that 'Rhetoric made
a Greek of me,' we should wish heartily that he had never been a
rhetorician. It is the practice of talking on unreal cases, doubtless
habitual with him up to forty, that must be responsible for the self-
satisfied fluency, the too great length, and the perverse ingenuity,
that sometimes excite our impatience. Naturally, it is in the pieces
of inferior subject or design that this taint is most perceptible; and
it must be forgiven in consideration of the fact that without the
toilsome study of rhetoric he would not have been the master of Greek
that he was.
The second is perhaps only a special case of the first. Julius Pollux,
a sophist whom Lucian is supposed to have attacked in _The
Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, is best known as author of an
_Onomasticon_, or word-list, containing the most important words
relating to certain subjects. One would be reluctant to believe that
Lucian condescended to use his enemy's manual; but it is hard to think
that he had not one of his own, of which he made much too good use.
The conviction is constantly forced on a translator that when Lucian
has said a thing sufficiently once, he has looked at his Onomasticon,
found that there are some words he has not yet got in, and forthwith
said the thing again with some of them, and yet again with the rest.
The third concerns his use of illustrative anecdotes, comparisons, and
phrases.
one of the important events in any great city's annals; and Lucian's
works are full of references to the impression these men produced, and
the envy they enjoyed. He himself was evidently consumed, during his
youth and early manhood, with desire for a position like theirs. To
him, sleeping with memories of the stick, appeared two women,
corresponding to _Virtue_ and _Pleasure_ in Prodicus's _Choice of
Heracles_--the working woman _Statuary_, and the lady _Culture_. They
advanced their claims to him in turn; but before _Culture_ had
completed her reply, the choice was made: he was to be a rhetorician.
From her reminding him that she was even now not all unknown to him,
we may perhaps assume that he spoke some sort of Greek, or was being
taught it; but he assures us that after leaving Syria he was still a
barbarian; we have also a casual mention of his offering a lock of his
hair to the Syrian goddess in his youth.
He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities
like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of
rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled
him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a
great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates
in _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, of studying exhaustively the old
Attic orators, poets, and historians.
He was at any rate successful. The different branches that a
rhetorician might choose between or combine were: (1) Speaking in
court on behalf of a client; (2) Writing speeches for a client to
deliver; (3) Teaching pupils; (4) Giving public displays of his skill.
There is a doubtful statement that Lucian failed in (1), and took to
(2) in default. His surviving rhetorical pieces (_The Tyrannicide,
The Disinherited, Phalaris_) are declamations on hypothetical cases
which might serve either for (3) or (4); and _The Hall, The Fly,
Dipsas_, and perhaps _Demosthenes_, suggest (4). A common form of
exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let
them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an
impromptu oration upon it.
Whatever his exact line was, he earned an income in Ionia, then in
Greece, had still greater success in Italy, and appears to have
settled for some time in Gaul, perhaps occupying a professorial chair
there. The intimate knowledge of Roman life in some aspects which
appears in _The dependent Scholar_ suggests that he also lived some
time in Rome. He seems to have known some Latin, since he could
converse with boatmen on the Po; but his only clear reference (A Slip
of the Tongue,) implies an imperfect knowledge of it; and there is not
a single mention in all his works, which are crammed with literary
allusions, of any Latin author. He claims to have been during his time
in Gaul one of the rhetoricians who could command high fees; and his
descriptions of himself as resigning his place close about his lady's
(i. e. Rhetoric's) person, and as casting off his wife Rhetoric because
she did not keep herself exclusively to him, show that he regarded
himself, or wished to be regarded, as having been at the head of his
profession.
This brings us to about the year 160 A. D. We may conceive Lucian now
to have had some of that yearning for home which he ascribes in the
_Patriotism_ even to the successful exile. He returned home, we
suppose, a distinguished man at thirty-five, and enjoyed impressing
the fact on his fellow citizens in _The Vision_. He may then have
lived at Antioch as a rhetorician for some years, of which we have a
memorial in _The Portrait-study_. Lucius Verus, M. Aurelius's
colleague, was at Antioch in 162 or 163 A. D. on his way to the
Parthian war, and _The Portrait-study_ is a panegyric on Verus's
mistress Panthea, whom Lucian saw there.
A year or two later we find him migrating to Athens, taking his father
with him, and at Athens he settled and remained many years. It was on
this journey that the incident occurred, which he relates with such a
curious absence of shame in the _Alexander_, of his biting that
charlatan's hand.
This change in his manner of life corresponds nearly with the change
in habit of mind and use of his powers that earned him his
immortality. His fortieth year is the date given by himself for his
abandonment of Rhetoric and, as he calls it, taking up with Dialogue,
or, as we might say, becoming a man of letters. Between Rhetoric and
Dialogue there was a feud, which had begun when Socrates five
centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric
appeals to the emotions and obscures the issues (such had been
Socrates's position); the way to elicit truth is by short question and
answer. The Socratic method, illustrated by Plato, had become, if not
the only, the accredited instrument of philosophers, who, so far as
they are genuine, are truth-seekers; Rhetoric had been left to the
legal persons whose object is not truth but victory. Lucian's
abandonment of Rhetoric was accordingly in some sort his change from a
lawyer to a philosopher. As it turned out, however, philosophy was
itself only a transitional stage with him.
Already during his career as a rhetorician, which we may put at
145-164 A. D. , he seems both to have had leanings to philosophy, and to
have toyed with dialogue. There is reason to suppose that the
Nigrinus_, with its strong contrast between the noise and vulgarity of
Rome and the peace and culture of Athens, its enthusiastic picture of
the charm of philosophy for a sensitive and intelligent spirit, was
written in 150 A. D. , or at any rate described an incident that
occurred in that year; and the _Portrait-study_ and its _Defence_,
dialogues written with great care, whatever their other merits, belong
to 162 or 163 A. D. But these had been excursions out of his own
province. After settling at Athens he seems to have adopted the
writing of dialogues as his regular work. The _Toxaris_, a collection
of stories on friendship, strung together by dialogue, the
_Anacharsis_, a discussion on the value of physical training, and the
_Pantomime_, a description slightly relieved by the dialogue form, may
be regarded as experiments with his new instrument. There is no trace
in them of the characteristic use that he afterwards made of dialogue,
for the purposes of satire.
That was an idea that we may suppose to have occurred to him after the
composition of the _Hermotimus_. This is in form the most philosophic
of his dialogues; it might indeed be a dialogue of Plato, of the
merely destructive kind; but it is at the same time, in matter, his
farewell to philosophy, establishing that the pursuit of it is
hopeless for mortal man. From this time onward, though he always
professes himself a lover of true philosophy, he concerns himself no
more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that
perhaps comes next, _The Parasite_, is still Platonic in form, but
only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged,
as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between
subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of
satire with dialogue.
One more step remained to be taken. In the piece called _A literary
Prometheus_, we are told what Lucian himself regarded as his claim
to the title of an original writer. It was the fusing of Comedy and
Dialogue--the latter being the prose conversation hat had hitherto
been confined to philosophical discussion. The new literary form,
then, was conversation, frankly for purposes of entertainment, as in
Comedy, but to be read and not acted. In this kind of writing he
remains, though he has been often imitated, first in merit as clearly
as in time; and nearly all his great masterpieces took this form. They
followed in rapid succession, being all written, perhaps, between 165
and 175 A. D. And we make here no further comment upon them, except to
remark that they fall roughly into three groups as he drew inspiration
successively from the writers of the New Comedy (or Comedy of ordinary
life) like Menander, from the satires of Menippus, and from writers of
the Old Comedy (or Comedy of fantastic imagination) like Aristophanes.
The best specimens of the first group are _The Liar_ and the
_Dialogues of the Hetaerae;_ of the second, the _Dialogues of the
Dead_ and _of the Gods, Menippus_ and _Icaromenippus, Zeus
cross-examined;_ of the third, _Timon, Charon, A Voyage to the lower
World, The Sale of Creeds, The Fisher, Zeus Tragoedus, The Cock, The
double Indictment, The Ship_.
During these ten or more years, though he lived at Athens, he is to be
imagined travelling occasionally, to read his dialogues to audiences
in various cities, or to see the Olympic Games. And these excursions
gave occasion to some works not of the dialogue kind; the _Zeuxis_ and
several similar pieces are introductions to series of readings away
from Athens; The _Way to write History_, a piece of literary criticism
still very readable, if out of date for practical purposes, resulted
from a visit to Ionia, where all the literary men were producing
histories of the Parthian war, then in progress (165 A. D. ). An
attendance at the Olympic Games of 169 A. D. suggested _The Death of
Peregrine_, which in its turn, through the offence given to Cynics,
had to be supplemented by the dialogue of _The Runaways. The True
History_, most famous, but, admirable as it is, far from best of his
works, presumably belongs to this period also, but cannot be
definitely placed. The _Book-fancier_ and _The Rhetorician's Vade
mecum_ are unpleasant records of bitter personal quarrels.
After some ten years of this intense literary activity, producing,
reading, and publishing, Lucian seems to have given up both the
writing of dialogues and the presenting of them to audiences, and to
have lived quietly for many years. The only pieces that belong here
are the _Life of Demonax_, the man whom he held the best of all
philosophers, and with whom he had been long intimate at Athens, and
that of Alexander, the Asiatic charlatan, who was the prince of
impostors as Demonax of philosophers. When quite old, Lucian was
appointed by the Emperor Commodus to a well-paid legal post in Egypt.
We also learn, from the new introductory lectures called _Dionysus_
and _Heracles_, that he resumed the practice of reading his dialogues;
but he wrote nothing more of importance. It is stated in Suidas that
he was torn to pieces by dogs; but, as other statements in the article
are discredited, it is supposed that this is the Christian revenge for
Lucian's imaginary hostility to Christianity. We have it from himself
that he suffered from gout in his old age. He solaced himself
characteristically by writing a play on the subject; but whether the
goddess Gout, who gave it its name, was appeased by it, or carried him
off, we cannot tell.
2. PROBABLE ORDER OF WRITINGS
The received order in which Lucian's works stand is admitted to be
entirely haphazard. The following arrangement in groups is roughly
chronological, though it is quite possible that they overlap each
other. It is M. Croiset's, put into tabular form. Many details in it
are open to question; but to read in this order would at least be more
satisfactory to any one who wishes to study Lucian seriously than to
take the pieces as they come. The table will also serve as a rough
guide to the first-class and the inferior pieces. The names italicized
are those of pieces rejected as spurious by M. Croiset, and therefore
not placed by him; we have inserted them where they seem to belong; as
to their genuineness, it is our opinion that the objections made (not
by M. Croiset, who does not discuss authenticity) to the _Demosthenes_
and _The Cynic_ at least are, in view of the merits of these,
unconvincing.
(i) About 145 to 160 A. D. Lucian a rhetorician in Ionia, Greece,
Italy, and Gaul.
The Tyrannicide, a rhetorical exercise.
The Disinherited.
Phalaris I & II.
_Demosthenes_, a panegyric.
Patriotism, an essay.
The Fly, an essay.
Swans and Amber, an introductory lecture.
Dipsas, an introductory lecture.
The Hall, an introductory lecture.
Nigrinus, a dialogue on philosophy, 150 A. D.
(ii) About 160 to 164 A. D. After Lucian's return to Asia.
The Portrait-study, a panegyric in dialogue, 162 A. D.
Defence of The Portrait-study, in dialogue.
A Trial in the Court of Vowels, a _jeu d'esprit_.
Hesiod, a short dialogue.
The Vision, an autobiographical address.
(iii) About 165 A. D. At Athens.
Pantomime, art criticism in dialogue.
Anacharsis, a dialogue on physical training.
Toxaris, stories of friendship in dialogue.
Slander, a moral essay.
The Way to write History, an essay in literary criticism.
The next eight groups, iv-xi, belong to the years from about 165 A. D.
to about 175 A. D. , when Lucian was at his best and busiest; iv-ix are
to be regarded roughly as succeeding each other in time; x and xi
being independent in this respect. Pieces are assigned to groups
mainly according to their subjects; but some are placed in groups that
do not seem at first sight the most appropriate, owing to specialties
in their treatment; e. g. _The Ship_ might seem more in place with vii
than with ix; but M. Croiset finds in it a maturity that induces him
to put it later.
(iv) About 165 A. D.
Hermotimus, a philosophic dialogue.
The Parasite, a parody of a philosophic dialogue.
(v) Influence of the New Comedy writers.
The Liar, a dialogue satirizing superstition.
A Feast of Lapithae, a dialogue satirizing the manners of
philosophers.
Dialogues of the Hetaerae, a series of short dialogues.
(vi) Influence of the Menippean satire.
Dialogues of the Dead, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, a series of short dialogues.
Menippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy.
Icaromenippus, a dialogue satirizing philosophy and religion.
Zeus cross-examined, a dialogue satirizing religion.
_The Cynic_, a dialogue against luxury.
_Of Sacrifice_, an essay satirizing religion.
Saturnalia, dialogue and letters on the relation of rich and poor.
The True History, a parody of the old Greek historians,
(vii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: vanity of human wishes.
A Voyage to the Lower World, a dialogue on the vanity of power.
Charon, a dialogue on the vanity of all things.
Timon, a dialogue on the vanity of riches.
The Cock, a dialogue on the vanity of riches and power,
(viii) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: dialogues satirizing
religion.
Prometheus on Caucasus.
Zeus Tragoedus.
The Gods in Council.
(ix) Influence of the Old Comedy writers: satire on philosophers.
The Ship, a dialogue on foolish aspirations.
The Life of Peregrine, a narrative satirizing the Cynics, 169 A. D.
The Runaways, a dialogue satirizing the Cynics.
The double Indictment, an autobiographic dialogue.
The Sale of Creeds, a dialogue satirizing philosophers.
The Fisher, an autobiographic dialogue satirizing philosophers.
(x) 165-175 A. D. Introductory lectures.
Herodotus.
Zeuxis.
Harmonides.
The Scythian.
A literary Prometheus.
(xi) 165-175 A. D. Scattered pieces standing apart from the great
dialogue series, but written during the same period.
The Book-fancier, an invective. About 170 A. D.
_The Purist purized_, a literary satire in dialogue.
Lexiphanes, a literary satire in dialogue.
The Rhetorician's Vade-mecum, a personal satire. About 178 A. D.
(xii) After 180 A. D.
Demonax, a biography.
Alexander, a satirical biography,
(xiii) In old age.
Mourning, an essay.
Dionysus, an introductory lecture.
Heracles, an introductory lecture.
Apology for 'The dependent Scholar. '
A Slip of the Tongue.
In conclusion, we have to say that this arrangement of M. Croiset's,
which we have merely tabulated without intentionally departing from it
in any particular, seems to us well considered in its broad lines;
there are a few modifications which we should have been disposed to
make in it; but we thought it better to take it entire than to
exercise our own judgment in a matter where we felt very little
confidence.
3. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TIME
M. Aurelius has for us moderns this great superiority in interest over
Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society
modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own,
in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it. ' M.
Arnold, _Essays in Criticism, M. Aurelius_.
The age of M.
Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes. ' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It
is neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance
here [Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given,
however, describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at
both epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which
witnessed the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have
been missed by very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance
with the general facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a
competent historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of
the present day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy,
though in some respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find
mystical philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some
process of logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and
amiable and intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old
mythology could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation--
whether in regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine
weather; and philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart
from the ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves,
while hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and
politicians, conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped
by the decay of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore
attempting the impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a
semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind. '--
_The Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893. ];
all that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached
way to readers of Lucian.
The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of
its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose,
it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day
questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the
questioners. Of what played the part then that the Christian religion
plays now, the pagan religion was only one half; the other half was
philosophy. The gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the
educated, but not perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content
to be without any guide through the maze of life, had taken to
philosophy instead. Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a
form this could take in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen
in the _Thoughts_ of M. Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is
not what form it takes in a virtuous mind, but what effects it
produces on those of another sort. Lucian applies the test of results
alike to the religion usually so called, and to its philosophic
substitute. He finds both wanting; the test is not a satisfactory one,
but it is being applied by all sorts and conditions of men to
Christianity in our own time; so is the second test, that of inherent
probability, which he uses as well as the other upon the pagan
theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even apart from
their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time. Our
attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.
Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The
Liar_, he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every
street' of the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All
the winners. ' We think of palmists and spiritualists in the
police-courts as we read of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting
the impostor Alexander. This sentence reads like the description of a
modern man of science confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an
occasion for a man whose intelligence was steeled against such
assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect
the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain
that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an
impossibility. ' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's
readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud
applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like
that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian
bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom
words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,'
we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of
whom Lucian may have been thinking ('The family of Herod, at least
after it had been favoured by fortune, was lineally descended from
Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern _carriere ouverte aux
talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord. There are the
elements of a socialist question in the feelings between rich and poor
described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand, the fact
of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_ is an
illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_ which
is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of other
classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden--lewd, dull, and
insipid. ' The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of
humour and insight; and we make no apology for translating most of
them. Lastly, a generation that is always complaining of the modern
over-production of books feels that it would be at home in a state of
society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.
As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.
The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.
If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity--a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second
is the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_--the
indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy
his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His
successors, the 'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn
bumble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were
commoner in Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in
Fielding, and Macaulay, and Thackeray.
Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but
the waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some
things which were then visible.
A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show
the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in
proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we
cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by
insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of
palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the
Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but
one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be
assumed that every one would like the mere sound of him.
We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them
from the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.
4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER
With all the sincerity of Lucian in _The True History_, 'soliciting
his reader's incredulity,' we solicit our reader's neglect of this
appreciation. We have no pretensions whatever to the critical faculty;
the following remarks are to be taken as made with diffidence, and
offered to those only who prefer being told what to like, and why, to
settling the matter for themselves.
Goethe, aged fourteen, with seven languages on hand, devised the plan
of a correspondence kept up by seven imaginary brothers scattered over
the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The
stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose
some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht.
The rector was always found with one book open before him--a
well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and
the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what
struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament
narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely amused,
had fits of mingled coughing and laughter, but made little attempt at
solving his pupil's difficulties, beyond ejaculating _Er narrischer
Kerl! Er narrischer Junge_! He let him dig for solutions, however, in
an English commentary on the shelves, and occupied the time with
turning the familiar pages of his Lucian [Footnote: _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_, book iv. ]. The wicked old rector perhaps chuckled to think
that here was one who bade fair to love Lucian one day as well as he
did himself.
For Lucian too was one who asked questions--spent his life doing
little else; if one were invited to draw him with the least possible
expenditure of ink, one's pen would trace a mark of interrogation.
That picture is easily drawn; to put life into it is a more difficult
matter. However, his is not a complex character, for all the irony in
which he sometimes chooses to clothe his thought; and materials are at
least abundant; he is one of the self-revealing fraternity; his own
personal presence is to be detected more often than not in his work.
He may give us the assistance, or he may not, of labelling a character
_Lucian_ or _Lycinus_; we can detect him, _volentes volentem_, under
the thin disguise of _Menippus_ or _Tychiades_ or _Cyniscus_ as well.
And the essence of him as he reveals himself is the questioning
spirit. He has no respect for authority. Burke describes the majority
of mankind, who do not form their own opinions, as 'those whom
Providence has doomed to live on trust'; Lucian entirely refuses to
live on trust; he 'wants to know. ' It was the wish of _Arthur
Clennam_, who had in consequence a very bad name among the _Tite
Barnacles_ and other persons in authority. Lucian has not escaped the
same fate; 'the scoffer Lucian' has become as much a commonplace as
'_fidus Achates_,' or 'the well-greaved Achaeans,' the reading of him
has been discountenanced, and, if he has not actually lost his place
at the table of Immortals, promised him when he temporarily left the
Island of the Blest, it has not been so 'distinguished' a place as it
was to have been and should have been. And all because he 'wanted to
know. '
His questions, of course, are not all put in the same manner. In the
_Dialogues of the Gods_, for instance, the mark of interrogation is
not writ large; they have almost the air at first of little stories
in dialogue form, which might serve to instruct schoolboys in the
attributes and legends of the gods--a manual charmingly done, yet a
manual only. But we soon see that he has said to himself: Let us put
the thing into plain natural prose, and see what it looks like with
its glamour of poetry and reverence stripped off; the Gods do human
things; why not represent them as human persons, and see what results?
What did result was that henceforth any one who still believed in the
pagan deities might at the cost of an hour's light reading satisfy
himself that his gods were not gods, or, if they were, had no business
to be. Whether many or few did so read and so satisfy themselves, we
have no means of knowing; it is easy to over-estimate the effect such
writing may have had, and to forget that those who were capable of
being convinced by exposition of this sort would mostly be those who
were already convinced without; still, so far as Lucian had any effect
on the religious position, it must have been in discrediting paganism
and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv. ]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.
The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the
fallen angels
reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost,
these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions
can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus
cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_.
He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be
left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering
questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent,
sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because
he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor
when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken
in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The
Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the
_Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain
point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods,
and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except
consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of
getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an
ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know
where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase,
'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of
direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy--a
rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long
run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the
great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being
able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without
expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book
vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of
'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get
the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot
tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to
do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and
_The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a
translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge)
of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and
how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the
philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of
_Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the
whimsical extravagance (as it strikes a modern) of the _Pantomime_, or
in the triumph permitted to the Cynic (against 'Lycinus' too) in the
dialogue called after him? In one of his own introductory lectures he
compares his pieces aptly enough to the bacchante's thyrsus with its
steel point concealed.
With his questions and his irony and his inconsistencies, it is no
wonder that Lucian is accused of being purely negative and
destructive. But we need not think he is disposed of in that way, any
more than our old-fashioned literary education is disposed of when it
has been pointed out that it does not equip its _alumni_ with
knowledge of electricity or of a commercially useful modern language;
it may have equipped them with something less paying, but more worth
paying for. Lucian, it is certain, will supply no one with a religion
or a philosophy; but it may be doubted whether any writer will supply
more fully both example and precept in favour of doing one's thinking
for oneself; and it may be doubted also whether any other intellectual
lesson is more necessary. He is _nullius addictus iurare in verba
magistri_, if ever man was; he is individualist to the core. No
religion or philosophy, he seems to say, will save you; the thing is
to think for yourself, and be a man of sense. 'It was but small
consolation,' says _Menippus_, 'to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest for truth. ' _Vox populi_ is no _vox dei_ for him;
he is quite proof against majorities; _Athanasius contra mundum_ is
more to his taste. "What is this I hear? " asked Arignotus, scowling
upon me; "you deny the existence of the supernatural, when there is
scarcely a man who has not seen some evidence of it? " "Therein lies my
exculpation," I replied; "I do not believe in the supernatural,
because, unlike the rest of mankind, I do not see it; if I saw, I
should doubtless believe, just as you all do. "' That British
schoolboys should have been brought up for centuries on Ovid, and
Lucian have been tabooed, is, in view of their comparative efficacy in
stimulating thought, an interesting example of _habent sua fata
libelli_.
It need not be denied that there is in him a certain lack of feeling,
not surprising in one of his analytic temper, but not agreeable
either. He is a hard bright intelligence, with no bowels; he applies
the knife without the least compunction--indeed with something of
savage enjoyment. The veil is relentlessly torn from family affection
in the _Mourning_. _Solon_ in the _Charon_ pursues his victory so far
as to make us pity instead of scorning _Croesus_. _Menippus_ and his
kind, in the shades, do their lashing of dead horses with a
disagreeable gusto, which tempts us to raise a society for the
prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession? ' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride. . .
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_. '
Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system. The external characteristics of the
philosophers, the absurd stories current about them, and the popular
misrepresentations of their doctrines--it is in these that philosophy
consists for him. That he had read some of them there is no doubt; but
one has an uneasy suspicion that he read Plato because he liked his
humour and his style, and did not trouble himself about anything
further. Gibbon speaks of 'the philosophic maze of the writings of
Plato, of which the dramatic is perhaps more interesting than the
argumentative part. ' That is quite a legitimate opinion, provided you
do not undertake to judge philosophy in the light of it. The
apparently serious rejection of geometrical truth in the _Hermotimus_
may fairly suggest that Lucian was as unphilosophic as he was
unmathematical. Twice, and perhaps twice only, does he express hearty
admiration for a philosopher. Demonax is 'the best of all
philosophers'; but then he admired him just because he was so little
of a philosopher and so much a man of ordinary common sense. And
Epicurus is 'the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and been
in solitary possession of truth'; but then that is in the _Alexander_,
and any stick was good enough to beat that dog with. The fact is,
Lucian was much too well satisfied with his own judgement to think
that he could possibly require guidance, and the commonplace test of
results was enough to assure him that philosophy was worthless: 'It is
no use having all theory at your fingers' ends, if you do not conform
your conduct to the right. ' There is a description in the _Pantomime_
that is perhaps truer than it is meant to pass for. 'Lycinus' is
called 'an educated man, and _in some sort_ a student of philosophy. '
If he is not a philosopher, he is very much a moralist; it is because
philosophy deals partly with morals that he thinks he cares for it.
But here too his conclusions are of a very commonsense order. The
Stoic notion that 'Virtue consists in being uncomfortable' strikes him
as merely absurd; no asceticism for him; on the other hand, no lavish
extravagance and _Persici apparatus_; a dinner of herbs with the
righteous--that is, the cultivated Athenian--, a neat repast of Attic
taste, is honestly his idea of good living; it is probable that he
really did sacrifice both money and fame to live in Athens rather than
in Rome, according to his own ideal. That ideal is a very modest one;
when _Menippus_ took all the trouble to get down to Tiresias in Hades
via Babylon, his reward was the information that 'the life of the
ordinary man is the best and the most prudent choice. ' So thought
Lucian; and it is to be counted to him for righteousness that he
decided to abandon 'the odious practices that his profession imposes
on the advocate--deceit, falsehood, bluster, clamour, pushing,' for
the quiet life of a literary man (especially as we should probably
never have heard his name had he done otherwise). Not that the life
was so quiet as it might have been. He could not keep his satire
impersonal enough to avoid incurring enmities. He boasts in the
_Peregrine_ of the unfeeling way in which he commented on that
enthusiast to his followers, and we may believe his assurance that his
writings brought general dislike and danger upon him. His moralizing
(of which we are happy to say there is a great deal) is based on
Tiresias's pronouncement. Moralizing has a bad name; but than good
moralizing there is, when one has reached a certain age perhaps, no
better reading. Some of us like it even in our novels, feel more at
home with Fielding and Thackeray for it, and regretfully confess
ourselves unequal to the artistic aloofness of a Flaubert. Well,
Lucian's moralizings are, for those who like such things, of the right
quality; they are never dull, and the touch is extremely light. We may
perhaps be pardoned for alluding to half a dozen conceptions that have
a specially modern air about them. The use that Rome may serve as a
school of resistance to temptation (_Nigrinus_, 19) recalls Milton's
'fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that
never sallies out and seeks her adversary. ' 'Old age is wisdom's
youth, the day of her glorious flower' (_Heracles_, 8) might have
stood as a text for Browning's _Rabbi ben Ezra_. The brands visible on
the tyrant's soul, and the refusal of Lethe as a sufficient punishment
(_Voyage to the lower World_, 24 and 28), have their parallels in our
new eschatology. The decision of _Zeus_ that _Heraclitus_ and
_Democritus_ are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go
together (_Sale of Creeds_, l3)--accords with our views of the
emotional temperament. _Chiron_ is impressive on the vanity of
fruition (_Dialogues of the Dead_, 26). And the figuring of _Truth_ as
'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (_The Fisher_,
16) is only one example of Lucian's felicity in allegory.
Another weak point, for which many people will have no more
inclination to condemn him than for his moralizing, is his absolute
indifference to the beauties of nature. Having already given him
credit for regarding nothing that is human as beyond his province, it
is our duty to record the corresponding limitation; of everything that
was not human he was simply unconscious; with him it was not so much
that the _proper_ as that the _only_ study of mankind is man. The
apparent exceptions are not real ones. If he is interested in the
gods, it is as the creatures of human folly that he takes them to be.
If he writes a toy essay with much parade of close observation on the
fly, it is to show how amusing human ingenuity can be on an unlikely
subject. But it is worth notice that 'the first of the moderns,'
though he shows himself in many descriptions of pictures quite awake
to the beauty manufactured by man, has in no way anticipated the
modern discovery that nature is beautiful. To readers who have had
enough of the pathetic fallacy, and of the second-rate novelist's
local colour, Lucian's tacit assumption that there is nothing but man
is refreshing. That he was a close enough observer of human nature,
any one can satisfy himself by glancing at the _Feast of Lapithae_,
the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_, some of the _Dialogues of the Gods_,
and perhaps best of all, _The Liar_.
As it occurs to himself to repel the imputation of plagiarism in _A
literary Prometheus_, the point must be briefly touched upon. There
is no doubt that Homer preceded him in making the gods extremely, even
comically, human, that Plato showed him an example of prose dialogue,
that Aristophanes inspired his constructive fancy, that Menippus
provided him with some ideas, how far developed on the same lines we
cannot now tell, that Menander's comedies and Herodas's mimes
contributed to the absolute naturalness of his conversation. If any,
or almost any, of these had never existed, Lucian would have been more
or less different from what he is. His originality is not in the least
affected by that; we may resolve him theoretically into his elements;
but he too had the gift, that out of three sounds he framed, not a
fourth sound, but a star. The question of his originality is no more
important--indeed much less so--than that of Sterne's.
When we pass to purely literary matters, the first thing to be
remarked upon is the linguistic miracle presented to us. It is useless
to dwell upon it in detail, since this is an introduction not to
Lucian, but to a translation of Lucian; it exists, none the less. A
Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but in
that of five or six centuries before, and he does it, if not with
absolute correctness, yet with the easy mastery that we expect only
from one in a million of those who write in their mother tongue, and
takes his place as an immortal classic. The miracle may be repeated;
an English-educated Hindu may produce masterpieces of Elizabethan
English that will rank him with Bacon and Ben Jonson; but it will
surprise us, when it does happen. That Lucian was himself aware of the
awful dangers besetting the writer who would revive an obsolete
fashion of speech is shown in the _Lexiphanes_.
Some faults of style he undoubtedly has, of which a word or two should
perhaps be said. The first is the general taint of rhetoric, which is
sometimes positively intolerable, and is liable to spoil enjoyment
even of the best pieces occasionally. Were it not that 'Rhetoric made
a Greek of me,' we should wish heartily that he had never been a
rhetorician. It is the practice of talking on unreal cases, doubtless
habitual with him up to forty, that must be responsible for the self-
satisfied fluency, the too great length, and the perverse ingenuity,
that sometimes excite our impatience. Naturally, it is in the pieces
of inferior subject or design that this taint is most perceptible; and
it must be forgiven in consideration of the fact that without the
toilsome study of rhetoric he would not have been the master of Greek
that he was.
The second is perhaps only a special case of the first. Julius Pollux,
a sophist whom Lucian is supposed to have attacked in _The
Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, is best known as author of an
_Onomasticon_, or word-list, containing the most important words
relating to certain subjects. One would be reluctant to believe that
Lucian condescended to use his enemy's manual; but it is hard to think
that he had not one of his own, of which he made much too good use.
The conviction is constantly forced on a translator that when Lucian
has said a thing sufficiently once, he has looked at his Onomasticon,
found that there are some words he has not yet got in, and forthwith
said the thing again with some of them, and yet again with the rest.
The third concerns his use of illustrative anecdotes, comparisons, and
phrases.
