No More Learning

3519 (#497) ###########################################

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
3519
worth. Let the individual feel that through his immortality he
may concentrate in his own being a greater good than that of
nations. Let him feel that he is placed in the community, not
to part with his individuality or to become a tool, but that he
should find a sphere for his various powers, and a preparation
for immortal glory. To me the progress of society consists in
nothing more than in bringing out the individual, in giving him.
a consciousness of his own being, and in quickening him to
strengthen and elevate his own mind.
In thus maintaining that the individual is the end of social
institutions, I may be thought to discourage public efforts and
the sacrifice of private interests to the State. Far from it. No
man, I affirm, will serve his fellow-beings so effectually, so fer-
vently, as he who is not their slave; as he who, casting off every
other yoke, subjects himself to the law of duty in his own mind.
For this law enjoins a disinterested and generous spirit, as man's
glory and likeness to his Maker. Individuality, or moral self-
subsistence, is the surest foundation of an all-comprehending love.
No man so multiplies his bonds with the community, as he who
watches most jealously over his own perfection. There is a beau-
tiful harmony between the good of the State and the moral free-
dom and dignity of the individual. Were it not so, were these
interests in any case discordant, were an individual ever called
to serve his country by acts debasing his own mind, he ought
not to waver a moment as to the good which he should prefer.
Property, life, he should joyfully surrender to the State. But his
soul he must never stain or enslave. From poverty, pain, the
rack, the gibbet, he should not recoil; but for no good of others
ought he to part with self-control, or violate the inward law.
We speak of the patriot as sacrificing himself to the public weal.
Do we mean that he sacrifices what is most properly himself,
the principle of piety and virtue? Do we not feel that however
great may be the good which through his sufferings accrues to
the State, a greater and purer glory redounds to himself; and
that the most precious fruit of his disinterested services is the
strength of resolution and philanthropy which is accumulated in
his own soul? .
The advantages of civilization have their peril. In such a
state of society, opinion and law impose salutary restraint, and
produce general order and security. But the power of opinion
grows into a despotism, which more than all things represses


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3520
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
original and free thought, subverts individuality of character, re-
duces the community to a spiritless monotony, and chills the
love of perfection. Religion, considered simply as the principle
which balances the power of human opinion, which takes man
out of the grasp of custom and fashion, and teaches him to refer
himself to a higher tribunal, is an infinite aid to moral strength
and elevation.
An important benefit of civilization, of which we hear much
from the political economist, is the division of labor, by which
arts are perfected. But this, by confining the mind to an
unceasing round of petty operations, tends to break it into little-
ness. We possess improved fabrics, but deteriorated men.
Another advantage of civilization is, that manners are refined
and accomplishments multiplied; but these are continually seen
to supplant simplicity of character, strength of feeling, the love
of nature, the love of inward beauty and glory. Under outward
courtesy we see a cold selfishness, a spirit of calculation, and
little energy of love.
I confess I look round on civilized society with many fears,
and with more and more earnest desire that a regenerating spirit
from heaven, from religion, may descend upon and pervade it.
I particularly fear that various causes are acting powerfully
among ourselves, to inflame and madden that enslaving and
degrading principle, the passion for property. For example, the
absence of hereditary distinctions in our country gives prominence
to the distinction of wealth, and holds up this as the chief prize
to ambition. Add to this the epicurean, self-indulgent habits
which our prosperity has multiplied, and which crave insatiably
for enlarging wealth as the only means of gratification. This
peril is increased by the spirit of our times, which is a spirit of
commerce, industry, internal improvements, mechanical invention,
political economy, and peace. Think not that I would disparage
commerce, mechanical skill, and especially pacific connections
among States.
But there is danger that these blessings may by
perversion issue in a slavish love of lucre. It seems to me that
some of the objects which once moved men most powerfully are
gradually losing their sway, and thus the mind is left more open
to the excitement of wealth. For example, military distinction is
taking the inferior place which it deserves: and the consequence
will be that the energy and ambition which have been exhausted
in war will seek new directions; and happy shall we be if they


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WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
3521
"
do not flow into the channel of gain. So I think that political
eminence is to be less and less coveted; and there is danger that
the energies absorbed by it will be spent in seeking another
kind of dominion, the dominion of property. And if such be the
result, what shall we gain by what is called the progress of
society? What shall we gain by national peace, if men, instead
of meeting on the field of battle, wage with one another the
more inglorious strife of dishonest and rapacious traffic? What
shall we gain by the waning of political ambition, if the intrigues
of the exchange take place of those of the cabinet, and private
pomp and luxury be substituted for the splendor of public life?
I am no foe to civilization. I rejoice in its progress. But I
mean to say that without a pure religion to modify its tendencies,
to inspire and refine it, we shall be corrupted, not ennobled by
it. It is the excellence of the religious principle, that it aids
and carries forward civilization, extends science and arts, multi-
plies the conveniences and ornaments of life, and at the same
time spoils them of their enslaving power, and even converts
them into means and ministers of that spiritual freedom which
when left to themselves they endanger and destroy.
In order, however, that religion should yield its full and best
fruit, one thing is necessary; and the times require that I should
state it with great distinctness. It is necessary that religion
should be held and professed in a liberal spirit. Just as far as
it assumes an intolerant, exclusive, sectarian form, it subverts
instead of strengthening the soul's freedom, and becomes the
heaviest and most galling yoke which is laid on the intellect and
conscience. Religion must be viewed, not as a monopoly of
priests, ministers, or sects, not as conferring on any man a right
to dictate to his fellow-beings, not as an instrument by which
the few may awe the many, not as bestowing on one a preroga-
tive which is not enjoyed by all; but as the property of every
human being and as the great subject for every human mind.
It must be regarded as the revelation of a common Father to
whom all have equal access, who invites all to the like immedi-
ate communion, who has no favorites, who has appointed no
infallible expounders of his will, who opens his works and word
to every eye, and calls upon all to read for themselves, and to
follow fearlessly the best convictions of their own understandings.
Let religion be seized on by individuals or sects, as their spe-
cial province; let them clothe themselves with God's prerogative
VI-221


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3522
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
of judgment; let them succeed in enforcing their creed by penal-
ties of law, or penalties of opinion; let them succeed in fixing a
brand on virtuous men whose only crime is free investigation –
and religion becomes the most blighting tyranny which can
establish itself over the mind. You have all heard of the out-
ward evils which religion, when thus turned into tyranny, has
inflicted; how it has dug dreary dungeons, kindled fires for the
martyr, and invented instruments of exquisite torture. But to
me all this is less fearful than its influence over the mind.
When I see the superstitions which it has fastened on the con-
science, the spiritual terrors with which it has haunted and
subdued the ignorant and susceptible, the dark appalling views
of God which it has spread far and wide, the dread of inquiry
which it has struck into superior understandings, and the servil-
ity of spirit which it has made to pass for piety-when I see
all this, the fire, the scaffold, and the outward inquisition, terri-
ble as they are, seem to me inferior evils. I look with a solemn
joy on the heroic spirits who have met, freely and fearlessly, pain
and death in the cause of truth and human rights. But there
are other victims of intolerance on whom I look with unmixed
sorrow. They are those who, spell-bound by early prejudice or
by intimidations from the pulpit and the press, dare not think;
who anxiously stifle every doubt or misgiving in regard to their
opinions, as if to doubt were a crime; who shrink from the
seekers after truth as from infection; who deny all virtue which
does not wear the livery of their own sect; who, surrendering to
others their best powers, receive unresistingly a teaching which
wars against reason and conscience; and who think it a merit to
impose on such as live within their influence, the grievous
bondage which they bear themselves. How much to be deplored
is it, that religion, the very principle which is designed to raise
men above the judgment and power of man, should become the
chief instrument of usurpation over the soul!


## p. 3523 (#501) ###########################################

3523
GEORGE CHAPMAN
(1559? -1634)
EORGE CHAPMAN, the translator of Homer, is of all the Eliza-
bethan dramatists the most undramatic. He is akin to
Marlowe in being more of an epic poet than a playwright;
but unlike his young compeer "of the mighty line," who in his suc-
cessive plays learnt how to subdue an essentially epic genius to the
demands of the stage, Chapman never got near the true secret of
dramatic composition. Yet he witnessed the growth of the glorious
Elizabethan drama, from its feeble beginning in Gorboduc' and
'Gammer Gurton's Needle' through its
very flowering in the immortal master-
pieces. He was born about 1559, five years
before Marlowe, the "morning star" of the
English drama, and he died in 1634, sur-
viving Shakespeare, in whom it reached its
maturity, and Beaumont, Middleton, and
Fletcher, whose works foreshadow decay.
From his native town Hitchin he passed
on to Oxford, where he distinguished him-
self as a classical scholar. Then for six-
teen years nothing definite is known about
him. His life has been called one of the
great blanks of English literature. He is
sometimes sent traveling on the Continent,
as a convenient means of accounting for this gap, and also to explain
the intimate acquaintance with German manners and customs and
the language displayed in his tragedy Alphonsus, Emperor of Ger-
many,' which argues at least for a trip to that country. In 1594 he
published the two hymns in the Shadow of Night'; and soon after
he must have begun writing for the stage, for his first extant
comedy, 'The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,' was acted in 1596, and
two years later he appears in Francis Meres's famous enumeration of
the poets and wits of the time. Hereafter his life is to be dated by
his publications.
GEORGE CHAPMAN

He occupies a position unique among the Elizabethans, because
of his wide culture and the diverse character of his work. Though
held together by his strong personality, it yet can be divided into
the distinct groups of comedies, tragedies, poems, and translations.


## p. 3524 (#502) ###########################################

GEORGE CHAPMAN
3524
>>
The first of these is the weakest, for Chapman was not a comic
genius. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria' and 'An Humorous Day's
Mirth deserve but a passing mention. In 1605 All Fooles' was
published, acted six years earlier under the name The World
Runs on Wheels. ' It is a realistic satire, with some good scenes and
character-drawing. 'The Gentleman Usher' is full of poetry and
ingenious situations. 'Monsieur D'Oline' contains also some good
comedy work. The Widow's Tears' tells the well-known story of
the Ephesian matron; though coarse, it is handled not without comic
talent. In his comedy work Chapman is neither new nor original;
he followed in Jonson's footsteps, and suggests moreover Terence,
Plautus, Fletcher, and Lyly. He has wit, satire, and sarcasm; but
along with these, poor construction and little invention. He was
going against his grain, and we have here the frankest expression of
"pot-boiling to be found among the Elizabethan dramatists. Writing
for the stage was the only kind of literature that really paid; the
playhouse was to the Elizabethan what the paper-covered novel is to
a modern reader. This accounts for the enormous dramatic produc-
tivity of the time, and also explains why the most finely endowed
minds, in need of money, produced dramas instead of other imagi-
native work. By the time he wrote his comedies, Chapman had
already won his place as poet and translator, but it earned him no
income. Pope, one hundred and twenty-five years later, made a for-
tune by his translation of Homer. But then the number of readers
had increased, and publishers could afford to give large sums to a
popular author. Chapman takes rank among the dramatists mainly
by his four chief tragedies: 'Bussy d'Ambois,' 'The Revenge of
Bussy d'Ambois,' The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron,' and
The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. ' They are unique among
the plays of the period, in that they deal with almost contemporary
events in French history; not with the purpose of exciting any feel-
ing for or against the parties introduced, but in calm ignoring of
public opinion, they bring recent happenings on the stage to suit the
dramatist's purpose. He drew his material mainly from the Historiæ
Sui Temporis' of Jacques Auguste de Thou, but he troubled him-
self little about following it with accuracy, or even painting the
characters of the chief actors as true to life. In these tragedies,
more than in the comedies, we get sight of Chapman the man;
indeed, it is his great failing as playwright that his own individuality
is constantly cropping out. He alone, of all the great Elizabethan
dramatists, was unable to go outside of himself and enter into the
habits and thoughts of his characters. Chapman was too much of a
scholar and a thinker to be a successful delineator of men. His is the
drama of the man who thinks about life, not of one who lives it in


## p. 3525 (#503) ###########################################

GEORGE CHAPMAN
3525
its fullness.
He does not get into the hearts of men. He has too
many theories. Homer had become the ruling influence in his life,
and he looked at things from the Homeric point of view and presented
life epically. He is at his best in single didactic or narrative pas-
sages, and exquisite bits of poetry are prodigally scattered up and
down the pages of his tragedies. Next to Shakespeare he is the
most sententious of dramatists. He sounded the depths of things in
thought which theretofore only Marlowe had done. He is the most
metaphysical of dramatists.
Yet his thought is sometimes too much for him, and he becomes
obscure. He packs words as tight as Browning, and the sense is
often more difficult to unravel. He is best in the closet drama.
'Cæsar and Pompey,' published in 1631 but never acted, contains
some of his finest thoughts.
Chapman also collaborated with other dramatists. 'Eastward Ho,'
in 1605, written with Marston and Jonson, is one of the liveliest and
best constructed Elizabethan comedies, combining the excellences of
the three men without their faults. Some allusion to the Scottish
nation offended King James; the authors we confined in Fleet
Prison and barely escaped having their ears and noses slit. With
Shirley he wrote the comedy The Ball' and the tragedy 'Chabot,
Admiral of France. '
Chapman wrote comedies to make money, and tragedies because
it was the fashion of the day, and he studded these latter with
exquisite passages because he was a poet born. But he was above
all a scholar with wide and deep learning, not only of the classics
but also of the Renaissance literature. From 1613 to 1631 he does
not appear to have written for the stage, but was occupied with his
translations of Homer, Hesiod, Juvenal, Musæus, Petrarch, and others.
In 1614, at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, was performed
in the most lavish manner the 'Memorable Masque of the two Hon-
orable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple and Lyncoln
Inne. ' Chapman also completed Marlowe's unfinished 'Hero and
Leander. '
His fame however rests on his version of Homer. The first
portion appeared in 1598: 'Seven Bookes of the Iliade of Homer,
Prince of Poets; Translated according to the Greeke in judgment of
his best Commentaries. ' In 1611 the Iliad complete appeared, and
in 1615 the whole of the Odyssey; though he by no means reproduces
Homer faithfully, he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and
grandeur. It is a typical product of the English Renaissance, full of
vigor and passion, but also of conceit and fancifulness. It lacks the
simplicity and the serenity of the Greek, but has caught its noble-
ness and rapidity. As has been said, "It is what Homer might have


## p. 3526 (#504) ###########################################

3526
GEORGE CHAPMAN
written before he came to years of discretion. " Yet with all its
shortcomings it remains one of the classics of Elizabethan literature.
Pope consulted it diligently, and has been accused of at times re-ver-
sifying this instead of the Greek. Coleridge said of it:—
"The Iliad is fine, but less equal in the translation [than the Odyssey], as
well as less interesting in itself. What is stupidly said of Shakespeare is
really true and appropriate of Chapman: Mighty faults counterpoised by
mighty beauties. . . . It is as truly an original poem as the 'Faerie
Queen'; it will give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than
Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome, most anti-Homeric Miltonisms.
For Chapman writes and feels as a poet, -as Homer might have written had
he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an
exquisite poem in spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and awk-
wardness, which are however amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness
and beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling. "
Keats's tribute, the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer,' attests another poet's appreciation of the Elizabethan's par-
aphrase. Keats diligently explored this "new planet" that swam
into his ken, and his own poetical diction is at times touched by the
quaintness and fancifulness of the elder poet he admired.
Lamb, that most sympathetic critic of the old dramatists, speaks
of him as follows:-
"Webster has happily characterized the 'full and heightened' style of
Chapman, who of all the English play-writers perhaps approaches nearest to
Shakespeare in the descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less purely
dramatic. He could not go out of himself, as Shakespeare could shift at
pleasure, to inform and animate other existences, but in himself he had an
eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and modes of being. He
would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not abundantly shown
himself to be one; for his 'Homer is not so properly a translation as the
stories of Achilles and Ulysses rewritten. The earnestness and passion which
he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader
of more modern translations.
The great obstacle to Chapman's trans-
lations being read is their unconquerable quaintness. He pours out in the
same breath the most just and natural, and the most violent and crude
expressions. He seems to grasp at whatever words come first to hand while
the enthusiasm is upon him, as if all others must be inadequate to the divine
meaning. But passion (the all-in-all in poetry) is everywhere present, raising
the low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense into the absurd. He makes
his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be
moved by words, or in spite of them be disgusted and overcome their dis-
gust. »


## p. 3527 (#505) ###########################################

GEORGE CHAPMAN
3527
ULYSSES AND NAUSICAA
From the Translation of Homer's Odyssey
ST
TRAIGHT rose the lovely Morn, that up did raise
Fair-veil'd Nausicaa, whose dream her praise
To admiration took; who no time spent
To give the rapture of her vision vent
To her loved parents, whom she found within.
Her mother set at fire, who had to spin
A rock, whose tincture with sea-purple shined;
Her maids about her. But she chanced to find
Her father going abroad, to council call'd
By his grave Senate; and to him exhaled
Her smother'd bosom was:- "Loved sire," said she,
"Will you not now command a coach for me,
Stately and complete? fit for me to bear
To wash at flood the weeds I cannot wear
Before re-purified? Yourself it fits
To wear fair weeds, as every man that sits
In place of council. And five sons you have,
Two wed, three bachelors, that must be brave
In every day's shift, that they may go dance;
For these three last with these things must advance
Their states in marriage; and who else but I,
Their sister, should their dancing rites supply? "
This general cause she shew'd, and would not name
Her mind of nuptials to her sire, for shame.
He understood her yet, and thus replied:
"Daughter! nor these, nor any grace beside,
I either will deny thee, or defer,
Mules, nor a coach, of state and circular,
Fitting at all parts. Go; my servants shall
Serve thy desires, and thy command in all. "
The servants then commanded soon obey'd,
Fetch'd coach, and mules join'd in it. Then the Maid
Brought from the chamber her rich weeds, and laid
All up in coach; in which her mother placed
A maund of victuals, varied well in taste,
And other junkets. Wine she likewise fill'd
Within a goat-skin bottle, and distill'd
Sweet and moist oil into a golden cruse,
Both for her daughter's and her handmaid's use,
To soften their bright bodies, when they rose
Cleansed from their cold baths. Up to coach then goes


## p. 3528 (#506) ###########################################

3528
GEORGE CHAPMAN
Th' observed Maid; takes both the scourge and reins;
And to her side her handmaid straight attains.
Nor these alone, but other virgins, graced
The nuptial chariot. The whole bevy placed,
Nausicaa scourged to make the coach-mules run,
That neigh'd, and paced their usual speed, and soon
Both maids and weeds brought to the river-side,
Where baths for all the year their use supplied.
Whose waters were so pure they would not stain,
But still ran fair forth; and did more remain
Apt to purge stains, for that purged stain within,
Which by the water's pure store was not seen.
These, here arrived, the mules uncoach'd, and drave
Up the gulfy river's shore, that gave
Sweet grass to them. The maids from coach then took
Their clothes, and steep'd them in the sable brook;
Then put them into springs, and trod them clean
With cleanly feet; adventuring wagers then,
Who should have soonest and most cleanly done.
When having thoroughly cleansed, they spread them on
The flood's shore, all in order. And then, where
The waves the pebbles wash'd, and ground was clear,
They bathed themselves, and all with glittering oil
Smooth'd their white skins; refreshing then their toil
With pleasant dinner, by the river's side.
Yet still watch'd when the sun their clothes had dried.
Till which time, having dined, Nausicaa
With other virgins did at stool-ball play,
Their shoulder-reaching head-tires laying by.
Nausicaa, with the wrists of ivory,
The liking stroke strook, singing first a song,
As custom order'd, and amidst the throng
Made such a shew, and so past all was seen,
As when the chaste-born, arrow-loving Queen,
Along the mountains gliding, either over
Spartan Taygetus, whose tops far discover,
Or Eurymanthus, in the wild boar's chace,
Or swift-hooved hart, and with her Jove's fair race,
The field Nymphs, sporting; amongst whom, to see
How far Diana had priority
(Though all were fair) for fairness; yet of all,
(As both by head and forehead being more tall)
Latona triumph'd, since the dullest sight
Might easily judge whom her pains brought to light;


## p. 3529 (#507) ###########################################

GEORGE CHAPMAN
3529
Nausicaa so, whom never husband tamed,
Above them all in all the beauties flamed.
But when they now made homewards, and array'd,
Ordering their weeds; disorder'd as they play'd,
Mules and coach ready, then Minerva thought
What means to wake Ulysses might be wrought,
That he might see this lovely-sighted maid,
Whom she intended should become his aid,
Bring him to town, and his return advance.
Her mean was this, though thought a stool-ball chance:
The queen now, for the upstroke, strook the ball
Quite wide off th' other maids, and made it fall
Amidst the whirlpools. At which outshriek'd all,
And with the shrick did wise Ulysses wake;
Who, sitting up, was doubtful who should make
That sudden outery, and in mind thus strived:-
"On what a people am I now arrived?
At civil hospitable men, that fear
The gods? or dwell injurious mortals here,
Unjust and churlish? Like the female cry
Of youth it sounds. What are they? Nymphs bred high
On tops of hills, or in the founts of floods,
In herby marshes, or in leavy woods?
Or are they high-spoke men I now am near?
I'll prove and see. " With this the wary peer
Crept forth the thicket, and an olive bough
Broke with his broad hand; which he did bestow
In covert of his nakedness, and then
Put hasty head out. Look how from his den
A mountain lion looks, that, all embrued
With drops of trees, and weatherbeaten-hued,
Bold of his strength goes on, and in his eye
A burning furnace glows, all bent to prey
On sheep, or oxen, or the upland hart,
His belly charging him, and he must part
Stakes with the herdsman in his beasts' attempt,
Even where from rape their strengths are most exempt:
So wet, so weather-beat, so stung with need,
Even to the home-fields of the country's breed
Ulysses was to force forth his access,
Though merely naked; and his sight did press
The eyes of soft-haired virgins. Horrid was
His rough appearance to them; the hard pass
He had at sea stuck by him. All in flight
The virgins scattered, frighted with this sight,


## p. 3530 (#508) ###########################################

GEORGE CHAPMAN
3530
About the prominent windings of the flood.
All but Nausicaa fled; but she fast stood:
Pallas had put a boldness in her breast,
And in her fair limbs tender fear comprest.
And still she stood him, as resolved to know
What man he was; or out of what should grow
His strange repair to them.
THE DUKE OF BYRON IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH
From the Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron›
Y HORROR of death, let me alone in peace,
And leave my soul to me, whom it concerns;
You have no charge of it; I feel her free:
How she doth rouse, and like a falcon stretch
B
Her silver wings; a threatening death with death;
At whom I joyfully will cast her off.
I know this body but a sink of folly,
The groundwork and raised frame of woe and frailty;
The bond and bundle of corruption;
A quick corse, only sensible of grief,
A walking sepulchre, or household thief:
A glass of air, broken with less than breath,
A slave bound face to face to death, till death.
And what said all you more? I know, besides,
That life is but a dark and stormy night
Of senseless dreams, terrors, and broken sleeps;
A tyranny, devising pains to plague
And make man long in dying, racks his death;
And death is nothing: what can you say more?
I bring a long globe and a little earth,
Am seated like earth, betwixt both the heavens,
That if I rise, to heaven I rise; if fall,
I likewise fall to heaven; what stronger faith
Hath any of your souls? what say you more?
Why lose I time in these things? Talk of knowledge,
It serves for inward use.
I will not die
Like to a clergyman; but like the captain
That prayed on horseback, and with sword in hand,
Threatened the sun, commanding it to stand;
These are but ropes of sand.


## p. 3531 (#509) ###########################################

3531
FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
(1768-1848)
ISCOUNT
V
DE CHÂTEAUBRIAND, the founder of the romantic
school in French literature, and one of the most brilliant
and polished writers of the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, was born at St. Malo in Brittany, September 14th, 1768. On the
paternal side he was a direct descendant of Thierri, grandson of
Alain III. , who was king of Armorica in the ninth century. Destined
for the Church, he became a pronounced skeptic, and entered the
army. In his nineteenth year he was presented at court, and became
acquainted with men of letters like La
Harpe, Le Brun, and Fontanes. At the
outbreak of the Revolution he quitted the
service, and embarked for America in Jan-
uary, 1791. Tiring of the restraints of
civilization, he plunged into the virgin
forests of Canada, and for several months
lived with the savages. This remarkable
experience inspired his most notable ro-
mantic work.

CHÂTEAUBRIAND
Returning to France in 1792, he cast his
lot with the Royalists, was wounded at
Thionville, and finally retired to England,
where for eight years he earned a bare sup-
port by teaching and translating. His first book was the 'Essay on
Revolutions (1797), which displayed some imagination, little reflec-
tion, and an affectation of misanthropy and skepticism. The subse-
quent change in his convictions followed on the death of his pious
mother in 1798. Returning to France he published Atala,' an idyll
à la mode, founded on the loves of two young savages. Teeming
with glowing descriptions of nature, and marked by elevation of
sentiment combined with a sensuousness almost Oriental, this barbaric
'Paul and Virginia' immediately established the author's fame.
Thus encouraged, in the following year he gave the world his
'Genius of Christianity,' in which the poetic and symbolic features of
Christianity are painted in dazzling colors and with great charm of
style. The enormous success of this book during the first decade of
the century unquestionably did more to revive French interest in
religion than the establishment of the Concordat itself. Napoleon


## p. 3532 (#510) ###########################################

3532
FRANÇOIS RENE AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
testified his gratitude by appointing the author secretary to the em-
bassy at Rome, and afterward minister plenipotentiary to the Valais.
When the Duke d'Enghien was assassinated (March 21st, 1804), Châ-
teaubriand resigned from the diplomatic service, although the ink
was scarcely dry in which the First Consul had signed his new com-
mission. Two years later the successful author departed on a senti-
mental pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He visited Asia Minor, Egypt,
and Spain, where amid the ruins of the Alhambra he wrote The
Last of the Abencerrages. To this interesting tour the world owes
the 'Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem' (1811), that book which in
Saintsbury's opinion remains "the pattern of all the picturesque
travels of modern times. "
With the publication of the 'Itinerary the literary career of
Châteaubriand virtually closes. On the return of the Bourbons to
power, the man of letters was tempted to enter the exciting arena
of politics, becoming successively ambassador at Berlin, at the court
of St. James, delegate to the Congress of Verona, and Minister of
Foreign Affairs. In 1830, unwilling to pledge himself to Louis
Philippe, he relinquished the dignity of peer of the realm accorded
him in 1815, and retired to a life of comparative poverty, which was
brightened by the friendship and devotion of Madame Récamier.
Until his death on the 4th of July, 1848, Châteaubriand devoted
himself to the completion of his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe,' an auto-
biographical work which was published posthumously, and which,
although diffuse and even puerile at times, contains much brilliant
writing.
His contemporaries pronounced Châteaubriand the foremost man
of letters of France, if not of all Europe. During the last half of
this century his fame has sensibly diminished both at home and
abroad, and in the history of French literature he is chiefly signifi-
cant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern
romantic school. Yet while admitting the glaring faults, exaggera-
tions, affectations, and egotism of the author of the Genius of
Christianity, a fair criticism admits his best passages to be unsur-
passed for perfection of style and gorgeousness of coloring. 'Atala'
is a classic with real life in it even yet,-powerful, interesting, and
even thrilling, in spite of its theatricality, and often magnificent in
description.
In 1811 Châteaubriand was elected to the French Academy as
the successor of the poet Chénier. Among his works not already
mentioned are ‘René' (1807), a sort of sequel to 'Atala'; 'The Mar-
tyrs' (1810); 'The Natchez' (1826), containing recollections of Amer-
ica; an Essay on English Literature' (2 vols. ); and a translation of
Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (1836).


## p. 3533 (#511) ###########################################

FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
3533
CHRISTIANITY VINDICATED
From The Genius of Christianity›
D
URING the reign of the Emperor Julian commenced a perse-
cution, perhaps more dangerous than violence itself, which
consisted in loading the Christians with disgrace and con-
tempt. Julian began his hostility by plundering the churches;
he then forbade the faithful to teach or to study the liberal arts
and sciences. Sensible, however, of the important advantages of
the institutions of Christianity, the emperor determined to estab-
lish hospitals and monasteries, and after the example of the
gospel system to combine morality with religion; he ordered a
kind of sermons to be delivered in the pagan temples.
From the time of Julian to that of Luther, the Church, flour-
ishing in full vigor, had no occasion for apologists; but when
the Western schism took place, with new enemies arose new
defenders. It cannot be denied that at first the Protestants had
the superiority, at least in regard to forms, as Montesquieu has
remarked. Erasmus himself was weak when opposed to Luther,
and Theodore Beza had a captivating manner of writing, in
which his opponents were too often deficient.
It is natural for schism to lead to infidelity, and for heresy to
engender atheism. Bayle and Spinoza arose after Calvin, and
they found in Clarke and Leibnitz men of sufficient talents to
refute their sophistry. Abbadie wrote an apology for religion,
remarkable for method and sound argument. Unfortunately his
style is feeble, though his ideas are not destitute of brilliancy.
"If the ancient philosophers," observes Abbadie, "adored the
Virtues, their worship was only a beautiful species of idolatry. "
While the Church was yet enjoying her triumph, Voltaire
renewed the persecution of Julian. He possessed the baneful
art of making infidelity fashionable among a capricious but
amiable people. Every species of self-love was pressed into this
insensate league. Religion was attacked with every kind of
weapon, from the pamphlet to the folio, from the epigram to the
sophism. No sooner did a religious book appear than the author
was overwhelmed with ridicule, while works which Voltaire was
the first to laugh at among his friends were extolled to the
skies. Such was his superiority over his disciples that he some-
times could not forbear diverting himself with their irreligious


## p. 3534 (#512) ###########################################

3534
FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
enthusiasm. Meanwhile the destructive system continued to
spread throughout France. It was first adopted in those provin-
cial academies, each of which was a focus of bad taste and fac-
tion. Women of fashion and grave philosophers alike read
lectures on infidelity. It was at length concluded that Christ-
ianity was no better than a barbarous system, and that its fall
could not happen too soon for the liberty of mankind, the promo-
tion of knowledge, the improvement of the arts, and the general
comfort of life.
If no
To say nothing of the abyss into which we were plunged by
this aversion to the religion of the gospel, its immediate conse-
quence was a return, more affected than sincere, to that mythol-
ogy of Greece and Rome to which all the wonders of antiquity
were ascribed. People were not ashamed to regret that worship
which had transformed mankind into a herd of madmen, mon-
sters of indecency, or ferocious beasts. This could not fail to
inspire contempt for the writers of the age of Louis XIV. , who
however had reached the high perfection which distinguished
them only by being religious.
one ventured to oppose
them face to face, on account of their firmly established reputa-
tion, they were nevertheless attacked in a thousand indirect
ways. It was asserted that they were unbelievers in their hearts;
or at least that they would have been much greater characters
had they lived in our times. Every author blessed his good
fortune for having been born in the glorious age of the Diderots
and d'Alemberts, in that age when all the attainments of the
human mind were ranged in alphabetical order in the Encyclo-
pédie,' that Babel of the sciences and of reason.
It was therefore necessary to prove that on the contrary the
Christian religion, of all the religions that ever existed, is the
most humane, the most favorable to liberty and to the arts and
sciences; that the modern world is indebted to it for every
improvement from agriculture to the abstract sciences, from the
hospitals for the reception of the unfortunate to the temples
reared by the Michael Angelos and embellished by the Raphaels.
It was necessary to prove that nothing is more divine than its
morality, nothing more lovely and more sublime than its tenets,
its doctrine, and its worship; that it encourages genius, corrects
the taste, develops the virtuous passions, imparts energy to the
ideas, presents noble images to the writer, and perfect models.
to the artist; that there is no disgrace in being believers with
•


## p. 3535 (#513) ###########################################

FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
3535
Newton and Bossuet, with Pascal and Racine. In a word, it was
necessary to summon all the charms of the imagination and all
the interests of the heart to the assistance of that religion
against which they had been set in array.
The reader may now have a clear view of the object of our
work. All other kinds of apologies are exhausted, and perhaps
they would be useless at the present day. Who would now sit
down to read a work professedly theological? Possibly a few
sincere Christians who are already convinced. But, it may be
asked, May there not be some danger in considering religion in
a merely human point of view? Why so? Does our religion
shrink from the light? Surely one great proof of its divine
origin is, that it will bear the test of the fullest and severest
scrutiny of reason. Would you have us always open to the
reproach of enveloping our tenets in sacred obscurity, lest their
falsehood should be detected? Will Christianity be the less true
for appearing the more beautiful? Let us banish our weak
apprehensions; let us not, by an excess of religion, leave religion
to perish. We no longer live in those times when you might
say, "Believe without inquiring. " People will inquire in spite
of us; and our timid silence, in heightening the triumph of the
infidel, will diminish the number of believers.
It is time that the world should know to what all those
charges of absurdity, vulgarity, and meanness, that are daily
alleged against Christianity, may be reduced. It is time to
demonstrate that instead of debasing the ideas, it encourages
the soul to take the most daring flights, and is capable of
enchanting the imagination as divinely as the deities of Homer
and Virgil. Our arguments will at least have this advantage,
that they will be intelligible to the world at large and will
require nothing but common-sense to determine their weight and
strength. In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather
too much, to speak the language of their readers. It is neces-
sary to be a scholar with a scholar, and a poet with a poet. The
Almighty does not forbid us to tread the flowery path, if it
serves to lead the wanderer once more to him; nor is it always
by the steep and rugged mountain that the lost sheep finds its
way back to the fold.
We think that this mode of considering Christianity displays
associations of ideas which are but imperfectly known. Sub-
lime in the antiquity of its recollections, which go back to the


## p. 3536 (#514) ###########################################

35 36
FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
-
creation of the world; ineffable in its mysteries, adorable in its
sacraments, interesting in its history, celestial in its morality,
rich and attractive in its ceremonial,- it is fraught with every spe
cies of beauty. Would you follow it in poetry? Tasso, Milton,
Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, will depict to you its miraculous
effects. In belles-lettres, in oratory, history, and philosophy,
what have not Bossuet, Fénélon, Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bacon,
Pascal, Euler, Newton, Leibnitz, produced by its inspiration!
In the arts, what masterpieces! If you examine it in its wor-
ship, what ideas are suggested by its antique Gothic churches,
its admirable prayers, its impressive ceremonies! Among its
clergy, behold all those scholars who have handed down to you
the languages and the works of Greece and Rome; all those
anchorets of Thebais; all those asylums for the unfortunate; all
those missionaries to China, to Canada, to Paraguay; not for-
getting the military orders whence chivalry derived its origin.
Everything has been engaged in our cause - the manners of our
ancestors, the pictures of days of yore, poetry, even romances
themselves. We have called smiles from the cradle, and tears
from the tomb. Sometimes, with the Maronite monk, we dwell
on the summits of Carmel and Lebanon; at others we watch
with the Daughter of Charity at the bedside of the sick. Here
two American lovers summon us into the recesses of their des-
erts; there we listen to the sighs of the virgin in the solitude of
the cloister. Homer takes his place by Milton, and Virgil beside
Tasso; the ruins of Athens and of Memphis form contrasts with
the ruins of Christian monuments, and the tombs of Ossian with
our rural churchyards. At St. Denis we visit the ashes of kings;
and when our subject requires us to treat of the existence of
God, we seek our proofs in the wonders of Nature alone. In
short, we endeavor to strike the heart of the infidel in every
possible way; but we dare not flatter ourselves that we possess
the miraculous rod of religion which caused living streams to
burst from the flinty rock.


## p. 3537 (#515) ###########################################

FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
3537
DESCRIPTION OF A THUNDER-STORM IN THE FOREST
From Atala›
IT
WAS the twenty-seventh sun since our departure from the
Cabins: the lune de fer (month of July) had commenced its
course, and all signs indicated the approach of a violent
storm. Toward the hour when the Indian matrons hang up the
plowshares on the branches of the junipers, and when the paro-
quets retire into the hollows of the cypress trees, the sky grew
overcast. The vague sounds of solitude gradually ceased, the
forests were wrapped in universal calm. Suddenly the pealing
of distant thunder, re-echoing through these vast woods as old as
the world itself, startled the ear with a diapason of noises
sublime. Fearing to be overwhelmed in the flood, we hastily
disembarked on the river's bank and sought safety in the seclu-
sion of one of the forest glades.
The ground was swampy. We pressed forward with difficulty
beneath a roof of smilax, among grape-vines and climbing plants
of all kinds, in which our feet were continually entangled. The
spongy soil trembled all around us, and every instant we were
on the verge of being engulfed in the quagmires. Swarms of
insects and enormous bats nearly blinded us; rattlesnakes were
heard on all sides; and the wolves, bears, panthers, and badgers
which had sought a refuge in this retreat filled the air with
their roarings.
Meanwhile the obscurity increased; the lowering clouds en-
tered beneath the shadows of the trees. The heavens were rent,
and the lightning traced a flashing zigzag of fire. A furious
gale from the west piled up the angry clouds in heavy masses;
the mighty trees bowed their heads to the blast. Again and
again the sky was rent, and through the yawning crevices one
beheld new heavens and vales of fire. What an awful, what a
magnificent spectacle! The trees were struck by lightning and
ignited; the conflagration spread like a flaming garland; the
showers of sparks and the columns of smoke ascended to the
very heavens, which vomited their thunders into the sea of fire.
Then the Great Spirit enveloped the mountains in utter dark-
ness; from the midst of this vast chaos came a confused roaring
made by the tumult of many winds, the moaning of the trees,
the howlings of ferocious beasts, the crackling of the flames,
VI-222


## p. 3538 (#516) ###########################################

3538
FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE CHÂTEAUBRIAND
and the descent of balls of fire which hissed as they were extin
guished in the water.
The Great Spirit knows the truth of what I now say! At
this moment I saw only Atala, I had no thought but for her.
Beneath the bent trunk of a birch-tree, I succeeded in protect-
ing her from the torrents of rain. Seated myself under the
tree, supporting my well-beloved on my knees, and chafing her
bare feet between my hands, I was even happier than the
young wife who feels for the first time the consciousness of her
motherhood.


## p. 3539 (#517) ###########################################

3539
THOMAS CHATTERTON
(1752-1770)
way to
) THE third quarter of the eighteenth century belongs the
tragedy of the life of Thomas Chatterton, who, misunder-
stood and neglected during his brief seventeen years of
poetic revery, has by the force of his genius and by his actual
achievement compelled the nineteenth century, through one of its
best critics, to acknowledge him as the father of the New Romantic
school, and to accord him thereby a place unique among his contem-
poraries. His family and early surroundings serve in a
explain his development. He was born at
Bristol, a town rich in the traditions and
monuments of bygone times. For nearly
two hundred years the office of sexton to
the church of St. Mary Redcliffe had been
handed down in the family. At the time
of the poet's birth it was held by a mater-
nal uncle; for his father, a "musical genius,
somewhat of a poet, an antiquary and dab-
bler in occult arts," was the first to aspire
to a position above the hereditary one, and
had taken charge of the Pyle free schools
in Bristol. He died before his son's birth,
and left his widow to support her two
children by keeping a little school and by
needlework. The boy, reserved and given to revery from his earliest
years, was at first considered dull, but finally learned to spell by
means of the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio and a black-
letter Bible. He spent much of his time with his uncle, in and
about the church. St. Mary Redcliffe, one of the finest specimens of
mediæval church architecture in England, is especially rich in altar
tombs with recumbent carved figures of knights, and ecclesiastic and
civic dignitaries of bygone days. These became the boy's familiar
associates, and he amused himself on his lonely visits by spelling out
the old inscriptions on their monuments. There he got hold of some
quaint oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch, filled
with parchments old as the Wars of the Roses, and these deeds and
charters of the Henrys and Edwards became his primers. In 1760 he
entered Colston's "Blue-Coat" charity school, located in a fine old

THOMAS CHATTERTON


## p. 3540 (#518) ###########################################

3540
THOMAS CHATTERTON
building of the Tudor times. The rules of the institution provided
for the training of its inmates "in the principles of the Christian
religion as laid down in the Church catechism," and in fitting them
to be apprenticed in due course to some trade. During the six years
of his stay, Chatterton received only the rudiments of a common-
school education, and found little to nourish his genius. But being
a voracious reader, he went on his small allowance through three
circulating libraries, and became acquainted with the older English
poets, and also read history and antiquities. He very early enter-
tained dreams of ambition, without however finding any sympathy;
so he lived in a world of his own, conceiving before the age of
twelve the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary cierk of the
fifteenth century, and his patron Master William Canynge, a former
mayor of Bristol whose effigy was familiar to him from the tomb in
the church. This fiction, which after his death gave rise to the cele-
brated controversy of the Rowley Poems,' matured at this early
age as a boy's life-dream, he fashioned into a consistent romance,
and wove into it among the prose fragments the ballads and lyrics
on which his fame as poet now rests. His earliest literary forgery
was a practical joke played on a credulous pewterer at Bristol, for
whom he fabricated a pedigree dating back to the time of the Nor-
man Conquest, which he professed to have collected from ancient
manuscripts. It is remarkable as the work of a boy not yet four-
teen. He was rewarded with a crown piece, and the success of this
hoax encouraged him further to play upon the credulity of his
townspeople, and to continue writing prose and verse in pseudo-
antique style.
In 1767 he was bound apprentice to John Lambert, attorney. The
office duties were light. He spent his spare time in poetizing, and
sent anonymously transcripts from professedly old poems to the local
papers. Their authorship being traced to him, he now claimed that
his father had found numerous old poems and other manuscripts
in a coffer of the muniment room at Redcliffe, and that he had tran-
scribed them. Under guise of this fiction he produced, within the
two years of his apprenticeship, a mass of pseudo-antique dramatic,
lyric, and descriptive poems, and fragments of local and general his-
tory, connected all with his romance of the clerk of Bristol. A
scholarly knowledge of Middle English was rare one hundred and
thirty years ago, and the self-taught boy easily gulled the local anti-
quaries. He even deceived Horace Walpole, who, dabbling in medi-
ævalism, had opened the way for prose romances with his 'Castle
of Otranto,' a spurious antique of the same time in which Chatter-
ton had placed his fiction. Walpole at first treated him courteously,
even offering to print some of the poems. But when Gray and Mason


## p. 3541 (#519) ###########################################

THOMAS CHATTERTON
3541
pronounced them modern, he at once gave Chatterton the cold shoul-
der, entirely forgetting his own imposition on a credulous public.
Chatterton now turned to periodical literature and the politics of
the day, and began to contribute to various London magazines. In
the spring of 1770 he finally came up to London, to start on the life
of a literary adventurer on a capital of less than five pounds. He
lived abstemiously and worked incessantly, literally day and night.
He had a wonderful versatility; he would write in the manner of any
one he chose to imitate, and he tried his hand at every species of
book-work. But even under the strain of this incessant productivity
he found time to turn back to his boyhood dreams, and produced
one of his finest poems, the 'Ballad of Charity. ' At first his contri-
butions were freely accepted, but he was poorly paid, and sometimes
not at all. Yet out of his scanty earnings he bought costly presents
for his mother and sister, as tokens of affection and an earnest of
what he hoped to do for them. After scarcely two months in Lon-
don he was at the end of his resources. He made an attempt to
gain a position as surgeon's assistant on board of an African trader,
but was unsuccessful. He now found himself face to face with
famine; and, too proud to ask for assistance or to accept even the
hospitality of a single meal, he on the night of August 25th, 1770,
locked himself into his garret, destroyed all his note-books and
papers, and swallowed a dose of arsenic. It is believed that he was
privately buried in the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe. There a
monument has been erected, with an inscription from his poem
Will':
"To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou art
a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a superior power. To that
power alone is he now answerable. »
His death attracted little notice, for he was regarded merely as
the transcriber of the Rowley' poems. They were collected after
his death, from the various persons to whom he had given the manu-
scripts, and occasioned a controversy that has lasted almost down
to the present generation. But only an age untrained in philological
research could ever have received them as genuine productions of
the fifteenth century: for Chatterton, who knew little of the old
authors antedating Spenser, constructed with the help of Bailey's and
Kersey's English dictionaries a lingo of his own; he strung together
old words of all periods and dialects, and even coined words himself
to suit the metre. His lingo resembles anything rather than Middle
English. It is supposed that he wrote first in modern English, and
then translated into his own dialect; for the poems do not suffer by
retranslation, on the contrary, they are more intelligible and often
-


## p. 3542 (#520) ###########################################

3542
THOMAS CHATTERTON
more rhythmical. Chatterton had a wonderful memory, and hav-
ing read enormously, there are frequent though perhaps unconscious
plagiarisms from Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Gray, and
others.
Yet after all has been said against the spurious character of the
'Rowley' poems, Chatterton's two volumes of collected writings, pro-
duced under the most adverse circumstances, are a record of youth-
ful precocity unparalleled in literary history. He wrote spirited
satires at ten, and some of his best old verse before sixteen. 'Ella'
is a dramatic poem of sustained power and originality, and its songs
have the true lyric ring; the Ode to Liberty,' a fragment from the
tragedy of Goddwyn,' is with its bold imagery one of the finest
martial lyrics in the language; the 'Ballad of Charity,' almost the
last poem he wrote, comes in its objectivity and artistic complete-
ness near to some of Keats's best ballad work. But more wonderful
perhaps than this early blossoming of his genius is its absolute ori-
ginality. At a time when Johnson was the literary dictator of Lon-
don, and Pope's manner still paramount, Chatterton, unmindful of
their conventionalities and the current French influence, instinctively
turned to earlier models, and sought his inspiration at the true
source of English song. Bishop Percy's 'Reliques of Old English
Poetry,' published in 1765, first made the people acquainted with
their fine old ballads; but by that year Chatterton had already
planned the story of the monk of Bristol and written some of the
poems. Gifted with a rich vein of romance, he heralded the coming
revival of medieval literature. But he not only divined the new
movements of poetry-he was also responsible for one side of its
development. He had a poet's ear for metrical effects, and trans-
mitted this gift to the romantic poets through Coleridge; for the lat-
ter, deeply interested in the tragedy of the life of the Bristol boy,
studied his work; and traces of this study, resulting in freer rhythm
and new harmonies, are found in Coleridge's own verse. The influ-
ence of the author of 'Christabel' on his brother poets is indisputa-
ble; hence his indebtedness to Chatterton gives to the latter at once
his rightful position as the father of the New Romantic school.
Keats also shows signs of close acquaintance with Chatterton; and he
proves moreover by the dedication of his 'Endymion' that he cher-
ished the memory of the unfortunate young poet, with whom he had,
as far as the romantic temper on its objective side goes, perhaps the
closest spiritual kinship of any poet of his time.
But quite apart from his youthful precocity and his influence on
later poets, Chatterton holds no mean place in English literature
because of the intrinsic value of his performance. His work, on the
one hand, aside from the 'Rowley' poems, shows him a true poet of


## p. 3543 (#521) ###########################################

THOMAS CHATTERTON
3543
the eighteenth century, and the best of it entitles him to a fair place
among his contemporaries; but on the other hand he stands almost
alone in his generation in possessing the highest poetic endowments,
-originality of thought, a quick eye to see and note, the gift of ex-
pression, sustained power of composition, and a fire and intensity of
imagination.