No More Learning

Newcomer


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11506
ALEXIS PIRON
ALEXIS PIRON
(1689-1773)
B
ORN a hundred years later, he would have been an ideal jour-
nalist," says Saintsbury of Piron. The brilliant ill-natured
satirist, who sneered at everything and everybody, was out
of sympathy with his age. He was always on the alert for flaws
in existing conditions. He was a revolutionist, despising classical plat-
itudes, yet with no new creed to advance. Voltaire and his brother
philosophers, as well as dead poets, were butts for his ridicule.
Alexis Piron, born at Dijon in 1689, was
the son of the gentle Burgundian poet Aimé
Piron, popular for his Noëls, or Christmas
songs. From him Piron inherited a love of
verse; and at an early age he deserted the
profession of law for that of poetry. A
licentious ode, written when he was twenty,
started him with an unfortunate reputation;
and many years later incurred the heavy
retribution of exclusion from the French
Academy. Although immoral, the poem
was witty. "If Piron wrote the famous ode,"
said Fontenelle, "he should be scolded but
admitted. If he did not write it, he should
be excluded. " Others thought the reverse;
and although he softened the disappointment with a pension, the
King refused to sanction Piron's election.
In 1819 Piron left Dijon for Paris, where he spent years as a hard-
working playwright, sometimes in collaboration with Le Sage. An
attempt was made to suppress the theatre, by forbidding dramatists
to introduce more than one character on the stage at a time. His
fellows despaired; but Piron's ingenuity was equal to the emergency,
and he produced 'Arlequin Deukalion,' a lively monologue in three
acts, which charmed all Paris. He also wrote many pot-boiling dra-
mas, forgotten now; and he produced one masterpiece,-a five-act
comedy, La Métromanie. ' The self-delusions of a vain would-be
poet, who is struggling for fame and also for academic prizes, is not
an emotional theme. Yet the skillful intrigue and graceful malice of



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ALEXIS PIRON
11507
the verse give it permanent charm. 'La Métromanie' is still revived
occasionally on the French stage, as a model of eighteenth-century
wit.
But Piron's name stands above all for epigram; for sharp retort
and satiric witticism at the expense of the Academy, of Voltaire,—
the man he envied and disliked,—and of nearly every one who fell
in his way. Samples of these lighter, more spontaneous composi-
tions are included in every collection of French bons mots. Crisp and
subtle, most of them are too essentially French to be caught in Eng-
lish without a knowledge of the occasion which prompted them.
An acquaintance who had written a poem full of plagiarisms
insisted upon reading it to him. From time to time Piron took off his
hat, until at last the poet demanded the reason. "It is my habit to
greet acquaintances," said Piron.
The Archbishop of Paris said graciously to him: "Have you read
my last mandate, Monsieur Piron ? » "Have you? " retorted Piron.
One day the Abbé Desfontaines, seeing Piron richly dressed, ex-
claimed: "What a costume for such a man! " "What a man for the
costume! " quickly answered the poet.
This irrepressible wit constantly embroiled him with others. It
was swift and direct, going straight to its target with a malicious
twang. So in spite of lovable qualities, which came out best in his
home life, this wittiest of Frenchmen made few friends, and lived in
constant dissension with his fellow-writers. There is caustic bitter-
ness in the epitaph he himself composed:
"Here lies Piron, who was nothing,-
Not even Academician! »
FROM LA MÉTROMANIE
[Damis, a visionary young man devoted to writing verse, has escaped
from his creditors in Paris, and under an assumed name is enjoying himself
in the country, where Mondor, his valet, discovers and reasons with him. ]
M
ONDOR [handing Damis a letter]-Ah! Thank Heaven, I've
unearthed you at last! [Damis takes the letter and reads it
to himself. ] Monsieur, I've been hunting for you a whole
week. I've been all over Paris a hundred times. I was afraid
of the river; lest in your extravagant visions, hunting some rhyme
and reading in the clouds, Pegasus with loose bridle should have
boldly borne your Muse to the nets of Saint Cloud.
Damis [aside, indicating the letter he has read]-Oh! Oh!
Shall I, shall I? Here's what keeps me back.


## p. 11508 (#122) ##########################################

11508
ALEXIS PIRON
Mondor - Listen, monsieur: my conscience, be careful! Some
fine day-
Damis [interrupting]- Some fine day will you hold your
tongue ?
Mondor-As you please. Speech is free, anyway. Well, some
one told me you might be here, but no one seemed to know
you. I've been all over this great place, but if you hadn't ap-
peared I'd have missed you again.
Damis-This whole inclosure is swarming with my admirers.
But didn't you ask for me by my family name?
Mondor-Of course. How should I have asked?
Damis-That is no longer my name.
Mondor-You've changed it?
Damis-Yes. For a week I've been imitating my confrères.
They rarely distinguish themselves under their true names, and
it is the common custom of such people to adopt or invent a
new name.
Mondor -Your name then is?
Damis- De l'Empirée. And I'll vouch it shall live!
Mondor-De l'Empirée ? Ah! As there is nothing under
heaven to make your name longer, as you don't possess anything
under the heavenly vault, you have nothing left but the name
of the envelope. So your mind has become a great land-owner?
Space is vast, so it has plenty of room. But when it ascends
alone to its domain, will your body allow you to go too?
He pre-
Damis-Do you think that a man of my talents can rule
his own course and dispose of himself? The destiny of people
like me is like that of drawing-room belles: all the world wants
them. I allowed myself to be brought here to Monsieur Fran-
calen's by an impudent fellow whom I scarcely know.
sents me, and, dupe of the household, I serve as passport to
the puppy who protects me. They were still at table, and made
room for us. I grew joyful, and so did we all. I became excited
and took fire. Uttered lightnings and thunders. My flight was
so rapid and prodigious that those who tried to follow me were
lost in the heavens. Then the company with acclamations be-
stowed upon me the name which descending from Pindus shall
enrich the archives.
Mondor-And impoverish us both!
Damis-Then a comfortable sumptuous carriage rolled me in
a quarter of an hour to this delightful spot, where I laugh, sing,
and drink; and all from complaisance!


## p. 11509 (#123) ##########################################

ALEXIS PIRON
11509
Mondor-From complaisance-so be it.
-
so be it. But don't you know-
Damis- Eh, what?
Mondor - While you are sporting in the fields, Fortune in the
city is a little jealous: Monsieur Balirois,-
Damis [interrupting] — What?
Mondor-Your uncle from Toulouse,-
Damis-Well?
Mondor - Is at Paris.
Damis
Let him stay there!
Mondor - Very well. Without thinking or wishing that you
should know anything about it.
Damis-Why do you tell me, then?
Mondor-Ah! what indifference! Well, is nothing of any
consequence to you any more? A rich old uncle upon whom
your lot depends, who is continually repenting of the good he
means to do you, who is trying to regulate your genius accord-
ing to his own taste, who detests your devilish verses, and who
has kept us for five good years, thank God, for you to study!
You may expect some horrible storms! He is coming incognito
to find out what you're about. Perhaps he has already discovered
that in your soaring you have not taken any license yet except
those he feared,-what you call in your rubrics poetical licenses.
Dread his indignation, I tell you! You will be disinherited.
That word ought to move you if you're not very hardened!
Damis [calmly offering Mondor a paper]- Mondor, take these
verses to the Mercury.
Mondor [refusing the paper]-Fine fruits of my sermon!
Damis-Worthy of the preacher!
Mondor - What? How much is this paper worth to us?
Damis-Honor!
Mondor [shaking his head]—Hum! honor!
Damis-Do you think I'm telling fictions?
Mondor-There's no honor in not paying one's debts; and
with honor alone you pay them very ill.
Damis-What a silly beast is an argumentative valet! Well,
do what I tell you.
Mondor - Now, not wishing to offend, you are a little too
much at your ease, monsieur. You have all the pleasure, and I
have all the annoyance. I have you and your creditors both on
my back.
I have to hear them and get rid of them. I'm tired
of playing the comedy for you, of shielding you, of putting


## p. 11510 (#124) ##########################################

11510
ALEXIS PIRON
off till another day so as brazenly to borrow again. This way
of living is repugnant to my honesty. I am tired of trying to
deliver you from this barking crew. I give it up. I repent. I
won't lie any more. Let them all come,- the bath-keeper, the
merchant, the tailor, your landlord. Let them nose you out
and pursue you. Get yourself out of it if you can; and let's
see-
Damis [interrupting, and again holding out the paper] - You
may get me the last Mercury. Do you hear?
Mondor [still refusing the paper]- Will it suit you to have
me come back with all the people I've just named?
Damis- Bring them.
Mondor-You jest?
Damis
No.
Mondor-You'll see.
Damis-I will wait for you.
Mondor [taking a few steps toward the door] —Oh, well, they'll
give you diversion.
――
Damis- And you that of seeing them overcome with joy.
Mondor [coming back]-Will you pay them?
Damis-Certainly.
Mondor-With what money?
Damis- Don't trouble yourself.
Mondor [aside]-Heyday! Can he be in funds?
Damis- Let us settle now how much we owe each other.
Mondor [aside]-Zounds! he'd teach me to weigh my words!
Damis-To the tutor?
Mondor [in a gentler voice]-Thirty or forty pistoles.
Damis-To the draper, the hair-dresser, the landlord?
Mondor-As much.
Damis-To the tailor?
Mondor-Eighty.
Damis-To the innkeeper?
Mondor-A hundred.
Damis-To you?
Mondor [drawing back and bowing] - Monsieur-
Damis How much?
-
Mondor - Monsieur
-
Damis-Speak!
Mondor-I abuse-
Damis- My patience!


## p. 11511 (#125) ##########################################

ALEXIS PIRON
11511
Mondor - Yes: I beg pardon. It is true that in my zeal I
have failed in respect; but the past made me suspicious of the
future.
Damis-A hundred crowns? Guess! More or less, it does
not matter. We'll share the prizes I shall soon win.
Mondor- The prizes?
Damis-Yes: the silver or gold which France distributes in
different places to whoever composes the best verses. I have
competed everywhere, at Paris, Rouen, Toulouse, Marseilles:
everywhere I've done wonders!
Mondor-Ah! so well that Paris will pay the board, Toulouse
the barber, Marseilles the draper, and the Devil my wages!
Damis- You doubt that I will win everywhere?
Mondor - No, doubt nothing; but haven't you a better secur-
ity for the tailor and the landlord? .
Damis-Yes, indeed: the noblest kind of security. The
Théâtre Français is to give my play to-day. My secret is safe.
Except one actor and yourself, no one in the world knows it is
mine. [Showing the letter which Mondor brought him. ] This
very evening they play it-this says so. To-day my talents are
revealed to Europe. I have taken the first steps toward immor-
tality. Dear friend, how much this great day means to me!
Another hope —
Mondor-Chimerical!
Damis- An adorable girl, only daughter, rare, famous, clever,
incomparable!
Mondor - What do you hope from this rare girl?
Damis-If I triumph to-day, to-morrow I can be her husband.
[Mondor wants to go. ] To-morrow Where are you going,
Mondor?
-
-
_____
Mondor To seek a master.
Damis-Eh! Why am I so suddenly judged unworthy?
Mondor-Monsieur, air is very poor nourishment.
Damis-Who wants you to live on air? Are you mad?
Mondor-Not at all.
Damis-Faith, you're not wise!
What, you revolt on the eve
—at the very moment of harvest? Since you force me to details
unworthy of me, let us take a clear view of the state of my for-
tunes, past and present. The payment of your wages is already
sure: one part to-night and the rest the day after to-morrow. I
will succeed; I will marry a scholarly woman. That is the beau-
tiful future before me. Generous young eaglets, worthy their race,


## p. 11512 (#126) ##########################################

11512
ALEXIS PIRON
will fly after us. If we have three, we will bequeath one to
comedy, one to tragedy, and the third to lyricism. These three
possess the whole stage. And my spouse and I, if we uttered
each year, I but a half-poem, she but a single novel, would
draw crowds from all sides. Behold gold and silver rolling
through the house, and our united intellects levying from theatre
and press!
Mondor-In self-esteem you are a rare man, and on that pil-
low you nap soundly. But the noise of hissing may wake you.
Damis [forcing him to take the paper]-Go! My embarrass-
ments merit some consideration. One play announced, another
in my head; one in which I am playing, and another all ready
to read! This is having the mind occupied.
Mondor An inheritance and lots of time thrown away
[He goes, and Damis returns to the house. ]
-
THE OTHERS
S
O RICH in famous men was Greece,
That still she vaunts them to us:
But seven wise men was all she had;
Judge then how many fools!
EXPERIENCE
WOR
ORK without thinking of gain;
Be neither selfish nor vain;
Love; do not hate nor disdain;
Be sober and gay; drink good wine;
And thy life at its final confine
Shall outvalue a monarch's long reign.
M
EPITAPH
Y JOURNEY here below is through;
Life is indeed a narrow strait.
Once saw I clear, now dimmed the view;
Once wise was I, but now I'm blate.
I, step by step, have reached the pass
Which may be shunned by fool nor sage,
To go, where know I not, alas!
Adieu, Piron, and bon voyage!


## p. 11513 (#127) ##########################################

11513
AUGUST VON PLATEN
(1796-1835)
T IS by reason rather of his exquisite perfection of form than
of his poetic inspiration, that Count Platen maintained his
distinguished place among the poets of Germany. The serv-
ice which he rendered to German literature was this: that amid the
mad rush of Romanticism towards banal sentimentality and fastastic
formlessness, he stood firm to the ideal of pure and lofty thoughts
cast in a chastened and classic form. The softer emotions rarely
find voice in his verse; but human dignity, profound sorrow, manly
independence, and fierce hatred of oppres-
sion, have thrilling utterance. He strove,
like Goethe, to live in a serene atmosphere
of intellect, disdaining popular tastes and
vulgar sentiments. Truth was his Muse,
and his poetry reflects her cold and crystal
beauty.

Count August von Platen-Hallermund
was born of a wealthy and noble family
at Ansbach, on October 24th, 1796. He was
educated at the cadet academy of Munich,
and at the age of eighteen became a lieu-
tenant in the Bavarian army. His part in
the campaign of 1815 was a tame one,
and garrison life was irksome to him. He
spent most of his time on furlough, studying philosophy and phi-
lology at the universities of Würzburg and Erlangen. Schelling exer-
cised an austere influence upon his thought.
In 1821 Platen came before the public as a poet, with his exquisite
and inimitable Ghaselen' (Gazels), - poems in the Persian manner;
and in another book of verse called 'Lyrische Blätter' (Lyric Leaves).
In 1823 came a second volume of 'Gazels. ' These poems elicited
warm words of praise from Goethe, and attracted the attention of
poets generally. It was the refinement of thought, and the easy
precision with which a difficult verse-form was handled, that aston-
ished and fascinated. For purposes of dogmatic classification Pla-
ten may be enrolled among the Romantic poets; but except in his
choice of exotic material he has little in common with them. Limpid
AUGUST VON PLATEN


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11514
AUGUST VON PLATEN
clearness and severe structural beauty distinguish even his earliest
work, and these qualities were at last elevated by him into a gospel
of art. Few poets have taken their calling more seriously, or held
their gifts more sacred.
In 1824 Platen visited Venice; and the noble Sonnets from Ven-
ice' show how his talents were stimulated there. Thenceforth his
life was exclusively devoted to scholarly pursuits and the work of
poetic creation. He was filled with glowing indignation at the bun-
gling of the later Romanticists, the lyrics of empty words, the nov-
els of mass without matter, and the tasteless "tragedies of fate. "
This indignation was concentrated in a comedy after the manner of
istophanes, Die Verhängnissvolle Gabel' (The Fatal Fork). The
cordial recognition which Platen received from Goethe, Uhland, and
Rückert raised his already well-developed self-esteem to the fighting
point. He became a poet militant, and so arose the unfortunate lit-
erary war with Immermann and Heine. A second Aristophanic com-
edy was directed against Immermann, - 'Der Romantische Edipus'
(The Romantic Edipus): Immermann had ridiculed the 'Gazels';
and Heine, who had joined in the ridicule, was included in the satire.
Heine's reply, deliciously witty but bitterly personal, appeared in the
'Reisebilder' (Travel-Pictures).
The indifference with which literary Germany generally received
Platen's enthusiasm for dignity of thought and purity of form in-
creased his wrath, and he left his native land in disgust. In Flor-
ence, Rome, and Naples he found more congenial surroundings.
Goethe blamed him for not forgetting the pettinesses of German
literary strife amid such scenes. Nevertheless these years were the
happiest of his life. Ballads, lyrics, odes, and dramas swelled the
volume of his contributions to literature. He wrote also a perfunc-
tory History of the Kingdom of Naples'; and a charming fairy epic,
'Die Abassiden,' written in 1830 but not published until 1834. His
last drama was the 'League of Cambray. ' The flaming Polenlieder'
(Songs of the Poles), which gave restrained but powerful expression
to his love of freedom, and his hatred of the Czar, were forbidden
by the censor, and did not appear until after the poet's death. It
was this act of tyranny that elicited the glowing stanzas with which
the series comes to an end.
Platen returned to Germany in 1832, and in the following year
brought out the first complete edition of his works. His poems won
new admirers constantly, and long before his death he had ceased
to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. In 1834 he went
back to Italy; and on December 5th, 1835, he died in Sicily.
Platen was an alien in his native land. It was not only that he
was rejected: he was not himself in touch with his time. Indeed, it


## p. 11515 (#129) ##########################################

AUGUST VON PLATEN
11515
is his chief merit that he checked the movement that threatened
literary chaos. After his death, enthusiastic admiration went almost
as far in the upward direction as indifference had sunk in the down-
ward. To-day we recognize in Platen the "sculptor in words," the
master of form, the stickler for truth, and the sincere thinker, who,
unable to reconcile himself to vulgar views of life, died disappointed
and in exile, rather
"Than the yoke of blind plebeian hatred bear. "
[This, and other selections from Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe,'
are reprinted with the approval of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers. ]
REMORSE
ow I started up in the night, in the night,
How Drawn on without rest or reprieval!
The streets, with their watchmen, were lost to my
sight,
As I wandered so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the gate with the arch medieval.
The mill-brook rushed through the rocky height,
I leaned o'er the bridge in my yearning;
Deep under me watched I the waves in their flight,
As they glided so light
In the night, in the night,
Yet backward not one was returning.
O'erhead were revolving, so countless and bright,
The stars in melodious existence;
And with them the moon, more serenely bedight;
They sparkled so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the magical, measureless distance.
And upward I gazed in the night, in the night,
And again on the waves in their fleeting;
Ah, woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight!
Now silence thou, light
In the night, in the night,
The remorse in thy heart that is beating.
Translation of Henry W. Longfellow.
I


## p. 11516 (#130) ##########################################

11516
AUGUST VON PLATEN
BEFORE THE CONVENT OF ST. JUST, 1556
From Trench's 'The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems,' and in 'Poets
and Poetry of Europe.
Is night, and storms continually roar;
T'S
Ye monks of Spain, now open me the door.
Here in unbroken quiet let me fare,
Save when the loud bell startles you to prayer.
Make ready for me what your house has meet,
A friar's habit and a winding-sheet.
A little cell unto my use assign:
More than the half of all this world was mine.
The head that stoops unto the scissors now,
Under the weight of many crowns did bow.
The shoulders on which now the cowl is flung,-
On them the ermine of the Cæsars hung.
I living now as dead myself behold,
And fall in ruins like this kingdom old.
THE GRAVE IN THE BUSENTO
-
BY
Y COSENZA Songs of wail at midnight wake Busento's shore;
O'er the wave resounds the answer, and amid the vortex's roar,
Valiant Goths, like spectres, steal along the banks with hurried pace,
Weeping o'er Alaric dead, the best, the bravest of his race.
Ah, too soon, from home so far, was it their lot to dig his grave,
While still o'er his shoulders flowed his youthful ringlets' flaxen
wave.
On the shore of the Busento ranged, they with each other vied,
As they dug another bed to turn the torrent's course aside.
In the waveless hollow, turning o'er and o'er the sod, the corpse
Deep into the earth they sank, in armor clad, upon his horse;
Covered then with earth again the horse and rider in the grave:
That above the hero's tomb the torrent's lofty plants might wave.
And, a second time diverted, was the flood conducted back;
Foaming rushed Busento's billows onward in their wonted track.


## p. 11517 (#131) ##########################################

AUGUST VON PLATEN
11517
And a warrior chorus sang, "Sleep with thy honors, hero brave;
Ne'er a foot of lucre-lusting Roman desecrate thy grave! "
Far and wide the songs of praise resounded in the Gothic host;
Bear them on Busento's billow! bear them on from coast to coast!
Translation of A. Baskerville.
VENICE
ENICE, calm shadow of her elder day,
VEN
Still, in the land of dreams, lives fresh and fair;
Where frowned the proud Republic's Lion, there
His empty prison-walls keep holiday.
The brazen steeds that, wet with briny spray,
On yonder church-walls shake their streaming hair,
They are the same no longer-ah! they wear
The bridle of the Corsican conqueror's sway!
Where is the people gone, the kindly race
That reared these marble piles amid the waves,
Which e'en decay invests with added grace?
Not in the brows of yon degenerate slaves
Think thou the traits of their great sires to trace; -
Go, read them, hewn in stone, on doges' graves!
Translation of Charles T. Brooks.
"FAIR AS THE DAY »
F
AIR as the day that bodes as fair a morrow,
With noble brow, with eyes in heaven's dew,
Of tender years, and charming as the new,
So found I thee,- so found I too my sorrow.
Oh, could I shelter in thy bosom borrow,
There most collected where the most unbent!
Oh, would this coyness were already spent,
That aye adjourns our union till to-morrow!
But canst thou hate me ? Art thou yet unshaken?
Wherefore refusest thou the soft confession
To him who loves, yet feels himself forsaken ?
Oh, when thy future love doth make expression,
An anxious rapture will the moment waken,
As with a youthful prince at his accession!
From Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe. Translator anonymous.


## p. 11518 (#132) ##########################################

11518
AUGUST VON PLATEN
TO SCHELLING
I
S HE not also Beauty's sceptre bearing,
Who holds in Truth's domain the kingly right?
Thou seest in the Highest both unite,
Like long-lost melodies together pairing.
Thou wilt not scorn the dainty motley band,
With clang of foreign music hither faring,
A little gift for thee, from Morning Land;
Thou wilt discern the beauty they are wearing.
Among the flowers, forsooth, of distant valleys,
I hover like the butterfly, that clings
To summer sweets and with a trifle dallies;
But thou dost dip thy holy, honeyed wings,
Beyond the margin of the world's flower-chalice,
Deep, deep into the mystery of things.
From Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe. '
Translator anonymous.
VOLUNTARY EXILE
MY
Y RANGING spirit seeks the far and wide,
And fain would soar and ever further soar:
I never long could linger on one shore,
Though Paradise should bloom on every side.
My spirit, sore perplexed and inly tried,
In this short life must often needs deplore
How easy 'tis to leave the homestead door;
But ah, how bitter elsewhere to abide!
Yet whoso hates things base with fervid soul,
Is driven from his country in despair,
When men, grown sordid, seek a sordid goal.
Far wiser then the exile's lot to share,
Than 'midst a folk that plays a childish rôle
The yoke of blind plebeian hatred bear.
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.


## p. 11519 (#133) ##########################################

11519
PLATO
(427-347 B. C. )
BY PAUL SHOREY
LATO, the first of philosophers, and the only writer of prose
who ranks in the literature of power with the bibles and
supreme poets of the world, was born at Athens in the year
427 B. C. , and died in the year 347. His youth was contemporaneous
with that fatal Peloponnesian war in which the Athens of Pericles
dissipated, in a fratricidal contest, the energies that might have pro-
longed the flowering season of the Greek genius for another century.
His maturity and old age were passed as writer and teacher in the
subdued and chastened Athens of the restoration, whose mission it
was, as schoolmaster of Greece, to disengage the spirit of Hellen-
ism from local and temporal accidents, and prepare it—not without
some loss of native charm-for assimilation by the Hellenistic, the
Roman, the modern world. Like his pupil the Stagirite Aristotle, he
embraces in the compass of his thoughts the entire experience, and
reflective criticism of life, of the Greek race. But because he was an
Athenian born, and had nourished his mighty youth on the still living
traditions of the great age, he transmits the final outcome of Greek
culture to us in no quintessential distillation of abstract formulas, but
in vivid dramatic pictures that make us actual participants in the
spiritual intoxication, the Bacchic revelry of philosophy, as Alcibiades
calls it, that accompanied the most intense, disinterested, and fruitful
outburst of intellectual activity in the annals of mankind.
It was an age of discussion. The influence of the French salon
on the tone and temper of modern European literature has been often
pointed out. But the drawing-room conversation of fine ladies and
gentlemen has its obvious limits. In the Athens of Socrates, for the
first and last time, men talked with men seriously, passionately, on
other topics than those of business or practical politics; and their
discussions created the logic, the rhetoric, the psychology, the meta-
physic, the ethical and political philosophy of western Europe, and
wrought out the distinctions, the definitions, the categories in which
all subsequent thought has been cast. The Platonic dialogues are
a dramatic idealization of that stimulating soul-communion which
Diotima celebrates as the consummation of the right love of the


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beautiful; wherein a man is copiously inspired to declare to his friend
what human excellence really is, and what are the practices and the
ways of life of the truly good man. And in addition to their formal
and inspirational value, they remain, even after the codification of
their leading thoughts in the systematic treatises of Aristotle, a still
unexhausted storehouse of ideas, which, as Emerson says, "make
great havoc of our originalities. " This incomparable suggestiveness
is due after the genius of Plato-to the wealth of virgin material
which then lay awaiting the interpretative ingenuity of these brilliant
talkers, and the synoptic eye of the philosopher who should first be
able to see the one in the many and the many in the one.
Before the recent transformation of all things by physical science,
the experience of the modern world offered little to the generalizing
philosophic mind which the Periclean Greek could not find in the
mythology, the poetry, the art, the historical vicissitudes, the colo-
nial enterprises, and the picturesquely various political life of his
race. Modern science was lacking. But the guesses of the pre-
Socratic poet-philosophers had started all its larger hypotheses, and
had attained at a bound to conceptions of evolution which, though
unverified in detail, distinctly raised all those far-reaching questions.
touching the origin and destiny of man and the validity of moral
and religious tradition, that exercise our own maturer thought.
The concentration and conscious enjoyment of this rich culture
in the intense life of imperial Athens gave rise to new ideals in edu-
cation, and to the new Spirit of the Age, embodied in the Sophists-
or professional teachers of rhetoric and of the art of getting on in
the world. Their sophistry consisted not in any positive intention of
corruption, but in the intellectual bewilderment of a broad but super-
ficial half-culture, which set them adrift with no anchorage of unques-
tioned principle or fixed faith in any kind of ultimate reality. They
thus came to regard the conflicting religious, ethical, and social ideals
of an age of transition merely as convenient themes for the execu-
tion of dialectical and rhetorical flourishes, or as forces to be esti-
mated in the shrewd conduct of the game of life.
-
Among these showy talkers moved the strange uncouth figure of
Socrates, hardly distinguished from them by the writers of comedy.
or by the multitude, and really resembling them in the temporarily.
unsettling effect, upon the mind of ingenuous youth, of his persistent
questioning of all untested conventions and traditions. Two things,
in addition to the stoic simplicity of his life, his refusal to accept
pay for his teaching, and his ironical affectation of ignorance, espe-
cially distinguish his conversation from theirs: First, a persistent
effort to clear up the intellectual confusion of the age before logic, by
insistence on definitions that shall distinguish essence from accident.


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11521
Second, an adamantine faith in the morality of common-sense, and
in the absoluteness of the distinction between right and wrong.
Every student must decide for himself which he will accept as
the probable Socrates of history: the homely portrait of Xenophon,
or the speculative, super-subtle, mystic protagonist of these dialogues,
fertile in invention, inexhaustible in resource, equal to every situation,
seemingly all things to all men, yet guarding ever his indomitable
moral and intellectual integrity behind a veil of playful irony. This
Platonic Socrates stands out as the second religious figure of the Euro-
pean world in the fourfold gospel of his conversation, his trial, his
temptation, and his death, recorded in the 'Gorgias,' the 'Apology,'
the Crito,' and the 'Phædo. ' However much of this result criticism
may attribute to the genius of the reporter, we divine a strangely
potent personality in the very fact that he dominated to the end the
imagination of a scholar who went to school to many other influ-
ences, and who absorbed the entire culture of that wondrous age
in "a synthesis without parallel before or since. " Amid all the dra-
matic variety, the curious subtlety, the daring speculation, the poetic
Pythagorean mysticism of the later dialogues, the two chief Socratic
notes persist. There is always an effort to dissipate the clouds of
intellectual confusion by the aid of some logic of definition and rele-
vancy; and however often the quest for absolute verities loses itself
in baffling labyrinths of dialectic, or issues in an impasse of conflicting
probabilities, the faith is never lost that truth exists, may be won by.
persistent wooing, and is in the end essentially moral.
Associated with Socrates are groups of the noble youths of Athens;
with worthy burghers who are their parents, guardians, or friends, an
inner circle of earnest disciples or devoted enthusiasts attached to the
person of the master, an outer circle of local celebrities and of all the
brilliant personalities whom the policy of Pericles drew to the Pry-
taneion of Greek intellect, visiting sophists, rhetoricians, philoso-
phers. The dramatic setting is some typical scene of Athenian life.
Socrates returning from the campaign of Potidæa strolls into a gym-
nasium, inquires of the progress of the young men, and draws the
reigning favorite Charmides into a discussion of the nature and defi-
nition of that virtue of temperance which is the bloom of youthful
beauty. He is aroused at earliest dawn by the knock of the youthful
enthusiast Hippocrates, who comes breathless to announce that "Pro-
tagoras is in town," and that there is to be a great gathering of wise
men at the house of Callias. Thither they proceed, and hear and say
many things. He meets Phædrus carrying a roll under his arm, and
fresh from the rhetorical school of Lysias, and joins him in a consti-
tutional beyond the city gates while they discourse on the philosophy
of style, and incidentally on love. He is a guest at the banquet held
―
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11522
PLATO
to celebrate the success of Agathon's new tragedy at the Dionysiac
festival; and after listening benignantly to the young men's euphuis-
tic panegyrics on the great god Love, expounds to them the lore
he learned from the wise woman Diotima; and then, as the night
wears on, drinks all the guests under the table while he proves to
Aristophanes and Agathon that the true dramatic artist will excel in
both tragedy and comedy. Turning homeward from attendance on a
religious ceremony at the Peiræus, he is constrained by the playful
importunity of a band of young friends to remain for the torchlight
race in the evening. They proceed to the house of the delightful old
man Cephalus, father of the orator Lysias, where a conversation springs
up on old age and the right use of wealth, which insensibly develops
into the long argument on the Republic or Ideal State, in which alone
justice and the happy life are perfectly typed. Condemned to drink
the hemlock "for corrupting the youth," he spends the last hours in
prison beguiling the grief of his distracted disciples with high dispu-
tations touching the immortality of the soul, striving
"-to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook. "
The style is as various as are the themes. It ranges from homely
Socratic parable and the simple exquisite urbanity of Attic conver-
sation to the subtlest metaphysical disquisition, the loftiest flights of
poetic eloquence, the most dithyrambic imaginative mysticism. The
only limitation of this universality which the critics of antiquity could
discover was the failure (in the 'Menexenus,' for example) to achieve
sustained formal eloquence of the Demosthenic type. The thought
was too curious and subtle, the expression charged with too many
minor intentions, for that; the peculiar blending, in the Platonic dic-
tion, of colloquialism, dialectic precision, vivid imagination, and the
tone of mystic unction, unfitted it for the conventional effects of
political oratory.
But no other prose writer manifests such complete and easy mas-
tery of every note in the compass of his idiom as Plato possesses over
the resources of Greek. He not only employs all styles separately at
will, but modulates from one to the other by insensible transitions,
that can be compared only to the effects of modern music. Platonic
prose is an orchestral accompaniment of the thought; suggesting for
every nuance of the idea its appropriate mood, and shot through
with leitmotifs of reminiscence and anticipation, that bind the whole
into emotional and artistic unity. He is not only the greatest but the
first artist of an elaborate and curiously wrought prose diction.
No


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11523
writer before him had thus combined quotation, parody, literary and
historic allusion, idiom, proverb, dialect, continued metaphor, and the
dramatically appropriated technical vocabularies of all arts, sciences,
and professions,-to' one resultant literary effect suited to his various
meanings and moods. The nice finish of Demosthenes's comparatively
simple oratorical prose was the outcome from a long evolution, and
from the labors of three generations of orators and rhetoricians. The
composite, suggestive, polychromatic, literary prose which is the ideal
of the cleverest modern writers, was created, in its perfection and
without precedent, by the genius of Plato.
The reconstruction of a systematic philosophy for Plato must be
left, in his own words, to "some very clever and laborious but not
altogether enviable man. " The notorious doctrine of Ideas is a lan-
guage, a metaphysic, a mythology. "Socrates used to ask concerning.
each thing,— as justice, friendship, or the State,- What is it? " And so
in the minor dialogues of search, the definition pursued through many
a dialectical winding in the dramatization of elementary logic came
to be regarded as a real thing to be apprehended, and not as the
mere "statement of the connotation of a term. " "The naïve childish
realism of the immature mind! " will be the confident comment of
the hasty critic. But as against the deeper meaning of Plato such
criticism is competent only to those, if any there be, who have com-
pletely solved the problem of the true nature of Universals. The
mediæval controversy still subsists under manifold disguises; and in
the last resort, as Professor James picturesquely says, "introspective
psychology is forced to throw up the sponge. " We may classify the
doctrine of Ideas as "logical realism"; but if we remember the kind
of reality which Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Shelley, and the
most delicate psychological analysis concur in attributing to the
"things" of common-sense, which Plato called shadows and copies
of the ideas, we may well surmise that the Platonic doctrine is more
nearly akin to modern psychological and poetical idealism than to the
crude logical realism of the Middle Ages. The verification of this
conjecture would take us too far afield. It is enough that general
notions, forms, essences, purposes, ideals, are in a sense as real as
brick and mortar.