Thou shalt break thy
staircase
under
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend.
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v20 - Phi to Qui
But just as I reached the summit, an infernal
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
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11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate. Sometimes he sings in a hoarse
voice a recitative with a plaintive modulation, which mingles with
the sighing of the vessels in port; sometimes he descends to
spoken prose, according to the nature and the more or less lyric
circumstances of his narration. He recounts the deeds of the
knight Rinaldo, or those of an unfortunate brigand of Calabria.
The noble public doubles its attention; the climax is at hand:
but behold, the bells sound the Ave: the singer stops short; he
makes the sign of the cross with a prayer in the name of the
virtuous assembly. Beside him the same Olympian sun which
grazes Virgil's tomb, gilds with a last ray the brow of Polichinel
sleeping at the corner of his theatre. The sail goes down, the
crowd disperses on all sides; one day more has passed over the
empire of Masaniello.
Meanwhile the young monk of Camaldules, on the mountain,
hears at his feet the murmurs rising from the shore. A thou-
sand images of pagan voluptuousness surround him with a circle
of damnation. He goes into his cell and prays; and the breeze
bears to him the sighs of Chia and Villa-Reale. He opens his
holy breviary, and the demon resuscitated from Greece writes
upon it playfully, with the end of his claw, litanies of love.
Over him bend magic skies; enchantments fasten to his scapu-
lary; from his chalice he quaffs long draughts of the philtre of
inexorable regrets. He is fortunate if old age chills his heart
prematurely. Only death can deliver him from these cruel de-
lights.
Ah! above all, let him incase himself in triple haircloth when
his eyes meet Posilipo, Capri, and white Nisida: for it is there
## p. 11967 (#601) ##########################################
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11967
that memories are forgotten, and vows falsified; heroic projects,
fruitful sorrows, are forgotten under those skies which rain love.
A voluptuousness more dangerous than befits human lips escapes
continually from the mountains, the lakes, the quivering stars.
Impalpable sirens languish under the sleeping waves; he only
who has escaped their embraces can count on his thick armor.
When the Romans grew corrupt, they became disgusted with
the grandeur and severity of Rome. They sought a nature in-
toxicated as they were, monstrous as they were. If they had
been able to tear Rome from its sad and serious foundations
they would have done so. The mixture of voluptuousness and
terror they were seeking in the time of Tiberius, of Nero, of
Caligula, was found on the promontories of Capri and Miseno.
There they came to establish their feasts, and to enjoy in peace,
in that pagan nature, the last days of paganism.
The villas of Cæsar on the Gulf of Baie were close beside
Lake Avernus and Lake Acherus, the Elysian Fields, the en-
trance to the infernal regions, -as though they wished to redouble
the insolence of their festivity by this opposition. This great
revel of Roman society a few steps from Acheron was the ban-
quet of the ancient Don Juan at the commander's. Little lakes,
adjoining the infernal regions, shone in the depths of extinct
craters as in cups of lava; on their margins climbed faded gar-
lands of eglantine, poor blossoms which survived the orgy of the
empire.
Christianity, which everywhere in Italy has seized upon pagan
ruins to replace them with its chapels or hermitages, has aban-
doned these, as though despairing of stifling the reviving volup-
tuousness. I ascended Cape Miseno; the infernal trumpets which
from this direction troubled Nero's sleep, no longer sounded;
the beach was silent; the empty gulf stretched its gaunt arms
out in the shadows. It was late. The sea was phosphorescent,
the stars were shining. I swam part of the way from Miseno to
Pozzuoli in the midst of ringing bells. The pale light of the
moon mingled with the electric light of the waves; they alone
still guarded the souvenir of imperial pleasures.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11968 (#602) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
HORUS OF STARS-
CHOR
A NIGHT IN THE ORIENT
From Ahasvérus ›
The griffin and the ibis have led the tribes through the
valleys to the land of their inheritance. And us too,- a
guide has led us across the mountains and valleys of the firma-
ment, on the cloud where we must sleep to-night.
The Moon-
The patriarch of Chaldea, sitting before his tent, watches his
flocks feeding about him on the slope of the mountain. Feed
too my flocks of bounding stars, around my silver tent which I
have planted on a spring cloud.
A Star-
Every tribe is sleeping in its marble city; every star in its
silver robe. My rays hang scattered from the pillars of Per-
sepolis. Nineveh has battlemented towers where they stoop to
the windows. But I like better the walls of Babylon; upon her
roofs they noiselessly gather and grow drowsy like snowflakes on
the summit of mountains.
Another Star
Perhaps, my sisters, we are taking the same journey as the
tribes of men. Astray like them, I would like to converse with
them. Gladly I would send them dreams with my golden beams.
I would give my words to the wind; the wind would carry them
to the desert flower, the flower to the river, the river would
repeat them on its way through the cities.
All-
Yes, that is what we must do.
A Flower of the Syrian Desert-
My head bows under the light of the stars; my chalice swells
with dew as a heart is filled with a secret which it longs to
repeat. In the night my blossom blushed with spots the color
of blood, like the robe of a Levite upon the day of sacrifice; the
murmur of the stars descended into my chalice and mingled
with my perfume. I carry a secret in my chalice; I have the
secret of the universe, which escaped it in dream during the
night, and no voice with which to repeat it. Ah! tell me where
## p. 11969 (#603) ##########################################
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11969
is the nearest city. Is it Jerusalem or is it Babylon ? Let the
passers-by come gather the mystery which burdens my crown.
and inclines my head.
The Euphrates-
Flower of the desert, bend thy head a little lower over my
bed, that I may hear thy murmur better; always bounding from
wave to wave, I will carry it to the walls of Babylon: tell me
thy secret; I will deposit it on the silvery waves at the foot of
the towers of the Chaldeans.
Dwellers of Babylon upon their roofs-
See how the Euphrates sparkles under the willows this even-
ing, like the blade of a poniard fallen from the table of a feast.
Its murmurs could not be gentler were it rolling over sacred
vessels of gold and silver in the depths of its bed.
A Slave-
Or if a whole nation hanging on its banks had let their tears
fall in one by one.
A King-
Or if an empire with the tiaras of its priests, with the robe
of its kings, with its glittering gods, had been swallowed up for
a thousand years on its gravel bed, like a flower of the waters.
Chorus of Priests-
The light of the night illumines the inscriptions of Semiramis
engraved on the rock of the mountain of Assur. Every word
shines from here like a sword of fire, which writes on the stone
the speech of the firmament. How the lyre answers the lyre, as
the voices of the stars, as their mute wills, gleam among us
with the voices of nations and echoes which endure a century.
The Orient has stretched about it its peoples and empires, as the
night has its robe embroidered with stars for the gods to attire
themselves in by day. But as yet the universe is only just
dawning, and He who has rewarmed it with his breath holds it
like a young dove in his hand. While the steps of the God of
Gods are visible on the grass of Eden and Cashmere, let us note
his traces on the heights of the mountains. Neither the sun nor
the hearts of men have yet drunk his breath at this hour. As
the Arab rises in the night to lick the dew of the desert before
noonday, thus we rise in the first days of the universe to draw
XX--749
## p. 11970 (#604) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
from our
urns the thought of Eternity before its spring has
dried. Drop by drop it falls from the stars, and from the vault
of heaven, and from every leaf of the palm-tree; let us intoxi-
cate ourselves with its liquor as with a resinous wine. O you
nations of India, of Chaldea, of Egypt, in turn, take and drink
the cup of eternity, which he has left filled in quitting his ban-
quet. Let all the new-born peoples lift to their lips, without
delay, the vessel in which the Infinite ferments to the brim.
After us, our sphinxes; after them, our idols of granite and
bronze. If the universe wavers to our eyes,- if it separates
into a thousand different gods, birds with the heads of men, ser-
pents with the bodies of women, crowned unicorns,-let it be
as in our feasts when the heart is gorged with Idumean wines,
and as each guest seems to see the golden vessels totter, clatter
together, and break on the porphyry table. Let us hasten from
India even to Araxe: who knows if the time is not coming when
the universe after centuries will be like a flower withered and
scorched at night by an Arabian sun, and if men's lips will not
press in vain the cup where we drink, and which then will have
no longer its perfume or eternal beverage?
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE
THE WANDERING JEW
HE BROTHERS OF AHASUERUS-
From Ahasvérus
Ahasuerus, come, enter the house. Latch the door. Are
you not afraid of the wind which is blowing, and of the
noise in the city?
The Brothers—
Ahasuerus —
Go in, little brothers; go to sleep on your mats.
stay on my bench, and watch the crowd pass.
There it is! Let us escape!
I wish to
The Crowd [following Christ, who is carrying the cross]-
Salutation to the king, to the fine king of Judea! Lead him
to the summit of Calvary, that he may see farther-see all his
―
## p. 11971 (#605) ##########################################
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11971
empire. Has the king of Babylon, or Egypt, or Persia, ever
mounted a throne so elevated? The precincts of the city are
not good enough for him at present. When our high towers
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
Ahasuerus-
They are coming. I can hear their steps. My heart beats in
my breast.
The Crowd-
Have they restored to Barabbas his sword, his cloak, his horse,
and his quiver full of arrows? Give him in his purse ten demers
of shining silver. Dress him in red as a messenger; he shall go
through the town to tell the robbers, the weavers, the slaves who
turn the mills, "Do you know the news? Your king is await-
ing you on the platform of his tower of Golgotha. "
Ahasuerus-
The voices of these people intoxicate me like a leathern bot-
tle of the wine of Carmel. Their wrath is surely just.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
――――――――
The Crowd-
Pilate, wise Pilate, hast thou taken thy golden ewer? Again,
again, see that spot thou hast not removed. Rome washes her
hands, that innocent virgin, who has held only the spindle in
her mother's chamber, does not wish to wear a bloody ring on
her finger; but we without delay will follow the steps of our
King's son. Truly, is he not greater than David? See, he weeps,
and he has neither sword nor sling; his cup-bearers are two rob-
bers. If he wishes to punish us, let him command: perhaps this
time he will not send us as far as the willows of Babylon. Must
we return, with hands tied behind our backs, to the desert, to
Egypt? Let us start; for a long time we have known the way
-and a short path to return.
Ahasuerus
They come - they are there- they pass-they recede; their
cries fill the street: if this man was indeed a soothsayer, the
wind which blows from the desert would overturn the terraces
with the towers. He is an impostor: death to him!
――
## p. 11972 (#606) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
The Crowd-
If he is a Chaldean, magician, he has as servants-in the
desert, under the remains of cities-marble unicorns, winged
lions, whose manes have been trimmed by spirits with scissors
of gold; he has as messengers, sphinxes which repose from their
courses at the doors of temples in blocks of rock. Let him tell
his griffins to come and escort him; - but the wings of his grif-
fins are too heavy, the sleep of his sphinxes is too profound.
Before his enchanted troop of unicorns and winged lions leap
about him, before the stone hawks and ibises descend from their
obelisks to defend him, behold the vultures of Judea who to-
morrow shall take the crown from his head to carry it to their
nest in the woods. Oh no, do not pause at thy nest, my vulture
of Carmel! mount higher than the roc, higher than the cloud,
higher than the star; mount to Jehovah! "Knowest thou what
I bear in my beak? O Jehovah! in truth, it is not a bit of
Joppa wool, it is not a twig of heather, it is the crown of
thorns of Judea, which I took at Calvary from the head of thy
son of Nazareth. "
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
As he advances, his halo shines more brightly than that of an
elect prophet: that is one of his enchantments.
-
It is thou, Ahasuerus?
Ahasuerus-
—
I do not know you.
Ahasuerus-
Christ-
I am thirsty: give me a little water from thy spring.
-
My well is empty.
Christ-
Take thy cup: thou shalt find it full.
Ahasuerus-
It is broken.
-
―
Christ
Help me to carry my cross by this hard way.
## p. 11973 (#607) ##########################################
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11973
Ahasuerus
I am not your cross-bearer: call a griffin from the
-
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
My bench is full: there is no place for any one.
Christ-
Let me sit down on thy bench, at the door of thy house.
And on thy sill?
-
Ahasuerus-
It is empty, and the door is bolted.
Christ-
Touch it with thy finger, and thou shalt enter to get a stool.
Ahasuerus
-
Go your way.
Christ-
sert.
Christ-
If thou desired, thy bench should become a golden stool at
the door of my father's house.
―
Ahasuerus-
Go, blaspheme where you will. Already you are making my
vine and fig-tree to wither. Do not lean on the railing of my
steps: it would crumble at hearing you speak.
You wish to
enchant me.
I wished to save thee.
Ahasuerus-
Soothsayer, depart from my shadow. Your way is before you.
Go, go!
Christ-
Why didst thou say it, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt con-
tinue to go until the last judgment, during more than a thou-
sand years.
Go take thy sandals, and thy garments for travel:
everywhere thou passest, they shall call thee "The Wandering
Jew. " Thou shalt not find a place to sit down, or a mountain
spring to quench thy thirst. In my stead thou shalt bear the
## p. 11974 (#608) ##########################################
I 1974
EDGAR QUINET
burden which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst, thou shalt
drink what I leave in my chalice. Others shall take my tunic,
thou shalt inherit my eternal sorrow. Hyssop shall sprout from
thy traveler's staff, absinth shall come in thy leather bottle,
despair shall press thy loins in thy leather belt. Thou shalt be
the man who never dies. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee
pass, the eagles will perch on the edge of their eyries; the
little birds will half hide themselves under the crests of the
rocks; the star will stoop from its cloud to hear thy tears fall-
ing drop by drop in the abyss. I am going to Golgotha: thou
shalt walk from ruin to ruin, from kingdom to kingdom, without
ever reaching thy Calvary.
Thou shalt break thy staircase under
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend. The gate of the
city shall say to thee, "Go farther, my bench is occupied;" and
the stream where thou wishest to sit shall say, "Go farther, go
farther, to the sea: my bank is full of brambles. " And the sea
too—"Farther, farther: are you not the eternal traveler who goes
from nation to nation, from century to century, drinking his
tears from his cup, who never sleeps day or night either on
silk or on stone, and who cannot return on the path by which
he came? " The griffins will sit down, the sphinxes will sleep.
Thou shalt have neither seat nor sleep. Thou shalt ask for me
from temple to temple without ever meeting me. Thou shalt
cry "Where is he? " until the dead show you the way to the
last judgment. When thou beholdest me again, my eyes will be
flaming, my finger will issue from under my robe to summon
thee to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
A Roman Soldier-
Did you hear? While he spoke my sword groaned in its
scabbard; my lance sweated blood; my horse wept. I have car-
ried my sword and my lance long enough.
As I listened, my
heart was consumed in my bosom.
little ones, that I may hide in my
The Crowd-
Open the door, my wife and
Calabrian hut.
—
Why climb farther to Calvary? What if he were perchance a
God in an unknown country, or yet a Son whom the Eternal in
his old age has forgotten? Let us go hide in our courts before
he can recognize us. Put out the lamps on our tables. Did you
see the hand of steel which wrote on the house of Ahasuerus,-
The Wandering Jew? Let not this name remain on the stone!
## p. 11975 (#609) ##########################################
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11975
Let him who bears it be the scapegoat of Judea. When he
passes, Babylon, Thebes, and the surrounding country shall
gather a stone from their ruins to hurl at him. But for us,
without ever quitting again our homes and our vines, we will fill
our bottles for the Passover, with our wine of Carmel.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ENVIRONMENT
From The Story of My Thoughts'
MY
Y PEACE was especially troubled when I listened to the inner
voice which called me to letters; for I distrusted this
voice, I regarded it as a tempting demon wishing to de-
ceive me.
Or if I yielded to it, I felt my powerlessness almost
at once. I saw myself alone, with no guide, no model, whom I
wished to follow. Everything hindered. I began in several ways
at the same time, and could not tell upon which to decide.
My age, my weakness, my ignorance, my isolation, counted
for much in this grievous perplexity. The situation of France
also had something to do with it. To understand the exhaustion
of a poor mind like mine at this first awakening, one must figure
to oneself that none of the traces which have been stamped upon
the moral world by our generation were then visible.
This gen-
eration which was to renew so many ideas, so many opinions,
and the language itself, had as yet produced nothing.
Not one of the new ideas, of the new forms, had as yet
brilliantly burst forth. None of the new names which we have
been accustomed to pronounce for forty years had then emerged
from obscurity. Those who were to make them illustrious cer-
tainly were distrustful of themselves. Every year I spent several
weeks with friends at Ouilly, on the other side of the valley
of Saint-Point. Who knew that on the opposite side of the hill
there was a great poet named Lamartine, hidden under those
trees whose shadow reached even to where I was? Did he him-
self know it then?
Whichever way I looked, I found a great void on the horizon.
I felt this void in poetry, in history, in philosophy, in everything.
I suffered from it, because I was incapable of filling it, and I
did not know that others were suffering from the same ill. Each
## p. 11976 (#610) ##########################################
11976
EDGAR QUINET
in his own obscurity was working to fill the voids of which I
was at least conscious.
In my first fever I attempted all the ways at once. Upon
each I met the same aridity, the same sterility, through all the
moral world, without any work to indicate what direction to fol-
low, or any man to say authoritatively, "This is the way. "
I was then sadly distressed at my own impotence, and I may
say at the impotence of my time; since I did not see a guide in
whom I could trust, or even a companion upon the way which
I both trembled and burned to enter. I had a presentiment of
an almost entire renewal of the things of the mind. And as I
saw no one working at it, I believed myself alone. This solitude.
was crushing me just at the moment when so many imperishable
works were being silently prepared and secretly brooded over.
Although this suffering often became despair, there was noth-
ing in it resembling spleen, weariness of life, all that brought on
the wave of passions toward the end of the last century. It seems
to me that it was in many ways the opposite of weariness and
satiety. It was rather a blind impatience to live, a feverish ex-
pectation, a premature ambition for the future, a kind of intoxi-
cation of renascent thought, a frenzied thirst of the soul after
the desert of the Empire. All that, joined to a consuming desire
to produce, to create, to do something, in the midst of a world.
still empty.
Those whom I questioned later upon those years told me they
experienced something similar.
Each one thought himself alone as I did; each one was
musing as in a desert island. The renascent force of the century
was stirring them all at once, and they were experiencing the
pains of moral growth, piercing to the very bones. How many
plaints were then exhaled! How many sincere tears were shed!
Nature too laments when about to bring forth.
The generation of which I am speaking did not understand
itself as yet; that was why it was groaning: but it was about to
do its work. At least the seeds were sown; they were beginning
to sprout. France resembled the earth in the first days of March
after a long winter. Not a leaf, not a flower. Nothing more
than short grass piercing the last snows. The birds have not
yet returned; all is silent, but all is in expectation of the new
season; the good grain germinates silently in the furrow. The
laborer has a sure presentiment that the corn is coming up.
## p. 11977 (#611) ##########################################
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11977
I too in my isolation felt-towards the autumn of 1820, in
the midst of the forest of Seillon, on the borders of the ponds, in
the company of teal and heron-that profound moral vegetating
process which, obscurely, silently, was tormenting French brains
from one frontier to the other. And this vegetating process, still
hidden, intoxicated me with a mysterious irresistible breath.
I was ignorant of all the names which were about to arise, I
loved them in advance. I had a morbid desire to anticipate these
minds that I was summoning; I experienced all the impatience
of a bird at the moment of migration. Not that I wished to
depart for a foreign land. I desired to emigrate toward that new
moral world—toward those half-seen ideas which escaped me as
I approached them. I rushed forward, I fell back almost at once;
I had not wings for so great a flight.
I rose again, however; and the idea which we were all then
forming of France furnished me with a great resource against
this first oppression. France, after her two downfalls, her two
invasions, distressed, pierced to the heart, all bleeding, appeared
to us so beautiful, so noble, so proud, in her calamities! Her
disgraces did not count: they rendered her a hundred times
more touching in our eyes. There was not then in the whole
world a single man who did not believe her made for truth, for
liberty, for all that honors human-kind. With what filial tender-
ness we looked at and counted her wounds! Who did not wish
to cure them at the price of his life? Who did not wish to
carry her as homage his work, his book, his sketch, his mite of
ideas; or in default of these, a part of his heart?
France was to be reborn,-I could not doubt it. And what
prevented us from aiding this renascence? Why should not I
too bring to it my grain of sand? Scarcely had this thought
appeared to me than I felt myself transformed. What strength
to endure everything! What a spur! At those moments I be-
lieved myself to be, and I was in truth, capable of something.
I beheld as though it were accomplished what I so fervently
desired.
I applied myself again to the work. But alas! At once two
minds which I found within me embarrassed me, and prevented
me from advancing: that of the eighteenth century which de-
sired to go on living, with which I had been reared, nourished;
and that of the nineteenth, which claimed its birth. Which
should I obey? which heed? There were indeed two spirits
## p. 11978 (#612) ##########################################
11978
EDGAR QUINET
who took for their battle-ground the soul of every man of that
time.
I did not want to renounce either the one or the other;
and I was too new, too unarmed as yet, to attempt to conciliate
them. What then did I do? I yielded now to one, now to the
other, at the risk of dissipating myself. This violent combat,
which I was incapable of determining, was another cause of
anguish and profound grief; it was like the torture of Brune-
hault.
To direct us in this conflict of the two centuries which were
enveloping us at the same time, we had two figures only, those
of Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël. But with them the
combat, far from ceasing, recommenced. For they differed from
each other as much as can be imagined: the one Catholic, the
other Protestant; the one turned toward the Middle Ages, the
other toward the uncertain regions of the future. In seeing
them so opposed in ideas, in sentiments, even in hopes, one felt
more astray, more deserted than ever. The choice between such
diverse ways, far from being decided by their example, became
practically impossible.
By another contradiction, the language of Châteaubriand was
emancipated while his thought did not seem to be. His colors
dazzled without enlightening me, and his ideas repelled me. I
followed them only with distrust, and scarcely admitted them to
my mind. On the contrary, the genius of Madame de Staël was
free while her expression seemed enchained. In the confused
clearness of her oracles I said to myself, "This is the side for
me to advance. Here is the century of life; here are all my
expectations. " I expected the sunrise; but I saw nothing but a
vague twilight, never penetrated by the full light of the new day.
From these two figures, if I gazed upon what were then called
the masses, I had uncertainty on one side and complete night on
the other. On the latter was no apparent desire, no enthusiasm
for other ideas than those they believed themselves to possess:
on the contrary, doubt, sneers, mockery, at the least effort to
leave the beaten paths; the old names opposed to the new like
an invincible barrier; no expectation, no presentiment of some-
thing unknown; the language impoverished by silence, weakened,
become so timid that all thought frightened it.
If a literary philosophical revolution was in preparation, evi-
dently it was to be accomplished not by the will of the greatest
## p. 11979 (#613) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11979
number, but by the ardor, the daring of a few solitary spirits who
would undertake at their own risk and peril to reawaken the
drowsy crowd. But who would dare begin? I sought far off, I
listened, I cried inwardly with anguish, "Is there no one, then? "
The astonishment, the incredulity of others, the anxiety of my
mother, were my only answer. These sentiments won me in my
turn.
Who? I? Write? What madness! Had I well considered?
Even if I could, dare I? Did I know even what an author was?
Had I ever beheld one with my eyes? To follow the trail of
ideas which existed nowhere in the air, to make one's life and
occupation of them, to embark one's destiny on this plank,- was
it not the vainest, most senseless of enterprises, perhaps even the
most culpable, to judge by the dismay of all my friends?
I awoke with a start as from a beautiful dream. All those
vivid lights of our generation which had appeared to me sud-
denly went out. The premature glories of which I had caught
sight disappeared one after another. All the hidden movement,
developed in a solitary and inexperienced spirit, made way for
reality. Of that expectation, of that presentiment, of that fever
of hope, there remained a naked, despoiled land, gleams of will-o'-
the-wisps on great leaden lakes, and the eternal sighing of our
forests.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11980 (#614) ##########################################
11980
QUINTILIAN
(35-95? A. D. )
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
M
ARCUS FABIUS QUINTILIANUS, for many years teacher of rheto-
ric and pleader of causes at Rome, and author of the most
exhaustive treatise upon the art of oratory ever written,
offers a marked example of that even balance of qualities and mild
uniformity of moral and intellectual tint, which render it peculiarly
difficult after a lapse of time either to form a vivid idea of a writer's
personality, or to receive a pungent impression from his work. Like
his friend the epigrammatist, Martial, Quintilian was a native of
Spain; and the two men were very nearly of the same age. Quin-
tilian was born at Catagurris, now Calahorra, on the Ebro, about the
year 40 A. D.
He was educated at Rome, studying first under one
Palæmon, a grammaticus or grammar-master, of worthless character
but great ability, who had been born a slave; later with the noted
rhetorician Domitius Afer of Nîmes, who flourished in the reigns
of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Concerning the latter, Quintilian
once told a class of his own pupils a striking anecdote. Domitius
greatly resented, in his old age, the fashion which had sprung up of
interrupting a speaker by rounds of applause,-"as if," says Pliny
junior, who has preserved the incident, "he were an actor, with a
hired claque. " On one occasion, when Domitius was pleading a case
before the Centumviri in his usual grave and deliberate manner,
his voice was suddenly drowned by an unseemly uproar. He stopped
short until the noise had subsided; then resumed, and was again
interrupted. When this had happened for the third time, he abruptly
concluded his harangue with the remark,- "Centumvirs, our art is
dead! "
The father of Quintilian had also some reputation as a public
speaker in Rome. Seneca speaks of having once listened to a decla-
mation "by the Old Quintilian"; and the son, in that part of his
magnum opus which treats of rhetorical ornament, quotes as a speci-
men of paronomasia, or play upon words, a not particularly brilliant
pun of his father's on the verbs immorier and immoror. Quintilian
returned to Spain after his studies were finished, and presumably
began the practice of his profession there; but went again to Rome
## p. 11981 (#615) ##########################################
QUINTILIAN
11981
in the train of Galba, the governor of Spain, when the latter was
proclaimed Emperor, upon Nero's death. Quintilian was now (68
A. D. ) not far from thirty; and for the twenty succeeding years,
though Rome changed rulers five times during the interval, he con-
tinued to prosper at the capital, as an orator and instructor in rhet-
oric. The younger Pliny was one of his pupils; Tacitus the historian
was probably another. Quintilian had as a client, upon one occas-
ion, that same Queen Berenice who once went, "with great pomp,
to hear Paul of Tarsus plead at Cæsarea;" and the Spaniard also
enjoyed the privilege of speaking apud ipsam,- in the presence of the
royal, though no longer youthful, charmer.
The two collections of speeches which once passed under Quin-
tilian's name are now held to be all spurious; but he himself speaks
of having been driven, by the nuisance of garbled reports and un-
authorized publications, to edit his plea in the case of one Nævius of
Arpinum; and he also makes repeated reference, in his main work,
to a previous essay on the Decline of Oratory - which has perished.
At the age of about fifty, he retired from the practice of his twofold
calling, and applied himself to the composition of the treatise by
which his name is remembered, 'Institutionis Oratoriæ XII Libri ›
(Twelve Books concerning the Education of an Orator), commonly
known as the 'Institutes. ' Thanks to heavy fees and imperial bounty,
-
- for he was granted by Vespasian a handsome salary from the
imperial treasury, and was the first rhetorician ever so endowed,-
Quintilian was now a rich man, and had lately married a very young
wife; probably out of that senatorial family into which one of his
beloved and deeply mourned sons was early adopted. Beside a short
preface addressed to his bookseller Trypho, and a general introduc-
tion, there are separate introductions to eight out of the twelve books
of the 'Institutio'; and from them we gather almost all the remain-
ing facts which are to be learned concerning the life of Quintilian.
In the proem to the fourth book he tells his friend Marcellus Victor,
to whom the whole work is inscribed, that he finds a fresh incentive
to care in its composition, in the fact that the Emperor Domitian has
appointed him tutor to his grandnephews, the sons of Flavius Clem-
ens and Vespasian's granddaughter Domatilla. These boys had lately
been adopted by the potentate, and named for succession to the
throne; and Quintilian also received, at the request of their father,
the appointment of Honorary Consul. He does not appear to have
been particularly a sycophant; but he would have been more than
human, and much more than first-century Roman, if he had not gone
on to write of his imperial patron in a strain which is a little sick-
ening when compared with what we know, from other sources, of
that dull and ruthless tyrant.
## p. 11982 (#616) ##########################################
11982
QUINTILIAN
In the preface to the sixth book of the Institutes' we see Quin-
tilian in a nobler light, and are brought near for a moment to the
unspoiled heart of the man. Very simply and affectingly he makes
the avowal that he had all but abandoned, at this point, the labor
of his life, in the despair occasioned by those crushing domestic
breavements which made his latter days desolate. The girl-wife had
died at nineteen, after giving birth to two boys: one of whom fol-
lowed his mother in early infancy; while the other, a remarkably
brilliant and promising child, lived to be only nine, and then suc-
cumbed to a long illness attended by great suffering, which he bore
with the utmost courage and sweetness. "What shall I do? " cries
the stricken father, "or what further use can there be in life for one
to whom the gods are so hostile ? What good parent could forgive
me, if I could go calmly on with my studies, after having survived
all my own? " Nevertheless, in the end, like Job when similarly
afflicted, he "girded up his loins like a man," and "answered" the
Power which had bereft him, by renewed devotion to his work;
finding there, no doubt, as many another sufferer has done, the best
antidote to pain. It has been supposed by some, on the strength of
an epistle of Pliny's (Book vi. , xxxi. ), that Quintilian married again
after sixty, and had a daughter who lived to maturity; but this is
most unlikely. The Quintilian for whose daughter the Complete
Letter-Writer incloses a wedding present of fifty thousand nummi
(about $2500) was plainly another man. Pliny does allude in several
places to the orator and his valued instructions, but always as though
he were already dead; and the probability is that he did not long sur-
vive the accession of Trajan.
The contemporaries of Quintilian,, even the most caustic of them,
have nothing but good to say of the man. Martial decorates him
with a honeyed epigram (Book xi. , xc. ):
"Quintiliane vagæ moderator summe juventæ
Gloria Romanæ, Quintiliane togæ. "
And even Juvenal, though protesting in his sixth satire, that only
through unparalleled good fortune could a teacher of rhetoric ever
have become a consul and a large landed proprietor, yet admits,
very handsomely for him, that these distinctions were deserved in
Quintilian's case; and that he was "fortunate and handsome and
clever; fortunate [again! ] and wise, high-minded and open-hearted. "
In his own writings Quintilian shows himself not merely the loving
husband and father, but indulgent and sympathetic with all child-
ren; and remarkably gentle in his judgments, and temperate in his
strictures upon other writers, -even on one whose foibles, personal
and literary, were as distasteful to him as those of Seneca. He knew,
## p. 11983 (#617) ##########################################
QUINTILIAN
11983
so to speak, all that had been written in his day; and his own taste
was excellent. He loved the best, and he loved it unaffectedly. Him-
self the purest Latin prose-writer of the "silver age," his heart was in
the "golden age"; and his feeling for Cicero and Virgil, as well as for
Homer and the great Greeks, was almost a religion.
are
The most interesting portions of the 'Institutionis Oratoriæ
the General Introduction, in which the scheme of the work is un-
folded; the first and second books, which are devoted to infantile and
primary-school education; the tenth, which enumerates the authors
with whom an accomplished speaker should be familiar, and gives
brief but often admirable criticisms of their best-known works; the
eleventh, which deals with the personal graces an orator ought most
to cultivate; and the twelfth, which amplifies the proposition laid
down at the outset, that the orator who would achieve success must
be essentially a good man. We note the fact that Quintilian, like the
ancients generally, conceives of human knowledge as one organic
whole, each of whose parts has a vital and necessary dependence
upon all the rest. In Cicero's time, he says, it was taken for granted
that a great orator would also be a cultivated and conscientious man:
but now Quintilian has to deplore what he rather affectedly calls "a
most inartistic division of the great art"; insomuch that the mere
causidicus, who will talk upon any side for pay, is considered as much
an orator as he who gives eloquent expression to his own convictions.
When he comes to treat of elementary instruction, Quintilian starts
with the cheerful assumption that the vast majority of children are
naturally clever and capable. A dull mind he thinks as rare among
them as a deformed body. He would have the future orator's train-
ing begin in the cradle; and insists that the nurse to whose charge
he is committed for his first three years should be a woman of some
instruction, and especially of refined speech, else he will never artic-
ulate properly. Our author observes, at this point, that it might be
well for the infant also to have had a highly educated father, and
a mother as able as the celebrated Cornelia, and the daughters of
Lælius the wise. But he seems to admit that this is rather a pluper-
fect requirement, not easy to be met after the child is an accom-
plished fact.
Let him have, at all events, an ivory alphabet among
his playthings; for Quintilian thinks, though he does not clearly say
why, that it is better to know the form of the letters by sight, before
one learns the sound of them by the ear. He would have the little
one taught to speak Greek first; yet not to use it so exclusively as to
affect his pronunciation of Latin.
light illumined the sky. Behold the spectacle which I had then
before me.
The earth trembled; it was warm to the touch. Through its
fissures shone the fiery veins of a hidden furnace. In the midst
of the great crater to which I had come, a new cone was form-
ing which seemed all in flames. From the mouth of this gulf
was exhaled a vast and long-sustained breath. This sigh, and a
profound and regular respiration like that of a forge, rose from
the bosom of the oppressed mountain. A terrible detonation fol-
lowed them. Flaming stones were cast in groups beyond our
vision, and rattled down noisily on the edges of the cone. For an
instant the steep sides and the interior of the abyss were lighted
as in broad day.
Lava was issuing from the ground by openings distant from
the crater. It rolled crackling from four mouths. Soon after-
ward the mountain uttered another giant sigh. Glancing toward
the sea at the moment of the explosion, I saw distinctly little
boats at anchor.
The mountain trembled still more; but the waves were not
affected, and nothing seemed to me more beautiful than the sleep
## p. 11965 (#599) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11965
of the sea, smiling under the unchained volcano. The Bay of
Naples resembled thus Ariosto's Angelica under the jaws and
outstretched wings of the Chimera.
I sat down upon the trembling ground; nature was seized
with a vertigo to which I abandoned myself with delight. The
intervals in quick succession of noise and silence, of light and
darkness, the calm of the night, the calm not less great of the
sea, this mountain shaken by starts,—all these contrary effects
were strengthened the one by the other. Without seeking why,
I found in this spectacle a host of images applicable to the moral
state in which I then was, and which had strongly prevailed
since my departure from Rome. I passed the night on the sum-
mit. When day appeared, I was able to enjoy at my leisure the
view of the famous gulf which lay at my feet. In the distance,
the island of Capri, which is shaped like an ancient galley, closed
the entrance to the sea. The sun rose from the other side of
Pompeii; it hovered some time over the tombs like a funeral
torch. This was the signal for a multitude of little barks to
leave shore and hoist sail. I heard at that moment the noise
of the awakening towns and villages. The vines interlaced in
the poplars, like gigantic thyrsi, began to shiver under the sea
breeze; an instant later the light sparkled on the ruffled waves;
a golden vapor like the dust of stars rose from the horizon; the
air became charged with perfumes. All nature seemed intoxi-
cated as in a pagan festival; and as long as the volcano con-
tinued agitated, this Christian Campania resembled the Sibyl
hesitating on her stand.
In Naples, the city of passions, I observe that the most con-
siderable monuments of art are the tombs. Moreover, these tombs
nearly all belong to the epoch of Spanish domination. The dead,
upright on their mausoleums, torch or dagger in hand, are sus-
tained by a singular pride: they seem still to rule over the living,
who pass lightly with furtive step over the soil below them.
The towers of Anjou, bathed by the sea, hold also this captive
earth. The palace of Jeanne la Folle, abandoned to the waves
which are every day seizing upon it, the beautiful arch of Ara-
gon, are other witnesses of the conquest. All the nations have
left the traces of their rule here in a particular architecture.
Only the Neapolitans are absent from the monuments of Naples.
This mimic people warms itself in the sun. It alone of all
Italy has never belonged to itself. Without a past, it has no
## p. 11966 (#600) ##########################################
11966
EDGAR QUINET
regrets; without a near future, it has no desire.
It cries, it ges-
ticulates, it spreads its nets, it runs, it declaims, it muses, it men-
aces,—and all that at once. Polichinel is its hero.
Yet when a soul chances to awaken from the bosom of this
mendicant sybarism, it is exalted in spiritualism or armed with
boundless energy. Pythagoras and his school, St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, Vico, Spagnoletto, Salvator Rosa, were strange lazzaroni.
Toward the middle of the day, sailors from Chia, from Sicily,
from Malta, seat themselves in a circle on the pier; a sail shades
the audience, which impatiently awaits the improvisator. At last
he appears; he is dressed in sailor's fustian; in his hand he
carries a switch instead of the laurel branch of his ancestors.
The eyes of the lazzaroni devour his lips in anticipation of the
story he is going to narrate. Sometimes he sings in a hoarse
voice a recitative with a plaintive modulation, which mingles with
the sighing of the vessels in port; sometimes he descends to
spoken prose, according to the nature and the more or less lyric
circumstances of his narration. He recounts the deeds of the
knight Rinaldo, or those of an unfortunate brigand of Calabria.
The noble public doubles its attention; the climax is at hand:
but behold, the bells sound the Ave: the singer stops short; he
makes the sign of the cross with a prayer in the name of the
virtuous assembly. Beside him the same Olympian sun which
grazes Virgil's tomb, gilds with a last ray the brow of Polichinel
sleeping at the corner of his theatre. The sail goes down, the
crowd disperses on all sides; one day more has passed over the
empire of Masaniello.
Meanwhile the young monk of Camaldules, on the mountain,
hears at his feet the murmurs rising from the shore. A thou-
sand images of pagan voluptuousness surround him with a circle
of damnation. He goes into his cell and prays; and the breeze
bears to him the sighs of Chia and Villa-Reale. He opens his
holy breviary, and the demon resuscitated from Greece writes
upon it playfully, with the end of his claw, litanies of love.
Over him bend magic skies; enchantments fasten to his scapu-
lary; from his chalice he quaffs long draughts of the philtre of
inexorable regrets. He is fortunate if old age chills his heart
prematurely. Only death can deliver him from these cruel de-
lights.
Ah! above all, let him incase himself in triple haircloth when
his eyes meet Posilipo, Capri, and white Nisida: for it is there
## p. 11967 (#601) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11967
that memories are forgotten, and vows falsified; heroic projects,
fruitful sorrows, are forgotten under those skies which rain love.
A voluptuousness more dangerous than befits human lips escapes
continually from the mountains, the lakes, the quivering stars.
Impalpable sirens languish under the sleeping waves; he only
who has escaped their embraces can count on his thick armor.
When the Romans grew corrupt, they became disgusted with
the grandeur and severity of Rome. They sought a nature in-
toxicated as they were, monstrous as they were. If they had
been able to tear Rome from its sad and serious foundations
they would have done so. The mixture of voluptuousness and
terror they were seeking in the time of Tiberius, of Nero, of
Caligula, was found on the promontories of Capri and Miseno.
There they came to establish their feasts, and to enjoy in peace,
in that pagan nature, the last days of paganism.
The villas of Cæsar on the Gulf of Baie were close beside
Lake Avernus and Lake Acherus, the Elysian Fields, the en-
trance to the infernal regions, -as though they wished to redouble
the insolence of their festivity by this opposition. This great
revel of Roman society a few steps from Acheron was the ban-
quet of the ancient Don Juan at the commander's. Little lakes,
adjoining the infernal regions, shone in the depths of extinct
craters as in cups of lava; on their margins climbed faded gar-
lands of eglantine, poor blossoms which survived the orgy of the
empire.
Christianity, which everywhere in Italy has seized upon pagan
ruins to replace them with its chapels or hermitages, has aban-
doned these, as though despairing of stifling the reviving volup-
tuousness. I ascended Cape Miseno; the infernal trumpets which
from this direction troubled Nero's sleep, no longer sounded;
the beach was silent; the empty gulf stretched its gaunt arms
out in the shadows. It was late. The sea was phosphorescent,
the stars were shining. I swam part of the way from Miseno to
Pozzuoli in the midst of ringing bells. The pale light of the
moon mingled with the electric light of the waves; they alone
still guarded the souvenir of imperial pleasures.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11968 (#602) ##########################################
11968
EDGAR QUINET
HORUS OF STARS-
CHOR
A NIGHT IN THE ORIENT
From Ahasvérus ›
The griffin and the ibis have led the tribes through the
valleys to the land of their inheritance. And us too,- a
guide has led us across the mountains and valleys of the firma-
ment, on the cloud where we must sleep to-night.
The Moon-
The patriarch of Chaldea, sitting before his tent, watches his
flocks feeding about him on the slope of the mountain. Feed
too my flocks of bounding stars, around my silver tent which I
have planted on a spring cloud.
A Star-
Every tribe is sleeping in its marble city; every star in its
silver robe. My rays hang scattered from the pillars of Per-
sepolis. Nineveh has battlemented towers where they stoop to
the windows. But I like better the walls of Babylon; upon her
roofs they noiselessly gather and grow drowsy like snowflakes on
the summit of mountains.
Another Star
Perhaps, my sisters, we are taking the same journey as the
tribes of men. Astray like them, I would like to converse with
them. Gladly I would send them dreams with my golden beams.
I would give my words to the wind; the wind would carry them
to the desert flower, the flower to the river, the river would
repeat them on its way through the cities.
All-
Yes, that is what we must do.
A Flower of the Syrian Desert-
My head bows under the light of the stars; my chalice swells
with dew as a heart is filled with a secret which it longs to
repeat. In the night my blossom blushed with spots the color
of blood, like the robe of a Levite upon the day of sacrifice; the
murmur of the stars descended into my chalice and mingled
with my perfume. I carry a secret in my chalice; I have the
secret of the universe, which escaped it in dream during the
night, and no voice with which to repeat it. Ah! tell me where
## p. 11969 (#603) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11969
is the nearest city. Is it Jerusalem or is it Babylon ? Let the
passers-by come gather the mystery which burdens my crown.
and inclines my head.
The Euphrates-
Flower of the desert, bend thy head a little lower over my
bed, that I may hear thy murmur better; always bounding from
wave to wave, I will carry it to the walls of Babylon: tell me
thy secret; I will deposit it on the silvery waves at the foot of
the towers of the Chaldeans.
Dwellers of Babylon upon their roofs-
See how the Euphrates sparkles under the willows this even-
ing, like the blade of a poniard fallen from the table of a feast.
Its murmurs could not be gentler were it rolling over sacred
vessels of gold and silver in the depths of its bed.
A Slave-
Or if a whole nation hanging on its banks had let their tears
fall in one by one.
A King-
Or if an empire with the tiaras of its priests, with the robe
of its kings, with its glittering gods, had been swallowed up for
a thousand years on its gravel bed, like a flower of the waters.
Chorus of Priests-
The light of the night illumines the inscriptions of Semiramis
engraved on the rock of the mountain of Assur. Every word
shines from here like a sword of fire, which writes on the stone
the speech of the firmament. How the lyre answers the lyre, as
the voices of the stars, as their mute wills, gleam among us
with the voices of nations and echoes which endure a century.
The Orient has stretched about it its peoples and empires, as the
night has its robe embroidered with stars for the gods to attire
themselves in by day. But as yet the universe is only just
dawning, and He who has rewarmed it with his breath holds it
like a young dove in his hand. While the steps of the God of
Gods are visible on the grass of Eden and Cashmere, let us note
his traces on the heights of the mountains. Neither the sun nor
the hearts of men have yet drunk his breath at this hour. As
the Arab rises in the night to lick the dew of the desert before
noonday, thus we rise in the first days of the universe to draw
XX--749
## p. 11970 (#604) ##########################################
11970
EDGAR QUINET
from our
urns the thought of Eternity before its spring has
dried. Drop by drop it falls from the stars, and from the vault
of heaven, and from every leaf of the palm-tree; let us intoxi-
cate ourselves with its liquor as with a resinous wine. O you
nations of India, of Chaldea, of Egypt, in turn, take and drink
the cup of eternity, which he has left filled in quitting his ban-
quet. Let all the new-born peoples lift to their lips, without
delay, the vessel in which the Infinite ferments to the brim.
After us, our sphinxes; after them, our idols of granite and
bronze. If the universe wavers to our eyes,- if it separates
into a thousand different gods, birds with the heads of men, ser-
pents with the bodies of women, crowned unicorns,-let it be
as in our feasts when the heart is gorged with Idumean wines,
and as each guest seems to see the golden vessels totter, clatter
together, and break on the porphyry table. Let us hasten from
India even to Araxe: who knows if the time is not coming when
the universe after centuries will be like a flower withered and
scorched at night by an Arabian sun, and if men's lips will not
press in vain the cup where we drink, and which then will have
no longer its perfume or eternal beverage?
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE
THE WANDERING JEW
HE BROTHERS OF AHASUERUS-
From Ahasvérus
Ahasuerus, come, enter the house. Latch the door. Are
you not afraid of the wind which is blowing, and of the
noise in the city?
The Brothers—
Ahasuerus —
Go in, little brothers; go to sleep on your mats.
stay on my bench, and watch the crowd pass.
There it is! Let us escape!
I wish to
The Crowd [following Christ, who is carrying the cross]-
Salutation to the king, to the fine king of Judea! Lead him
to the summit of Calvary, that he may see farther-see all his
―
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EDGAR QUINET
11971
empire. Has the king of Babylon, or Egypt, or Persia, ever
mounted a throne so elevated? The precincts of the city are
not good enough for him at present. When our high towers
are fallen, when serpents are climbing our stairs instead of us,
when the desert is at our table, then he shall return if he wishes,
with his crown of thorns, with his torn robe, his bleeding feet,
to be the king of our ruin.
Ahasuerus-
They are coming. I can hear their steps. My heart beats in
my breast.
The Crowd-
Have they restored to Barabbas his sword, his cloak, his horse,
and his quiver full of arrows? Give him in his purse ten demers
of shining silver. Dress him in red as a messenger; he shall go
through the town to tell the robbers, the weavers, the slaves who
turn the mills, "Do you know the news? Your king is await-
ing you on the platform of his tower of Golgotha. "
Ahasuerus-
The voices of these people intoxicate me like a leathern bot-
tle of the wine of Carmel. Their wrath is surely just.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
――――――――
The Crowd-
Pilate, wise Pilate, hast thou taken thy golden ewer? Again,
again, see that spot thou hast not removed. Rome washes her
hands, that innocent virgin, who has held only the spindle in
her mother's chamber, does not wish to wear a bloody ring on
her finger; but we without delay will follow the steps of our
King's son. Truly, is he not greater than David? See, he weeps,
and he has neither sword nor sling; his cup-bearers are two rob-
bers. If he wishes to punish us, let him command: perhaps this
time he will not send us as far as the willows of Babylon. Must
we return, with hands tied behind our backs, to the desert, to
Egypt? Let us start; for a long time we have known the way
-and a short path to return.
Ahasuerus
They come - they are there- they pass-they recede; their
cries fill the street: if this man was indeed a soothsayer, the
wind which blows from the desert would overturn the terraces
with the towers. He is an impostor: death to him!
――
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EDGAR QUINET
The Crowd-
If he is a Chaldean, magician, he has as servants-in the
desert, under the remains of cities-marble unicorns, winged
lions, whose manes have been trimmed by spirits with scissors
of gold; he has as messengers, sphinxes which repose from their
courses at the doors of temples in blocks of rock. Let him tell
his griffins to come and escort him; - but the wings of his grif-
fins are too heavy, the sleep of his sphinxes is too profound.
Before his enchanted troop of unicorns and winged lions leap
about him, before the stone hawks and ibises descend from their
obelisks to defend him, behold the vultures of Judea who to-
morrow shall take the crown from his head to carry it to their
nest in the woods. Oh no, do not pause at thy nest, my vulture
of Carmel! mount higher than the roc, higher than the cloud,
higher than the star; mount to Jehovah! "Knowest thou what
I bear in my beak? O Jehovah! in truth, it is not a bit of
Joppa wool, it is not a twig of heather, it is the crown of
thorns of Judea, which I took at Calvary from the head of thy
son of Nazareth. "
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
As he advances, his halo shines more brightly than that of an
elect prophet: that is one of his enchantments.
-
It is thou, Ahasuerus?
Ahasuerus-
—
I do not know you.
Ahasuerus-
Christ-
I am thirsty: give me a little water from thy spring.
-
My well is empty.
Christ-
Take thy cup: thou shalt find it full.
Ahasuerus-
It is broken.
-
―
Christ
Help me to carry my cross by this hard way.
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11973
Ahasuerus
I am not your cross-bearer: call a griffin from the
-
Christ-
Ahasuerus-
My bench is full: there is no place for any one.
Christ-
Let me sit down on thy bench, at the door of thy house.
And on thy sill?
-
Ahasuerus-
It is empty, and the door is bolted.
Christ-
Touch it with thy finger, and thou shalt enter to get a stool.
Ahasuerus
-
Go your way.
Christ-
sert.
Christ-
If thou desired, thy bench should become a golden stool at
the door of my father's house.
―
Ahasuerus-
Go, blaspheme where you will. Already you are making my
vine and fig-tree to wither. Do not lean on the railing of my
steps: it would crumble at hearing you speak.
You wish to
enchant me.
I wished to save thee.
Ahasuerus-
Soothsayer, depart from my shadow. Your way is before you.
Go, go!
Christ-
Why didst thou say it, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt con-
tinue to go until the last judgment, during more than a thou-
sand years.
Go take thy sandals, and thy garments for travel:
everywhere thou passest, they shall call thee "The Wandering
Jew. " Thou shalt not find a place to sit down, or a mountain
spring to quench thy thirst. In my stead thou shalt bear the
## p. 11974 (#608) ##########################################
I 1974
EDGAR QUINET
burden which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst, thou shalt
drink what I leave in my chalice. Others shall take my tunic,
thou shalt inherit my eternal sorrow. Hyssop shall sprout from
thy traveler's staff, absinth shall come in thy leather bottle,
despair shall press thy loins in thy leather belt. Thou shalt be
the man who never dies. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee
pass, the eagles will perch on the edge of their eyries; the
little birds will half hide themselves under the crests of the
rocks; the star will stoop from its cloud to hear thy tears fall-
ing drop by drop in the abyss. I am going to Golgotha: thou
shalt walk from ruin to ruin, from kingdom to kingdom, without
ever reaching thy Calvary.
Thou shalt break thy staircase under
thy feet, and be no longer able to descend. The gate of the
city shall say to thee, "Go farther, my bench is occupied;" and
the stream where thou wishest to sit shall say, "Go farther, go
farther, to the sea: my bank is full of brambles. " And the sea
too—"Farther, farther: are you not the eternal traveler who goes
from nation to nation, from century to century, drinking his
tears from his cup, who never sleeps day or night either on
silk or on stone, and who cannot return on the path by which
he came? " The griffins will sit down, the sphinxes will sleep.
Thou shalt have neither seat nor sleep. Thou shalt ask for me
from temple to temple without ever meeting me. Thou shalt
cry "Where is he? " until the dead show you the way to the
last judgment. When thou beholdest me again, my eyes will be
flaming, my finger will issue from under my robe to summon
thee to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
A Roman Soldier-
Did you hear? While he spoke my sword groaned in its
scabbard; my lance sweated blood; my horse wept. I have car-
ried my sword and my lance long enough.
As I listened, my
heart was consumed in my bosom.
little ones, that I may hide in my
The Crowd-
Open the door, my wife and
Calabrian hut.
—
Why climb farther to Calvary? What if he were perchance a
God in an unknown country, or yet a Son whom the Eternal in
his old age has forgotten? Let us go hide in our courts before
he can recognize us. Put out the lamps on our tables. Did you
see the hand of steel which wrote on the house of Ahasuerus,-
The Wandering Jew? Let not this name remain on the stone!
## p. 11975 (#609) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11975
Let him who bears it be the scapegoat of Judea. When he
passes, Babylon, Thebes, and the surrounding country shall
gather a stone from their ruins to hurl at him. But for us,
without ever quitting again our homes and our vines, we will fill
our bottles for the Passover, with our wine of Carmel.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ENVIRONMENT
From The Story of My Thoughts'
MY
Y PEACE was especially troubled when I listened to the inner
voice which called me to letters; for I distrusted this
voice, I regarded it as a tempting demon wishing to de-
ceive me.
Or if I yielded to it, I felt my powerlessness almost
at once. I saw myself alone, with no guide, no model, whom I
wished to follow. Everything hindered. I began in several ways
at the same time, and could not tell upon which to decide.
My age, my weakness, my ignorance, my isolation, counted
for much in this grievous perplexity. The situation of France
also had something to do with it. To understand the exhaustion
of a poor mind like mine at this first awakening, one must figure
to oneself that none of the traces which have been stamped upon
the moral world by our generation were then visible.
This gen-
eration which was to renew so many ideas, so many opinions,
and the language itself, had as yet produced nothing.
Not one of the new ideas, of the new forms, had as yet
brilliantly burst forth. None of the new names which we have
been accustomed to pronounce for forty years had then emerged
from obscurity. Those who were to make them illustrious cer-
tainly were distrustful of themselves. Every year I spent several
weeks with friends at Ouilly, on the other side of the valley
of Saint-Point. Who knew that on the opposite side of the hill
there was a great poet named Lamartine, hidden under those
trees whose shadow reached even to where I was? Did he him-
self know it then?
Whichever way I looked, I found a great void on the horizon.
I felt this void in poetry, in history, in philosophy, in everything.
I suffered from it, because I was incapable of filling it, and I
did not know that others were suffering from the same ill. Each
## p. 11976 (#610) ##########################################
11976
EDGAR QUINET
in his own obscurity was working to fill the voids of which I
was at least conscious.
In my first fever I attempted all the ways at once. Upon
each I met the same aridity, the same sterility, through all the
moral world, without any work to indicate what direction to fol-
low, or any man to say authoritatively, "This is the way. "
I was then sadly distressed at my own impotence, and I may
say at the impotence of my time; since I did not see a guide in
whom I could trust, or even a companion upon the way which
I both trembled and burned to enter. I had a presentiment of
an almost entire renewal of the things of the mind. And as I
saw no one working at it, I believed myself alone. This solitude.
was crushing me just at the moment when so many imperishable
works were being silently prepared and secretly brooded over.
Although this suffering often became despair, there was noth-
ing in it resembling spleen, weariness of life, all that brought on
the wave of passions toward the end of the last century. It seems
to me that it was in many ways the opposite of weariness and
satiety. It was rather a blind impatience to live, a feverish ex-
pectation, a premature ambition for the future, a kind of intoxi-
cation of renascent thought, a frenzied thirst of the soul after
the desert of the Empire. All that, joined to a consuming desire
to produce, to create, to do something, in the midst of a world.
still empty.
Those whom I questioned later upon those years told me they
experienced something similar.
Each one thought himself alone as I did; each one was
musing as in a desert island. The renascent force of the century
was stirring them all at once, and they were experiencing the
pains of moral growth, piercing to the very bones. How many
plaints were then exhaled! How many sincere tears were shed!
Nature too laments when about to bring forth.
The generation of which I am speaking did not understand
itself as yet; that was why it was groaning: but it was about to
do its work. At least the seeds were sown; they were beginning
to sprout. France resembled the earth in the first days of March
after a long winter. Not a leaf, not a flower. Nothing more
than short grass piercing the last snows. The birds have not
yet returned; all is silent, but all is in expectation of the new
season; the good grain germinates silently in the furrow. The
laborer has a sure presentiment that the corn is coming up.
## p. 11977 (#611) ##########################################
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11977
I too in my isolation felt-towards the autumn of 1820, in
the midst of the forest of Seillon, on the borders of the ponds, in
the company of teal and heron-that profound moral vegetating
process which, obscurely, silently, was tormenting French brains
from one frontier to the other. And this vegetating process, still
hidden, intoxicated me with a mysterious irresistible breath.
I was ignorant of all the names which were about to arise, I
loved them in advance. I had a morbid desire to anticipate these
minds that I was summoning; I experienced all the impatience
of a bird at the moment of migration. Not that I wished to
depart for a foreign land. I desired to emigrate toward that new
moral world—toward those half-seen ideas which escaped me as
I approached them. I rushed forward, I fell back almost at once;
I had not wings for so great a flight.
I rose again, however; and the idea which we were all then
forming of France furnished me with a great resource against
this first oppression. France, after her two downfalls, her two
invasions, distressed, pierced to the heart, all bleeding, appeared
to us so beautiful, so noble, so proud, in her calamities! Her
disgraces did not count: they rendered her a hundred times
more touching in our eyes. There was not then in the whole
world a single man who did not believe her made for truth, for
liberty, for all that honors human-kind. With what filial tender-
ness we looked at and counted her wounds! Who did not wish
to cure them at the price of his life? Who did not wish to
carry her as homage his work, his book, his sketch, his mite of
ideas; or in default of these, a part of his heart?
France was to be reborn,-I could not doubt it. And what
prevented us from aiding this renascence? Why should not I
too bring to it my grain of sand? Scarcely had this thought
appeared to me than I felt myself transformed. What strength
to endure everything! What a spur! At those moments I be-
lieved myself to be, and I was in truth, capable of something.
I beheld as though it were accomplished what I so fervently
desired.
I applied myself again to the work. But alas! At once two
minds which I found within me embarrassed me, and prevented
me from advancing: that of the eighteenth century which de-
sired to go on living, with which I had been reared, nourished;
and that of the nineteenth, which claimed its birth. Which
should I obey? which heed? There were indeed two spirits
## p. 11978 (#612) ##########################################
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EDGAR QUINET
who took for their battle-ground the soul of every man of that
time.
I did not want to renounce either the one or the other;
and I was too new, too unarmed as yet, to attempt to conciliate
them. What then did I do? I yielded now to one, now to the
other, at the risk of dissipating myself. This violent combat,
which I was incapable of determining, was another cause of
anguish and profound grief; it was like the torture of Brune-
hault.
To direct us in this conflict of the two centuries which were
enveloping us at the same time, we had two figures only, those
of Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël. But with them the
combat, far from ceasing, recommenced. For they differed from
each other as much as can be imagined: the one Catholic, the
other Protestant; the one turned toward the Middle Ages, the
other toward the uncertain regions of the future. In seeing
them so opposed in ideas, in sentiments, even in hopes, one felt
more astray, more deserted than ever. The choice between such
diverse ways, far from being decided by their example, became
practically impossible.
By another contradiction, the language of Châteaubriand was
emancipated while his thought did not seem to be. His colors
dazzled without enlightening me, and his ideas repelled me. I
followed them only with distrust, and scarcely admitted them to
my mind. On the contrary, the genius of Madame de Staël was
free while her expression seemed enchained. In the confused
clearness of her oracles I said to myself, "This is the side for
me to advance. Here is the century of life; here are all my
expectations. " I expected the sunrise; but I saw nothing but a
vague twilight, never penetrated by the full light of the new day.
From these two figures, if I gazed upon what were then called
the masses, I had uncertainty on one side and complete night on
the other. On the latter was no apparent desire, no enthusiasm
for other ideas than those they believed themselves to possess:
on the contrary, doubt, sneers, mockery, at the least effort to
leave the beaten paths; the old names opposed to the new like
an invincible barrier; no expectation, no presentiment of some-
thing unknown; the language impoverished by silence, weakened,
become so timid that all thought frightened it.
If a literary philosophical revolution was in preparation, evi-
dently it was to be accomplished not by the will of the greatest
## p. 11979 (#613) ##########################################
EDGAR QUINET
11979
number, but by the ardor, the daring of a few solitary spirits who
would undertake at their own risk and peril to reawaken the
drowsy crowd. But who would dare begin? I sought far off, I
listened, I cried inwardly with anguish, "Is there no one, then? "
The astonishment, the incredulity of others, the anxiety of my
mother, were my only answer. These sentiments won me in my
turn.
Who? I? Write? What madness! Had I well considered?
Even if I could, dare I? Did I know even what an author was?
Had I ever beheld one with my eyes? To follow the trail of
ideas which existed nowhere in the air, to make one's life and
occupation of them, to embark one's destiny on this plank,- was
it not the vainest, most senseless of enterprises, perhaps even the
most culpable, to judge by the dismay of all my friends?
I awoke with a start as from a beautiful dream. All those
vivid lights of our generation which had appeared to me sud-
denly went out. The premature glories of which I had caught
sight disappeared one after another. All the hidden movement,
developed in a solitary and inexperienced spirit, made way for
reality. Of that expectation, of that presentiment, of that fever
of hope, there remained a naked, despoiled land, gleams of will-o'-
the-wisps on great leaden lakes, and the eternal sighing of our
forests.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Jane
Grosvenor Cooke
## p. 11980 (#614) ##########################################
11980
QUINTILIAN
(35-95? A. D. )
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
M
ARCUS FABIUS QUINTILIANUS, for many years teacher of rheto-
ric and pleader of causes at Rome, and author of the most
exhaustive treatise upon the art of oratory ever written,
offers a marked example of that even balance of qualities and mild
uniformity of moral and intellectual tint, which render it peculiarly
difficult after a lapse of time either to form a vivid idea of a writer's
personality, or to receive a pungent impression from his work. Like
his friend the epigrammatist, Martial, Quintilian was a native of
Spain; and the two men were very nearly of the same age. Quin-
tilian was born at Catagurris, now Calahorra, on the Ebro, about the
year 40 A. D.
He was educated at Rome, studying first under one
Palæmon, a grammaticus or grammar-master, of worthless character
but great ability, who had been born a slave; later with the noted
rhetorician Domitius Afer of Nîmes, who flourished in the reigns
of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Concerning the latter, Quintilian
once told a class of his own pupils a striking anecdote. Domitius
greatly resented, in his old age, the fashion which had sprung up of
interrupting a speaker by rounds of applause,-"as if," says Pliny
junior, who has preserved the incident, "he were an actor, with a
hired claque. " On one occasion, when Domitius was pleading a case
before the Centumviri in his usual grave and deliberate manner,
his voice was suddenly drowned by an unseemly uproar. He stopped
short until the noise had subsided; then resumed, and was again
interrupted. When this had happened for the third time, he abruptly
concluded his harangue with the remark,- "Centumvirs, our art is
dead! "
The father of Quintilian had also some reputation as a public
speaker in Rome. Seneca speaks of having once listened to a decla-
mation "by the Old Quintilian"; and the son, in that part of his
magnum opus which treats of rhetorical ornament, quotes as a speci-
men of paronomasia, or play upon words, a not particularly brilliant
pun of his father's on the verbs immorier and immoror. Quintilian
returned to Spain after his studies were finished, and presumably
began the practice of his profession there; but went again to Rome
## p. 11981 (#615) ##########################################
QUINTILIAN
11981
in the train of Galba, the governor of Spain, when the latter was
proclaimed Emperor, upon Nero's death. Quintilian was now (68
A. D. ) not far from thirty; and for the twenty succeeding years,
though Rome changed rulers five times during the interval, he con-
tinued to prosper at the capital, as an orator and instructor in rhet-
oric. The younger Pliny was one of his pupils; Tacitus the historian
was probably another. Quintilian had as a client, upon one occas-
ion, that same Queen Berenice who once went, "with great pomp,
to hear Paul of Tarsus plead at Cæsarea;" and the Spaniard also
enjoyed the privilege of speaking apud ipsam,- in the presence of the
royal, though no longer youthful, charmer.
The two collections of speeches which once passed under Quin-
tilian's name are now held to be all spurious; but he himself speaks
of having been driven, by the nuisance of garbled reports and un-
authorized publications, to edit his plea in the case of one Nævius of
Arpinum; and he also makes repeated reference, in his main work,
to a previous essay on the Decline of Oratory - which has perished.
At the age of about fifty, he retired from the practice of his twofold
calling, and applied himself to the composition of the treatise by
which his name is remembered, 'Institutionis Oratoriæ XII Libri ›
(Twelve Books concerning the Education of an Orator), commonly
known as the 'Institutes. ' Thanks to heavy fees and imperial bounty,
-
- for he was granted by Vespasian a handsome salary from the
imperial treasury, and was the first rhetorician ever so endowed,-
Quintilian was now a rich man, and had lately married a very young
wife; probably out of that senatorial family into which one of his
beloved and deeply mourned sons was early adopted. Beside a short
preface addressed to his bookseller Trypho, and a general introduc-
tion, there are separate introductions to eight out of the twelve books
of the 'Institutio'; and from them we gather almost all the remain-
ing facts which are to be learned concerning the life of Quintilian.
In the proem to the fourth book he tells his friend Marcellus Victor,
to whom the whole work is inscribed, that he finds a fresh incentive
to care in its composition, in the fact that the Emperor Domitian has
appointed him tutor to his grandnephews, the sons of Flavius Clem-
ens and Vespasian's granddaughter Domatilla. These boys had lately
been adopted by the potentate, and named for succession to the
throne; and Quintilian also received, at the request of their father,
the appointment of Honorary Consul. He does not appear to have
been particularly a sycophant; but he would have been more than
human, and much more than first-century Roman, if he had not gone
on to write of his imperial patron in a strain which is a little sick-
ening when compared with what we know, from other sources, of
that dull and ruthless tyrant.
## p. 11982 (#616) ##########################################
11982
QUINTILIAN
In the preface to the sixth book of the Institutes' we see Quin-
tilian in a nobler light, and are brought near for a moment to the
unspoiled heart of the man. Very simply and affectingly he makes
the avowal that he had all but abandoned, at this point, the labor
of his life, in the despair occasioned by those crushing domestic
breavements which made his latter days desolate. The girl-wife had
died at nineteen, after giving birth to two boys: one of whom fol-
lowed his mother in early infancy; while the other, a remarkably
brilliant and promising child, lived to be only nine, and then suc-
cumbed to a long illness attended by great suffering, which he bore
with the utmost courage and sweetness. "What shall I do? " cries
the stricken father, "or what further use can there be in life for one
to whom the gods are so hostile ? What good parent could forgive
me, if I could go calmly on with my studies, after having survived
all my own? " Nevertheless, in the end, like Job when similarly
afflicted, he "girded up his loins like a man," and "answered" the
Power which had bereft him, by renewed devotion to his work;
finding there, no doubt, as many another sufferer has done, the best
antidote to pain. It has been supposed by some, on the strength of
an epistle of Pliny's (Book vi. , xxxi. ), that Quintilian married again
after sixty, and had a daughter who lived to maturity; but this is
most unlikely. The Quintilian for whose daughter the Complete
Letter-Writer incloses a wedding present of fifty thousand nummi
(about $2500) was plainly another man. Pliny does allude in several
places to the orator and his valued instructions, but always as though
he were already dead; and the probability is that he did not long sur-
vive the accession of Trajan.
The contemporaries of Quintilian,, even the most caustic of them,
have nothing but good to say of the man. Martial decorates him
with a honeyed epigram (Book xi. , xc. ):
"Quintiliane vagæ moderator summe juventæ
Gloria Romanæ, Quintiliane togæ. "
And even Juvenal, though protesting in his sixth satire, that only
through unparalleled good fortune could a teacher of rhetoric ever
have become a consul and a large landed proprietor, yet admits,
very handsomely for him, that these distinctions were deserved in
Quintilian's case; and that he was "fortunate and handsome and
clever; fortunate [again! ] and wise, high-minded and open-hearted. "
In his own writings Quintilian shows himself not merely the loving
husband and father, but indulgent and sympathetic with all child-
ren; and remarkably gentle in his judgments, and temperate in his
strictures upon other writers, -even on one whose foibles, personal
and literary, were as distasteful to him as those of Seneca. He knew,
## p. 11983 (#617) ##########################################
QUINTILIAN
11983
so to speak, all that had been written in his day; and his own taste
was excellent. He loved the best, and he loved it unaffectedly. Him-
self the purest Latin prose-writer of the "silver age," his heart was in
the "golden age"; and his feeling for Cicero and Virgil, as well as for
Homer and the great Greeks, was almost a religion.
are
The most interesting portions of the 'Institutionis Oratoriæ
the General Introduction, in which the scheme of the work is un-
folded; the first and second books, which are devoted to infantile and
primary-school education; the tenth, which enumerates the authors
with whom an accomplished speaker should be familiar, and gives
brief but often admirable criticisms of their best-known works; the
eleventh, which deals with the personal graces an orator ought most
to cultivate; and the twelfth, which amplifies the proposition laid
down at the outset, that the orator who would achieve success must
be essentially a good man. We note the fact that Quintilian, like the
ancients generally, conceives of human knowledge as one organic
whole, each of whose parts has a vital and necessary dependence
upon all the rest. In Cicero's time, he says, it was taken for granted
that a great orator would also be a cultivated and conscientious man:
but now Quintilian has to deplore what he rather affectedly calls "a
most inartistic division of the great art"; insomuch that the mere
causidicus, who will talk upon any side for pay, is considered as much
an orator as he who gives eloquent expression to his own convictions.
When he comes to treat of elementary instruction, Quintilian starts
with the cheerful assumption that the vast majority of children are
naturally clever and capable. A dull mind he thinks as rare among
them as a deformed body. He would have the future orator's train-
ing begin in the cradle; and insists that the nurse to whose charge
he is committed for his first three years should be a woman of some
instruction, and especially of refined speech, else he will never artic-
ulate properly. Our author observes, at this point, that it might be
well for the infant also to have had a highly educated father, and
a mother as able as the celebrated Cornelia, and the daughters of
Lælius the wise. But he seems to admit that this is rather a pluper-
fect requirement, not easy to be met after the child is an accom-
plished fact.
Let him have, at all events, an ivory alphabet among
his playthings; for Quintilian thinks, though he does not clearly say
why, that it is better to know the form of the letters by sight, before
one learns the sound of them by the ear. He would have the little
one taught to speak Greek first; yet not to use it so exclusively as to
affect his pronunciation of Latin.
