No More Learning

Five shillings is the least you can slip into
his palm, if you would do the thing properly. He has scruples. 'Really,
sir--couldn't think of it; no, indeed, sir. ' But he is prevailed upon at
last, and goes off, grinning from ear to ear. You then look out your best
clothes, have your bath, make yourself as presentable as possible, and
arrive--in fear and trembling lest you should be the first, which would
wear an awkward air, just as it savours of ostentation to arrive last.
Accordingly you contrive to hit on the right moment, are received with
every attention, and shown to your place, a little above the host,
separated from him only by a couple of his intimates. And now you feel as
if you were in heaven. You are all admiration; everything you see
done throws you into ecstasies. It is all so new and strange! The waiters
stare at you, the company watch your movements. Nor is the host without
curiosity. Some of his servants have instructions to observe you
narrowly, lest your glance should fall too often on his wife or children.
The other guests' men perceive your amazement at the novel scene, and
exchange jesting asides. From the fact that you do not know what to make
of your napkin, they conclude that this is your first experience of
dining-out. You perspire with embarrassment; not unnaturally. You are
thirsty, but you dare not ask for wine, lest you should be thought a
tippler. The due connexion between the various dishes which make their
appearance is beyond you: which ought you to take first? which next?
There is nothing for it but to snatch a side glance at your neighbour, do
as he does, and learn to dine in sequence. On the whole, your feelings
are mingled, your spirit perturbed, and stricken with awe. One moment you
are envying your host his gold, his ivory, and all his magnificence; the
next, you are pitying yourself,--that miserable nonentity which calls its
existence life; and then at intervals comes the thought, 'how happy shall
I be, sharing in these splendours, enjoying them as if they were my own! '
For you conceive of your future life as one continual feast; and the
smiling attendance of gracious Ganymedes gives a charming finish to the
picture. That line of Homer keeps coming to your lips: Small blame to
Trojan or to greaved Achaean, if such happiness as this was to be the
reward of their toils and sufferings. Presently healths are drunk. The
host calls for a large beaker, and drinks to 'the Professor,' or whatever
your title is to be. You, in your innocence, do not know that you ought
to say something in reply; you receive the cup in silence, and are set
down as a boor.

Apart from this, your host's pledge has secured you the enmity of many of
his old friends, with some of whom it was already a grievance, that an
acquaintance of a few hours' standing should sit above men who have been
drinking the cup of slavery for years. Tongues are busy with you at once.
Listen to some of them. 'So! We are to give place to new-comers! It
wanted but this. The gates of Rome are open to none but these Greeks. Now
what is their claim to be set over our heads? I suppose they think they
are conferring a favour on us with their wordy stuff? ' 'How he did drink,
to be sure! ' says another. 'And did you see how he shovelled his food
down, hand over hand? Mannerless starveling! He has never so much as
dreamt of white bread before. 'Twas the same with the capon and pheasant;
much if he left us the bones to pick! ' 'My dear sirs' (cries number
three), 'I give him five days at the outside; after which you will see
him at our end of the table, making like moan with ourselves. He is a new
pair of shoes just now, and is treated with all ceremony. Wait till he
has been worn a few times, and the mud has done its work; he will be
flung under the bed, poor wretch, like the rest of us, to be a receptacle
for bugs. ' Such are some among the many comments you excite; and, for all
we know, mischief may be brewing at this moment.

Meanwhile, you are the guest of the evening, and the principal theme of
conversation. Your unwonted situation has led you on to drink more than
was advisable. For some time you have been feeling uncomfortable effects
from your host's light, eager wine. To get up before the rest would be
bad manners: to remain is perilous. The drinking is prolonged; subject
upon subject is started, spectacle after spectacle is produced; for your
host is determined that you shall see all he has to show. You suffer the
torments of the damned. You see nothing of what is going forward: some
favourite singer or musician is performing--you hear him not; and while
you force out some complimentary phrase, you are praying that an
earthquake may swallow up all, or that the news of a fire may break up
the party.

Such, my friend, is your first dinner, the best you will ever get. For my
part, give me a dinner of herbs, with liberty to eat when I will and as
much as I will. I shall spare you the recital of the nocturnal woes that
follow your excess. The next morning, you have to come to terms as to the
amount of your salary, and the times of payment. Appearing in answer to
his summons, you find two or three friends with him. He bids you be
seated, and begins to speak. 'You have now seen the sort of way in which
we live--no ostentation, no fuss; everything quite plain and ordinary.
Now you will consider everything here as your own. It would be a strange
thing, indeed, were I to entrust you with the highest responsibility of
all, the moral guidance of myself and my children'--if there are children
to be taught--'and yet hesitate to place the rest at your disposal.
Something, however, must be settled. I know your moderate, independent
spirit. I quite realize that you come to us from no mercenary motive,
that you are influenced only by the regard and uniform respect which will
be assured to you in this house. Still, as I say, something must be
settled. Now, my dear sir, tell me yourself, what you think right;
remembering that there is something to be expected at the great
festivals; for you will not find me remiss in that respect, though I say
nothing definite at present; and these occasions, as you know, come
pretty frequently in the course of the year. This consideration will no
doubt influence you in settling the amount of your salary; and apart from
that, it sits well on men of culture like yourself, to be above the
thought of money. ' Your hopes are blasted at the words, and your proud
spirit is tamed. The dream of the millionaire and landed proprietor fades
away, as you gradually catch his parsimonious drift. Yet you smirk
appreciation of the promise. You are to 'consider everything as your
own'; there, surely, is something solid? 'Tis a draught (did you but know
it)

That wets the lips, but leaves the palate dry.
After an interval of embarrassment, you leave the matter to his decision.
He declines the responsibility, and calls for the intervention of one of
the company: let him name a sum, at once worthy of your acceptance, and
not burdensome to his purse, which has so many more urgent calls upon it.
'Sir,' says this officious old gentleman, who has been a toady from his
youth, 'Sir, you are the luckiest man in Rome. Deny it if you can! You
have gained a privilege which many a man has longed for, and is not like
to obtain at Fortune's hands. You have been admitted to enjoy the company
and share the hearth and home of the first citizen of our empire. Used
aright, such a privilege will be more to you than the wealth of a Croesus
or a Midas. Knowing as I do how many there are--persons of high standing
--who would be glad to pay money down, merely for the honour and glory of
the acquaintanceship, of being seen in his company, and ranking as his
friends and intimates,--knowing this, I am at a loss for words in which
to express my sense of your good fortune. You are not only to enjoy this
happiness, but to be paid for enjoying it! Under the circumstances, I
think we shall satisfy your most extravagant expectations, if we say'--
and he names a sum which in itself is of the smallest, quite apart from
all reference to your brilliant hopes. However, there is nothing for it
but to submit with a good grace. It is too late now for escape; you are
in the toils. So you open your mouth for the bit, and are very manageable
from the first. You give your rider no occasion to keep a tight rein, or
to use the spur; and at last by imperceptible degrees you are quite
broken in to him.

The outside world from that time watches you with envy. You dwell within
his courts; you have free access; you are become a person of consequence.
Yet it is now incomprehensible to you how they can suppose you to be
happy. At the same time, you are not without a certain exultation: you
cheat yourself from day to day with the thought that there are better
things to come. Quite the contrary turns out to be the case. Your
prospects, like the proverbial sacrifice of Mandrobulus, dwindle and
contract from day to day. Gradually you get some faint glimmerings of the
truth. It begins to dawn upon you at last, that those golden hopes were
neither more nor less than gilded bubbles: the vexations, on the other
hand, are realities; solid, abiding, uncompromising realities. 'And what
are these vexations? ' you will perhaps exclaim; 'I see nothing so
vexatious about the matter; I know not what are the hardships and the
drudgery alluded to. ' Then listen. And do not confine yourself to the
article of drudgery, but keep a sharp look-out for ignominy, for
degradation, for everything, in short, that is unworthy of a free man.

Let me remind you then, to begin with, that you are no longer free-born,
no longer a man of family. Birth, freedom, ancestry, all these you will
leave on the other side of the door, when you enter upon the fulfilment
of your servile contract; for Freedom will never bear you company in that
ignoble station. You are a slave, wince as you may at the word; and, be
assured, a slave of many masters; a downward-looking drudge, from morning
till night

serving for sorry wage.

Then again, you are a backward pupil: Servitude was not the nurse of your
childhood; you are getting on in years when she takes you in hand;
accordingly, you will do her little credit, and give little satisfaction
to your lord. Recollections of Freedom will exercise their demoralizing
influence upon you, causing you to jib at times, and you will make
villanous work of your new profession. Or will your aspirations after
Freedom be satisfied, perhaps, with the thought, that you are no son of a
Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, no Bithynian, to be knocked down under the hammer
of a bawling auctioneer? My dear sir, when pay-day comes round each
month, and you mingle in the herd of Pyrrhiases and Zopyrions, and hold
out your hand for the wage that is due to you, what is that but a sale?
No need of an auctioneer, for the man who can cry his own wares, and
hawks his liberty about from day to day. Wretch! (one is prompted to
exclaim, and particularly when the culprit is a professed philosopher)
Wretch! Were you captured and sold by a pirate or a brigand, you would
bewail your lot, and think that Fortune had dealt hardly with you. Were a
man to lay violent hands on you, and claim a master's rights in you, loud
and bitter would be your outcry: 'By heaven and earth, 'tis monstrous! I
appeal to the laws! ' And now, at an age at which a born slave may begin
to look towards Freedom, _now_ for a few pence do you sell yourself,
your virtue and wisdom, in one parcel? And could Plato's noble words,
could all that Chrysippus and Aristotle have said, of the blessings of
freedom and the curse of slavery, raise no compunction in you? Do you
count it no shame to be pitted against toadies and vulgar parasites? no
shame to sit at the noisy banquets of a promiscuous, and for the most
part a disreputable company, a Greek among Romans, wearing the foreign
garb of philosophy, and stammering their tongue with a foreign accent?
How fulsome are your flatteries on these occasions! how indecent your
tipplings! And next morning the bell rings, and up you must get, losing
the best of your sleep, to trudge up and down with yesterday's mud still
on your shoes. Were lupines and wild herbs so scarce with you? had the
springs ceased to give their wonted supply, that you were brought to such
a pass? No, the cause of your captivity is too clear. Not water, not
lupines were the object of your desire, but dainty viands and fragrant
wines; and your sin has found you out: you are hooked like a pike by your
greedy jaws. We have not far to look for the reward of gluttony. Like a
monkey with a collar about its neck, you are kept to make amusement for
the company; fancying yourself supremely happy, because you are unstinted
in the matter of dried figs. As to freedom and generosity, they are fled,
with the memories of Greece, and have left no trace behind them. And
would that that were all, the disgrace of falling from freedom to
servitude! Would that your employments were not those of a very menial!
Consider: are your duties any lighter than those of a Dromo or a Tibius?
As to the studies in which your employer professed an interest when he
engaged you, they are nothing to him. Shall an ass affect the lyre?
Remove from these men's minds the gold and the silver, with the cares
that these involve, and what remains? Pride, luxury, sensuality,
insolence, wantonness, ignorance. Consuming must be their desire, doubt
it not, for the wisdom of Homer, the eloquence of Demosthenes, the
sublimity of Plato!

No, your employer has no need of your services in this direction. On the
other hand, you have a long beard and a venerable countenance; the
Grecian cloak hangs admirably upon your shoulders, and you are known to
be a professor of rhetoric, or literature, or philosophy; it will not be
amiss, he thinks, to have such pursuits represented in the numerous
retinue that marches before him. It will give him an air of Grecian
culture, of liberal curiosity in fact. Friend, friend! your stock-in-
trade would seem to be not words of wisdom, but a cloak and a beard. If
you would do your duty, therefore, be always well in evidence; begin your
unfailing attendance from the early hours of the morning, and never quit
his side. Now and again he places a hand upon your shoulder, and mutters
some nonsense for the benefit of the passers-by, who are to understand
that though he walk abroad the Muses are not forgotten, that in all his
comings and goings he can find elegant employment for his mind.
Breathless and perspiring, you trot, a pitiable spectacle, at the
litter's side; or if he walks--you know what Rome is--, up hill and down
dale after him you tramp. While he is paying a call on a friend, you are
left outside, where, for lack of a seat, you are fain to take out your
book and read standing.

Night finds you hungry and thirsty. You snatch an apology for a bath; and
it is midnight or near it before you get to dinner. You are no longer an
honoured guest; no longer do you engage the attention of the company. You
have retired to make room for some newer capture. Thrust into the most
obscure corner, you sit watching the progress of dinner, gnawing in
canine sort any bones that come down to you and regaling yourself with
hungry zest on such tough mallow-leaves--the wrappers of daintier fare--
as may escape the vigilance of those who sit above you. No slight is
wanting. You have not so much as an egg to call your own; for there is no
reason why you should expect to be treated in the same way as a stranger;
that would be absurd. The birds that fall to your lot are not like other
birds. Your neighbour gets some plump, luscious affair; you, a poor half-
chicken, or lean pigeon, an insult, a positive outrage in poultry. As
often as not, an extra guest appears unexpectedly, and the waiter solves
the difficulty by removing your share (with the whispered consolation
that you are 'one of the family'), and placing it before the new-comer.
When the joint, be it pork or venison, is brought in to be carved, let us
hope that you stand well with the carver, or you will receive a
Promethean helping of 'bones wrapped up in fat. ' And the way in which a
dish is whisked past you, after remaining with your neighbour till he can
eat no more! --what free man would endure it, though he were as innocent
of gall as any stag? And I have said nothing yet of the wine. While the
other guests are drinking of some rare old vintage, you have vile thick
stuff, whose colour you must industriously conceal with the help of a
gold or silver cup, lest it should betray the estimation in which the
drinker is held. It would be something if you could get enough even of
this. Alas! you may call and call: the waiter is

as one that marketh not.

Many are your grievances; nay, all is one huge grievance. And the climax
is reached, when you find yourself eclipsed by some minion, some dancing-
master, some vile Alexandrian patterer of Ionic lays. How should you hope
to rank with the minister of Love's pleasures, with the stealthy conveyer
of billets-doux? You cower shamefaced in your corner, and bewail your
hard lot, as well you may; cursing your luck that you have never a
smattering of such graceful accomplishments yourself. I believe you wish
that _you_ could turn love-songs, or sing other men's with a good
grace; perceiving as you do what a thing it is to be in request. Nay, you
could find it in you to play the wizard's, the fortune-teller's part; to
deal in thrones and in millions of money. For these, too, you observe,
make their way in the world, and are high in favour. Gladly would you
enter on any one of these vocations, rather than be a useless castaway.
Alas, even these are beyond you; you lack plausibility. It remains for
you to give place to others; to endure neglect, and keep your complaints
to yourself.

Nay, more. Should some slave whisper that you alone withheld your praise,
when his mistress's favourite danced or played, the neglect may cost you
dear. Then let your dry throat be as busy as any thirsty frog's. See to
it, that your voice is heard leading the chorus of applause; and time
after time, when all else are silent, throw in some studied servile
compliment. The situation is not without humour. Hungry as you are, ay,
and thirsty into the bargain, you must anoint yourself with oil of
gladness, and crown your head with garlands. It reminds one of the
offerings made by recent mourners at a tomb. The tomb gets the ointment
and the garlands, while the mourners drink and enjoy the feast.

If your patron is of a jealous disposition, and has a young wife or
handsome children, and you are not wholly without personal attractions,
then beware! you are on dangerous ground. Many are the ears of a king,
and many the eyes, that see not the truth only, but ever something over
and above the truth, lest they should seem to fail of their office.
Imagine yourself, therefore, at a Persian banquet. Keep your eyes
downwards, lest a eunuch should catch them resting on one of the
concubines. For see, there stands another with his bow ever on the
stretch: one glance at the forbidden object as you raise your cup, and
his arrow is through your jaw before you can put it down.

And now dinner is over; you retire, and snatch a little sleep. But at
cock-crow you are aroused. 'Wretch! Worm that I am! ' you exclaim. 'To
sacrifice the pursuits, the society of former days, the placid life
wherein sleep was measured by inclination, and my comings and goings were
unfettered, and all to precipitate myself bodily into this hideous gulf!
And why? What, in God's name, is my glorious recompense? Was there no
other way? Could I not have provided for myself better than this, and
preserved liberty and free-will into the bargain? Alas! the lion is fast
bound in the net. I am haled hither and thither. Pitiable is my lot,
where no honour is to be won, no favour to be hoped for. Untaught,
unpractised in the arts of flattery, I am pitted against professionals. I
am no choice spirit, no jolly companion; to raise a laugh is beyond me.
My presence (well do I know it) is a vexation to my patron, and then most
when he is in his most gracious mood. He finds me sullen; and how to
attune myself to him I know not. If I wear a grim face, I am a sour
fellow, scarcely to be endured. If I assume my most cheerful expression,
my smiles arouse his contempt and disgust. As well attempt to act a comic
part in the mask of tragedy! And what is the end of it all? My present
life has been another's: do I look to have a new life which shall be my
own? '

Your soliloquy is interrupted by the bell. The old routine awaits you:
you must trudge, and you must stand; and first anoint your limbs, if you
would hold out to the end. Dinner will be the same as ever, and go on as
late as ever. The change from all your former habits, the wakeful night,
the violent exercise, the exhaustion, are slowly undermining your health
at this moment, and preparing you for consumption or colic, for asthma or
the delights of gout. However, you hold out in spite of all, though many
a time your right place would be in bed. But that would never do: that
looks like shamming, like shirking your work. The result is that you grow
as pallid as a man at the point of death.

So much for your city life. And now for an excursion into the country.
I will content myself with a single detail. As likely as not it is a wet
day. Your turn for the carriage (as might be expected) comes last. You
wait and wait, till at last its return is out of the question, and you
are squeezed into some vehicle with the cook, or with my lady's _friseur_,
without even a proper allowance of straw. I shall make no scruple of
relating to you an experience of Thesmopolis the Stoic, which I had from
his own mouth; a most amusing incident, and just the sort of thing one
might expect to find happening again. He was in the service of a certain
wealthy and luxurious lady of quality, whom on one occasion he had to
accompany on a journey from Rome. The fun began at once. The philosopher
received as his travelling companion a beardless exquisite of the
pitch-plastering persuasion, by whom, you may be certain, my lady set
great store; his name, she informed the philosopher, was 'Robinetta. ' Is
not this a promising start? --the grave and reverend Thesmopolis, with his
hoary beard (you know what a long, venerable affair it is), side by side
with this rouged and painted ogler, whose drooping neck and plucked
throat suggested the vulture rather than the robin! 'Twas all that
Thesmopolis could do to persuade him not to wear his hair-net; and as it
was he had a sad journey of it, with the fellow singing and whistling all
the time--I daresay he would have danced there and then, if Thesmopolis
had not prevented him. But there was more to come, as you will see.
'Thesmopolis,' cries my lady, calling him to her, 'I have a great favour
to ask of you; now please don't say no, and don't wait to be asked twice,
there's a good creature. ' Of course, he said he would do anything she
wished. 'I only ask you, because I know you are to be trusted; you are so
good-natured and affectionate! I want you to take my little dog Myrrhina
in with you, and see that she wants for nothing. Poor little lady! she is
soon to become a mother. These hateful, inattentive servants take no
notice of _me_ when we are travelling, much less of her. You will be doing
me a great kindness, I assure you, in taking charge of her; I am so fond
of the sweet little pet! ' She prayed and almost wept; and Thesmopolis
promised. Imagine the ludicrous picture. The little beast peeping out from
beneath the philosophic cloak; within licking distance of that beard,
which perhaps still held traces of the thick soup of yesterday; yapping
away with its shrill pipe of a voice, as Maltese terriers will; and no
doubt taking other liberties, which Thesmopolis did not think worth
mentioning. That night at dinner, the exquisite, his fellow traveller,
after cracking a passable joke here and there at the expense of the other
guests, came to Thesmopolis. 'Of him,' he remarked, 'I have only this to
say, that our Stoic has turned Cynic. ' According to what I heard, the
little animal actually littered in his mantle!

Such are the caprices, nay, the insults, let me rather say, with which
the patron gradually breaks the spirit of his dependants. I know myself
of an orator, a very free speaker, who was actually ordered to stand up
and deliver a speech at table; and a masterly speech it was, trenchant
and terse. He received the congratulations of the company on being timed
by a _wine_--instead of a _water_-clock; and this affront, it is said, he
was content to put up, for the consideration of 8 pounds. But what of
that? Wait till you get a patron who has poetical or historical
tendencies, and spouts passages of his own works all through dinner: you
must praise, you must flatter, you must devise original compliments for
him,--or die in the attempt. Then there are the beaux, the Adonises and
Hyacinths, as you must be careful to call them, undeterred by the
eighteen inches or so of nose that some of them carry on their faces. Do
your praises halt? 'Tis envy, 'tis treason! Away with you, Philoxenus
that you are, to Syracusan quarries! --Let them be orators, let them be
philosophers, if they will: what matter for a solecism here and there?
Find Attic elegance, find honey of Hymettus in every word; and pronounce
it law henceforth, to speak as they speak.

If we had only men to deal with, it would be something: but there are the
women too. For among the objects of feminine ambition is this, of having
a scholar or two in their pay, to dance attendance at the litter's side;
it adds one more to the list of their adornments, if they can get the
reputation of culture and philosophy, of turning a song which will bear
comparison with Sappho's. So they too keep their philosopher, their
orator, or their _litterateur_; and give him audience--when, think
you? Why, at the toilet, by all that is ridiculous, among the rouge-pots
and hair-brushes; or else at the dinner-table. They have no leisure at
other times. As it is, the philosopher is often interrupted by the
entrance of a maid with a billet-doux. Virtue has then to bide her time;
for the audience will not be resumed till the gallant has his answer.

At rare intervals, at the Saturnalia or the Feast of Minerva, you will be
presented with a sorry cloak, or a worn-out tunic; and a world of
ceremony will go to the presentation. The first who gets wind of the
great man's intention flies to you with the news of what is in store
for you; and the bringer of glad tidings does not go away empty-handed. The
next morning a dozen of them arrive, conveying the present, each with his
tale of how he spoke up for you, or the hints he threw out, or how he was
entrusted with the choice, and chose the best. Not a man of them but
departs with your money in his pocket, grumbling that it is no more.

As to that salary, it will be paid to you sixpence at a time, and there
will be black looks when you ask for it. Still, you must get it somehow.
Ply your patron therefore with flatteries and entreaties, and pay due
observance to his steward, and let it be the kind of observance that
stewards like best; nor must you forget your kind introducer. You do get
something at last; but it all goes to pay the tailor, the doctor, or the
shoemaker, and you are left the proud possessor of nothing at all.

Meanwhile, jealousy is rife, and some slander is perhaps working its
stealthy way to ears which are predisposed to hear anything to your
discredit. For your employer perceives that by this time incessant
fatigues have worn you out; you are crippled, you are good for nothing
more, and gout is coming on. All the profit that was to be had of you, he
has effectually sucked out. Your prime has gone by, your bodily vigour is
exhausted, you are a tattered remnant. He begins to look about for a
convenient dunghill whereon to deposit you, and for an able-bodied
substitute to do your work. You have attempted the honour of one of his
minions: you have been trying to corrupt his wife's maid, venerable
sinner that you are! --any accusation will serve. You are gagged and
turned out neck and crop into the darkness. Away you go, helpless and
destitute, with gout for the cheering companion of your old age. Whatever
you once knew, you have unlearnt in all these years: on the other hand,
you have developed a paunch like a balloon; a monster insatiable,
inexorable, which has acquired a habit of asking for more, and likes not
at all the unlearning process. It is not to be supposed that any one else
will give you employment, at your age; you are like an old horse, whose
very hide has deteriorated in value. Not to mention that the worst
interpretation will be put upon your late dismissal; you will be credited
with adultery, or poisoning, or something of that kind. Your accuser, you
see, is convincing even in silence; whereas you--you are a loose-
principled, unscrupulous _Greek_. That is the character we Greeks
bear; and it serves us right; I see excellent grounds for the opinion
they have of us. Greek after Greek who enters their service sets up (in
default of any other practical knowledge) for wizard or poisoner, and
deals in love-charms and evil spells; and these are they who talk of
culture, who wear grey beards and philosophic cloaks! When these, who are
accounted the best of us, stand thus exposed, when men observe their
interested servility, their gross flatteries at table and elsewhere, it
is not to be wondered at that we have all fallen under suspicion. Those
whom they have cast off, they hate, and seek to make an end of them
altogether; arguing, naturally enough, that men who know their secrets,
and have seen them in all their nakedness, may divulge many a foible
which will not bear the light; and the thought is torment to them. The
fact is, that these great men are for all the world like handsomely bound
books. Outside are the gilt edges and the purple cover: and within? a
Thyestes feasts upon his own children; an Oedipus commits incest with his
mother; a Tereus woos two sisters at once. Such are these human books:
their brilliancy attracts all eyes, but between the purple covers lurks
many a horrid tale. Turn over the pages of any one of them, and you find
a drama worthy the pen of Sophocles or Euripides: close the volume--all
is gilt edge and exquisite tooling. Well may they hate the confidants of
such crimes, and plot their destruction! What if the outcast should take
to rehearsing in public the tragedy that he has got by heart?

I am minded to give you, after the manner of Cebes, a life-picture of
Dependence; with this before your eyes, you may judge for yourself,
whether it is the life for you. I would gladly call in the aid of an
Apelles or a Parrhasius, an Aetion or a Euphranor, but no such perfect
painters are to be found in these days; I must sketch you the picture in
outline as best I can. I begin then with tall golden gates, not set in
the plain, but high upon a hill. Long and steep and slippery is the
ascent; and many a time when a man looks to reach the top, his foot
slips, and he is plunged headlong. Within the gates sits Wealth, a figure
all of gold (so at least she seems); most fair, most lovely. Her lover
painfully scales the height, and draws near to the door; and that golden
sight fills him with amazement. The beautiful woman in gorgeous raiment
who now takes him by the hand is Hope. As she leads him in, his spirit is
stricken with awe. Hope still shows the way; but two others, Despair and
Servitude, now take charge of him, and conduct him to Toil, who grinds
the poor wretch down with labour, and at last hands him over to Age. He
looks sickly now, and all his colour is gone. Last comes Contempt, and
laying violent hands on him drags him into the presence of Despair; it is
now time for Hope to take wing and vanish. Naked, potbellied, pale and
old, he is thrust forth, not by those golden gates by which he entered,
but by some obscure back-passage. One hand covers his nakedness; with the
other he would fain strangle himself. Now let Regret meet him without,
dropping vain tears and heaping misery on misery,--and my picture is
complete.

Examine it narrowly in all its details, and see whether you like the idea
of going in at my golden front door, to be expelled ignominiously at the
back. And whichever way you decide, remember the words of the wise man:
'Blame not Heaven, but your own choice. '




APOLOGY FOR 'THE DEPENDENT SCHOLAR'


DEAR SABINUS,

I have been guessing how you are likely to have expressed yourself upon
reading my essay about dependants. I feel pretty sure you read it all and
had a laugh over it; but it is your running and general comment in words
that I am trying to piece on to it. If I am any good at divination, this
is the sort of thing: _To think that a man can set down such a scathing
indictment of the life, and then forget it all, get hold of the other end
of the stick, and plunge headlong into such manifest conspicuous slavery!
Take Midas, Croesus, golden Pactolus, roll them into one, multiply them,
and could they induce him to relinquish the freedom which he has loved
and consorted with from a child? He is nearly in the clutches of Aeacus,
one foot is on the ferryman's boat, and it is now that he lets himself be
dragged submissively about by a golden collar. _ [Footnote: Omitting as
a scholium, with Dindorf and Fritzsche, the words: hoia esti ton
tryphonton plousion ta sphingia kai ta kourallia. ] _There is some
slight inconsistency between his life and his treatise; the rivers are
running up-hill; topsy-turvydom prevails; our recantations are new-
fashioned; the first palinodist_ [Footnote: See _Stesichorus_ in
Notes. ] _mended words with words for Helen of Troy; but we spoil words
(those words we thought so wise) with deeds. _

Such, I imagine, were your inward remarks. And I dare say you will give
me some overt advice to the same effect; well, it will not be ill-timed;
it will illustrate your friendship, and do you credit as a good man and a
philosopher. If I render your part respectably for you, that will do, and
we will pay our homage to the God of words; [Footnote: i. e. Hermes. ] if I
fail, you will fill in the deficiency for yourself. There, the stage is
ready; I am to hold my tongue, and submit to any necessary carving and
cauterizing for my good, and you are to plaster me, and have your scalpel
handy, and your iron red-hot. Sabinus takes the word, and thus addresses
me:

_My dear friend, this treatise of yours has quite rightly been earning
you a fine reputation, from its first delivery before the great audience
I had described to me, to its private use by the educated who have
consulted and thumbed it since. For indeed it presents the case
meritoriously; there is study of detail and experience of life in
abundance; your views are the reverse of vague; and above all the book is
practically useful, chiefly but not exclusively to the educated whom it
might save from an unforeseen slavery. However, your mind is changed; the
life you described is now the better; good-bye to freedom; your motto is
that contemptible line:

Give me but gain, I'll turn from free to slave.

Let none hear the lecture from you again, then; see to it that no copy of
it comes under the eyes of any one aware of your present life; ask Hermes
to bring Lethe-water from below, enough to drug your former hearers; else
you will remind us of the Corinthian tale, and your writing, like
Bellerophon's, be your own condemnation. I assure you I see no decent
defence you can make, at least if your detractors have the humour to
commend the independence of the writings while the writer is a slave and
a voluntary beast of burden before their eyes.

They will say with some plausibility: Either the book is some other
good man's work, and you a jackdaw strutting in borrowed, plumes; or, if
it is really yours, you are a second Salaethus; the Crotoniate legislator
made most severe laws against adultery, was much looked up to on the
strength of it, and was shortly after taken in adultery with his
brother's wife. You are an exact reproduction of Salaethus, they will
say; or rather he was not half so bad as you, seeing that he was mastered
by passion, as he pleaded in court, and moreover preferred to leap
into the flames, like a brave man, when the Crotoniates were moved to
compassion and gave him the alternative of exile. The difference between
_your_ precept and practice is infinitely more ridiculous; you draw
a realistic word-picture of that servile life; you pour contempt on the
man who runs into the trap of a rich man's house, where a thousand
degradations, half of them self-inflicted, await him; and then in extreme
old age, when you are on the border between life and death, you take this
miserable servitude upon you and make a sort of circus exhibition of your
chains. The conspicuousness of your position will only make the more
ridiculous that contrast between your book and your life.

But I need not beat my brains for phrases of reprobation; there is one
good enough in a noble tragedy:

Wisdom begins at home; no wisdom, else.

And your censors will find no lack of illustrations against you; some
will compare you to the tragic actor; on the stage he is Agamemnon or
Creon or great Heracles; but off it, stripped of his mask, he is just
Polus or Aristodemus, a hireling liable to be hissed off, or even whipped
on occasion, at the pleasure of the audience. Others will say you have
had the experience of Queen Cleopatra's monkey: the docile creature used
to dance in perfect form and time, and was much admired for the
regularity and decorum of its movements, adapted to the voices and
instruments of a bridal chorus; alas, one day it spied a fig or almond a
little way off on the ground; flutes and measures and steps were all
forgotten, the mask was far off in several pieces, and there was he
chewing his find.

You, they will say, are the author (for 'actor' would understate the
case) who has laid down the laws of noble conduct; and no sooner is the
lump of figs presented than the monkey is revealed; your lips are the
lips of a philosopher, and your heart is quite other; it is no injustice
to say that those sentiments for which you claim admiration have 'wetted
your lips, and left your palate dry. ' You have not had to wait long for
retribution; you spoke unadvisedly in scorn of human needs; and, this
little while after, behold you making public renunciation of your
freedom! Surely Nemesis was standing behind your back as you drank in the
flattering tributes to your superiority; did she not smile in her divine
fore-knowledge of the impending change, and mark how you forgot to
propitiate her before you assailed the victims whom fortune's mutability
had reduced to such courses?

Now I want you to imagine a rhetorician writing on the theme that
Aeschines, after his indictment of Timarchus, was himself proved guilty
by eyewitnesses of similar iniquity; would, or would not, the amusement
of the audience be heightened by the fact that he had got Timarchus
punished for offences excused by youth, whereas he was himself an old man
at the time of his own guilt? Why, you are like the quack who offered a
cough-mixture which was to cure instantaneously, and could hardly get the
promise out for coughing. _

Yes, Sabinus, and there is plenty more of the same sort for an accuser
like you to urge; the subject is all handles; you can take hold of it
anywhere. I have been looking about for my best line of defence. Had I
better turn craven, face right-about, confess my sin, and have recourse
to the regular plea of Chance, Fate, Necessity? Shall I humbly beseech my
critics to pardon me, remembering that nothing is in a man's own choice--
we are led by some stronger power, one of the three I mentioned, probably,
and are not true agents but guiltless altogether, whatever we say or do?
Or will you tell me this might do well enough for one of the common herd,
but you cannot have _me_ sheltering myself so? _I_ must not brief Homer;
it will not serve me to plead:

No mortal man e'er yet escaped his fate;

nor again,

His thread was spun, then when his mother bare him.

On the other hand, I might avoid that plea as wanting in plausibility,
and say that I did not accept this association under the temptation of
money or any prospects of that kind, but in pure admiration of the
wisdom, strength, and magnanimity of my patron's character, which
inspired the wish to partake his activity. But I fear I should only have
brought on myself the additional imputation of flattery. It would be a
case of 'one nail drives out one nail,' and this time the one left in
would be the bigger; for flattery is the most servile, and consequently
reckoned the worst, of all vices.

Both these pleas, then, being excluded, what is left me but to confess
that I have no sound defence to make? I have indeed one anchor yet
aboard: I may whine over age and ill health, and their attendant poverty,
from which a man will purchase escape at any cost. The situation tempts
me to send an invitation to Euripides's _Medea_: will she come and
recite certain lines of hers on my behalf, kindly making the slight
changes needed? --

Too well I know how monstrous is the deed;
My poverty, but not my will, consents.

And every one knows the place in Theognis, whether I quote it or not,
where he approves of people's flinging themselves to the unplumbed deep
from sky-pointing crags, if one may be quit of poverty that way.

That about exhausts the obvious lines of defence; and none of them is
very promising. But never fear, my friend, I am not going to try any of
them. May never Argos be so hard put to it that Cyllarabis must be sown!
nor ever I be in such straits for a tolerable defence as to be driven
upon these evasions! No, I only ask you to consider the vast difference
between being a hireling in a rich man's house, where one is a slave, and
must put up with all that is described in my book--between that and
entering the public service, doing one's best as an administrator, and
taking the Emperor's pay for it. Go fully into the matter; take the two
things separately and have a good look at them; you will find that they
are two octaves apart, as the musical people say; the two lives are about
as like each other as lead is to silver, bronze to gold, an anemone to a
rose, a monkey to a man; there is pay, and there is subordination, in
each case; but the essence of the two things is utterly different. In one
we have manifest slavery; the new-comers who accept the terms are barely
distinguishable from the human chattels a man has bought or bred; but
persons who have the management of public business, and give their
services to states and nations, are not to have insinuations aimed at
them just because they are paid; that single point of resemblance is not
to level them down to the others. If that is to be the principle, we had
better do away with all such offices at once; governors of whole
provinces, prefects of cities, commanders of legions and armies, will all
fall under the same condemnation; for they are paid. But of course
everything is not to be upset to suit a single case; all who receive pay
are not to be lumped together.

It is all a mistake; I never said that all drawers of salaries lived a
degraded life; I only pitied those domestic slaves who have been caught
by compliments on their culture. My position, you see, is entirely
different; my private relations are as they were before, though in a
public capacity I am now an active part of the great Imperial machine. If
you care to inquire, you will find that my charge is not the least
important in the government of Egypt. I control the cause-list, see that
trials are properly conducted, keep a record of all proceedings and
pleas, exercise censorship over forensic oratory, and edit the Emperor's
rescripts with a view to their official and permanent preservation in the
most lucid, accurate, and genuine form. My salary comes from no private
person, but from the Emperor; and it is considerable, amounting to many
hundreds. In the future too there is before _me_ the brilliant prospect of
attaining in due course to a governorship or other distinguished
employment.

Accordingly I am now going to throw off reserve, come to grips with the
charge against me, and prove my case _a fortiori_. I tell you that nobody
does anything for nothing; you may point to people in high places--as high
as you like; the Emperor himself is paid. I am not referring to the taxes
and tribute which flow in annually from subjects; the chief item in the
Emperor's pay is panegyrics, world-wide fame, and grateful devotion; the
statues, temples, and consecrated ground which their subjects bestow upon
them, what are these but pay for the care and forethought which they apply
to public policy and improvements? To compare small things with great, if
you will begin at the top of the heap and work down through the grains of
which it is composed, you will find that we inferior ones differ from the
superior in point of size, but all are wage-earners together.

If the law I laid down had been that no one should do anything, I might
fairly have been accused of transgressing it; but as my book contains
nothing of the sort, and as goodness consists in doing good, what better
use can you make of yourself than if you join forces with your friends in
the cause of progress, come out into the open, and let men see that you
are loyal and zealous and careful of your trust, not what Homer calls a
vain cumberer of the earth?

But before all, my critics are to remember that in me they will be
criticizing not a wise man (if indeed there is such a person on earth),
but one of the common people, one who has indeed practised rhetoric and
won some little reputation therein, but has never been trained up to the
perfect virtue of the really great. Well, I may surely be forgiven for
that; if any one ever did come up to the ideal of the wise man, it has
not been my fortune to meet him. And I confess further that I should be
disappointed if I found you criticizing my present life; you knew me long
ago when I was making a handsome income out of the public profession of
rhetoric; for on that Atlantic tour of yours which included Gaul, you
found me numbered among those teachers who could command high fees. Now,
my friend, you have my defence; I am exceedingly busy, but could not be
indifferent to securing _your_ vote of acquittal; as for others, let
them all denounce me with one voice if they will; on them I shall waste
no more words than, What cares Hippoclides?




A SLIP OF THE TONGUE IN SALUTATION
[Footnote: This piece, which even in the Greek fails to convince us that
Asclepius heard the prayer with which it concludes, is still flatter in
English, because we have no words of salutation which correspond at once
in etymological meaning and in conventional usage to the Greek. The
English reader who cares to understand a piece so little worth his
attention, will obligingly bear in mind that the Greek word represented
here by Joy and Rejoice roughly answered in Lucian's time to our Good-
morning and How do you do, as well as to the epistolary My dear----;
while that represented by Hail or Health did the work of Good-night,
Good-bye, Farewell, and (in letters) Yours truly. ]


If a poor mortal has some difficulty in guarding against that spirit of
mischief which dwells aloft, he has still more in clearing himself of the
absurd consequences when that spirit trips him up. I am in both
predicaments at once; coming to make you my morning salutation, which
should have taken the orthodox form of Rejoice, I bade you, in a very
choice fit of absent-mindedness, Be healthy--a good enough wish in its
way, but a little untimely and unconnected with that early hour. I at
once went moist and red, not quite aware whether I was on my head or my
heels; some of the company took me for a lunatic, no doubt, some thought
I was in my second childhood, some that I had not quite got over my last
night's wine--though you yourself were the pink of good manners, not
showing your consciousness of the slip by any ghost of a smile. It
occurred to me to write to myself a little something in the way of
comfort, and so modify the distress my blunder gave me--prove to myself
that it was not absolutely unpardonable for an old man to transgress
etiquette so flagrantly before so many witnesses. As to apology, there
could be no occasion for that, when one's slip had resulted in so well-
omened a wish.

I began to write expecting my task to be very difficult, but found plenty
of material as I went on. I will defer it, however, till I have cleared
the way with a few necessary remarks on the three forms--Rejoice or Joy,
Prosper or Prosperity, Hail or Health. Joy is a very ancient greeting; but
it was not confined to the morning, or the first meeting. They did
use it when they first saw one another:

Joy to thee, Lord of this Tirynthian land!

But again at the moment when the wine succeeded to the meal:

Achilles, Joy! We lack not fair repast--

so says Odysseus discharging his embassy. And even at parting:

Joy be with you! And henceforth know me God,
No longer mortal man.

In fact the apostrophe was not limited to any particular season, as now
to the morning alone; indeed they used it on gloomy, nay, on the most
lamentable occasions; in Euripides, Polynices ends his life with the
words,

Joy with you! for the darkness closes on me.

Nor was it necessarily significative of friendliness; it could express
hatred and the determination to see no more of another. To wish much joy
to, was a regular form for ceasing to care about.

The modern use of the word dates back to Philippides the dispatch-runner.
Bringing the news of Marathon, he found the archons seated, in suspense
regarding the issue of the battle. 'Joy, we win! ' he said, and died upon
his message, breathing his last in the word Joy.