No More Learning

He looked at
her. He hid his face on her bosom, and burst into tears. With sobs long
and loud, and convulsive as those of a terrified child, he poured forth
on her bosom the tribute of impetuous and uncontrollable emotion. He
raised his head; but he in vain struggled to restore composure to the
brow which had confronted the frown of Sylla, and the lips which had
rivalled the eloquence of Cicero. He several times attempted to speak,
but in vain; and his voice still faltered with tenderness, when, after a
pause of several minutes, he thus addressed her:

"My own dear Zoe, your love has been bestowed on one who, if he
cannot merit, can at least appreciate and adore you. Beings of similar
loveliness, and similar devotedness of affection, mingled, in all my
boyish dreams of greatness, with visions of curule chairs and ivory
cars, marshalled legions and laurelled fasces. Such I have endeavoured
to find in the world; and, in their stead, I have met with selfishness,
with vanity, with frivolity, with falsehood. The life which you have
preserved is a boon less valuable than the affection "--

"Oh! Caesar," interrupted the blushing Zoe, "think only on your own
security at present. If you feel as you speak,--but you are only mocking
me,--or perhaps your compassion "--

"By Heaven! --by every oath that is binding "--

"Alas! alas! Caesar, were not all the same oaths sworn yesterday to
Valeria? But I will trust you, at least so far as to partake your
present dangers. Flight may be necessary:--form your plans. Be they what
they may, there is one who, in exile, in poverty, in peril, asks only to
wander, to beg, to die with you. "

"My Zoe, I do not anticipate any such necessity. To renounce the
conspiracy without renouncing the principles on which it was originally
undertaken,--to elude the vengeance of the Senate without losing
the confidence of the people,--is, indeed, an arduous, but not an
impossible, task. I owe it to myself and to my country to make the
attempt. There is still ample time for consideration. At present I am
too happy in love to think of ambition or danger. "

They had reached the door of a stately palace. Caesar struck it. It was
instantly opened by a slave. Zoe found herself in a magnificent hall,
surrounded by pillars of green marble, between which were ranged the
statues of the long line of Julian nobles.

"Call Endymion," said Caesar.

The confidential freed-man made his appearance, not without a slight
smile, which his patron's good nature emboldened him to hazard, at
perceiving the beautiful Athenian.

"Arm my slaves, Endymion; there are reasons for precaution. Let
them relieve each other on guard during the night. Zoe, my love, my
preserver, why are your cheeks so pale? Let me kiss some bloom into
them. How you tremble! Endymion, a flask of Samian and some fruit. Bring
them to my apartments. This way, my sweet Zoe. "

*****




ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. (June 1823. )

This is the age of societies. There is scarcely one Englishman in ten
who has not belonged to some association for distributing books, or for
prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to
the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich, or blankets to the poor.
To be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small
distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal
Society of Literature. At the first establishment of that ridiculous
academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage
and episcopal management, it would do nothing, or do harm. And it will
scarcely be denied that those expectations have hitherto been fulfilled.

I do not attack the founders of the association. Their characters are
respectable; their motives, I am willing to believe, were laudable.
But I feel, and it is the duty of every literary man to feel, a strong
jealousy of their proceedings. Their society can be innocent only while
it continues to be despicable. Should they ever possess the power to
encourage merit, they must also possess the power to depress it. Which
power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has studied
literary history, let every one who has studied human nature, declare.

Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities. They
often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent and
scientific associations. But it is in literary academies that they exert
the most extensive and pernicious influence. In the first place, the
principles of literary criticism, though equally fixed with those on
which the chemist and the surgeon proceed, are by no means equally
recognised. Men are rarely able to assign a reason for their approbation
or dislike on questions of taste; and therefore they willingly submit
to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is
more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than
the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence it is
in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most
easily decried.

In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine arts; and
it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of that institution
which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset House with an acre of
spoiled canvas. But a literary tribunal is incomparably more dangerous.
Other societies, at least, have no tendency to call forth any opinions
on those subjects which most agitate and inflame the minds of men. The
sceptic and the zealot, the revolutionist and the placeman, meet on
common ground in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science. They
can praise or censure without reference to the differences which exist
between them. In a literary body this can never be the case. Literature
is, and always must be, inseparably blended with politics and theology;
it is the great engine which moves the feelings of a people on the most
momentous questions. It is, therefore, impossible that any society
can be formed so impartial as to consider the literary character of an
individual abstracted from the opinions which his writings inculcate. It
is not to be hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings
of the man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the
academician. The consequences are evident. The honours and censures
of this Star Chamber of the Muses will be awarded according to the
prejudices of the particular sect or faction which may at the time
predominate. Whigs would canvass against a Southey, Tories against a
Byron. Those who might at first protest against such conduct as unjust
would soon adopt it on the plea of retaliation; and the general good of
literature, for which the society was professedly instituted, would be
forgotten in the stronger claims of political and religious partiality.

Yet even this is not the worst. Should the institution ever acquire any
influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities to every malignant
coward who may desire to blast a reputation which he envies. It will
furnish a secure ambuscade, behind which the Maroons of literature may
take a certain and deadly aim. The editorial WE has often been fatal
to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of
speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead. The academic WE
would have a far greater and more ruinous influence. Numbers, while
they increase the effect, would diminish the shame, of injustice.
The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous attack would be
combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of
concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon,
found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the
shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything
that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and
everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this
new temple of wisdom.

The French academy was, of all such associations, the most widely and
the most justly celebrated. It was founded by the greatest of ministers:
it was patronised by successive kings; it numbered in its lists most of
the eminent French writers. Yet what benefit has literature derived from
its labours? What is its history but an uninterrupted record of servile
compliances--of paltry artifices--of deadly quarrels--of perfidious
friendships? Whether governed by the Court, by the Sorbonne, or by
the Philosophers, it was always equally powerful for evil, and equally
impotent for good. I might speak of the attacks by which it attempted
to depress the rising fame of Corneille; I might speak of the reluctance
with which it gave its tardy confirmation to the applauses which the
whole civilised world had bestowed on the genius of Voltaire. I might
prove by overwhelming evidence that, to the latest period of its
existence, even under the superintendence of the all-accomplished
D'Alembert, it continued to be a scene of the fiercest animosities and
the basest intrigues. I might cite Piron's epigrams, and Marmontel's
memoirs, and Montesquieu's letters. But I hasten on to another topic.

One of the modes by which our Society proposes to encourage merit is the
distribution of prizes. The munificence of the king has enabled it
to offer an annual premium of a hundred guineas for the best essay in
prose, and another of fifty guineas for the best poem, which may be
transmitted to it. This is very laughable. In the first place the
judges may err. Those imperfections of human intellect to which, as the
articles of the Church tell us, even general councils are subject, may
possibly be found even in the Royal Society of Literature. The French
academy, as I have already said, was the most illustrious assembly of
the kind, and numbered among its associates men much more distinguished
than ever will assemble at Mr Hatchard's to rummage the box of the
English Society. Yet this famous body gave a poetical prize, for which
Voltaire was a candidate, to a fellow who wrote some verses about THE
FROZEN AND THE BURNING POLE.

Yet, granting that the prizes were always awarded to the best
composition, that composition, I say without hesitation, will always be
bad. A prize poem is like a prize sheep. The object of the competitor
for the agricultural premium is to produce an animal fit, not to be
eaten, but to be weighed. Accordingly he pampers his victim into morbid
and unnatural fatness; and, when it is in such a state that it would
be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The
object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a
good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which
may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. Compositions thus
constructed will always be worthless. The few excellences which they may
contain will have an exotic aspect and flavour. In general, prize sheep
are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems are
good for nothing but to light them.

The first subject proposed by the Society to the poets of England was
Dartmoor. I thought that they intended a covert sarcasm at their own
projects. Their institution was a literary Dartmoor scheme;--a plan
for forcing into cultivation the waste lands of intellect,--for raising
poetical produce, by means of bounties, from soil too meagre to have
yielded any returns in the natural course of things. The plan for the
cultivation of Dartmoor has, I hear, been abandoned. I hope that this
may be an omen of the fate of the Society.

In truth, this seems by no means improbable. They have been offering for
several years the rewards which the king placed at their disposal, and
have not, as far as I can learn, been able to find in their box one
composition which they have deemed worthy of publication. At least no
publication has taken place. The associates may perhaps be astonished
at this. But I will attempt to explain it, after the manner of ancient
times, by means of an apologue.

About four hundred years after the Deluge, King Gomer Chephoraod reigned
in Babylon. He united all the characteristics of an excellent sovereign.
He made good laws, won great battles, and white-washed long streets.
He was, in consequence, idolised by his people, and panegyrised by many
poets and orators. A book was then a sermons undertaking. Neither paper
nor any similar material had been invented. Authors were therefore under
the necessity of inscribing their compositions on massive bricks. Some
of these Babylonian records are still preserved in European museums; but
the language in which they are written has never been deciphered. Gomer
Chephoraod was so popular that the clay of all the plains round the
Euphrates could scarcely furnish brick-kilns enough for his eulogists.
It is recorded in particular that Pharonezzar, the Assyrian Pindar,
published a bridge and four walls in his praise.

One day the king was going in state from his palace to the temple of
Belus. During this procession it was lawful for any Babylonian to offer
any petition or suggestion to his sovereign. As the chariot passed
before a vintner's shop, a large company, apparently half-drunk, sallied
forth into the street, and one of them thus addressed the king:

"Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever! It appears to thy servants that of all
the productions of the earth good wine is the best, and bad wine is the
worst. Good wine makes the heart cheerful, the eyes bright, the speech
ready. Bad wine confuses the head, disorders the stomach, makes us
quarrelsome at night, and sick the next morning. Now therefore let my
lord the king take order that thy servants may drink good wine.

"And how is this to be done? " said the good-natured prince.

"O King," said his monitor, "this is most easy. Let the king make a
decree, and seal it with his royal signet: and let it be proclaimed that
the king will give ten she-asses, and ten slaves, and ten changes of
raiment, every year, unto the man who shall make ten measures of the
best wine. And whosoever wishes for the she-asses, and the slaves, and
the raiment, let him send the ten measures of wine to thy servants, and
we will drink thereof and judge. So shall there be much good wine in
Assyria. "

The project pleased Gomer Chephoraod. "Be it so," said he. The people
shouted. The petitioners prostrated themselves in gratitude. The same
night heralds were despatched to bear the intelligence to the remotest
districts of Assyria.

After a due interval the wines began to come in; and the examiners
assembled to adjudge the prize. The first vessel was unsealed. Its
odour was such that the judges, without tasting it, pronounced unanimous
condemnation. The next was opened: it had a villainous taste of clay.
The third was sour and vapid. They proceeded from one cask of execrable
liquor to another, till at length, in absolute nausea, they gave up the
investigation.

The next morning they all assembled at the gate of the king, with pale
faces and aching heads. They owned that they could not recommend any
competitor as worthy of the rewards. They swore that the wine was little
better than poison, and entreated permission to resign the office of
deciding between such detestable potions.

"In the name of Belus, how can this have happened? " said the king.

Merolchazzar, the high-priest, muttered something about the anger of
the Gods at the toleration shown to a sect of impious heretics who ate
pigeons broiled, "whereas," said he, "our religion commands us to eat
them roasted. Now therefore, O King," continued this respectable divine,
"give command to thy men of war, and let them smite the disobedient
people with the sword, them, and their wives, and their children, and
let their houses, and their flocks, and their herds, be given to thy
servants the priests. Then shall the land yield its increase, and
the fruits of the earth shall be no more blasted by the vengeance of
Heaven. "

"Nay," said the king, "the ground lies under no general curse from
Heaven. The season has been singularly good. The wine which thou didst
thyself drink at the banquet a few nights ago, O venerable Merolchazzar,
was of this year's vintage. Dost thou not remember how thou didst praise
it? It was the same night that thou wast inspired by Belus and didst
reel to and fro, and discourse sacred mysteries. These things are too
hard for me. I comprehend them not. The only wine which is bad is that
which is sent to my judges. Who can expound this to us? "

The king scratched his head. Upon which all the courtiers scratched
their heads.

He then ordered proclamation to be made that a purple robe and a golden
chain should be given to the man who could solve this difficulty.

An old philosopher, who had been observed to smile rather disdainfully
when the prize had first been instituted, came forward and spoke thus:--

"Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever! Marvel not at that which has happened.
It was no miracle, but a natural event. How could it be otherwise? It is
true that much good wine has been made this year. But who would send it
in for thy rewards? Thou knowest Ascobaruch who hath the great vineyards
in the north, and Cohahiroth who sendeth wine every year from the south
over the Persian Golf. Their wines are so delicious that ten measures
thereof are sold for an hundred talents of silver. Thinkest thou that
they will exchange them for thy slaves and thine asses? What would thy
prize profit any who have vineyards in rich soils? "

"Who then," said one of the judges, "are the wretches who sent us this
poison? "

"Blame them not," said the sage, "seeing that you have been the authors
of the evil. They are men whose lands are poor, and have never yielded
them any returns equal to the prizes which the king proposed. Wherefore,
knowing that the lords of the fruitful vineyards would not enter into
competition with them they planted vines, some on rocks, and some in
light sandy soil, and some in deep clay. Hence their wines are bad.
For no culture or reward will make barren land bear good vines. Know
therefore, assuredly, that your prizes have increased the quantity of
bad but not of good wine. "

There was a long silence. At length the king spoke. "Give him the purple
robe and the chain of gold. Throw the wines into the Euphrates; and
proclaim that the Royal Society of Wines is dissolved. "

*****




SCENES FROM "ATHENIAN REVELS. " (January 1824. )

A DRAMA.

I.

SCENE--A Street in Athens.

Enter CALLIDEMUS and SPEUSIPPUS;

CALLIDEMUS. So, you young reprobate! You must be a man of wit, forsooth,
and a man of quality! You must spend as if you were as rich as Nicias,
and prate as if you were as wise as Pericles! You must dangle after
sophists and pretty women! And I must pay for all! I must sup on thyme
and onions, while you are swallowing thrushes and hares! I must drink
water, that you may play the cottabus (This game consisted in projecting
wine out of cups; it was a diversion extremely fashionable at Athenian
entertainments. ) with Chian wine!
I must wander about as ragged as
Pauson (Pauson was an Athenian painter, whose name was synonymous with
beggary. See Aristophanes; Plutus, 602. From his poverty, I am inclined
to suppose that he painted historical pictures. ), that you may be
as fine as Alcibiades! I must lie on bare boards, with a stone (See
Aristophanes; Plutus, 542. ) for my pillow, and a rotten mat for my
coverlid, by the light of a wretched winking lamp, while you are
marching in state, with as many torches as one sees at the feast of
Ceres, to thunder with your hatchet (See Theocritus; Idyll ii. 128. )
at the doors of half the Ionian ladies in Peiraeus. (This was the most
disreputable part of Athens. See Aristophanes: Pax, 165. )

SPEUSIPPUS. Why, thou unreasonable old man! Thou most shameless of
fathers! --

CALLIDEMUS. Ungrateful wretch; dare you talk so? Are you not afraid of
the thunders of Jupiter?

SPEUSIPPUS. Jupiter thunder! nonsense! Anaxagoras says, that thunder is
only an explosion produced by--

CALLIDEMUS. He does! Would that it had fallen on his head for his pains!

SPEUSIPPUS. Nay: talk rationally.

CALLIDEMUS. Rationally! You audacious young sophist! I will talk
rationally. Do you know that I am your father? What quibble can you make
upon that?

SPEUSIPPUS. Do I know that you are my father? Let us take the question
to pieces, as Melesigenes would say. First, then, we must inquire what
is knowledge? Secondly, what is a father? Now, knowledge, as Socrates
said the other day to Theaetetus (See Plato's Theaetetus. )--

CALLIDEMUS. Socrates! what! the ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who walks
about all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats, and
shoes (See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150. ) fleas with wax?

SPEUSIPPUS. All fiction! All trumped up by Aristophanes!

CALLIDEMUS. By Pallas, if he is in the habit of putting shoes on his
fleas, he is kinder to them than to himself. But listen to me, boy; if
you go on in this way, you will be ruined. There is an argument for you.
Go to your Socrates and your Melesigenes, and tell them to refute that.
Ruined! Do you hear?

SPEUSIPPUS. Ruined!

CALLIDEMUS. Ay, by Jupiter! Is such a show as you make to be supported
on nothing? During all the last war, I made not an obol from my
farm; the Peloponnesian locusts came almost as regularly as the
Pleiades;--corn burnt;--olives stripped;--fruit trees cut down;--wells
stopped up;--and, just when peace came, and I hoped that all would turn
out well, you must begin to spend as if you had all the mines of Thasus
at command.

SPEUSIPPUS. Now, by Neptune, who delights in horses--

CALLIDEMUS. If Neptune delights in horses, he does not resemble me. You
must ride at the Panathenaea on a horse fit for the great king: four
acres of my best vines went for that folly. You must retrench, or you
will have nothing to eat. Does not Anaxagoras mention, among his other
discoveries, that when a man has nothing to eat he dies?

SPEUSIPPUS. You are deceived. My friends--

CALLIDEMUS. Oh, yes! your friends will notice you, doubtless, when you
are squeezing through the crowd, on a winter's day, to warm yourself
at the fire of the baths;--or when you are fighting with beggars and
beggars' dogs for the scraps of a sacrifice;--or when you are glad
to earn three wretched obols (The stipend of an Athenian juryman. ) by
listening all day to lying speeches and crying children.

SPEUSIPPUS. There are other means of support.

CALLIDEMUS. What! I suppose you will wander from house to house,
like that wretched buffoon Philippus (Xenophon; Convivium. ), and beg
everybody who has asked a supper-party to be so kind as to feed you
and laugh at you; or you will turn sycophant; you will get a bunch
of grapes, or a pair of shoes, now and then, by frightening some rich
coward with a mock prosecution. Well! that is a task for which your
studies under the sophists may have fitted you.

SPEUSIPPUS. You are wide of the mark.

CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Juno, is your scheme? Do
you intend to join Orestes (A celebrated highwayman of Attica. See
Aristophanes; Aves, 711; and in several other passages. ), and rob on
the highway? Take care; beware of the eleven (The police officers of
Athens. ); beware of the hemlock. It may be very pleasant to live at
other people's expense; but not very pleasant, I should think, to hear
the pestle give its last bang against the mortar, when the cold dose is
ready. Pah! --

SPEUSIPPUS. Hemlock? Orestes! folly! --I aim at nobler objects. What say
you to politics,--the general assembly?

CALLIDEMUS. You an orator! --oh no! no! Cleon was worth twenty such fools
as you. You have succeeded, I grant, to his impudence, for which, if
there be justice in Tartarus, he is now soaking up to the eyes in his
own tanpickle. But the Paphlagonian had parts.

SPEUSIPPUS. And you mean to imply--

CALLIDEMUS. Not I. You are a Pericles in embryo, doubtless. Well: and
when are you to make your first speech? O Pallas!

SPEUSIPPUS. I thought of speaking, the other day, on the Sicilian
expedition; but Nicias (See Thucydides, vi. 8. ) got up before me.

CALLIDEMUS. Nicias, poor honest man, might just as well have sate
still; his speaking did but little good. The loss of your oration is,
doubtless, an irreparable public calamity.

SPEUSIPPUS. Why, not so; I intend to introduce it at the next assembly;
it will suit any subject.

CALLIDEMUS. That is to say, it will suit none. But pray, if it be not
too presumptuous a request, indulge me with a specimen.

SPEUSIPPUS. Well; suppose the agora crowded;--an important subject under
discussion;--an ambassador from Argos, or from the great king;--the
tributes from the islands;--an impeachment;--in short, anything you
please. The crier makes proclamation. --"Any citizen above fifty years
old may speak--any citizen not disqualified may speak. " Then I rise:--a
great murmur of curiosity while I am mounting the stand.

CALLIDEMUS. Of curiosity! yes, and of something else too. You will
infallibly be dragged down by main force, like poor Glaucon (See
Xenophon Memorabilia, iii. ) last year.

SPEUSIPPUS. Never fear. I shall begin in this style: "When I consider,
Athenians, the importance of our city;--when I consider the extent
of its power, the wisdom of its laws, the elegance of its
decorations;--when I consider by what names and by what exploits its
annals are adorned; when I think on Harmodius and Aristogiton, on
Themistocles and Miltiades, on Cimon and Pericles;--when I contemplate
our pre-eminence in arts and letters;--when I observe so many
flourishing states and islands compelled to own the dominion, and
purchase the protection of the City of the Violet Crown" (A favourite
epithet of Athens. See Aristophanes; Acharn. 637. )--

CALLIDEMUS. I shall choke with rage. Oh, all ye gods and goddesses, what
sacrilege, what perjury have I ever committed, that I should be singled
out from among all the citizens of Athens to be the father of this fool?

SPEUSIPPUS. What now? By Bacchus, old man, I would not advise you to
give way to such fits of passion in the streets. If Aristophanes were to
see you, you would infallibly be in a comedy next spring.

CALLIDEMUS. You have more reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool
living. Oh, that he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of
Straton (See Aristophanes; Equites, 1375. ) and the lisp of Alcibiades!
(See Aristophanes; Vespae, 44. ) You would be an inexhaustible subject.
You would console him for the loss of Cleon.

SPEUSIPPUS. No, no. I may perhaps figure at the dramatic representations
before long; but in a very different way.

CALLIDEMUS. What do you mean?

SPEUSIPPUS. What say you to a tragedy?

CALLIDEMUS. A tragedy of yours?

SPEUSIPPUS. Even so.

CALLIDEMUS. Oh Hercules! Oh Bacchus! This is too much. Here is an
universal genius; sophist,--orator,--poet. To what a three-headed
monster have I given birth! a perfect Cerberus of intellect! And pray
what may your piece be about? Or will your tragedy, like your speech,
serve equally for any subject?

SPEUSIPPUS. I thought of several plots;--Oedipus,--Eteocles and
Polynices,--the war of Troy,--the murder of Agamemnon.

CALLIDEMUS. And what have you chosen?

SPEUSIPPUS. You know there is a law which permits any modern poet
to retouch a play of Aeschylus, and bring it forward as his own
composition. And, as there is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar,
in favour of his extravagant pieces, I have selected one of them, and
altered it.

CALLIDEMUS. Which of them?

SPEUSIPPUS. Oh! that mass of barbarous absurdities, the Prometheus. But
I have framed it anew upon the model of Euripides. By Bacchus, I shall
make Sophocles and Agathon look about them. You would not know the play
again.

CALLIDEMUS. By Jupiter, I believe not.

SPEUSIPPUS. I have omitted the whole of the absurd dialogue between
Vulcan and Strength, at the beginning.

CALLIDEMUS. That may be, on the whole, an improvement. The play will
then open with that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained to
the rock.

"Oh! ye eternal heavens! ye rushing winds! Ye fountains of great
streams! Ye ocean waves, That in ten thousand sparkling dimples wreathe
Your azure smiles! All-generating earth! All-seeing sun! On you, on you,
I call. " (See Aeschylus; Prometheus, 88. )

Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable of that
idea. Why do you laugh?