Take away
the moral impulse and there would have been no orator, no oratory,
no thirty years of unmatched eloquence, no such rhetorical lesson as
the speeches of Phillips now give.
the moral impulse and there would have been no orator, no oratory,
no thirty years of unmatched eloquence, no such rhetorical lesson as
the speeches of Phillips now give.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 to v20 - Phi to Qui
00
I
NEW YORK
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. WIL.
PUBLISHERS
## p. 11394 (#8) ############################################
## p. 11395 (#9) ############################################
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OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
Ancient and Modern
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
EDITOR
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE, LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE,
GEORGE H. WARNER
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THIRTY VOLUMES
VOL. XX
NEW YORK
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL
PUBLISHERS
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## p. 11397 (#11) ###########################################
THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of History and Political Science,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M. , LL. B. ,
Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D. ,
President of the
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A. M. , PH. D. ,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
and Literatures,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D. , .
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A. ,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History,
UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH. D. ,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D. ,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.
2
## p. 11398 (#12) ###########################################
## p. 11399 (#13) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PILPAY
VOL. XX
BY GEORGE W. SMALLEY
The Hero of Hayti (Lecture on 'Toussaint L'Ouverture')
Antiquity of Inventions and Stories (Lecture on 'The
Lost Arts')
PIERRE OF PROVENCE AND THE BEAUTIFUL MAGUELONNE
BY OLGA FLINCH
LIVED
1811-1884
BY CHARLES R. LANMAN
The Talkative Tortoise
First Version (Jataka')
Second Version (North's 'Doni')
The Golden Goose (Jataka')
The Gratitude of Animals (same)
The Dullard and the Plow-Shaft (same)
The Widow's Mite (same)
What's in a Name? (same)
The Buddhist Duty of Courtesy to Animals (same)
Monkeys in the Garden (same)
The Antelope, the Woodpecker, and the Tortoise (same)
Prince Five-Weapons (same)
An "Example" of the Evils of Rashness
First Version - The Brahman and his Faithful Ich-
neumon (Hitopadeça')
Second Version - The Results of Precipitation
('Anvár-i Suhailí ')
Third Version - The Example of the First Master
(Seven Wise Masters of Rome')
PAGE
11409
11428
11437
## p. 11400 (#14) ###########################################
PILPAY-Continued:
The Lion-Makers (Panchatantra')
The King and the Hawk ('Anvár-i Suhailí ')
The Ass in the Lion's Skin (Jataka')
The Hare-Mark in the Moon (same)
Count Not your Chickens before They be Hatched (Pan-
chatantra')
The Transformed Mouse (same)
The Greedy Jackal (same)
"How Plausible» (Jataka')
The Man in the Pit (Maha-Bharata ')
PINDAR
First Olympian Ode
Second Olympian Ode
ALEXIS PIRON
vi
Experience
Epitaph
From 'La Métromanie'
The Others
BY BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
PLATO
AUGUST VON PLATEN
Remorse
Before the Convent of St. Just,
1556
The Grave in the Busento
522-450? B. C.
First Pythian Ode
LIVED
Third Olympian Ode
Seventh Olympian Ode
1689-1773
BY PAUL SHOREY
1796-1835
Venice
"Fair as the Day"
To Schelling
Voluntary Exile
427-347 B. C.
From the Protagoras': Socrates and the Sophists
From the Phædo': Socrates Prepares for Death
From the Apology': Socrates's Remarks after Condem-
nation
From the 'Phædrus': Mythic Description of the Soul
From the Gorgias': Myth of the Judgment of the Dead
From the Republic': Figure of the Cave
From
The Statesman': The Ideal Ruler Portrayed
PAGE
11487
11506
11513
11519
## p. 11401 (#15) ###########################################
vii
TITUS MACCIUS PLAUTUS
PLINY THE ELDER
From Miles Gloriosus' (The Braggart Soldier)
Prologue of Casina'
Prologue of Trinummus'
Prologue of Rudens'
Epilogue of the 'Captives'
Epilogue of 'Asinaria ›
Busybodies
Unpopularity of Tragedy (Amphitruo')
Mixture of Greek and Roman Manners (Casina')
Rewards of Heroism (Captives')
Fishermen's Luck (Menæchmi')
Plautus's Epitaph on Himself
PLINY THE YOUNGER
LIVED
254-184 B. C.
BY GONZALEZ LODGE
23-79 A. D.
Introduction to Lithology (Natural History')
Anecdotes of Artists (same): Apelles; Praxiteles; Phidias
The Most Perfect Works of Nature (same)
61-113? A. D.
Portrait of a Rival
To Minutius Fundanus: How Time Passes at Rome (Let-
ters')
To Socius Senecio: The Last Crop of Poets (same)
To Nepos: Of Arria (same)
To Marcellinus: Death of Fundanus's Daughter (same)
To Calpurnia (same)
To Tacitus: The Eruption of Vesuvius (same)
PLUTARCH
To Calpurnia (same)
To Maximus: Pliny's Success as an Author (same)
To Fuscus: A Day in the Country (same)
To the Emperor Trajan: Of the Christians; and Trajan's
Answer
About 50-120 A. D.
BY EDWARD BULL CLAPP
Pericles ('Lives of Illustrious Men')
Coriolanus (same)
Plutarch on Himself (same)
Antony and Cleopatra (same)
PAGE
11557
11573
11583
11601
## p. 11402 (#16) ###########################################
PLUTARCH- Continued:
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Letter to his Wife on their Daughter's Death
The Wife of Pythes (Concerning the Virtues of Women')
The Teaching of Virtue (That Virtue may be Taught)
The Need of Good Schoolmasters (Discourse on the
Training of Children")
Mothers and Nurses (sat. e)
viii
POLYBIUS
BY FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
A Descent into the Maelstrom
The Fall of the House of Usher (including The Haunted
Palace')
The Bells
For Annie
Song from 'The Assignation' Ulalume
The Raven
To Helen
ALEXANDER POPE
Annabel Lee
BY B. PERRIN
Scope of Polybius's History (Histories")
Polybius and the Scipios (same)
The Fall of Corinth (same)
1809-1849
('Dunciad')
The Triumph of Dullness (same)
The Universal Prayer
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
LIVED
BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
204-122 B. C.
Ode: The Dying Christian to his Soul
Epitaph on Sir William Trumbal
Messiah: A Sacred Eclogue
From the Essay on Criticism'
The Game of Cards (The Rape of the Lock')
From the Essay on Man'
From the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'
The Goddess of Dullness is Addressed on Education
Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine
The Vicar
The Belle of the Ball
1688-1744
1802-1839
PAGE
11651
11701
11711
11757
## p. 11403 (#17) ###########################################
ix
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE
"The Melancholy Night" (Conquest of Mexico')
The Spanish Arabs (Ferdinand and Isabella')
The Capture of the Inca (Conquest of Peru')
The Personal Habits of Philip II. (History of Philip II. ')
The Spanish Moors Persecuted into Rebellion (same)
ANTOINE FRANÇOIS PRÉVOST D'EXILES
Exile and Death (Manon Lescaut')
WILLIAM COWPER PRIME
MATTHEW PRIOR
1825-
The Old Man at the Water-Wheel ('Boat Life in Egypt
and Nubia')
LIVED
1796-1859
The Defeat of the Christian Host at Galilee, A. D. 1187
(Tent Life in the Holy Land')
A New England Auction: The Lonely Church in the Val-
ley ('Along New England Roads')
To a Child of Quality
Song
To a Lady Refusing to Con-
tinue a Dispute
An Ode
Cupid Mistaken
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
(By Bryan W. Procter:)
The Sea
A Petition to Time
Life
Inscription for a Fountain
(By Adelaide A. Procter:)
A Doubting Heart
A Woman's Question
A Lost Chord
1697-1763
The Female Phaeton
1664-1721
A Better Answer
A Simile
PAGE
11767
1787-1874
1825-1864
11805
11820
The Secretary
A Test of Love (Henry and
Emma')
The Lady's Looking-Glass
11837
11849
"Sit Down, Sad Soul"
The Poet's Song to his Wife
"Peace! what do Tears Avail? »
The Stormy Petrel
## p. 11404 (#18) ###########################################
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
Beauty Unadorned
To Tullus
To Cynthia
X
BY GEORGE MEASON WHICHER
LUIGI PULCI
Cornelia
LIVED
50? -15? B. C.
PROVENÇAL LITERATURE (The Troubadours), 1090-1290
To Caius Cilnius Mæcenas
To the Muse
The Immortality of Genius
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
Guillaume de Poitiers (1190-1227)
Guiraud Le Roux (1110-1147)
Bernard de Ventadour (1140-1195)
Richard Coeur de Lion (1169–1199)
Guillaume de Cabestaing (1181-1196)
Comtesse de Die (Twelfth Century)
Arnaut de Maroill (1170-1200)
Raimon de Miraval (1190-1200)
Alba Author unknown (Twelfth Century)
Alba-Guiraut de Borneil (1175-1230)
Alba - Bertrand d'Aamanon (End of Twelfth Century)
ALEXANDER SERGYÉEVITCH PUSHKIN
1431-1486
The Conversion of the Giant Morgante (Morgante Mag-
giore')
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
JULES QUESNAY DE BEAUREPAIRE
The Forest ('The Woodman')
A Madwoman (same)
Brotherly Love (same)
1799-1837
From Boris Godunoff'
Evgeny Onyegin; (including) Tatyana's Letter to Onyegin
1838-
PAGE
11861
11871
11891
11904
11925
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
1863-
When the Sap Rose: A Fantasia (The Delectable Duchy')
The Paupers (same)
11947
## p. 11405 (#19) ###########################################
xi
EDGAR QUINET
QUINTILIAN
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
LIVED
1803-1876
Naples and Vesuvius (Italy)
A Night in the Orient ('Ahasvérus')
The Wandering Jew (same)
The Struggle against Environment (The Story of My
Thoughts')
35-95? A. D.
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
On the Object and Scope of the Work (Institutes')
On the Early Practice of Composition (same)
On Nature and Art in Oratory (same)
On Embellishments of Style (same)
On the Handling of Witnesses in Court
On Ancient Authors: Homer; Virgil and Other Roman
Poets; Historians and Orators
PAGE
11961
11980
## p. 11406 (#20) ###########################################
## p. 11407 (#21) ###########################################
LIST OF PORTRAITS
Wendell Phillips
Pindar
Alexis Piron
August von Platen
Plato
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Edgar Allan Poe
IN VOL. XX
Polybius
Alexander Pope
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
William Hickling Prescott
Antoine François Prévost D'Exiles
William Cowper Prime
Matthew Prior
Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall)
Sextus Propertius
Alexander Sergyéevitch Pushkin
A. T. Quiller-Couch
Edgar Quinet
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
## p. 11408 (#22) ###########################################
1
## p. 11409 (#23) ###########################################
11409
WENDELL PHILLIPS
(1811-1884)
BY GEORGE W. SMALLEY
MERSON said of Phillips that he was the best orator in Amer-
ica, because he had spoken every day for fourteen years.
What Emerson meant was, that immense practice was the
secret of Phillips's supremacy. It was one secret; but not, I think,
the secret. He was one of those men in whom the orator is born,
not made. It may be doubted whether he ever delivered a better
speech than his first, at that memorable
meeting in Faneuil Hall on the murder of
Lovejoy. The germ of all his oratory lies
there; the methods which he followed all
his life he adopted, instinctively and un-
consciously, in that critical instant of his
life. He had not meant to speak. He
went up to Faneuil Hall in the state which
is called unprepared,- that is to say, his
preparation consisted in years of thought
and study, in a profound moral sense, in
the possession of an imaginative and ora-
torical genius and of a diction which for
his purpose was nearly perfect. It was the
speech of Austin, Attorney-General of Mas-
sachusetts, in opposition to the object of the meeting, and his in-
vective upon Lovejoy, which brought Phillips from the floor to the
platform. I quote once more the famous sentence,-"Sir, when I
heard the Attorney-General place the murderers of Alton side by side.
with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those
pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant
American, the slanderer of the dead. " I asked Phillips, with whom I
often talked over his speeches and his life, whether the image was
thought out beforehand. "Oh no," he answered: "it was the por-
traits themselves which suggested it as I spoke. "
WENDELL PHILLIPS
The answer covers much. For this austere and irreconcilable
enthusiast, with the blood of the martyr in his veins, was in oratory
a pure opportunist. He was a general who went into battle with a
XX-714
## p. 11410 (#24) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11410
force of all arms, but used infantry or artillery or cavalry as each
seemed most apt to the moment. He formed his plan, as Napoleon
did, on the field and in presence of the enemy. For Phillips — and
the fact is vital to all criticism of his oratory-spoke almost always,
during twenty-five years of his oratorical life, to a hostile audience.
His audiences were often mobs; they often sought to drive him from
the platform, sometimes to kill him. He needed all his resources
merely to hold his ground and to get a hearing. You cannot com-
pare oratory in those circumstances with oratory in a dress debate,
or even with the oratory of a great parliamentary contest. On this
last has often hung, no doubt, the life of a ministry. On Phillips's
mastery over his hearers depended sometimes his own life, sometimes
that of the antislavery cause- with which, as we now all see and
as then hardly anybody saw, was bound up the life of the nation.
It was, in my judgment, the oratory of Phillips which insured the
maintenance of that great antislavery struggle during the last ten
years or more which preceded the War. His oratory must be judged
with reference to that to its object as well as to its rhetorical
qualities. He had and kept the ear of the people. To have silenced
that silver trumpet would have been to wreck the cause.
I speak
of the Abolitionist cause by itself - that which relied solely on moral
forces and stood completely outside of politics.
Yet Phillips never made a concession. There was no art of speech
he would not employ to win the attention of his audience. But he
never softened an invective or compromised the clear logic of his
statement in order to divert the hostility which confronted him. He
would coax, cajole, ridicule, transpierce, or overwhelm an opponent,
but never yielded a jot in principle. I have known him try all means
to conciliate and then all means to crush, all within a few minutes.
He had the art of so exciting curiosity, that a raging mob which
half caught the first half of a sentence would still its own tumult in
order to hear what was coming next. He shrank from no danger: on
his unfailing cool courage and self-possession rested half the orator's
power. When in Faneuil Hall he called the Attorney-General recre-
ant, there were cries "Take that back! " and a tumult. "Fellow-
citizens," answered the young Bostonian, "I cannot take back my
words. " It was the motto of his whole career. Twenty-four years
later, April 21st, 1861, he was to speak in the Music Hall of Boston
for the War. Against his habit, he wrote out his speech;—it was a
turning-point in his history as orator and as abolitionist. He read me
the speech, which began: "Many times this winter, here and else- .
where, I have counseled peace,-urged as well as I know how the ex-
pediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy, and the peaceful
separation of these thirty-four States. One of the journals announces
## p. 11411 (#25) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11411
to you that I come here this morning to retract those opinions. No,
not one of them. " Those were days of flame and fire, and I said
to Phillips that they would never let him get farther. "Well," he
answered, "if I cannot say that I will say nothing. " And he read on.
"I need them all,- every word I have spoken this winter, every act
of twenty-five years of my life, to make the welcome I give this
War hearty and hot. " The result justified his gallantry. The low
murmurs which the opening sentence provoked were swept away in
the storm of passionate cheers which followed.
All this dwelling upon the moral attributes of the orator may
seem out of place in a brief criticism; but it is inevitable.
Take away
the moral impulse and there would have been no orator, no oratory,
no thirty years of unmatched eloquence, no such rhetorical lesson as
the speeches of Phillips now give. There is, unhappily, no adequate
record of them; as there is none of the speeches of any orator of
the first order, except where they were written out like those of the
great Greek, or written and rewritten like his Roman rival's or like
Burke's, or unless, like those of the one great English orator of
this generation, Bright, they were fully reported at the time. Phillips
was never thought worth reporting till late in life. He was of the
minority; and then as now, the tyranny of the majority in this coun-
try was oppressive and relentless. They meant to keep him in obscur-
ity: it was the sun of his genius which burst through the mists and
darkness which enveloped him. Traditions still fresh tell you of
the beauty of Phillips's presence on the platform, of his incompar-
able charm of manner and voice, of his persuasiveness, and much else.
But oratory, save under such conditions as I mentioned above, is
evanescent. That of Phillips did its work: it is the eulogy would
value most. There was in him the poet. He had in abounding
measure the sympathies without which no oratory, be its other qual-
ities what they may, carries an audience captive. He put himself
instantly on easy terms with those before him. He could be col-
loquial and familiar, he delighted in repartee,-in which he never
found his equal,- the next moment he was among the clouds, and
on the just and unjust alike descended a rain of eloquence, beneath
which sprang forth those seeds of virtue and moral faith and reli-
gious hatred of wrong which presently covered the land.
There was much of the Greek in him: the sense of ordered beauty
and of art. He had culture; the fire of true patriotism; serenity of
mind. Not a speech in which those high qualities are not visible.
They were still more evident as you heard him; and still more, per-
haps, the symmetrical quality of mind and speech which is almost.
the rarest in modern oratory or modern life. He had indomitable
good-nature on the platform. The hard things he said about men had
no root in his heart; they were meant to fasten attention not on the
·
## p. 11412 (#26) ###########################################
11412
WENDELL PHILLIPS
sin only, which is abstract, but on the sinner. Intellectually a Greek,
his moral nature was Hebraic, and the language of the Old Testament
is inwrought in his oratory. But there was a smile on his face while
the lightnings flashed. The authority with which he spoke was due
largely to this coolness; but it is idle to ascribe it to any one trait,
and to seek for the sources of it in mere rhetoric or mere culture.
The true source of it was the whole man.
Gow. Surachey
билу
W.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. -Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Mas-
sachusetts, November 29th, 1811; a son of the city's first mayor, and
allied to the State's best blood and brains. He graduated at Harvard
College in 1831, and from its Law School in 1833. A year later he
was admitted to the bar. His career as a leader of men and a pub-
lic orator, however, began early, and almost uninterruptedly engaged
him until the close of his life. His denunciatory speech on the mur-
der of Lovejoy, in 1837, may be reckoned the opening of his platform
career. His "great speeches" followed each other rapidly. He threw
himself fervently into the Abolition movement, and succeeded Will-
iam Lloyd Garrison as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, in 1865.
His continuous tours as a lecturer occupied all his latter years.
died February 2d, 1884.
He
The following selection is from one of the most famous of his gen-
eral lectures. Only one other was equally identified with his name in
popular regard,- that on 'Lost Arts'; a brilliant mosaic of apocrypha
from all ages, so plausibly stated that it was hard to resist convic-
tion of their truth while listening to his easy, graceful, conversational
periods, spoken as though he had just remembered some interesting
facts and wished to share the pleasure with a group of friends.
THE HERO OF HAYTI
From Toussaint l'Ouverture,' a lecture delivered in 1861. Copyright 1863,
by Wendell Phillips
Tmingo.
HIS is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection of St. Do-
mingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its banner,
"Long live the King"; and on the other, "We claim the
Old Laws. " Singular mottoes for a rebellion. In fact, it was the
posse comitatus; it was the only French army on the island; it
## p. 11413 (#27) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11413
was the only force that had a right to bear arms: and what it
undertook it achieved. It put Blanchelande his seat; it put
the island beneath his rule. When it was done, the blacks said
to the governor they had created, "Now grant us one day in
seven; give us one day's labor; we will buy another, and with
the two buy a third," the favorite method of emancipation at
that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years before, he re-
fused. He said, "Disarm! Disperse! " and the blacks answered,
"The right hand that has saved you, the right hand that has
saved the island for the Bourbons, may perchance clutch some
of our own rights;" and they stood still. This is the first
insurrection, if any such there were in St. Domingo,- the first
determined purpose on the part of the negro, having saved the
government, to save himself.
At such a moment Toussaint l'Ouverture appeared.
He had been born a slave on a plantation in the north of the
island, an unmixed negro,- his father stolen from Africa. If
anything, therefore, that I say of him to-night moves your admi-
ration, remember, the black race claims it all,- we have no part
nor lot in it. He was fifty years old at this time. An old negro
had taught him to read. His favorite books were Epictetus,
Raynal, military memoirs, Plutarch. In the woods he learned
some of the qualities of herbs; and was village doctor. On the
estate, the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman.
At fifty he joined the army as physician. Before he went, he
placed his master and mistress on shipboard, freighted the vessel
with a cargo of sugar and coffee, and sent them to Baltimore;
and never afterward did he forget to send them, year by year,
ample means of support. And I might add, that of all the lead-
ing negro generals, each one saved the man under whose roof he
was born, and protected the family.
Let me add another thing. If I stood here to-night to tell
the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of French-
men, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain
of the nineteenth century. Were I here to tell you the story of
Washington, I should take it from your hearts,-you, who think
no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the
Father of his Country. I am about to tell you the story of
a negro who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it
from the reluctant testimony of Britons, Frenchmen, Spaniards,—
## p. 11414 (#28) ###########################################
11414
WENDELL PHILLIPS
men who despised him as a negro and a slave, and hated him
because he had beaten them in many a battle. All the materials
for his biography are from the lips of his enemies.
The second story told of him is this: About the time he
reached the camp, the army had been subjected to two insults.
First their commissioners, summoned to meet the French Com-
mittee, were ignominiously and insultingly dismissed; and when
afterward François, their general, was summoned to a second
conference, and went to it on horseback, accompanied by two
officers, a young lieutenant, who had known him as a slave,
angered at seeing him in the uniform of an officer, raised his
riding-whip and struck him over the shoulders. If he had been
the savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only to
breathe the insult to his twenty-five thousand soldiers, and they
would have trodden out the Frenchmen in blood. But the indig-
nant chief rode back in silence to his tent, and it was twenty-
four hours before his troops heard of this insult to their gen-
eral. Then the word went forth, "Death to every white man! "
They had fifteen hundred prisoners. Ranged in front of the
camp, they were about to be shot. Toussaint, who had a vein
of religious fanaticism, like most great leaders,-like Moham-
med, like Napoleon, like Cromwell, like John Brown, he could
preach as well as fight,- mounting a hillock, and getting the ear
of the crowd, exclaimed:-"Brothers, this blood will not wipe
out the insult to our chief; only the blood in yonder French
camp can wipe it out. To shed that is courage; to shed this is
cowardice and cruelty besides; "-and he saved fifteen hundred
lives.
I cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts. This
was in 1793. Leap with me over seven years; come to 1800:
what has he achieved? He has driven the Spaniard back into
his own cities, conquered him there, and put the French banner
over every Spanish town; and for the first time, and almost the
last, the island obeys one law. He has put the mulatto under
his feet. He has attacked Maitland, defeated him in pitched
battles, and permitted him to retreat to Jamaica; and when the
French army rose upon Laveaux, their general, and put him in
chains, Toussaint defeated them, took Laveaux out of prison,
and put him at the head of his own troops. The grateful
French in return named him general-in-chief. "Cet homme fait
## p. 11415 (#29) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11415
l'ouverture partout," said one (This man makes an opening every-
where); hence his soldiers named him "L'Ouverture," the opening.
This was the work of seven years. Let us pause a moment,
and find something to measure him by. You remember Mac-
aulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napoleon, that Cromwell.
showed the greater military genius, if we consider that he never
saw an army till he was forty; while Napoleon was educated
from a boy in the best military schools in Europe. Cromwell
manufactured his own army; Napoleon at the age of twenty-
seven was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw.
They were both successful; but, says Macaulay, with such disad-
vantages the Englishman showed the greater genius. Whether
you allow the inference or not, you will at least grant that it is
a fair mode of measurement. Apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell
never saw an army till he was forty: this man never saw a
soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army
-out of what? Englishmen, the best blood in Europe; out of
the middle class of Englishmen, the best blood of the island.
And with it he conquered-what? Englishmen, their equals.
This man manufactured his army-out of what? Out of what
you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized
by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them
imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a
dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed,
and as you say, despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt and
burled it at-what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the
Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike
blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at
the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked
home to Jamaica. Now if Cromwell was a general, at least this
man was a soldier. I know it was a small territory; it was not
as large as the continent: but it was as large as that Attica,
which with Athens for a capital has filled the earth with its
fame for two thousand years. We measure genius by quality,
not by quantity.
Further, Cromwell was only a soldier; his fame stops there.
Not one line in the statute-book of Britain can be traced to
Cromwell; not one step in the social life of England finds its
motive power in his brain. The State he founded went down
with him to his grave. But this man no sooner put his hand
――――――
## p. 11416 (#30) ###########################################
11416
WENDELL PHILLIPS
on the helm of State than the ship steadied with an upright
keel, and he began to evince a statesmanship as marvelous as his
military genius. History says that the most statesmanlike act of
Napoleon was his proclamation of 1802, at the peace of Amiens,
when, believing that the indelible loyalty of a native-born heart
is always a sufficient basis on which to found an empire, he said:
"Frenchmen, come home. I pardon the crimes of the last twelve
years; I blot out its parties; I found my throne on the hearts
of all Frenchmen; "- and twelve years of unclouded success
showed how wisely he judged. That was in 1802. In 1800 this
negro made a proclamation; it runs thus: "Sons of St. Domingo,
come home. We never meant to take your houses or your lands.
The negro only asked that liberty which God gave him. Your
houses wait for you; your lands are ready; come and cultivate
them;" and from Madrid and Paris, from Baltimore and New
Orleans, the emigrant planters crowded home to enjoy their estates,
under the pledged word, that was never broken, of a victorious
slave.
-
Again, Carlyle has said, "The natural king is one who melts
all wills into his own. " At this moment he turned to his armies,
- poor, ill-clad, and half-starved, and said to them: Go back
and work on these estates you have conquered; for an empire.
can be founded only on order and industry, and you can learn
these virtues only there. And they went. The French admiral,
who witnessed the scene, said that in a week his army melted
back into peasants.
It was 1800. The world waited fifty years before, in 1846,
Robert Peel dared to venture, as a matter of practical states-
manship, the theory of free trade. Adam Smith theorized, the
French statesmen dreamed, but no man at the head of affairs had
ever dared to risk it as a practical measure. Europe waited till
1846 before the most practical intellect in the world, the English,
adopted the great economic formula of unfettered trade. But in
1800 this black, with the instinct of statesmanship, said to the
committee who were drafting for him a constitution: "Put at the
head of the chapter of commerce that the ports of St. Domingo
are open to the trade of the world. " With lofty indifference
to race, superior to all envy or prejudice, Toussaint had formed.
this committee of eight white proprietors and one mulatto,—not
a soldier nor a negro on the list; although Haytian history proves
## p. 11417 (#31) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11417
that with the exception of Rigaud, the rarest genius has always
been shown by pure negroes.
Again, it was 1800, at a time when England was poisoned on
every page of her statute-book with religious intolerance, when
a man could not enter the House of Commons without taking
an Episcopal communion, when every State in the Union except
Rhode Island was full of the intensest religious bigotry. This
man was a negro. You say that is a superstitious blood. He
was uneducated. You say that makes a man narrow-minded.
He was a Catholic. Many say that is but another name for
intolerance. And yet―negro, Catholic, slave - he took his place
by the side of Roger Williams, and said to his committee:
"Make it the first line of my Constitution that I know no differ-
ence between religious beliefs. "
Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me
to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman
you please. Let him be either American or European; let him
have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him
have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it
the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the
silver of seventy years, -and show me the man of Saxon lin-
eage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel
rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro:
rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content
to blot out all party distinctions and trust a State to the blood of
its sons,-anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his
station by the side of Roger Williams before any Englishman or
American had won the right;—and yet this is the record which
the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of
St. Domingo.
It was 1801. The Frenchmen who lingered on the island
described its prosperity and order as almost incredible. You
might trust a child with a bag of gold to go from Samana to
Port-au-Prince without risk. Peace was in every household; the
valleys laughed with fertility; culture climbed the mountains;
the commerce of the world was represented in its harbors. At
this time Europe concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon
took his seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes
across the Atlantic, and with a single stroke of his pen reduced.
Cayenne and Martinique back into chains. He then said to his
## p. 11418 (#32) ###########################################
11418
WENDELL PHILLIPS
>>>
Council, "What shall I do with St. Domingo? The slavehold-
ers said, "Give it to us. Napoleon turned to the Abbé Gré-
goire: "What is your opinion? " "I think those men would
change their opinions if they changed their skins. " Colonel
Vincent, who had been private secretary to Toussaint, wrote a
letter to Napoleon, in which he said: "Sire, leave it alone: it is
the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man to
govern; races melt under his hand. He saved you this island;
for I know of my own knowledge that when the Republic could
not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III. offered him
any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the
British crown. He refused, and saved it for France. " Napoleon
turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, "I
have sixty thousand idle troops: I must find them something to
do. »
He meant to say, "I am about to seize the crown; I dare
not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers: I
must give them work at a distance to do. ” The gossip of Paris
gives another reason for his expedition against St. Domingo. It
is said that the satirists of Paris had christened Toussaint the
Black Napoleon; and Bonaparte hated his black shadow. Tous-
saint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, "The first
of the blacks to the first of the whites. " He did not like the
comparison. You would think it too slight a motive. But let
me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigram-
matists of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at
Versailles Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black
Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order forbidding the use
of the word. The Napoleon blood is very sensitive. So Napo-
leon resolved to crush Toussaint, from one motive or another;
from the prompting of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance,-
which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must
have been the white, since the negro preceded him several years.
They were very much alike, and they were very French,-
French even in vanity, common to both. You remember Bona-
parte's vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyramids: "Forty
centuries look down upon us. " In the same mood, Toussaint
said to the French captain who urged him to go to France in
his frigate, "Sir, your ship is not large enough to carry me. "
Napoleon, you know, could never bear the military uniform.
He hated the restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray
>>
## p. 11419 (#33) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11419
coat of the Little Corporal, and wander in the camp. Toussaint
also never could bear a uniform.
He wore a plain coat, and
often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. A French
lieutenant once called him a maggot in a yellow handkerchief.
Toussaint took him prisoner next day, and sent him home to his
mother. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days; could dictate
to three secretaries at once; could wear out four or five horses.
Like Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated
his plan.
He was only a negro; and so in him they called it
hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For instance,
three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, from not firing
at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a car-
riage, he would be in the south on horseback; if they thought
he was in the city in a house, he would be in the field in a tent.
They once riddled his carriage with bullets; he was on horseback
on the other side. The seven Frenchmen who did it were ar-
rested. They expected to be shot. The next day was some saint's
day; he ordered them to be placed before the high altar, and
when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness, came down
from his high seat, repeated it with him, and permitted them.
to go unpunished. He had that wit common to all great com-
manders, which makes its way in a camp. His soldiers getting
disheartened, he filled a large vase with powder, and scattering
six grains of rice in it, shook them up, and said: "See, there
is the white, there is the black; what are you afraid of? " So
when people came to him in great numbers for office, as it is
reported they do sometimes even in Washington, he learned the
first words of a Catholic prayer in Latin, and repeating it, would
say, "Do you understand that?
I
NEW YORK
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. WIL.
PUBLISHERS
## p. 11394 (#8) ############################################
## p. 11395 (#9) ############################################
LIBRARY
OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
Ancient and Modern
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
EDITOR
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE, LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE,
GEORGE H. WARNER
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
THIRTY VOLUMES
VOL. XX
NEW YORK
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL
PUBLISHERS
## p. 11396 (#10) ###########################################
it 2325118
i.
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
COPYRIGHT 1897
BY R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL
All rights reserved
WERNER COMPANY
PRINTERS
BINDERS
## p. 11397 (#11) ###########################################
THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D. , L. H. D. ,
Professor of History and Political Science,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M. , LL. B. ,
Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D. ,
President of the
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A. M. , PH. D. ,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
and Literatures,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D. , .
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A. ,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History,
UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH. D. ,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D. ,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.
2
## p. 11398 (#12) ###########################################
## p. 11399 (#13) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PILPAY
VOL. XX
BY GEORGE W. SMALLEY
The Hero of Hayti (Lecture on 'Toussaint L'Ouverture')
Antiquity of Inventions and Stories (Lecture on 'The
Lost Arts')
PIERRE OF PROVENCE AND THE BEAUTIFUL MAGUELONNE
BY OLGA FLINCH
LIVED
1811-1884
BY CHARLES R. LANMAN
The Talkative Tortoise
First Version (Jataka')
Second Version (North's 'Doni')
The Golden Goose (Jataka')
The Gratitude of Animals (same)
The Dullard and the Plow-Shaft (same)
The Widow's Mite (same)
What's in a Name? (same)
The Buddhist Duty of Courtesy to Animals (same)
Monkeys in the Garden (same)
The Antelope, the Woodpecker, and the Tortoise (same)
Prince Five-Weapons (same)
An "Example" of the Evils of Rashness
First Version - The Brahman and his Faithful Ich-
neumon (Hitopadeça')
Second Version - The Results of Precipitation
('Anvár-i Suhailí ')
Third Version - The Example of the First Master
(Seven Wise Masters of Rome')
PAGE
11409
11428
11437
## p. 11400 (#14) ###########################################
PILPAY-Continued:
The Lion-Makers (Panchatantra')
The King and the Hawk ('Anvár-i Suhailí ')
The Ass in the Lion's Skin (Jataka')
The Hare-Mark in the Moon (same)
Count Not your Chickens before They be Hatched (Pan-
chatantra')
The Transformed Mouse (same)
The Greedy Jackal (same)
"How Plausible» (Jataka')
The Man in the Pit (Maha-Bharata ')
PINDAR
First Olympian Ode
Second Olympian Ode
ALEXIS PIRON
vi
Experience
Epitaph
From 'La Métromanie'
The Others
BY BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
PLATO
AUGUST VON PLATEN
Remorse
Before the Convent of St. Just,
1556
The Grave in the Busento
522-450? B. C.
First Pythian Ode
LIVED
Third Olympian Ode
Seventh Olympian Ode
1689-1773
BY PAUL SHOREY
1796-1835
Venice
"Fair as the Day"
To Schelling
Voluntary Exile
427-347 B. C.
From the Protagoras': Socrates and the Sophists
From the Phædo': Socrates Prepares for Death
From the Apology': Socrates's Remarks after Condem-
nation
From the 'Phædrus': Mythic Description of the Soul
From the Gorgias': Myth of the Judgment of the Dead
From the Republic': Figure of the Cave
From
The Statesman': The Ideal Ruler Portrayed
PAGE
11487
11506
11513
11519
## p. 11401 (#15) ###########################################
vii
TITUS MACCIUS PLAUTUS
PLINY THE ELDER
From Miles Gloriosus' (The Braggart Soldier)
Prologue of Casina'
Prologue of Trinummus'
Prologue of Rudens'
Epilogue of the 'Captives'
Epilogue of 'Asinaria ›
Busybodies
Unpopularity of Tragedy (Amphitruo')
Mixture of Greek and Roman Manners (Casina')
Rewards of Heroism (Captives')
Fishermen's Luck (Menæchmi')
Plautus's Epitaph on Himself
PLINY THE YOUNGER
LIVED
254-184 B. C.
BY GONZALEZ LODGE
23-79 A. D.
Introduction to Lithology (Natural History')
Anecdotes of Artists (same): Apelles; Praxiteles; Phidias
The Most Perfect Works of Nature (same)
61-113? A. D.
Portrait of a Rival
To Minutius Fundanus: How Time Passes at Rome (Let-
ters')
To Socius Senecio: The Last Crop of Poets (same)
To Nepos: Of Arria (same)
To Marcellinus: Death of Fundanus's Daughter (same)
To Calpurnia (same)
To Tacitus: The Eruption of Vesuvius (same)
PLUTARCH
To Calpurnia (same)
To Maximus: Pliny's Success as an Author (same)
To Fuscus: A Day in the Country (same)
To the Emperor Trajan: Of the Christians; and Trajan's
Answer
About 50-120 A. D.
BY EDWARD BULL CLAPP
Pericles ('Lives of Illustrious Men')
Coriolanus (same)
Plutarch on Himself (same)
Antony and Cleopatra (same)
PAGE
11557
11573
11583
11601
## p. 11402 (#16) ###########################################
PLUTARCH- Continued:
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Letter to his Wife on their Daughter's Death
The Wife of Pythes (Concerning the Virtues of Women')
The Teaching of Virtue (That Virtue may be Taught)
The Need of Good Schoolmasters (Discourse on the
Training of Children")
Mothers and Nurses (sat. e)
viii
POLYBIUS
BY FREDERIC W. H. MYERS
A Descent into the Maelstrom
The Fall of the House of Usher (including The Haunted
Palace')
The Bells
For Annie
Song from 'The Assignation' Ulalume
The Raven
To Helen
ALEXANDER POPE
Annabel Lee
BY B. PERRIN
Scope of Polybius's History (Histories")
Polybius and the Scipios (same)
The Fall of Corinth (same)
1809-1849
('Dunciad')
The Triumph of Dullness (same)
The Universal Prayer
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
LIVED
BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
204-122 B. C.
Ode: The Dying Christian to his Soul
Epitaph on Sir William Trumbal
Messiah: A Sacred Eclogue
From the Essay on Criticism'
The Game of Cards (The Rape of the Lock')
From the Essay on Man'
From the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'
The Goddess of Dullness is Addressed on Education
Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine
The Vicar
The Belle of the Ball
1688-1744
1802-1839
PAGE
11651
11701
11711
11757
## p. 11403 (#17) ###########################################
ix
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE
"The Melancholy Night" (Conquest of Mexico')
The Spanish Arabs (Ferdinand and Isabella')
The Capture of the Inca (Conquest of Peru')
The Personal Habits of Philip II. (History of Philip II. ')
The Spanish Moors Persecuted into Rebellion (same)
ANTOINE FRANÇOIS PRÉVOST D'EXILES
Exile and Death (Manon Lescaut')
WILLIAM COWPER PRIME
MATTHEW PRIOR
1825-
The Old Man at the Water-Wheel ('Boat Life in Egypt
and Nubia')
LIVED
1796-1859
The Defeat of the Christian Host at Galilee, A. D. 1187
(Tent Life in the Holy Land')
A New England Auction: The Lonely Church in the Val-
ley ('Along New England Roads')
To a Child of Quality
Song
To a Lady Refusing to Con-
tinue a Dispute
An Ode
Cupid Mistaken
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
(By Bryan W. Procter:)
The Sea
A Petition to Time
Life
Inscription for a Fountain
(By Adelaide A. Procter:)
A Doubting Heart
A Woman's Question
A Lost Chord
1697-1763
The Female Phaeton
1664-1721
A Better Answer
A Simile
PAGE
11767
1787-1874
1825-1864
11805
11820
The Secretary
A Test of Love (Henry and
Emma')
The Lady's Looking-Glass
11837
11849
"Sit Down, Sad Soul"
The Poet's Song to his Wife
"Peace! what do Tears Avail? »
The Stormy Petrel
## p. 11404 (#18) ###########################################
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
Beauty Unadorned
To Tullus
To Cynthia
X
BY GEORGE MEASON WHICHER
LUIGI PULCI
Cornelia
LIVED
50? -15? B. C.
PROVENÇAL LITERATURE (The Troubadours), 1090-1290
To Caius Cilnius Mæcenas
To the Muse
The Immortality of Genius
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
Guillaume de Poitiers (1190-1227)
Guiraud Le Roux (1110-1147)
Bernard de Ventadour (1140-1195)
Richard Coeur de Lion (1169–1199)
Guillaume de Cabestaing (1181-1196)
Comtesse de Die (Twelfth Century)
Arnaut de Maroill (1170-1200)
Raimon de Miraval (1190-1200)
Alba Author unknown (Twelfth Century)
Alba-Guiraut de Borneil (1175-1230)
Alba - Bertrand d'Aamanon (End of Twelfth Century)
ALEXANDER SERGYÉEVITCH PUSHKIN
1431-1486
The Conversion of the Giant Morgante (Morgante Mag-
giore')
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
JULES QUESNAY DE BEAUREPAIRE
The Forest ('The Woodman')
A Madwoman (same)
Brotherly Love (same)
1799-1837
From Boris Godunoff'
Evgeny Onyegin; (including) Tatyana's Letter to Onyegin
1838-
PAGE
11861
11871
11891
11904
11925
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
1863-
When the Sap Rose: A Fantasia (The Delectable Duchy')
The Paupers (same)
11947
## p. 11405 (#19) ###########################################
xi
EDGAR QUINET
QUINTILIAN
BY HENRY BÉRENGER
LIVED
1803-1876
Naples and Vesuvius (Italy)
A Night in the Orient ('Ahasvérus')
The Wandering Jew (same)
The Struggle against Environment (The Story of My
Thoughts')
35-95? A. D.
BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON
On the Object and Scope of the Work (Institutes')
On the Early Practice of Composition (same)
On Nature and Art in Oratory (same)
On Embellishments of Style (same)
On the Handling of Witnesses in Court
On Ancient Authors: Homer; Virgil and Other Roman
Poets; Historians and Orators
PAGE
11961
11980
## p. 11406 (#20) ###########################################
## p. 11407 (#21) ###########################################
LIST OF PORTRAITS
Wendell Phillips
Pindar
Alexis Piron
August von Platen
Plato
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Edgar Allan Poe
IN VOL. XX
Polybius
Alexander Pope
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
William Hickling Prescott
Antoine François Prévost D'Exiles
William Cowper Prime
Matthew Prior
Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall)
Sextus Propertius
Alexander Sergyéevitch Pushkin
A. T. Quiller-Couch
Edgar Quinet
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
## p. 11408 (#22) ###########################################
1
## p. 11409 (#23) ###########################################
11409
WENDELL PHILLIPS
(1811-1884)
BY GEORGE W. SMALLEY
MERSON said of Phillips that he was the best orator in Amer-
ica, because he had spoken every day for fourteen years.
What Emerson meant was, that immense practice was the
secret of Phillips's supremacy. It was one secret; but not, I think,
the secret. He was one of those men in whom the orator is born,
not made. It may be doubted whether he ever delivered a better
speech than his first, at that memorable
meeting in Faneuil Hall on the murder of
Lovejoy. The germ of all his oratory lies
there; the methods which he followed all
his life he adopted, instinctively and un-
consciously, in that critical instant of his
life. He had not meant to speak. He
went up to Faneuil Hall in the state which
is called unprepared,- that is to say, his
preparation consisted in years of thought
and study, in a profound moral sense, in
the possession of an imaginative and ora-
torical genius and of a diction which for
his purpose was nearly perfect. It was the
speech of Austin, Attorney-General of Mas-
sachusetts, in opposition to the object of the meeting, and his in-
vective upon Lovejoy, which brought Phillips from the floor to the
platform. I quote once more the famous sentence,-"Sir, when I
heard the Attorney-General place the murderers of Alton side by side.
with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those
pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant
American, the slanderer of the dead. " I asked Phillips, with whom I
often talked over his speeches and his life, whether the image was
thought out beforehand. "Oh no," he answered: "it was the por-
traits themselves which suggested it as I spoke. "
WENDELL PHILLIPS
The answer covers much. For this austere and irreconcilable
enthusiast, with the blood of the martyr in his veins, was in oratory
a pure opportunist. He was a general who went into battle with a
XX-714
## p. 11410 (#24) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11410
force of all arms, but used infantry or artillery or cavalry as each
seemed most apt to the moment. He formed his plan, as Napoleon
did, on the field and in presence of the enemy. For Phillips — and
the fact is vital to all criticism of his oratory-spoke almost always,
during twenty-five years of his oratorical life, to a hostile audience.
His audiences were often mobs; they often sought to drive him from
the platform, sometimes to kill him. He needed all his resources
merely to hold his ground and to get a hearing. You cannot com-
pare oratory in those circumstances with oratory in a dress debate,
or even with the oratory of a great parliamentary contest. On this
last has often hung, no doubt, the life of a ministry. On Phillips's
mastery over his hearers depended sometimes his own life, sometimes
that of the antislavery cause- with which, as we now all see and
as then hardly anybody saw, was bound up the life of the nation.
It was, in my judgment, the oratory of Phillips which insured the
maintenance of that great antislavery struggle during the last ten
years or more which preceded the War. His oratory must be judged
with reference to that to its object as well as to its rhetorical
qualities. He had and kept the ear of the people. To have silenced
that silver trumpet would have been to wreck the cause.
I speak
of the Abolitionist cause by itself - that which relied solely on moral
forces and stood completely outside of politics.
Yet Phillips never made a concession. There was no art of speech
he would not employ to win the attention of his audience. But he
never softened an invective or compromised the clear logic of his
statement in order to divert the hostility which confronted him. He
would coax, cajole, ridicule, transpierce, or overwhelm an opponent,
but never yielded a jot in principle. I have known him try all means
to conciliate and then all means to crush, all within a few minutes.
He had the art of so exciting curiosity, that a raging mob which
half caught the first half of a sentence would still its own tumult in
order to hear what was coming next. He shrank from no danger: on
his unfailing cool courage and self-possession rested half the orator's
power. When in Faneuil Hall he called the Attorney-General recre-
ant, there were cries "Take that back! " and a tumult. "Fellow-
citizens," answered the young Bostonian, "I cannot take back my
words. " It was the motto of his whole career. Twenty-four years
later, April 21st, 1861, he was to speak in the Music Hall of Boston
for the War. Against his habit, he wrote out his speech;—it was a
turning-point in his history as orator and as abolitionist. He read me
the speech, which began: "Many times this winter, here and else- .
where, I have counseled peace,-urged as well as I know how the ex-
pediency of acknowledging a Southern Confederacy, and the peaceful
separation of these thirty-four States. One of the journals announces
## p. 11411 (#25) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11411
to you that I come here this morning to retract those opinions. No,
not one of them. " Those were days of flame and fire, and I said
to Phillips that they would never let him get farther. "Well," he
answered, "if I cannot say that I will say nothing. " And he read on.
"I need them all,- every word I have spoken this winter, every act
of twenty-five years of my life, to make the welcome I give this
War hearty and hot. " The result justified his gallantry. The low
murmurs which the opening sentence provoked were swept away in
the storm of passionate cheers which followed.
All this dwelling upon the moral attributes of the orator may
seem out of place in a brief criticism; but it is inevitable.
Take away
the moral impulse and there would have been no orator, no oratory,
no thirty years of unmatched eloquence, no such rhetorical lesson as
the speeches of Phillips now give. There is, unhappily, no adequate
record of them; as there is none of the speeches of any orator of
the first order, except where they were written out like those of the
great Greek, or written and rewritten like his Roman rival's or like
Burke's, or unless, like those of the one great English orator of
this generation, Bright, they were fully reported at the time. Phillips
was never thought worth reporting till late in life. He was of the
minority; and then as now, the tyranny of the majority in this coun-
try was oppressive and relentless. They meant to keep him in obscur-
ity: it was the sun of his genius which burst through the mists and
darkness which enveloped him. Traditions still fresh tell you of
the beauty of Phillips's presence on the platform, of his incompar-
able charm of manner and voice, of his persuasiveness, and much else.
But oratory, save under such conditions as I mentioned above, is
evanescent. That of Phillips did its work: it is the eulogy would
value most. There was in him the poet. He had in abounding
measure the sympathies without which no oratory, be its other qual-
ities what they may, carries an audience captive. He put himself
instantly on easy terms with those before him. He could be col-
loquial and familiar, he delighted in repartee,-in which he never
found his equal,- the next moment he was among the clouds, and
on the just and unjust alike descended a rain of eloquence, beneath
which sprang forth those seeds of virtue and moral faith and reli-
gious hatred of wrong which presently covered the land.
There was much of the Greek in him: the sense of ordered beauty
and of art. He had culture; the fire of true patriotism; serenity of
mind. Not a speech in which those high qualities are not visible.
They were still more evident as you heard him; and still more, per-
haps, the symmetrical quality of mind and speech which is almost.
the rarest in modern oratory or modern life. He had indomitable
good-nature on the platform. The hard things he said about men had
no root in his heart; they were meant to fasten attention not on the
·
## p. 11412 (#26) ###########################################
11412
WENDELL PHILLIPS
sin only, which is abstract, but on the sinner. Intellectually a Greek,
his moral nature was Hebraic, and the language of the Old Testament
is inwrought in his oratory. But there was a smile on his face while
the lightnings flashed. The authority with which he spoke was due
largely to this coolness; but it is idle to ascribe it to any one trait,
and to seek for the sources of it in mere rhetoric or mere culture.
The true source of it was the whole man.
Gow. Surachey
билу
W.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. -Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Mas-
sachusetts, November 29th, 1811; a son of the city's first mayor, and
allied to the State's best blood and brains. He graduated at Harvard
College in 1831, and from its Law School in 1833. A year later he
was admitted to the bar. His career as a leader of men and a pub-
lic orator, however, began early, and almost uninterruptedly engaged
him until the close of his life. His denunciatory speech on the mur-
der of Lovejoy, in 1837, may be reckoned the opening of his platform
career. His "great speeches" followed each other rapidly. He threw
himself fervently into the Abolition movement, and succeeded Will-
iam Lloyd Garrison as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, in 1865.
His continuous tours as a lecturer occupied all his latter years.
died February 2d, 1884.
He
The following selection is from one of the most famous of his gen-
eral lectures. Only one other was equally identified with his name in
popular regard,- that on 'Lost Arts'; a brilliant mosaic of apocrypha
from all ages, so plausibly stated that it was hard to resist convic-
tion of their truth while listening to his easy, graceful, conversational
periods, spoken as though he had just remembered some interesting
facts and wished to share the pleasure with a group of friends.
THE HERO OF HAYTI
From Toussaint l'Ouverture,' a lecture delivered in 1861. Copyright 1863,
by Wendell Phillips
Tmingo.
HIS is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection of St. Do-
mingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its banner,
"Long live the King"; and on the other, "We claim the
Old Laws. " Singular mottoes for a rebellion. In fact, it was the
posse comitatus; it was the only French army on the island; it
## p. 11413 (#27) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11413
was the only force that had a right to bear arms: and what it
undertook it achieved. It put Blanchelande his seat; it put
the island beneath his rule. When it was done, the blacks said
to the governor they had created, "Now grant us one day in
seven; give us one day's labor; we will buy another, and with
the two buy a third," the favorite method of emancipation at
that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years before, he re-
fused. He said, "Disarm! Disperse! " and the blacks answered,
"The right hand that has saved you, the right hand that has
saved the island for the Bourbons, may perchance clutch some
of our own rights;" and they stood still. This is the first
insurrection, if any such there were in St. Domingo,- the first
determined purpose on the part of the negro, having saved the
government, to save himself.
At such a moment Toussaint l'Ouverture appeared.
He had been born a slave on a plantation in the north of the
island, an unmixed negro,- his father stolen from Africa. If
anything, therefore, that I say of him to-night moves your admi-
ration, remember, the black race claims it all,- we have no part
nor lot in it. He was fifty years old at this time. An old negro
had taught him to read. His favorite books were Epictetus,
Raynal, military memoirs, Plutarch. In the woods he learned
some of the qualities of herbs; and was village doctor. On the
estate, the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman.
At fifty he joined the army as physician. Before he went, he
placed his master and mistress on shipboard, freighted the vessel
with a cargo of sugar and coffee, and sent them to Baltimore;
and never afterward did he forget to send them, year by year,
ample means of support. And I might add, that of all the lead-
ing negro generals, each one saved the man under whose roof he
was born, and protected the family.
Let me add another thing. If I stood here to-night to tell
the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of French-
men, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain
of the nineteenth century. Were I here to tell you the story of
Washington, I should take it from your hearts,-you, who think
no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the
Father of his Country. I am about to tell you the story of
a negro who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it
from the reluctant testimony of Britons, Frenchmen, Spaniards,—
## p. 11414 (#28) ###########################################
11414
WENDELL PHILLIPS
men who despised him as a negro and a slave, and hated him
because he had beaten them in many a battle. All the materials
for his biography are from the lips of his enemies.
The second story told of him is this: About the time he
reached the camp, the army had been subjected to two insults.
First their commissioners, summoned to meet the French Com-
mittee, were ignominiously and insultingly dismissed; and when
afterward François, their general, was summoned to a second
conference, and went to it on horseback, accompanied by two
officers, a young lieutenant, who had known him as a slave,
angered at seeing him in the uniform of an officer, raised his
riding-whip and struck him over the shoulders. If he had been
the savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only to
breathe the insult to his twenty-five thousand soldiers, and they
would have trodden out the Frenchmen in blood. But the indig-
nant chief rode back in silence to his tent, and it was twenty-
four hours before his troops heard of this insult to their gen-
eral. Then the word went forth, "Death to every white man! "
They had fifteen hundred prisoners. Ranged in front of the
camp, they were about to be shot. Toussaint, who had a vein
of religious fanaticism, like most great leaders,-like Moham-
med, like Napoleon, like Cromwell, like John Brown, he could
preach as well as fight,- mounting a hillock, and getting the ear
of the crowd, exclaimed:-"Brothers, this blood will not wipe
out the insult to our chief; only the blood in yonder French
camp can wipe it out. To shed that is courage; to shed this is
cowardice and cruelty besides; "-and he saved fifteen hundred
lives.
I cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts. This
was in 1793. Leap with me over seven years; come to 1800:
what has he achieved? He has driven the Spaniard back into
his own cities, conquered him there, and put the French banner
over every Spanish town; and for the first time, and almost the
last, the island obeys one law. He has put the mulatto under
his feet. He has attacked Maitland, defeated him in pitched
battles, and permitted him to retreat to Jamaica; and when the
French army rose upon Laveaux, their general, and put him in
chains, Toussaint defeated them, took Laveaux out of prison,
and put him at the head of his own troops. The grateful
French in return named him general-in-chief. "Cet homme fait
## p. 11415 (#29) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11415
l'ouverture partout," said one (This man makes an opening every-
where); hence his soldiers named him "L'Ouverture," the opening.
This was the work of seven years. Let us pause a moment,
and find something to measure him by. You remember Mac-
aulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napoleon, that Cromwell.
showed the greater military genius, if we consider that he never
saw an army till he was forty; while Napoleon was educated
from a boy in the best military schools in Europe. Cromwell
manufactured his own army; Napoleon at the age of twenty-
seven was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw.
They were both successful; but, says Macaulay, with such disad-
vantages the Englishman showed the greater genius. Whether
you allow the inference or not, you will at least grant that it is
a fair mode of measurement. Apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell
never saw an army till he was forty: this man never saw a
soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army
-out of what? Englishmen, the best blood in Europe; out of
the middle class of Englishmen, the best blood of the island.
And with it he conquered-what? Englishmen, their equals.
This man manufactured his army-out of what? Out of what
you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized
by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them
imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a
dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed,
and as you say, despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt and
burled it at-what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the
Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike
blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at
the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked
home to Jamaica. Now if Cromwell was a general, at least this
man was a soldier. I know it was a small territory; it was not
as large as the continent: but it was as large as that Attica,
which with Athens for a capital has filled the earth with its
fame for two thousand years. We measure genius by quality,
not by quantity.
Further, Cromwell was only a soldier; his fame stops there.
Not one line in the statute-book of Britain can be traced to
Cromwell; not one step in the social life of England finds its
motive power in his brain. The State he founded went down
with him to his grave. But this man no sooner put his hand
――――――
## p. 11416 (#30) ###########################################
11416
WENDELL PHILLIPS
on the helm of State than the ship steadied with an upright
keel, and he began to evince a statesmanship as marvelous as his
military genius. History says that the most statesmanlike act of
Napoleon was his proclamation of 1802, at the peace of Amiens,
when, believing that the indelible loyalty of a native-born heart
is always a sufficient basis on which to found an empire, he said:
"Frenchmen, come home. I pardon the crimes of the last twelve
years; I blot out its parties; I found my throne on the hearts
of all Frenchmen; "- and twelve years of unclouded success
showed how wisely he judged. That was in 1802. In 1800 this
negro made a proclamation; it runs thus: "Sons of St. Domingo,
come home. We never meant to take your houses or your lands.
The negro only asked that liberty which God gave him. Your
houses wait for you; your lands are ready; come and cultivate
them;" and from Madrid and Paris, from Baltimore and New
Orleans, the emigrant planters crowded home to enjoy their estates,
under the pledged word, that was never broken, of a victorious
slave.
-
Again, Carlyle has said, "The natural king is one who melts
all wills into his own. " At this moment he turned to his armies,
- poor, ill-clad, and half-starved, and said to them: Go back
and work on these estates you have conquered; for an empire.
can be founded only on order and industry, and you can learn
these virtues only there. And they went. The French admiral,
who witnessed the scene, said that in a week his army melted
back into peasants.
It was 1800. The world waited fifty years before, in 1846,
Robert Peel dared to venture, as a matter of practical states-
manship, the theory of free trade. Adam Smith theorized, the
French statesmen dreamed, but no man at the head of affairs had
ever dared to risk it as a practical measure. Europe waited till
1846 before the most practical intellect in the world, the English,
adopted the great economic formula of unfettered trade. But in
1800 this black, with the instinct of statesmanship, said to the
committee who were drafting for him a constitution: "Put at the
head of the chapter of commerce that the ports of St. Domingo
are open to the trade of the world. " With lofty indifference
to race, superior to all envy or prejudice, Toussaint had formed.
this committee of eight white proprietors and one mulatto,—not
a soldier nor a negro on the list; although Haytian history proves
## p. 11417 (#31) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11417
that with the exception of Rigaud, the rarest genius has always
been shown by pure negroes.
Again, it was 1800, at a time when England was poisoned on
every page of her statute-book with religious intolerance, when
a man could not enter the House of Commons without taking
an Episcopal communion, when every State in the Union except
Rhode Island was full of the intensest religious bigotry. This
man was a negro. You say that is a superstitious blood. He
was uneducated. You say that makes a man narrow-minded.
He was a Catholic. Many say that is but another name for
intolerance. And yet―negro, Catholic, slave - he took his place
by the side of Roger Williams, and said to his committee:
"Make it the first line of my Constitution that I know no differ-
ence between religious beliefs. "
Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me
to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman
you please. Let him be either American or European; let him
have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him
have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it
the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the
silver of seventy years, -and show me the man of Saxon lin-
eage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel
rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro:
rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content
to blot out all party distinctions and trust a State to the blood of
its sons,-anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his
station by the side of Roger Williams before any Englishman or
American had won the right;—and yet this is the record which
the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of
St. Domingo.
It was 1801. The Frenchmen who lingered on the island
described its prosperity and order as almost incredible. You
might trust a child with a bag of gold to go from Samana to
Port-au-Prince without risk. Peace was in every household; the
valleys laughed with fertility; culture climbed the mountains;
the commerce of the world was represented in its harbors. At
this time Europe concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon
took his seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes
across the Atlantic, and with a single stroke of his pen reduced.
Cayenne and Martinique back into chains. He then said to his
## p. 11418 (#32) ###########################################
11418
WENDELL PHILLIPS
>>>
Council, "What shall I do with St. Domingo? The slavehold-
ers said, "Give it to us. Napoleon turned to the Abbé Gré-
goire: "What is your opinion? " "I think those men would
change their opinions if they changed their skins. " Colonel
Vincent, who had been private secretary to Toussaint, wrote a
letter to Napoleon, in which he said: "Sire, leave it alone: it is
the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man to
govern; races melt under his hand. He saved you this island;
for I know of my own knowledge that when the Republic could
not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III. offered him
any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the
British crown. He refused, and saved it for France. " Napoleon
turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, "I
have sixty thousand idle troops: I must find them something to
do. »
He meant to say, "I am about to seize the crown; I dare
not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers: I
must give them work at a distance to do. ” The gossip of Paris
gives another reason for his expedition against St. Domingo. It
is said that the satirists of Paris had christened Toussaint the
Black Napoleon; and Bonaparte hated his black shadow. Tous-
saint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, "The first
of the blacks to the first of the whites. " He did not like the
comparison. You would think it too slight a motive. But let
me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigram-
matists of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at
Versailles Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black
Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order forbidding the use
of the word. The Napoleon blood is very sensitive. So Napo-
leon resolved to crush Toussaint, from one motive or another;
from the prompting of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance,-
which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must
have been the white, since the negro preceded him several years.
They were very much alike, and they were very French,-
French even in vanity, common to both. You remember Bona-
parte's vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyramids: "Forty
centuries look down upon us. " In the same mood, Toussaint
said to the French captain who urged him to go to France in
his frigate, "Sir, your ship is not large enough to carry me. "
Napoleon, you know, could never bear the military uniform.
He hated the restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray
>>
## p. 11419 (#33) ###########################################
WENDELL PHILLIPS
11419
coat of the Little Corporal, and wander in the camp. Toussaint
also never could bear a uniform.
He wore a plain coat, and
often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. A French
lieutenant once called him a maggot in a yellow handkerchief.
Toussaint took him prisoner next day, and sent him home to his
mother. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days; could dictate
to three secretaries at once; could wear out four or five horses.
Like Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated
his plan.
He was only a negro; and so in him they called it
hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For instance,
three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, from not firing
at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a car-
riage, he would be in the south on horseback; if they thought
he was in the city in a house, he would be in the field in a tent.
They once riddled his carriage with bullets; he was on horseback
on the other side. The seven Frenchmen who did it were ar-
rested. They expected to be shot. The next day was some saint's
day; he ordered them to be placed before the high altar, and
when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness, came down
from his high seat, repeated it with him, and permitted them.
to go unpunished. He had that wit common to all great com-
manders, which makes its way in a camp. His soldiers getting
disheartened, he filled a large vase with powder, and scattering
six grains of rice in it, shook them up, and said: "See, there
is the white, there is the black; what are you afraid of? " So
when people came to him in great numbers for office, as it is
reported they do sometimes even in Washington, he learned the
first words of a Catholic prayer in Latin, and repeating it, would
say, "Do you understand that?
