No More Learning

Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as _The Times_ talks of it. ' M.
Arnold, _Essays in Criticism, M. Aurelius_.

The age of M. Aurelius is also the age of Lucian, and with any man of
that age who has, like these two, left us a still legible message we
can enter into quite different relations from those which are possible
with what M. Arnold calls in the same essay 'classical-dictionary
heroes. ' A twentieth-century Englishman, a second-century Greek or
Roman, would be much more at home in each other's century, if they had
the gift of tongues, than in most of those which have intervened. It
is neither necessary nor possible to go deeply into the resemblance
here [Footnote: Some words of Sir Leslie Stephen's may be given,
however, describing the welter of religious opinions that prevailed at
both epochs: 'The analogy between the present age and that which
witnessed the introduction of Christianity is too striking to have
been missed by very many observers. The most superficial acquaintance
with the general facts shows how close a parallel might be drawn by a
competent historian. There are none of the striking manifestations of
the present day to which it would not be easy to produce an analogy,
though in some respects on a smaller scale. Now, as then, we can find
mystical philosophers trying to evolve a satisfactory creed by some
process of logical legerdemain out of theosophical moonshine; and
amiable and intelligent persons labouring hard to prove that the old
mythology could be forced to accept a rationalistic interpretation--
whether in regard to the inspection of entrails or prayers for fine
weather; and philosophers framing systems of morality entirely apart
from the ancient creeds, and sufficiently satisfactory to themselves,
while hopelessly incapable of impressing the popular mind; and
politicians, conscious that the basis of social order was being sapped
by the decay of the faith in which it had arisen, and therefore
attempting the impossible task of galvanizing dead creeds into a
semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their
lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose
intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling
errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to
ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and,
beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and
natural bonds, and a blind groping toward some more cosmopolitan creed
and some deeper satisfaction for the emotional needs of mankind. '--
_The Religion of all Sensible Men_ in _An Agnostic's Apology_, 1893. ];
all that need be done is to pass in review those points of it, some
important, and some trifling, which are sure to occur in a detached
way to readers of Lucian.

The Graeco-Roman world was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of
its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of
amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as
firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose,
it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day
questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the
questioners. Of what played the part then that the Christian religion
plays now, the pagan religion was only one half; the other half was
philosophy. The gods of Olympus had long lost their hold upon the
educated, but not perhaps upon the masses; the educated, ill content
to be without any guide through the maze of life, had taken to
philosophy instead. Stoicism was the prevalent creed, and how noble a
form this could take in a cultivated and virtuous mind is to be seen
in the _Thoughts_ of M. Aurelius. The test of a religion, however, is
not what form it takes in a virtuous mind, but what effects it
produces on those of another sort. Lucian applies the test of results
alike to the religion usually so called, and to its philosophic
substitute. He finds both wanting; the test is not a satisfactory one,
but it is being applied by all sorts and conditions of men to
Christianity in our own time; so is the second test, that of inherent
probability, which he uses as well as the other upon the pagan
theology; and it is this that gives his writings, even apart from
their wit and fancy, a special interest for our own time. Our
attention seems to be concentrated more and more on the ethical, as
opposed to the speculative or dogmatic aspect of religion; just such
was Lucian's attitude towards philosophy.

Some minor points of similarity may be briefly noted. As we read the
_Anacharsis_, we are reminded of the modern prominence of athletics;
the question of football _versus_ drill is settled for us; light is
thrown upon the question of conscription; we think of our Commissions
on national deterioration, and the schoolmaster's wail over the
athletic _Frankenstein's_ monster which, like _Eucrates_ in _The
Liar_, he has created but cannot control. The 'horsy talk in every
street' of the _Nigrinus_ calls up the London newsboy with his 'All
the winners. ' We think of palmists and spiritualists in the
police-courts as we read of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles consulting
the impostor Alexander. This sentence reads like the description of a
modern man of science confronted with the supernatural: 'It was an
occasion for a man whose intelligence was steeled against such
assaults by scepticism and insight, one who, if he could not detect
the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain
that, though this escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an
impossibility. ' The upper-class audiences who listened to Lucian's
readings, taking his points with quiet smiles instead of the loud
applause given to the rhetorician, must have been something like
that which listens decorously to an Extension lecturer. When Lucian
bids us mark 'how many there are who once were but cyphers, but whom
words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and to noble lineage too,'
we remember not only Gibbon's remark about the very Herodes Atticus of
whom Lucian may have been thinking ('The family of Herod, at least
after it had been favoured by fortune, was lineally descended from
Cimon and Miltiades'), but also the modern _carriere ouverte aux
talents_, and the fact that Tennyson was a lord. There are the
elements of a socialist question in the feelings between rich and poor
described in the _Saturnalia_; while, on the other hand, the fact
of there being an audience for the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_ is an
illustration of that spirit of _humani nihil a me alienum puto_ which
is again prevalent today. We care now to realize the thoughts of other
classes besides our own; so did they in Lucian's time; but it is
significant that Francklin in 1780, refusing to translate this series,
says: 'These dialogues exhibit to us only such kind of conversation as
we may hear in the purlieus of Covent Garden--lewd, dull, and
insipid. ' The lewdness hardly goes beyond the title; they are full of
humour and insight; and we make no apology for translating most of
them. Lastly, a generation that is always complaining of the modern
over-production of books feels that it would be at home in a state of
society in which our author found that, not to be too singular, he
must at least write about writing history, if he declined writing it
himself, even as Diogenes took to rolling his tub, lest he should be
the only idle man when Corinth was bustling about its defences.

As Lucian is so fond of saying, 'this is but a small selection of the
facts which might have been quoted' to illustrate the likeness between
our age and his. It may be well to allude, on the other hand, to a few
peculiarities of the time that appear conspicuously in his writings.

The Roman Empire was rather Graeco-Roman than Roman; this is now a
commonplace. It is interesting to observe that for Lucian 'we' is on
occasion the Romans; 'we' is also everywhere the Greeks; while at the
same time 'I' is a barbarian and a Syrian. Roughly speaking, the Roman
element stands for energy, material progress, authority, and the Greek
for thought; the Roman is the British Philistine, the Greek the man of
culture. Lucian is conscious enough of the distinction, and there is
no doubt where his own preference lies. He may be a materialist, so
far as he is anything, in philosophy; but in practice he puts the
things of the mind before the things of the body.

If our own age supplies parallels for most of what we meet with in the
second century, there are two phenomena which are to be matched rather
in an England that has passed away. The first is the Cynics, who swarm
in Lucian's pages like the begging friars in those of a historical
novelist painting the middle ages. Like the friars, they began nobly
in the desire for plain living and high thinking; in both cases the
thinking became plain, the living not perhaps high, but the best that
circumstances admitted of, and the class--with its numbers hugely
swelled by persons as little like their supposed teachers as a Marian
or Elizabethan persecutor was like the founder of Christianity--a pest
to society. Lucian's sympathy with the best Cynics, and detestation of
the worst, make Cynicism one of his most familiar themes. The second
is the class so vividly presented in _The dependent Scholar_--the
indigent learned Greek who looks about for a rich vulgar Roman to buy
his company, and finds he has the worst of the bargain. His
successors, the 'trencher chaplains' who 'from grasshoppers turn
bumble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the Muses mules, to
satisfy their hunger-starved panches, and get a meal's meat,' were
commoner in Burton's days than in our own, and are to be met in
Fielding, and Macaulay, and Thackeray.

Two others of Lucian's favourite figures, the parasite and the
legacy-hunter, exist still, no doubt, as they are sure to in every
complex civilization; but their operations are now conducted with more
regard to the decencies. This is worth remembering when we are
occasionally offended by his frankness on subjects to which we are not
accustomed to allude; he is not an unclean or a sensual writer, but
the waters of decency have risen since his time and submerged some
things which were then visible.

A slight prejudice, again, may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick
of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest
statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in
words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show
the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in
proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we
cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by
insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of
palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the
Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but
one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be
assumed that every one would like the mere sound of him.

We may end by remarking that the public readings of his own works, to
which the author makes frequent reference, were what served to a great
extent the purpose of our printing-press. We know that his pieces were
also published; but the public that could be reached by hand-written
copies would bear a very small proportion to that which heard them
from the writer's own lips; and though the modern system may have the
advantage on the whole, it is hard to believe that the unapproached
life and naturalness of Lucian's dialogue does not owe something to
this necessity.




4. LUCIAN AS A WRITER


With all the sincerity of Lucian in _The True History_, 'soliciting
his reader's incredulity,' we solicit our reader's neglect of this
appreciation. We have no pretensions whatever to the critical faculty;
the following remarks are to be taken as made with diffidence, and
offered to those only who prefer being told what to like, and why, to
settling the matter for themselves.

Goethe, aged fourteen, with seven languages on hand, devised the plan
of a correspondence kept up by seven imaginary brothers scattered over
the globe, each writing in the language of his adopted land. The
stay-at-home in Frankfort was to write Jew-German, for which purpose
some Hebrew must be acquired. His father sent him to Rector Albrecht.
The rector was always found with one book open before him--a
well-thumbed Lucian. But the Hebrew vowel-points were perplexing, and
the boy found better amusement in putting shrewd questions on what
struck him as impossibilities or inconsistencies in the Old-Testament
narrative they were reading. The old gentleman was infinitely amused,
had fits of mingled coughing and laughter, but made little attempt at
solving his pupil's difficulties, beyond ejaculating _Er narrischer
Kerl! Er narrischer Junge_! He let him dig for solutions, however, in
an English commentary on the shelves, and occupied the time with
turning the familiar pages of his Lucian [Footnote: _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_, book iv. ]. The wicked old rector perhaps chuckled to think
that here was one who bade fair to love Lucian one day as well as he
did himself.

For Lucian too was one who asked questions--spent his life doing
little else; if one were invited to draw him with the least possible
expenditure of ink, one's pen would trace a mark of interrogation.
That picture is easily drawn; to put life into it is a more difficult
matter. However, his is not a complex character, for all the irony in
which he sometimes chooses to clothe his thought; and materials are at
least abundant; he is one of the self-revealing fraternity; his own
personal presence is to be detected more often than not in his work.
He may give us the assistance, or he may not, of labelling a character
_Lucian_ or _Lycinus_; we can detect him, _volentes volentem_, under
the thin disguise of _Menippus_ or _Tychiades_ or _Cyniscus_ as well.
And the essence of him as he reveals himself is the questioning
spirit. He has no respect for authority. Burke describes the majority
of mankind, who do not form their own opinions, as 'those whom
Providence has doomed to live on trust'; Lucian entirely refuses to
live on trust; he 'wants to know. ' It was the wish of _Arthur
Clennam_, who had in consequence a very bad name among the _Tite
Barnacles_ and other persons in authority. Lucian has not escaped the
same fate; 'the scoffer Lucian' has become as much a commonplace as
'_fidus Achates_,' or 'the well-greaved Achaeans,' the reading of him
has been discountenanced, and, if he has not actually lost his place
at the table of Immortals, promised him when he temporarily left the
Island of the Blest, it has not been so 'distinguished' a place as it
was to have been and should have been. And all because he 'wanted to
know. '

His questions, of course, are not all put in the same manner. In the
_Dialogues of the Gods_, for instance, the mark of interrogation is
not writ large; they have almost the air at first of little stories
in dialogue form, which might serve to instruct schoolboys in the
attributes and legends of the gods--a manual charmingly done, yet a
manual only. But we soon see that he has said to himself: Let us put
the thing into plain natural prose, and see what it looks like with
its glamour of poetry and reverence stripped off; the Gods do human
things; why not represent them as human persons, and see what results?
What did result was that henceforth any one who still believed in the
pagan deities might at the cost of an hour's light reading satisfy
himself that his gods were not gods, or, if they were, had no business
to be. Whether many or few did so read and so satisfy themselves, we
have no means of knowing; it is easy to over-estimate the effect such
writing may have had, and to forget that those who were capable of
being convinced by exposition of this sort would mostly be those who
were already convinced without; still, so far as Lucian had any effect
on the religious position, it must have been in discrediting paganism
and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv. ]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.

The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the
fallen angels

reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost,

these subjects have had their share of attention; but the questions
can hardly be put more directly, or more neatly, than in the _Zeus
cross-examined_, and the thirtieth _Dialogue of the Dead_.

He has many other interrogative methods besides these, which may be
left to reveal themselves in the course of reading. As for answering
questions, that is another matter. The answer is sometimes apparent,
sometimes not; he will not refrain from asking a question just because
he does not know the answer; his _role_ is asking, not answering. Nor
when he gives an answer is it always certain whether it is to be taken
in earnest. Was he a cynic? one would say so after reading _The
Cynic_; was he an Epicurean? one would say so after reading the
_Alexander_; was he a philosopher? one would say Yes at a certain
point of the _Hermotimus_, No at another. He doubtless had his moods,
and he was quite unhampered by desire for any consistency except
consistent independence of judgement. Moreover, the difficulty of
getting at his real opinions is increased by the fact that he was an
ironist. We have called him a self-revealer; but you never quite know
where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase,
'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of
direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy--a
rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long
run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the
great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being
able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without
expending much thought of their own' (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book
vii). Fielding gives us in _Jonathan Wild_ a sustained piece of
'direct irony'; you have only to reverse everything said, and you get
the author's meaning. Lucian's irony is not of that sort; you cannot
tell when you are to reverse him, only that you will have sometimes to
do so. He does use the direct kind; _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ and
_The Parasite_ are examples; the latter is also an example (unless a
translator, who is condemned not to skip or skim, is an unfair judge)
of how tiresome it may become. But who shall say how much of irony and
how much of genuine feeling there is in the fine description of the
philosophic State given in the _Hermotimus_ (with its suggestions of
_Christian_ in _The Pilgrim's Progress_, and of the 'not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble'), or in the
whimsical extravagance (as it strikes a modern) of the _Pantomime_, or
in the triumph permitted to the Cynic (against 'Lycinus' too) in the
dialogue called after him? In one of his own introductory lectures he
compares his pieces aptly enough to the bacchante's thyrsus with its
steel point concealed.

With his questions and his irony and his inconsistencies, it is no
wonder that Lucian is accused of being purely negative and
destructive. But we need not think he is disposed of in that way, any
more than our old-fashioned literary education is disposed of when it
has been pointed out that it does not equip its _alumni_ with
knowledge of electricity or of a commercially useful modern language;
it may have equipped them with something less paying, but more worth
paying for. Lucian, it is certain, will supply no one with a religion
or a philosophy; but it may be doubted whether any writer will supply
more fully both example and precept in favour of doing one's thinking
for oneself; and it may be doubted also whether any other intellectual
lesson is more necessary. He is _nullius addictus iurare in verba
magistri_, if ever man was; he is individualist to the core. No
religion or philosophy, he seems to say, will save you; the thing is
to think for yourself, and be a man of sense. 'It was but small
consolation,' says _Menippus_, 'to reflect that I was in numerous
and wise and eminently sensible company, if I was a fool still, all
astray in my quest for truth. ' _Vox populi_ is no _vox dei_ for him;
he is quite proof against majorities; _Athanasius contra mundum_ is
more to his taste. "What is this I hear? " asked Arignotus, scowling
upon me; "you deny the existence of the supernatural, when there is
scarcely a man who has not seen some evidence of it? " "Therein lies my
exculpation," I replied; "I do not believe in the supernatural,
because, unlike the rest of mankind, I do not see it; if I saw, I
should doubtless believe, just as you all do. "' That British
schoolboys should have been brought up for centuries on Ovid, and
Lucian have been tabooed, is, in view of their comparative efficacy in
stimulating thought, an interesting example of _habent sua fata
libelli_.

It need not be denied that there is in him a certain lack of feeling,
not surprising in one of his analytic temper, but not agreeable
either. He is a hard bright intelligence, with no bowels; he applies
the knife without the least compunction--indeed with something of
savage enjoyment. The veil is relentlessly torn from family affection
in the _Mourning_. _Solon_ in the _Charon_ pursues his victory so far
as to make us pity instead of scorning _Croesus_. _Menippus_ and his
kind, in the shades, do their lashing of dead horses with a
disagreeable gusto, which tempts us to raise a society for the
prevention of cruelty to the Damned. A voyage through Lucian in search
of pathos will yield as little result as one in search of interest in
nature. There is a touch of it here and there (which has probably
evaporated in translation) in the _Hermotimus_, the _Demonax_, and the
_Demosthenes_; but that is all. He was perhaps not unconscious of all
this himself. 'But what is your profession? ' asks _Philosophy_. 'I
profess hatred of imposture and pretension, lying and pride. . .
However, I do not neglect the complementary branch, in which love
takes the place of hate; it includes love of truth and beauty and
simplicity, and all that is akin to love. _But the subjects for this
branch of the profession are sadly few_. '

Before going on to his purely literary qualities, we may collect here
a few detached remarks affecting rather his character than his skill
as an artist. And first of his relations to philosophy. The statements
in the _Menippus_ and the _Icaromenippus_, as well as in _The Fisher_
and _The double Indictment_, have all the air of autobiography
(especially as they are in the nature of digressions), and give us to
understand that he had spent much time and energy on philosophic
study. He claims _Philosophy_ as his mistress in _The Fisher_, and in
a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty
in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he
loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his
day. But it _will_ occur to us after reading him through that he has
dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from
beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of
any philosophic system. The external characteristics of the
philosophers, the absurd stories current about them, and the popular
misrepresentations of their doctrines--it is in these that philosophy
consists for him. That he had read some of them there is no doubt; but
one has an uneasy suspicion that he read Plato because he liked his
humour and his style, and did not trouble himself about anything
further. Gibbon speaks of 'the philosophic maze of the writings of
Plato, of which the dramatic is perhaps more interesting than the
argumentative part. ' That is quite a legitimate opinion, provided you
do not undertake to judge philosophy in the light of it. The
apparently serious rejection of geometrical truth in the _Hermotimus_
may fairly suggest that Lucian was as unphilosophic as he was
unmathematical. Twice, and perhaps twice only, does he express hearty
admiration for a philosopher. Demonax is 'the best of all
philosophers'; but then he admired him just because he was so little
of a philosopher and so much a man of ordinary common sense. And
Epicurus is 'the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and been
in solitary possession of truth'; but then that is in the _Alexander_,
and any stick was good enough to beat that dog with. The fact is,
Lucian was much too well satisfied with his own judgement to think
that he could possibly require guidance, and the commonplace test of
results was enough to assure him that philosophy was worthless: 'It is
no use having all theory at your fingers' ends, if you do not conform
your conduct to the right. ' There is a description in the _Pantomime_
that is perhaps truer than it is meant to pass for. 'Lycinus' is
called 'an educated man, and _in some sort_ a student of philosophy. '

If he is not a philosopher, he is very much a moralist; it is because
philosophy deals partly with morals that he thinks he cares for it.
But here too his conclusions are of a very commonsense order. The
Stoic notion that 'Virtue consists in being uncomfortable' strikes him
as merely absurd; no asceticism for him; on the other hand, no lavish
extravagance and _Persici apparatus_; a dinner of herbs with the
righteous--that is, the cultivated Athenian--, a neat repast of Attic
taste, is honestly his idea of good living; it is probable that he
really did sacrifice both money and fame to live in Athens rather than
in Rome, according to his own ideal. That ideal is a very modest one;
when _Menippus_ took all the trouble to get down to Tiresias in Hades
via Babylon, his reward was the information that 'the life of the
ordinary man is the best and the most prudent choice. ' So thought
Lucian; and it is to be counted to him for righteousness that he
decided to abandon 'the odious practices that his profession imposes
on the advocate--deceit, falsehood, bluster, clamour, pushing,' for
the quiet life of a literary man (especially as we should probably
never have heard his name had he done otherwise). Not that the life
was so quiet as it might have been. He could not keep his satire
impersonal enough to avoid incurring enmities. He boasts in the
_Peregrine_ of the unfeeling way in which he commented on that
enthusiast to his followers, and we may believe his assurance that his
writings brought general dislike and danger upon him. His moralizing
(of which we are happy to say there is a great deal) is based on
Tiresias's pronouncement. Moralizing has a bad name; but than good
moralizing there is, when one has reached a certain age perhaps, no
better reading. Some of us like it even in our novels, feel more at
home with Fielding and Thackeray for it, and regretfully confess
ourselves unequal to the artistic aloofness of a Flaubert. Well,
Lucian's moralizings are, for those who like such things, of the right
quality; they are never dull, and the touch is extremely light. We may
perhaps be pardoned for alluding to half a dozen conceptions that have
a specially modern air about them. The use that Rome may serve as a
school of resistance to temptation (_Nigrinus_, 19) recalls Milton's
'fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that
never sallies out and seeks her adversary. ' 'Old age is wisdom's
youth, the day of her glorious flower' (_Heracles_, 8) might have
stood as a text for Browning's _Rabbi ben Ezra_. The brands visible on
the tyrant's soul, and the refusal of Lethe as a sufficient punishment
(_Voyage to the lower World_, 24 and 28), have their parallels in our
new eschatology. The decision of _Zeus_ that _Heraclitus_ and
_Democritus_ are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go
together (_Sale of Creeds_, l3)--accords with our views of the
emotional temperament. _Chiron_ is impressive on the vanity of
fruition (_Dialogues of the Dead_, 26). And the figuring of _Truth_ as
'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (_The Fisher_,
16) is only one example of Lucian's felicity in allegory.

Another weak point, for which many people will have no more
inclination to condemn him than for his moralizing, is his absolute
indifference to the beauties of nature. Having already given him
credit for regarding nothing that is human as beyond his province, it
is our duty to record the corresponding limitation; of everything that
was not human he was simply unconscious; with him it was not so much
that the _proper_ as that the _only_ study of mankind is man. The
apparent exceptions are not real ones. If he is interested in the
gods, it is as the creatures of human folly that he takes them to be.
If he writes a toy essay with much parade of close observation on the
fly, it is to show how amusing human ingenuity can be on an unlikely
subject. But it is worth notice that 'the first of the moderns,'
though he shows himself in many descriptions of pictures quite awake
to the beauty manufactured by man, has in no way anticipated the
modern discovery that nature is beautiful. To readers who have had
enough of the pathetic fallacy, and of the second-rate novelist's
local colour, Lucian's tacit assumption that there is nothing but man
is refreshing. That he was a close enough observer of human nature,
any one can satisfy himself by glancing at the _Feast of Lapithae_,
the _Dialogues of the Hetaerae_, some of the _Dialogues of the Gods_,
and perhaps best of all, _The Liar_.

As it occurs to himself to repel the imputation of plagiarism in _A
literary Prometheus_, the point must be briefly touched upon. There
is no doubt that Homer preceded him in making the gods extremely, even
comically, human, that Plato showed him an example of prose dialogue,
that Aristophanes inspired his constructive fancy, that Menippus
provided him with some ideas, how far developed on the same lines we
cannot now tell, that Menander's comedies and Herodas's mimes
contributed to the absolute naturalness of his conversation. If any,
or almost any, of these had never existed, Lucian would have been more
or less different from what he is. His originality is not in the least
affected by that; we may resolve him theoretically into his elements;
but he too had the gift, that out of three sounds he framed, not a
fourth sound, but a star. The question of his originality is no more
important--indeed much less so--than that of Sterne's.

When we pass to purely literary matters, the first thing to be
remarked upon is the linguistic miracle presented to us. It is useless
to dwell upon it in detail, since this is an introduction not to
Lucian, but to a translation of Lucian; it exists, none the less. A
Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but in
that of five or six centuries before, and he does it, if not with
absolute correctness, yet with the easy mastery that we expect only
from one in a million of those who write in their mother tongue, and
takes his place as an immortal classic. The miracle may be repeated;
an English-educated Hindu may produce masterpieces of Elizabethan
English that will rank him with Bacon and Ben Jonson; but it will
surprise us, when it does happen. That Lucian was himself aware of the
awful dangers besetting the writer who would revive an obsolete
fashion of speech is shown in the _Lexiphanes_.

Some faults of style he undoubtedly has, of which a word or two should
perhaps be said. The first is the general taint of rhetoric, which is
sometimes positively intolerable, and is liable to spoil enjoyment
even of the best pieces occasionally. Were it not that 'Rhetoric made
a Greek of me,' we should wish heartily that he had never been a
rhetorician. It is the practice of talking on unreal cases, doubtless
habitual with him up to forty, that must be responsible for the self-
satisfied fluency, the too great length, and the perverse ingenuity,
that sometimes excite our impatience.
Naturally, it is in the pieces
of inferior subject or design that this taint is most perceptible; and
it must be forgiven in consideration of the fact that without the
toilsome study of rhetoric he would not have been the master of Greek
that he was.

The second is perhaps only a special case of the first. Julius Pollux,
a sophist whom Lucian is supposed to have attacked in _The
Rhetorician's Vade mecum_, is best known as author of an
_Onomasticon_, or word-list, containing the most important words
relating to certain subjects. One would be reluctant to believe that
Lucian condescended to use his enemy's manual; but it is hard to think
that he had not one of his own, of which he made much too good use.
The conviction is constantly forced on a translator that when Lucian
has said a thing sufficiently once, he has looked at his Onomasticon,
found that there are some words he has not yet got in, and forthwith
said the thing again with some of them, and yet again with the rest.

The third concerns his use of illustrative anecdotes, comparisons, and
phrases. It is true that, if his pieces are taken each separately, he
is most happy with all these (though it is hard to forgive Alexander's
bathe in the Cydnus with which _The Hall_ opens); but when they are
read continuously, the repeated appearances of the tragic actor
disrobed, the dancing apes and their nuts, of Zeus's golden cord, and
of the 'two octaves apart,' produce an impression of poverty that
makes us momentarily forget his real wealth.

We have spoken of the annoying tendency to pleonasm in Lucian's style,
which must be laid at the door of rhetoric. On the other hand let it
have part of the credit for a thing of vastly more importance, his
choice of dialogue as a form when he took to letters. It is quite
obvious that he was naturally a man of detached mind, with an
inclination for looking at both sides of a question. This was no doubt
strengthened by the common practice among professional rhetoricians of
writing speeches on both sides of imaginary cases. The
level-headedness produced by this combination of nature and training
naturally led to the selection of dialogue. In one of the preliminary
trials of _The double Indictment, Drink_, being one of the parties,
and consciously incapable at the moment of doing herself justice,
employs her opponent, _The Academy_, to plead for as well as against
her. There are a good many pieces in which Lucian follows the same
method. In _The Hall_ the legal form is actually kept; in the
_Peregrine_ speeches are delivered by an admirer and a scorner of the
hero; in _The Rhetorician's Vade mecum_ half the piece is an imaginary
statement of the writer's enemy; in the _Apology for 'The dependent
Scholar'_ there is a long imaginary objection set up to be afterwards
disposed of; the _Saturnalian Letters_ are the cases of rich and poor
put from opposite sides. None of these are dialogues; but they are all
less perfect devices to secure the same object, the putting of the two
views that the man of detached mind recognizes on every question. Not
that justice is always the object; these devices, and dialogue still
more, offer the further advantage of economy; no ideas need be wasted,
if the subject is treated from more than one aspect. The choice of
dialogue may be accounted for thus; it is true that it would not have
availed much if the chooser had not possessed the nimble wit and the
endless power of varying the formula which is so astonishing in
Lucian; but that it was a matter of importance is proved at once by
comparing the _Alexander_ with _The Liar_, or _The dependent Scholar_
with the _Feast of Lapithae_. Lucian's non-dialogue pieces (with the
exception of _The True History_) might have been written by other
people; the dialogues are all his own.

About five-and-thirty of his pieces (or sets of pieces) are in
dialogue, and perhaps the greatest proof of his artistic skill is that
the form never palls; so great is the variety of treatment that no one
of them is like another. The point may be worth dwelling on a little.
The main differences between dialogues, apart from the particular
writer's characteristics, are these: the persons may be two only, or
more; they may be well or ill-matched; the proportions and relations
between conversation and narrative vary; and the objects in view are
not always the same. It is natural for a writer to fall into a groove
with some or all of these, and produce an effect of sameness. Lucian,
on the contrary, so rings the changes by permutations and combinations
of them that each dialogue is approached with a delightful uncertainty
of what form it may take. As to number of persons, it is a long step
from the _Menippus_ to the crowded _dramatis personae_ of _The Fisher_
or the _Zeus Tragoedus_, in the latter of which there are two
independent sets, one overhearing and commenting upon the other. It is
not much less, though of another kind, from _The Parasite_, where the
interlocutor is merely a man of straw, to the _Hermotimus_, where he
has life enough to give us ever fresh hopes of a change in fortune, or
to the _Anacharsis_, where we are not quite sure, even when all is
over, which has had the best. Then if we consider conversation and
narrative, there are all kinds. _Nigrinus_ has narrative in a setting
of dialogue, _Demosthenes_ vice versa, _The Liar_ reported dialogue
inside dialogue; _Icaromenippus_ is almost a narrative, while _The
Runaways_ is almost a play. Lastly, the form serves in the _Toxaris_
as a vehicle for stories, in the _Hermotimus_ for real discussion, in
_Menippus_ as relief for narrative, in the _Portrait-study_ for
description, in _The Cock_ to convey moralizing, in _The double
Indictment_ autobiography, in the _Lexiphanes_ satire, and in the
short series it enshrines prose idylls.

These are considerations of a mechanical order, perhaps; it may be
admitted that technical skill of this sort is only valuable in giving
a proper chance to more essential gifts; but when those exist, it is
of the highest value. And Lucian's versatility in technique is only a
symbol of his versatile powers in general. He is equally at home in
heaven and earth and hell, with philosophers and cobblers, telling a
story, criticizing a book, describing a picture, elaborating an
allegory, personifying an abstraction, parodying a poet or a
historian, flattering an emperor's mistress, putting an audience into
good temper with him and itself, unveiling an imposture, destroying a
religion or a reputation, drawing a character. The last is perhaps the
most disputable of the catalogue. How many of his personages are
realities to us when we have read, and not mere labels for certain
modes of thought or conduct? Well, characterization is not the first,
but only the second thing with him; what is said matters rather more
than who says it; he is more desirous that the argument should advance
than that the person should reveal himself; nevertheless, nothing is
ever said that is out of character; while nothing can be better of the
kind than some of his professed personifications, his _Plutus_ or his
_Philosophy_, we do retain distinct impressions of at least an
irresponsible _Zeus_ and a decorously spiteful _Hera_, a well-meaning,
incapable _Helius_, a bluff _Posidon_, a gallant _Prometheus_, a one-
idea'd _Charon_; _Timon_ is more than misanthropy, _Eucrates_ than
superstition, _Anacharsis_ than intelligent curiosity, _Micyllus_ than
ignorant poverty, poor _Hermotimus_ than blind faith, and Lucian than
a scoffer.




THE WORKS OF LUCIAN


THE VISION

A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY


When my childhood was over, and I had just left school, my father
called a council to decide upon my profession. Most of his friends
considered that the life of culture was very exacting in toil, time,
and money: a life only for fortune's favourites; whereas our resources
were quite narrow, and urgently called for relief. If I were to take
up some ordinary handicraft, I should be making my own living straight
off, instead of eating my father's meat at my age; and before long my
earnings would be a welcome contribution.

So the next step was to select the most satisfactory of the
handicrafts; it must be one quite easy to acquire, respectable,
inexpensive as regards plant, and fairly profitable. Various
suggestions were made, according to the taste and knowledge of the
councillors; but my father turned to my mother's brother, supposed to
be an excellent statuary, and said to him: 'With you here, it would be
a sin to prefer any other craft; take the lad, regard him as your
charge, teach him to handle, match, and grave your marble; he will do
well enough; you know he has the ability. ' This he had inferred from
certain tricks I used to play with wax. When I got out of school, I
used to scrape off the wax from my tablets and work it into cows,
horses, or even men and women, and he thought I did it creditably; my
masters used to cane me for it, but on this occasion it was taken as
evidence of a natural faculty, and my modelling gave them good hopes
of my picking up the art quickly.

As soon as it seemed convenient for me to begin, I was handed over to
my uncle, and by no means reluctantly; I thought I should find it
amusing, and be in a position to impress my companions; they should
see me chiselling gods and making little images for myself and my
favourites. The usual first experience of beginners followed: my uncle
gave me a chisel, and told me to give a gentle touch to a plaque lying
on the bench: 'Well begun is half done,' said he, not very originally.
In my inexperience I brought down the tool too hard, and the plaque
broke; he flew into a rage, picked up a stick which lay handy, and
gave me an introduction to art which might have been gentler and more
encouraging; so I paid my footing with tears.

I ran off, and reached home still howling and tearful, told the story
of the stick, and showed my bruises. I said a great deal about his
brutality, and added that it was all envy: he was afraid of my being a
better sculptor than he. My mother was very angry, and abused her
brother roundly; as for me, I fell asleep that night with my eyes
still wet, and sorrow was with me till the morning.

So much of my tale is ridiculous and childish. What you have now to
hear, gentlemen, is not so contemptible, but deserves an attentive
hearing; in the words of Homer,

To me in slumber wrapt a dream divine
Ambrosial night conveyed,

a dream so vivid as to be indistinguishable from reality; after all
these years, I have still the figures of its persons in my eyes, the
vibration of their words in my ears; so clear it all was.

Two women had hold of my hands, and were trying vehemently and
persistently to draw me each her way; I was nearly pulled in two with
their contention; now one would prevail and all but get entire
possession of me, now I would fall to the other again, All the time
they were exchanging loud protests: 'He is mine, and I mean to keep
him;' 'Not yours at all, and it is no use your saying he is. ' One of
them seemed to be a working woman, masculine looking, with untidy
hair, horny hands, and dress kilted up; she was all powdered with
plaster, like my uncle when he was chipping marble. The other had a
beautiful face, a comely figure, and neat attire. At last they invited
me to decide which of them I would live with; the rough manly one made
her speech first.

'Dear youth, I am Statuary--the art which you yesterday began to
learn, and which has a natural and a family claim upon you. Your
grandfather' (naming my mother's father) 'and both your uncles
practised it, and it brought them credit. If you will turn a deaf ear
to this person's foolish cajolery, and come and live with me, I
promise you wholesome food and good strong muscles; you shall never
fear envy, never leave your country and your people to go wandering
abroad, and you shall be commended not for your words, but for your
works.

'Let not a slovenly person or dirty clothes repel you; such were the
conditions of that Phidias who produced the Zeus, of Polyclitus who
created the Hera, of the much-lauded Myron, of the admired Praxiteles;
and all these are worshipped with the Gods. If you should come to be
counted among them, you will surely have fame enough for yourself
through all the world, you will make your father the envy of all
fathers, and bring your country to all men's notice. ' This and more
said Statuary, stumbling along in a strange jargon, stringing her
arguments together in a very earnest manner, and quite intent on
persuading me. But I can remember no more; the greater part of it has
faded from my memory. When she stopped, the other's turn came.

'And I, child, am Culture, no stranger to you even now, though you
have yet to make my closer acquaintance. The advantages that the
profession of a sculptor will bring with it you have just been told;
they amount to no more than being a worker with your hands, your whole
prospects in life limited to that; you will be obscure, poorly and
illiberally paid, mean-spirited, of no account outside your doors;
your influence will never help a friend, silence an enemy, nor impress
your countrymen; you will be just a worker, one of the masses,
cowering before the distinguished, truckling to the eloquent, living
the life of a hare, a prey to your betters. You may turn out a Phidias
or a Polyclitus, to be sure, and create a number of wonderful works;
but even so, though your art will be generally commended, no sensible
observer will be found to wish himself like you; whatever your real
qualities, you will always rank as a common craftsman who makes his
living with his hands.

'Be governed by me, on the other hand, and your first reward shall be
a view of the many wondrous deeds and doings of the men of old; you
shall hear their words and know them all, what manner of men they
were; and your soul, which is your very self, I will adorn with many
fair adornments, with self-mastery and justice and reverence and
mildness, with consideration and understanding and fortitude, with
love of what is beautiful, and yearning for what is great; these
things it is that are the true and pure ornaments of the soul. Naught
shall escape you either of ancient wisdom or of present avail; nay,
the future too, with me to aid, you shall foresee; in a word, I will
instill into you, and that in no long time, all knowledge human and
divine.

'This penniless son of who knows whom, contemplating but now a
vocation so ignoble, shall soon be admired and envied of all, with
honour and praise and the fame of high achievement, respected by the
high-born and the affluent, clothed as I am clothed' (and here she
pointed to her own bright raiment), 'held worthy of place and
precedence; and if you leave your native land, you will be no unknown
nameless wanderer; you shall wear my marks upon you, and every man
beholding you shall touch his neighbour's arm and say, That is he.

'And if some great moment come to try your friends or country, then
shall all look to you. And to your lightest word the many shall listen
open-mouthed, and marvel, and count you happy in your eloquence, and
your father in his son. 'Tis said that some from mortal men become
immortal; and I will make it truth in you; for though you depart from
life yourself, you shall keep touch with the learned and hold
communion with the best. Consider the mighty Demosthenes, whose son he
was, and whither I exalted him; consider Aeschines; how came a Philip
to pay court to the cymbal-woman's brat? how but for my sake? Dame
Statuary here had the breeding of Socrates himself; but no sooner
could he discern the better part, than he deserted her and enlisted
with me; since when, his name is on every tongue.

'You may dismiss all these great men, and with them all glorious
deeds, majestic words, and seemly looks, all honour, repute, praise,
precedence, power, and office, all lauded eloquence and envied wisdom;
these you may put from you, to gird on a filthy apron and assume a
servile guise; then will you handle crowbars and graving tools,
mallets and chisels; you will be bowed over your work, with eyes and
thoughts bent earthwards, abject as abject can be, with never a free
and manly upward look or aspiration; all your care will be to
proportion and fairly drape your works; to proportioning and adorning
yourself you will give little heed enough, making yourself of less
account than your marble. '

I waited not for her to bring her words to an end, but rose up and
spoke my mind; I turned from that clumsy mechanic woman, and went
rejoicing to lady Culture, the more when I thought upon the stick, and
all the blows my yesterday's apprenticeship had brought me. For a time
the deserted one was wroth, with clenched fists and grinding teeth;
but at last she stiffened, like another Niobe, into marble. A strange
fate, but I must request your belief; dreams are great magicians, are
they not?

Then the other looked upon me and spoke:--'For this justice done me,'
said she, 'you shall now be recompensed; come, mount this car'--and
lo, one stood ready, drawn by winged steeds like Pegasus--, 'that you
may learn what fair sights another choice would have cost you. ' We
mounted, she took the reins and drove, and I was carried aloft and
beheld towns and nations and peoples from the East to the West; and
methought I was sowing like Triptolemus; but the nature of the seed I
cannot call to mind--only this, that men on earth when they saw it
gave praise, and all whom I reached in my flight sent me on my way
with blessings.

When she had presented these things to my eyes, and me to my admirers,
she brought me back, no more clad as when my flight began; I returned,
methought, in glorious raiment. And finding my father where he stood
waiting, she showed him my raiment, and the guise in which I came, and
said a word to him upon the lot which they had come so near appointing
for me. All this I saw when scarce out of my childhood; the confusion
and terror of the stick, it may be, stamped it on my memory.

'Good gracious,' says some one, before I have done, 'what a longwinded
lawyer's vision! ' 'This,' interrupts another, 'must be a winter dream,
to judge by the length of night required; or perhaps it took three
nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he
babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and
a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take
us for interpreters of dreams? ' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related
that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire
and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was it in deliberate
ineptitude that he reproduced it? a likely thing in their desperate
military situation, with the enemy surrounding them! no, the relation
was to serve a useful purpose.

Similarly I have had an object in telling you my dream. It is that the
young may be guided to the better way and set themselves to Culture,
especially any among them who is recreant for fear of poverty, and
minded to enter the wrong path, to the ruin of a nature not all
ignoble. Such an one will be strengthened by my tale, I am well
assured; in me he will find an apt example; let him only compare the
boy of those days, who started in pursuit of the best and devoted
himself to Culture regardless of immediate poverty, with the man who
has now come back to you, as high in fame, to put it at the lowest, as
any stonecutter of them all.

H.




A LITERARY PROMETHEUS


So you will have me a Prometheus? If your meaning is, my good sir,
that my works, like his, are of clay, I accept the comparison and hail
my prototype; potter me to your heart's content, though _my_ clay is
poor common stuff, trampled by common feet till it is little better
than mud. But perhaps it is in exaggerated compliment to my ingenuity
that you father my books upon the subtlest of the Titans; in that case
I fear men will find a hidden meaning, and detect an Attic curl on
your laudatory lips. Where do you find my ingenuity? in what consists
the great subtlety, the Prometheanism, of my writings? enough for me
if you have not found them sheer earth, all unworthy of Caucasian
clay-pits. How much better a claim to kinship with Prometheus have you
gentlemen who win fame in the courts, engaged in real contests; _your_
works have true life and breath, ay, and the warmth of fire. That is
Promethean indeed, though with the difference, it may be, that you do
not work in clay; your creations are oftenest of gold; we
on the other hand who come before popular audiences and offer mere
lectures are exhibitors of imitations only. However, I have the
general resemblance to Prometheus, as I said before--a resemblance
which I share with the dollmakers--, that my modelling is in clay; but
then there is no motion, as with him, not a sign of life;
entertainment and pastime is the beginning and the end of my work. So
I must look for light elsewhere; possibly the title is a sort of
_lucus a non lucendo_, applied to me as to Cleon in the comedy:

Full well Prometheus-Cleon plans--the past.

Or again, the Athenians used to call Prometheuses the makers of jars
and stoves and other, clay-workers, with playful reference to the
material, and perhaps to the use of fire in baking the ware. If that
is all your 'Prometheus' means, you have aimed your shaft well enough,
and flavoured your jest with the right Attic tartness; my productions
are as brittle as their pottery; fling a stone, and you may smash them
all to pieces.

But here some one offers me a crumb of comfort: 'That was not the
likeness he found between you and Prometheus; he meant to commend your
innovating originality: at a time when human beings did not exist,
Prometheus conceived and fashioned them; he moulded and elaborated
certain living things into agility and beauty; he was practically
their creator, though Athene assisted by putting breath into the clay
and bringing the models to life. ' So says my some one, giving your
remark its politest possible turn. Perhaps he has hit the true
meaning; not that I can rest content, however, with the mere credit of
innovation, and the absence of any original to which my work can be
referred; if it is not good as well as original, I assure you I shall
be ashamed of it, bring down my foot and crush it out of existence;
its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness
from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen
of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could
not see that ugliness was only aggravated by strangeness.

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, imported two novelties into Egypt; one was a
pure black Bactrian camel, the other a piebald man, half absolutely
black and half unusually white, the two colours evenly distributed; he
invited the Egyptians to the theatre, and concluded a varied show with
these two, expecting to bring down the house. The audience, however,
was terrified by the camel and almost stampeded; still, it _was_
decked all over with gold, had purple housings and a richly jewelled
bridle, the spoil of Darius' or Cambyses' treasury, if not of Cyrus'
own. As for the man, a few laughed at him, but most shrank as from a
monster. Ptolemy realized that the show was a failure, and the
Egyptians proof against mere novelty, preferring harmony and beauty.
So he withdrew and ceased to prize them; the camel died forgotten, and
the parti-coloured man became the reward of Thespis the fluteplayer
for a successful after-dinner performance.

I am afraid my work is a camel in Egypt, and men's admiration limited
to the bridle and purple housings; as to combinations, though the
components may be of the most beautiful (as Comedy and Dialogue in the
present case), that will not ensure a good effect, unless the mixture
is harmonious and well-proportioned; it is possible that the resultant
of two beauties may be bizarre. The readiest instance to hand is the
centaur: not a lovely creature, you will admit, but a savage, if the
paintings of its drunken bouts and murders go for anything. Well, but
on the other hand is it not possible for two such components to result
in beauty, as the combination of wine and honey in superlative
sweetness? That is my belief; but I am not prepared to maintain that
_my_ components have that property; I fear the mixture may only
have obscured their separate beauties.

For one thing, there was no great original connexion or friendship
between Dialogue and Comedy; the former was a stay-at-home, spending
his time in solitude, or at most taking a stroll with a few intimates;
whereas Comedy put herself in the hands of Dionysus, haunted the
theatre, frolicked in company, laughed and mocked and tripped it to
the flute when she saw good; nay, she would mount her anapaests, as
likely as not, and pelt the friends of Dialogue with nicknames--
doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved
of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence,
exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring
the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But
Dialogue continued his deep speculations upon Nature and Virtue, till,
as the musicians say, the interval between them was two full octaves,
from the highest to the lowest note. This ill-assorted pair it is that
we have dared to unite and harmonize--reluctant and ill--disposed for
reconciliation.

And here comes in the apprehension of yet another Promethean analogy:
have I confounded male and female, and incurred the penalty? Or no--
when will resemblances end? --have I, rather, cheated my hearers by
serving them up bones wrapped in fat, comic laughter in philosophic
solemnity? As for stealing--for Prometheus is the thief's patron too--
I defy you there; that is the one fault you cannot find with me: from
whom should I have stolen? if any one has dealt before me in such
forced unions and hybrids, I have never made his acquaintance. But
after all, what am I to do? I have made my bed, and I must lie in it;
Epimetheus may change his mind, but Prometheus, never.

H.




NIGRINUS


[Lucian to Nigrinus. Health.

There is a proverb about carrying 'owls to Athens'--an absurd
undertaking, considering the excellent supply already on the spot. Had
it been my intention, in presenting Nigrinus with a volume of my
composition, to indulge him of all people with a display of literary
skill, I should indeed have been an arrant 'owl-fancier in Athens. ' As
however my object is merely to communicate to you my present
sentiments, and the profound impression produced upon me by your
eloquence, I may fairly plead Not Guilty, even to the charge of
Thucydides, that 'Men are bold from ignorance, where mature
consideration would render them cautious. ' For I need not say that
devotion to my subject is partly responsible for my present hardihood;
it is not _all_ the work of ignorance. Farewell. ]




NIGRINUS

A DIALOGUE

_Lucian. A Friend_


_Fr_. What a haughty and dignified Lucian returns to us from his
journey! He will not vouchsafe us a glance; he stands aloof, and will
hold no further communion with us. Altogether a supercilious Lucian!
The change is sudden. Might one inquire the cause of this altered
demeanour?

_Luc_. 'Tis the work of Fortune.

_Fr_. Of Fortune!

_Luc_. As an incidental result of my journey, you see in me a happy
man; 'thrice-blest,' as the tragedians have it.

_Fr_. Dear me. What, in this short time?

_Luc_. Even so.

_Fr_. But what does it all mean? What is the secret of your elation? I
decline to rejoice with you in this abridged fashion; I must have
details. Tell me all about it.

_Luc_. What should you think, if I told you that I had exchanged
servitude for freedom; poverty for true wealth; folly and presumption
for good sense?

_Fr_. Extraordinary! But I am not quite clear of your meaning yet.

_Luc_. Why, I went off to Rome to see an oculist--my eyes had been
getting worse--

_Fr_. Yes, I know about that. I have been hoping that you would light
on a good man.

_Luc_. Well, I got up early one morning with the intention of paying a
long-deferred visit to Nigrinus, the Platonic philosopher. On reaching
his house, I knocked, and was duly announced and admitted to his
presence. I found him with a book in his hand, surrounded by various
statues of the ancient philosophers. Before him lay a tablet, with
geometrical figures described on it, and a globe of reeds, designed
apparently to represent the universe. He greeted me cordially, and
asked after my welfare. I satisfied his inquiries, and demanded, in my
turn, how he did, and whether he had decided on another trip to
Greece. Once on that subject, he gave free expression to his
sentiments; and, I assure you, 'twas a veritable feast of ambrosia to
me. The spells of the Sirens (if ever there were Sirens), of the
Pindaric 'Charmers,' of the Homeric lotus, are things to be forgotten,
after his truly divine eloquence. Led on by his theme, he spoke the
praises of philosophy, and of the freedom which philosophy confers;
and expressed his contempt for the vulgar error which sets a value
upon wealth and renown and dominion and power, upon gold and purple,
and all that dazzles the eyes of the world,--and once attracted my
own! I listened with rapt attention, and with a swelling heart. At the
time, I knew not what had come over me; my feelings were
indescribable. My dearest idols, riches and renown, lay shattered; one
moment I was ready to shed bitter tears over the disillusionment, the
next, I could have laughed for scorn of these very things, and was
exulting in my escape from the murky atmosphere of my past life into
the brightness of the upper air. The result was curious: I forgot all
about my ophthalmic troubles, in the gradual improvement of my
spiritual vision; for till that day I had grovelled in spiritual
blindness. Little by little I came into the condition with which you
were twitting me just now. Nigrinus's words have raised in me a joyous
exaltation of spirit which precludes every meaner thought. Philosophy
seems to have produced the same effect on me as wine is said to have
produced on the Indians the first time they drank it. The mere taste
of such potent liquor threw them into a state of absolute frenzy, the
intoxicating power of the wine being doubled in men so warm-blooded by
nature. This is my case. I go about like one possessed; I am drunk
with the words of wisdom.

_Fr_. This is not drunkenness, but sobriety and temperance. But I
should like to hear what Nigrinus actually said, if that may be. It is
only right that you should take that trouble for me; I am your friend,
and share your interests.

_Luc_. Enough! You urge a willing steed.