No More Learning

But this I say, that I perceive not wherefore a king should be
exempted from all punishment. Is it just that where most is given least
should be required? Or politic that where there is the greatest power to
injure there should be no danger to restrain? But, you will say,
there is no such law. Such a law there is. There is the law of
selfpreservation written by God himself on our hearts. There is the
primal compact and bond of society, not graven on stone, or sealed with
wax, nor put down on parchment, nor set forth in any express form of
words by men when of old they came together; but implied in the very act
that they so came together, pre-supposed in all subsequent law, not to
be repealed by any authority, nor invalidated by being omitted in any
code; inasmuch as from thence are all codes and all authority.

"Neither do I well see wherefore you cavaliers, and, indeed, many of us
whom you merrily call Roundheads, distinguish between those who fought
against King Charles, and specially after the second commission given to
Sir Thomas Fairfax, and those who condemned him to death. Sure, if his
person were inviolable, it was as wicked to lift the sword against it at
Naseby as the axe at Whitehall. If his life might justly be taken, why
not in course of trial as well as by right of war?

"Thus much in general as touching the right. But, for the execution of
King Charles in particular, I will not now undertake to defend it. Death
is inflicted, not that the culprit may die, but that the state may be
thereby advantaged. And, from all that I know, I think that the death of
King Charles hath more hindered than advanced the liberties of England.

"First, he left an heir. He was in captivity. The heir was in freedom.
He was odious to the Scots. The heir was favoured by them. To kill
the captive therefore, whereby the heir, in the apprehension of all
royalists, became forthwith king--what was it, in truth, but to set
their captive free, and to give him besides other great advantages?

"Next, it was a deed most odious to the people, and not only to your
party, but to many among ourselves; and, as it is perilous for any
government to outrage the public opinion, so most was it perilous for a
government which had from that opinion alone its birth, its nurture, and
its defence.

"Yet doth not this properly belong to our dispute; nor can these faults
be justly charged upon that most renowned Parliament. For, as you know,
the high court of justice was not established until the House had been
purged of such members as were adverse to the army, and brought wholly
under the control of the chief officers. "

"And who," said Mr Cowley, "levied that army? Who commissioned those
officers? Was not the fate of the Commons as justly deserved as was that
of Diomedes, who was devoured by those horses whom he had himself taught
to feed on the flesh and blood of men? How could they hope that others
would respect laws which they had themselves insulted; that swords which
had been drawn against the prerogatives of the king would be put up at
an ordinance of the Commons? It was believed, of old, that there were
some devils easily raised but never to be laid; insomuch that, if a
magician called them up, he should be forced to find them always some
employment; for, though they would do all his bidding, yet, if he left
them but for one moment without some work of evil to perform, they would
turn their claws against himself. Such a fiend is an army. They who
evoke it cannot dismiss it. They are at once its masters and its slaves.
Let them not fail to find for it task after task of blood and rapine.
Let them not leave it for a moment in repose, lest it tear them in
pieces.

"Thus was it with that famous assembly. They formed a force which they
could neither govern nor resist. They made it powerful. They made it
fanatical. As if military insolence were not of itself sufficiently
dangerous, they heightened it with spiritual pride,--they encouraged
their soldiers to rave from the tops of tubs against the men of Belial,
till every trooper thought himself a prophet. They taught them to abuse
popery, till every drummer fancied that he was as infallible as a pope.

"Then it was that religion changed her nature. She was no longer
the parent of arts and letters, of wholesome knowledge, of innocent
pleasures, of blessed household smiles. In their place came sour faces,
whining voices, the chattering of fools, the yells of madmen. Then men
fasted from meat and drink, who fasted not from bribes and blood. Then
men frowned at stage-plays, who smiled at massacres. Then men preached
against painted faces, who felt no remorse for their own most painted
lives. Religion had been a pole-star to light and to guide. It was now
more like to that ominous star in the book of the Apocalypse, which
fell from heaven upon the fountains and rivers and changed them into
wormwood; for even so did it descend from its high and celestial
dwelling-place to plague this earth, and to turn into bitterness all
that was sweet, and into poison all that was nourishing.

"Therefore it was not strange that such things should follow. They who
had closed the barriers of London against the king could not defend
them against their own creatures. They who had so stoutly cried for
privilege, when that prince, most unadvisedly no doubt, came among them
to demand their members, durst not wag their fingers when Oliver filled
their hall with soldiers, gave their mace to a corporal, put their keys
in his pocket, and drove them forth with base terms, borrowed half from
the conventicle and half from the ale-house. Then were we, like the
trees of the forest in holy writ, given over to the rule of the bramble;
then from the basest of the shrubs came forth the fire which devoured
the cedars of Lebanon. We bowed down before a man of mean birth, of
ungraceful demeanour, of stammering and most vulgar utterance, of
scandalous and notorious hypocrisy. Our laws were made and unmade at his
pleasure; the constitution of our Parliaments changed by his writ and
proclamation; our persons imprisoned; our property plundered; our lands
and houses overrun with soldiers; and the great charter itself was
but argument for a scurrilous jest; and for all this we may thank that
Parliament; for never, unless they had so violently shaken the vessel,
could such foul dregs have risen to the top. "

Then answered Mr Milton: "What you have now said comprehends so great a
number of subjects, that it would require, not an evening's sail on the
Thames, but rather a voyage to the Indies, accurately to treat of all:
yet, in as few words as I may, I will explain my sense of these matters.

"First, as to the army. An army, as you have well set forth, is always
a weapon dangerous to those who use it; yet he who falls among thieves
spares not to fire his musquetoon, because he may be slain if it burst
in his hand. Nor must states refrain from defending themselves, lest
their defenders should at last turn against them. Nevertheless, against
this danger statesmen should carefully provide; and, that they may do
so, they should take especial care that neither the officers nor the
soldiers do forget that they are also citizens. I do believe that the
English army would have continued to obey the parliament with all duty,
but for one act, which, as it was in intention, in seeming, and in
immediate effect, worthy to be compared with the most famous in history,
so was it, in its final consequence, most injurious. I speak of that
ordinance called the "self-denying", and of the new model of the army.
By those measures the Commons gave up the command of their forces into
the hands of men who were not of themselves. Hence, doubtless, derived
no small honour to that noble assembly, which sacrificed to the hope of
public good the assurance of private advantage. And, as to the conduct
of the war, the scheme prospered. Witness the battle of Naseby, and the
memorable exploits of Fairfax in the west. But thereby the Parliament
lost that hold on the soldiers and that power to control them, which
they retained while every regiment was commanded by their own members.
Politicians there be, who would wholly divide the legislative from
the executive power. In the golden age this may have succeeded; in the
millennium it may succeed again. But, where great armies and great taxes
are required, there the executive government must always hold a great
authority, which authority, that it may not oppress and destroy the
legislature, must be in some manner blended with it. The leaders of
foreign mercenaries have always been most dangerous to a country. The
officers of native armies, deprived of the civil privileges of other
men, are as much to be feared. This was the great error of that
Parliament: and, though an error it were, it was an error generous,
virtuous, and more to be deplored than censured.

"Hence came the power of the army and its leaders, and especially of
that most famous leader, whom both in our conversation to-day, and in
that discourse whereon I before touched, you have, in my poor opinion,
far too roughly handled. Wherefore you speak contemptibly of his parts
I know not; but I suspect that you are not free from the error common to
studious and speculative men. Because Oliver was an ungraceful orator,
and never said, either in public or private, anything memorable, you
will have it that he was of a mean capacity. Sure this is unjust. Many
men have there been ignorant of letters, without wit, without eloquence,
who yet had the wisdom to devise, and the courage to perform, that which
they lacked language to explain. Such men often, in troubled times, have
worked out the deliverance of nations and their own greatness, not
by logic, not by rhetoric, but by wariness in success, by calmness in
danger, by fierce and stubborn resolution in all adversity. The hearts
of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their
eloquence: and such an one, in my judgment, was his late Highness, who,
if none were to treat his name scornfully now shook not at the sound of
it while he lived, would, by very few, be mentioned otherwise than with
reverence. His own deeds shall avouch him for a great statesman, a great
soldier, a true lover of his country, a merciful and generous conqueror.

"For his faults, let us reflect that they who seem to lead are
oftentimes most constrained to follow. They who will mix with men, and
especially they who will govern them, must in many things obey them.
They who will yield to no such conditions may be hermits, but cannot
be generals and statesmen. If a man will walk straight forward without
turning to the right or the left, he must walk in a desert, and not in
Cheapside. Thus was he enforced to do many things which jumped not with
his inclination nor made for his honour; because the army, on which
alone he could depend for power and life, might not otherwise be
contented. And I, for mine own part, marvel less that he sometimes was
fain to indulge their violence than that he could so often restrain it.

"In that he dissolved the Parliament, I praise him. It then was so
diminished in numbers, as well by the death as by the exclusion of
members, that it was no longer the same assembly; and, if at that time
it had made itself perpetual, we should have been governed, not by an
English House of Commons, but by a Venetian Council.

"If in his following rule he overstepped the laws, I pity rather than
condemn him. He may be compared to that Maeandrius of Samos, of whom
Herodotus saith, in his Thalia, that, wishing to be of all men the most
just, he was not able; for after the death of Polycrates he offered
freedom to the people; and not till certain of them threatened to call
him to a reckoning for what he had formerly done, did he change his
purpose, and make himself a tyrant, lest he should be treated as a
criminal.

"Such was the case of Oliver. He gave to his country a form of
government so free and admirable that, in near six thousand years,
human wisdom hath never devised any more excellent contrivance for human
happiness. To himself he reserved so little power that it would scarcely
have sufficed for his safety, and it is a marvel that it could suffice
for his ambition. When, after that, he found that the members of his
Parliament disputed his right even to that small authority which he had
kept, when he might have kept all, then indeed I own that he began to
govern by the sword those who would not suffer him to govern by the law.

"But, for the rest, what sovereign was ever more princely in pardoning
injuries, in conquering enemies, in extending the dominions and
the renown of his people? What sea, what shore did he not mark with
imperishable memorials of his friendship or his vengeance? The gold of
Spain, the steel of Sweden, the ten thousand sails of Holland, availed
nothing against him. While every foreign state trembled at our arms, we
sat secure from all assault. War, which often so strangely troubles both
husbandry and commerce, never silenced the song of our reapers, or the
sound of our looms. Justice was equally administered; God was freely
worshipped.

"Now look at that which we have taken in exchange. With the restored
king have come over to us vices of every sort, and most the basest and
most shameful,--lust without love--servitude without loyalty--foulness
of speech--dishonesty of dealing--grinning contempt of all things good
and generous. The throne is surrounded by men whom the former Charles
would have spurned from his footstool. The altar is served by slaves
whose knees are supple to every being but God. Rhymers, whose books the
hangman should burn, pandars, actors, and buffoons, these drink a health
and throw a main with the King; these have stars on their breasts and
gold sticks in their hands; these shut out from his presence the best
and bravest of those who bled for his house. Even so doth God visit
those who know not how to value freedom. He gives them over to the
tyranny which they have desired, Ina pantes epaurontai basileos. "

"I will not," said Mr Cowley, "dispute with you on this argument. But,
if it be as you say, how can you maintain that England hath been so
greatly advantaged by the rebellion? "

"Understand me rightly, Sir," said Mr Milton. "This nation is not given
over to slavery and vice. We tasted indeed the fruits of liberty before
they had well ripened. Their flavour was harsh and bitter; and we turned
from them with loathing to the sweeter poisons of servitude. This is
but for a time. England is sleeping on the lap of Dalilah, traitorously
chained, but not yet shorn of strength. Let the cry be once heard--the
Philistines be upon thee; and at once that sleep will be broken, and
those chains will be as flax in the fire. The great Parliament hath left
behind it in our hearts and minds a hatred of tyrants, a just knowledge
of our rights, a scorn of vain and deluding names; and that the
revellers of Whitehall shall surely find. The sun is darkened; but it is
only for a moment: it is but an eclipse; though all birds of evil omen
have begun to scream, and all ravenous beasts have gone forth to prey,
thinking it to be midnight. Woe to them if they be abroad when the rays
again shine forth!

"The king hath judged ill. Had he been wise he would have remembered
that he owed his restoration only to confusions which had wearied us
out, and made us eager for repose. He would have known that the folly
and perfidy of a prince would restore to the good old cause many hearts
which had been alienated thence by the turbulence of factions; for, if
I know aught of history, or of the heart of man, he will soon learn that
the last champion of the people was not destroyed when he murdered Vane,
nor seduced when he beguiled Fairfax. "

Mr Cowley seemed to me not to take much amiss what Mr Milton had said
touching that thankless court, which had indeed but poorly requited his
own good service. He only said, therefore, "Another rebellion! Alas!
alas! Mr Milton! If there be no choice but between despotism and
anarchy, I prefer despotism. "

"Many men," said Mr Milton, "have floridly and ingeniously compared
anarchy and despotism; but they who so amuse themselves do but look at
separate parts of that which is truly one great whole. Each is the cause
and the effect of the other; the evils of either are the evils of
both. Thus do states move on in the same eternal cycle, which, from the
remotest point, brings them back again to the same sad starting-post:
and, till both those who govern and those who obey shall learn and mark
this great truth, men can expect little through the future, as they
have known little through the past, save vicissitudes of extreme evils,
alternately producing and produced.

"When will rulers learn that, where liberty is not, security end order
can never be? We talk of absolute power; but all power hath limits,
which, if not fixed by the moderation of the governors, will be fixed
by the force of the governed. Sovereigns may send their opposers to
dungeons; they may clear out a senate-house with soldiers; they may
enlist armies of spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected in
chains at every cross road; but what power shall stand in that frightful
time when rebellion hath become a less evil than endurance? Who shall
dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the hearts of the oppressed,
denounces against the oppressor the doom of its wild justice? Who shall
repeal the law of selfdefence? What arms or discipline shall resist
the strength of famine and despair? How often were the ancient Caesars
dragged from their golden palaces, stripped of their purple robes,
mangled, stoned, defiled with filth, pierced with hooks, hurled into
Tiber? How often have the Eastern Sultans perished by the sabres of
their own janissaries, or the bow-strings of their own mutes! For no
power which is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. Small,
therefore, is the wisdom of those who would fly to servitude as if it
were a refuge from commotion; for anarchy is the sure consequence of
tyranny. That governments may be safe, nations must be free. Their
passions must have an outlet provided, lest they make one.

"When I was at Naples, I went with Signor Manso, a gentleman of
excellent parts and breeding, who had been the familiar friend of that
famous poet Torquato Tasso, to see the burning mountain Vesuvius. I
wondered how the peasants could venture to dwell so fearlessly and
cheerfully on its sides, when the lava was flowing from its summit;
but Manso smiled, and told me that when the fire descends freely they
retreat before it without haste or fear. They can tell how fast it will
move, and how far; and they know, moreover, that, though it may work
some little damage, it will soon cover the fields over which it hath
passed with rich vineyards and sweet flowers. But, when the flames are
pent up in the mountain, then it is that they have reason to fear; then
it is that the earth sinks and the sea swells; then cities are swallowed
up; and their place knoweth them no more. So it is in politics: where
the people is most closely restrained, there it gives the greatest
shocks to peace and order; therefore would I say to all kings, let your
demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead armies; let them bluster, lest
they massacre; a little turbulence is, as it were, the rainbow of the
state; it shows indeed that there is a passing shower; but it is a
pledge that there shall be no deluge. "

"This is true," said Mr Cowley; "yet these admonitions are not less
needful to subjects than to sovereigns. "

"Surely," said Mr Milton; "and, that I may end this long debate with a
few words in which we shall both agree, I hold that, as freedom is the
only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally
necessary to preserve freedom. Even the vainest opinions of men are not
to be outraged by those who propose to themselves the happiness of men
for their end, and who must work with the passions of men for their
means. The blind reverence for things ancient is indeed so foolish
that it might make a wise man laugh, if it were not also sometimes so
mischievous that it would rather make a good man weep. Yet, since it may
not be wholly cured it must be discreetly indulged; and therefore those
who would amend evil laws should consider rather how much it may be safe
to spare, than how much it may be possible to change. Have you not heard
that men who have been shut up for many years in dungeons shrink if they
see the light, and fall down if their irons be struck off? And so, when
nations have long been in the house of bondage, the chains which have
crippled them are necessary to support them, the darkness which hath
weakened their sight is necessary to preserve it. Therefore release them
not too rashly, lest they curse their freedom and pine for their prison.

"I think indeed that the renowned Parliament, of which we have talked so
much, did show, until it became subject to the soldiers, a singular
and admirable moderation, in such times scarcely to be hoped, and
most worthy to be an example to all that shall come after. But on this
argument I have said enough: and I will therefore only pray to Almighty
God that those who shall, in future times stand forth in defence of
our liberties, as well civil as religious, may adorn the good cause
by mercy, prudence, and soberness, to the glory of his name and the
happiness and honour of the English people. "

And so ended that discourse; and not long after we were set on shore
again at the Temple Gardens, and there parted company: and the same
evening I took notes of what had been said, which I have here more fully
set down, from regard both to the fame of the men, and the importance of
the subject-matter.

*****




ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS. (August 1824. )

"To the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne. " --Milton.

The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no
limits, except those which separate civilised from savage man. Their
works are the common property of every polished nation. They have
furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the poet. In the
minds of the educated classes throughout Europe, their names
are indissolubly associated with the endearing recollections of
childhood,--the old school-room,--the dog-eared grammar,--the first
prize,--the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the
veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and
commentators who perform the lowest menial offices to their memory, are
considered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes,
as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary precedence. It is,
therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely
have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance.
When they particularise, they are commonly trivial: when they would
generalise, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made
in favour of Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combination, that great
man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal
degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their
primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious
systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he
changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought
to literary researches the same vigour and amplitude of mind to which
both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His
fundamental principles of criticism are excellent. To cite only a
single instance:--the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an
imitative art, when justly understood, is to the critic what the compass
is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive
excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose
himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of
an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a
science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the
superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is
partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though
qualified to do all that could be done by the resolving and combining
powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of
sensibility or imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed to the
deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed
were not either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to enable
any man to form a perfect code of literature. To require that a critic
should conceive classes of composition which had never existed, and then
investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of
Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream
and then to interpret it.

With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and
profound critic of antiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the same
exquisite subtilty, or the same vast comprehension. But he had access
to a much greater number of specimens; and he had devoted himself, as
it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His
peculiar judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is
only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

Quintilian applied to general literature the same principles by which he
had been accustomed to judge of the declamations of his pupils. He looks
for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of the highest order. He
speaks coldly of the incomparable works of Aeschylus. He admires, beyond
expression, those inexhaustible mines of common-places, the plays of
Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on the poetical character of
Homer. He then proceeds to consider him merely as an orator. An orator
Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But surely nothing is more
remarkable, in his admirable works, than the art with which his
oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry.
Nor
can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are
many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we
can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour which the soil of
despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Eloquence
was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate
in a despot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amusement for
the travelled nobles and the blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is,
therefore, with him, rather a sport than a war; it is a contest of
foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the
attitude than of the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must be
acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which
Cicero has too often given the sanction, both of his precept and of his
example.

Longinus seems to have had great sensibility, but little discrimination.
He gives us eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was happily
said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from
"L'Esprit des Lois" to "L'Esprit sur les Lois". In the same manner
the philosopher of Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not
"Longinus on the Sublime," but "The Sublimities of Longinus. " The origin
of the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects of
inquiry that can occupy the attention of a critic. In our own country it
has been discussed, with great ability, and, I think, with very little
success, by Burke and Dugald Stuart. Longinus dispenses himself from all
investigations of this nature, by telling his friend Terentianus that he
already knows everything that can be said upon the question. It is to be
regretted that Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to
his instructor: for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means
height--or elevation. (Akrotes kai exoche tis logon esti ta uoe. ) This
name, so commodiously vague, is applied indifferently to the noble
prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a passage of Plato about the human
body, as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Having no fixed standard,
Longinus is right only by accident. He is rather a fancier than a
critic.

Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying the
deficiencies of their classical predecessors. At the time of the revival
of literature, no man could, without great and painful labour, acquire
an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And,
unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which
it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman
genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility
of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which
has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic
spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to
small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and,
when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape
from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced his
stature. When the means have long been the objects of application, they
are naturally substituted for the end. It was said, by Eugene of Savoy,
that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at
once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of war,
without being employed in the petty calculations and manoeuvres which
employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is
equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best
understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables
and particles.

I remember to have observed among the French Anas a ludicrous instance
of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning, recommends the study
of some long Latin treatise, of which I now forget the name, on the
religion, manners, government, and language of the early Greeks. "For
there," says he, "you will learn everything of importance that is
contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two
such tedious books. " Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman
that all the knowledge to which he attached so much value was useful
only as it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be
as worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria, or the
vocabulary of Otaheite.

Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to verbal
criticism few have been successful. The ancient languages have,
generally, a magical influence on their faculties. They were "fools
called into a circle by Greek invocations. " The Iliad and Aeneid were to
them not books but curiosities, or rather reliques. They no more admired
those works for their merits than a good Catholic venerates the house of
the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture. Whatever was classical was
good. Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus. The epistles of
Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with respect to
questions of evidence they fell into the same error. The authority of
all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same with them. It
never crossed their minds that the lapse of five hundred years, or
the distance of five hundred leagues, could affect the accuracy of
a narration;--that Livy could be a less veracious historian than
Polybius;--or that Plutarch could know less about the friends of
Xenophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived by the distance of time, they
seem to consider all the Classics as contemporaries; just as I have
known people in England, deceived by the distance of place, take it for
granted that all persons who live in India are neighbours, and ask an
inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta.
It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass over
Europe. But should such a calamity happen, it seems not improbable that
some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of England from
Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel
Wraxall's Memoirs.

It is surely time that ancient literature should be examined in a
different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a just
allowance, at the same time, for the difference of circumstances and
manners. I am far from pretending to the knowledge or ability which
such a task would require. All that I mean to offer is a collection of
desultory remarks upon a most interesting portion of Greek literature.

It may be doubted whether any compositions which have ever been produced
in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the great Athenian
orations. Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the
production of cotton and molasses. The supply adjusts itself to the
demand. The quantity may be diminished by restrictions, and multiplied
by bounties. The singular excellence to which eloquence attained at
Athens is to be mainly attributed to the influence which it exerted
there. In turbulent times, under a constitution purely democratic,
among a people educated exactly to that point at which men are most
susceptible of strong and sudden impressions, acute, but not sound
reasoners, warm in their feelings, unfixed in their principles,
and passionate admirers of fine composition, oratory received such
encouragement as it has never since obtained.

The taste and knowledge of the Athenian people was a favourite object of
the contemptuous derision of Samuel Johnson; a man who knew nothing of
Greek literature beyond the common school-books, and who seems to have
brought to what he had read scarcely more than the discernment of a
common school-boy. He used to assert, with that arrogant absurdity
which, in spite of his great abilities and virtues, renders him, perhaps
the most ridiculous character in literary history, that Demosthenes
spoke to a people of brutes;--to a barbarous people;--that there could
have been no civilisation before the invention of printing. Johnson
was a keen but a very narrow-minded observer of mankind. He perpetually
confounded their general nature with their particular circumstances. He
knew London intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on its society is
perfectly astonishing. But Fleet Street was the world to him. He
saw that Londoners who did not read were profoundly ignorant; and
he inferred that a Greek, who had few or no books, must have been as
uninformed as one of Mr Thrale's draymen.

There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe, that, in
general intelligence, the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower
orders of any community that has ever existed. It must be considered,
that to be a citizen was to be a legislator,--a soldier,--a judge,--one
upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary
state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, both of
agriculture and of trade, were, in common, performed by slaves. The
commonwealth supplied its meanest members with the support of life, the
opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement. Books were indeed
few: but they were excellent; and they were accurately known. It is
not by turning over libraries, but by repeatedly perusing and intently
contemplating a few great models, that the mind is best disciplined. A
man of letters must now read much that he soon forgets, and much from
which he learns nothing worthy to be remembered. The best works employ,
in general, but a small portion of his time. Demosthenes is said to have
transcribed six times the history of Thucydides. If he had been a young
politician of the present age, he might in the same space of time have
skimmed innumerable newspapers and pamphlets. I do not condemn that
desultory mode of study which the state of things, in our day, renders
a matter of necessity. But I may be allowed to doubt whether the changes
on which the admirers of modern institutions delight to dwell have
improved our condition so much in reality as in appearance. Rumford,
it is said, proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his
soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to
compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity, thus
eaten, would, according to that famous projector, afford more sustenance
than a large meal hastily devoured. I do not know how Rumford's
proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be found
more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume.

Books, however, were the least part of the education of an Athenian
citizen. Let us, for a moment, transport ourselves in thought, to that
glorious city. Let us imagine that we are entering its gates, in the
time of its power and glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico. All
are gazing with delight at the entablature; for Phidias is putting up
the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there:
men, women, children are thronging round him: the tears are running down
their cheeks: their eyes are fixed: their very breath is still; for
he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those
hands,--the terrible--the murderous,--which had slain so many of his
sons. (--kai kuse cheiras, deinas, anorophonous, ai oi poleas ktanon
uias. )

We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning
forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Socrates is
pitted against the famous atheist, from Ionia, and has just brought
him to a contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald is
crying--"Room for the Prytanes. " The general assembly is to meet. The
people are swarming in on every side. Proclamation is made--"Who wishes
to speak? " There is a shout, and a clapping of hands: Pericles is
mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with
Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system
of education.

Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus formed were, indeed, likely
to be, in some respects, defective. Propositions which are advanced
in discourse generally result from a partial view of the question, and
cannot be kept under examination long enough to be corrected. Men of
great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of
lively sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives, for the moment, both
themselves and their auditors. Thus we see doctrines, which cannot bear
a close inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in debating
societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. To the
conversational education of the Athenians I am inclined to attribute
the great looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in most of their
scientific writings. Even the most illogical of modern writers would
stand perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which seem to have
deluded some of the greatest men of antiquity. Sir Thomas Lethbridge
would stare at the political economy of Xenophon; and the author of
"Soirees de Petersbourg" would be ashamed of some of the metaphysical
arguments of Plato. But the very circumstances which retarded the growth
of science were peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of eloquence.
From the early habit of taking a share in animated discussion the
intelligent student would derive that readiness of resource, that
copiousness of language, and that knowledge of the temper and
understanding of an audience, which are far more valuable to an orator
than the greatest logical powers.

Horace has prettily compared poems to those paintings of which the
effect varies as the spectator changes his stand. The same remark
applies with at least equal justice to speeches. They must be read
with the temper of those to whom they were addressed, or they must
necessarily appear to offend against the laws of taste and reason; as
the finest picture, seen in a light different from that for which it was
designed, will appear fit only for a sign. This is perpetually forgotten
by those who criticise oratory. Because they are reading at leisure,
pausing at every line, reconsidering every argument, they forget that
the hearers were hurried from point to point too rapidly to detect the
fallacies through which they were conducted; that they had no time to
disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight inaccuracies of expression;
that elaborate excellence, either of reasoning or of language, would
have been absolutely thrown away. To recur to the analogy of the sister
art, these connoisseurs examine a panorama through a microscope, and
quarrel with a scene-painter because he does not give to his work the
exquisite finish of Gerard Dow.

Oratory is to be estimated on principles different from those which
are applied to other productions. Truth is the object of philosophy and
history. Truth is the object even of those works which are peculiarly
called works of fiction, but which, in fact, bear the same relation to
history which algebra bears to arithmetic. The merit of poetry, in
its wildest forms, still consists in its truth,--truth conveyed to the
understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of
imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors. The object
of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion. The admiration of the
multitude does not make Moore a greater poet than Coleridge, or Beattie
a greater philosopher than Berkeley. But the criterion of eloquence is
different. A speaker who exhausts the whole philosophy of a question,
who displays every grace of style, yet produces no effect on his
audience, may be a great essayist, a great statesman, a great master of
composition; but he is not an orator. If he miss the mark, it makes no
difference whether he have taken aim too high or too low.

The effect of the great freedom of the press in England has been, in a
great measure, to destroy this distinction, and to leave among us little
of what I call Oratory Proper. Our legislators, our candidates, on great
occasions even our advocates, address themselves less to the audience
than to the reporters. They think less of the few hearers than of the
innumerable readers. At Athens the case was different; there the only
object of the speaker was immediate conviction and persuasion. He,
therefore, who would justly appreciate the merit of the Grecian orators
should place himself, as nearly as possible, in the situation of
their auditors: he should divest himself of his modern feelings and
acquirements, and make the prejudices and interests of the Athenian
citizen his own. He who studies their works in this spirit will find
that many of those things which, to an English reader, appear to be
blemishes,--the frequent violation of those excellent rules of
evidence by which our courts of law are regulated,--the introduction
of extraneous matter,--the reference to considerations of political
expediency in judicial investigations,--the assertions, without
proof,--the passionate entreaties,--the furious invectives,--are really
proofs of the prudence and address of the speakers. He must not
dwell maliciously on arguments or phrases, but acquiesce in his first
impressions. It requires repeated perusal and reflection to decide
rightly on any other portion of literature. But with respect to works
of which the merit depends on their instantaneous effect the most hasty
judgment is likely to be best.

The history of eloquence at Athens is remarkable. From a very early
period great speakers had flourished there. Pisistratus and Themistocles
are said to have owed much of their influence to their talents for
debate. We learn, with more certainty, that Pericles was distinguished
by extraordinary oratorical powers. The substance of some of his
speeches is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and that excellent writer
has doubtless faithfully reported the general line of his arguments. But
the manner, which in oratory is of at least as much consequence as the
matter, was of no importance to his narration. It is evident that he has
not attempted to preserve it. Throughout his work, every speech on every
subject, whatever may have been the character of the dialect of the
speaker, is in exactly the same form. The grave king of Sparta, the
furious demagogue of Athens, the general encouraging his army, the
captive supplicating for his life, all are represented as speakers
in one unvaried style,--a style moreover wholly unfit for oratorical
purposes. His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality
most consecutive,--yet in appearance often incoherent. His meaning, in
itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible
words. His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little
conduced to this effect. Every one must have observed how much more the
sense is condensed in the verses of Pope and his imitators, who never
ventured to continue the same clause from couplet to couplet, than
in those of poets who allow themselves that license. Every artificial
division, which is strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has
the same tendency. The natural and perspicuous expression which
spontaneously rises to the mind will often refuse to accommodate itself
to such a form. It is necessary either to expand it into weakness, or
to compress it into almost impenetrable density. The latter is generally
the choice of an able man, and was assuredly the choice of Thucydides.

It is scarcely necessary to say that such speeches could never have been
delivered. They are perhaps among the most difficult passages in the
Greek language, and would probably have been scarcely more intelligible
to an Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. Their obscurity was
acknowledged by Cicero, who was as intimate with the literature and
language of Greece as the most accomplished of its natives, and who
seems to have held a respectable rank among the Greek authors. Their
difficulty to a modern reader lies, not in the words, but in the
reasoning. A dictionary is of far less use in studying them than a clear
head and a close attention to the context. They are valuable to the
scholar as displaying, beyond almost any other compositions, the powers
of the finest of languages: they are valuable to the philosopher as
illustrating the morals and manners of a most interesting age: they
abound in just thought and energetic expression. But they do not
enable us to form any accurate opinion on the merits of the early Greek
orators.

Though it cannot be doubted that, before the Persian wars, Athens had
produced eminent speakers, yet the period during which eloquence most
flourished among her citizens was by no means that of her greatest power
and glory. It commenced at the close of the Peloponnesian war. In
fact, the steps by which Athenian oratory approached to its finished
excellence seem to have been almost contemporaneous with those by which
the Athenian character and the Athenian empire sunk to degradation. At
the time when the little commonwealth achieved those victories which
twenty-five eventful centuries have left unequalled, eloquence was
in its infancy. The deliverers of Greece became its plunderers and
oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atrocious vengeance, the madness of the
multitude, the tyranny of the great, filled the Cyclades with tears,
and blood, and mourning. The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day.
The plough passed over the ruins of famous cities. The imperial
republic sent forth her children by thousands to pine in the quarries
of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of Aegospotami. She was at length
reduced by famine and slaughter to humble herself before her enemies,
and to purchase existence by the sacrifice of her empire and her laws.
During these disastrous and gloomy years, oratory was advancing towards
its highest excellence. And it was when the moral, the political, and
the military character of the people was most utterly degraded, it was
when the viceroy of a Macedonian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the
courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid contest of eloquence that
the world has ever known.

The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I think, difficult to assign.
The division of labour operates on the productions of the orator as it
does on those of the mechanic. It was remarked by the ancients that the
Pentathlete, who divided his attention between several exercises, though
he could not vie with a boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one who
had confined his attention to running in the contest of the stadium,
yet enjoyed far greater general vigour and health than either. It is
the same with the mind. The superiority in technical skill is often more
than compensated by the inferiority in general intelligence. And this is
peculiarly the case in politics. States have always been best governed
by men who have taken a wide view of public affairs, and who have rather
a general acquaintance with many sciences than a perfect mastery of
one. The union of the political and military departments in Greece
contributed not a little to the splendour of its early history. After
their separation more skilful generals and greater speakers appeared;
but the breed of statesmen dwindled and became almost extinct.
Themistocles or Pericles would have been no match for Demosthenes in
the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field. But surely they were
incomparably better fitted than either for the supreme direction of
affairs.

There is indeed a remarkable coincidence between the progress of the
art of war, and that of the art of oratory, among the Greeks. They
both advanced to perfection by contemporaneous steps, and from similar
causes. The early speakers, like the early warriors of Greece, were
merely a militia. It was found that in both employments practice and
discipline gave superiority. (It has often occurred to me, that to the
circumstances mentioned in the text is to be referred one of the most
remarkable events in Grecian history; I mean the silent but rapid
downfall of the Lacedaemonian power. Soon after the termination of the
Peloponnesian war, the strength of Lacedaemon began to decline. Its
military discipline, its social institutions, were the same. Agesilaus,
during whose reign the change took place, was the ablest of its kings.
Yet the Spartan armies were frequently defeated in pitched battles,--an
occurrence considered impossible in the earlier ages of Greece. They are
allowed to have fought most bravely; yet they were no longer attended by
the success to which they had formerly been accustomed. No solution of
these circumstances is offered, as far as I know, by any ancient author.
The real cause, I conceive, was this. The Lacedaemonians, alone among
the Greeks, formed a permanent standing army. While the citizens of
other commonwealths were engaged in agriculture and trade, they had no
employment whatever but the study of military discipline. Hence, during
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, they had that advantage over their
neighbours which regular troops always possess over militia. This
advantage they lost, when other states began, at a later period, to
employ mercenary forces, who were probably as superior to them in the
art of war as they had hitherto been to their antagonists. ) Each pursuit
therefore became first an art, and then a trade. In proportion as the
professors of each became more expert in their particular craft, they
became less respectable in their general character. Their skill had been
obtained at too great expense to be employed only from disinterested
views. Thus, the soldiers forgot that they were citizens, and the
orators that they were statesmen. I know not to what Demosthenes and his
famous contemporaries can be so justly compared as to those mercenary
troops who, in their time, overran Greece; or those who, from
similar causes, were some centuries ago the scourge of the Italian
republics,--perfectly acquainted with every part of their profession,
irresistible in the field, powerful to defend or to destroy, but
defending without love, and destroying without hatred. We may despise
the characters of these political Condottieri; but is impossible
to examine the system of their tactics without being amazed at its
perfection.

I had intended to proceed to this examination, and to consider
separately the remains of Lysias, of Aeschines, of Demosthenes, and of
Isocrates, who, though strictly speaking he was rather a pamphleteer
than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in such a
disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions compels me
to postpone this part of the subject to another occasion. A Magazine is
certainly a delightful invention for a very idle or a very busy man. He
is not compelled to complete his plan or to adhere to his subject.