No More Learning

In art its taste is rich and of fine
quality,--at once unrestrained and complex, ancient and modern,
special to itself and original. In the region of morals it is
unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of contrasts in all
their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, of scepticism
and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in collision; nothing
was blended and united. Everything was in ferment; it was a period
of chaos; every ray of light caused a storm. It was not a gentle
age, or one we can call an age of light, but an age of struggle and
combat. What distinguished Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him
was, that in such an age he should have possessed moderation,
caution, and order.

Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient languages
as a game while still a child, waked even in his cradle by the sound
of musical instruments, he seemed less fitted for a rude and violent
epoch than for the commerce and sanctuary of the muses. His rare
good sense corrected what was too ideal and poetical in his early
education; but he preserved the happy faculty of saying everything
with freshness and wit. Married, when past thirty, to an estimable
woman who was his companion for twenty-eight years, he seems to have
put passion only into friendship. He immortalised his love for
Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of the sweetest
and closest intimacy. For some time counsellor in the Parliament of
Bordeaux, Montaigne, before he was forty, retired from public life,
and flung away ambition to live in his tower of Montaigne, enjoying
his own society and his own intellect, entirely given up to his own
observations and thoughts, and to the busy idleness of which we know
all the sports and fancies. The first edition of the Essays appeared
in 1580, consisting of only two books, and in a form representing
only the first rough draft of what we have in the later editions.
The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to Switzerland and
Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of Bordeaux
elected him mayor of their town. At first he refused and excused
himself, but warned that it would be well to accept, and enjoined by
the king, he took the office, "the more beautiful," he said, "that
there was neither renunciation nor gain other than the honour of its
performance. " He filled the office for four years, from July 1582 to
July 1586, being re-elected after the first two years. Thus
Montaigne, at the age of fifty, and a little against his will, re-
entered public life when the country was on the eve of civil
disturbances which, quieted and lulled to sleep for a while, broke
out more violently at the cry of the League. Although, as a rule,
lessons serve for nothing, since the art of wisdom and happiness
cannot be taught, let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of
listening to Montaigne; let us look on his wisdom and happiness; let
him speak of public affairs, of revolutions and disturbances, and of
his way of conducting himself with regard to them. We do not put
forward a model, but we offer our readers an agreeable recreation.

Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, a period
that a man who had lived through the Terror (M. Daunou) called the
most tragic century in all history, he by no means regarded his age
as the worst of ages. He was not of those prejudiced and afflicted
persons, who, measuring everything by their visual horizon, valuing
everything according to their present sensations, alway declare that
the disease they suffer from is worse than any ever before
experienced by a human being. He was like Socrates, who did not
consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world; with his
broad and full imagination he embraced the universality of countries
and of ages; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which
he was witness and victim. "Who is it," he said, "that, seeing the
bloody havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out that the
machine of the world is near dissolution, and that the day of
judgment is at hand, without considering that many worse revolutions
have been seen, and that, in the mean time, people are being merry
in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part,
considering the license and impunity that always attend such
commotions, I admire they are so moderate, and that there is not
more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his
ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest. " And
raising his thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering
to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing there not only
himself but whole kingdoms as mere specks in the infinite, he added
in words which foreshadowed Pascal, in words whose outline and
salient points Pascal did not disdain to borrow: "But whoever shall
represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our
mother nature, portrayed in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in
her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever
shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole
kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in
comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things
according to their true estimate and grandeur. "

Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it
all the same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have
been written down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do
not mean to underrate the gravity of the circumstances in which
France is just now involved, for I believe there is pressing need to
bring together all the energy, prudence, and courage she possesses
in order that the country may come out with honour [Footnote: This
essay appeared April 28, 1851]. However, let us reflect, and
remember that, leaving aside the Empire, which as regards internal
affairs was a period of calm, and before 1812 of prosperity, we who
utter such loud complaints, lived in peace from 1815 to 1830,
fifteen long years; that the three days of July only inaugurated
another order of things that for eighteen years guaranteed peace and
in dustrial prosperity; in all, thirty-two years of repose. Stormy
days came; tempests burst, and will doubtless burst again. Let us
learn how to live through them, but do not let us cry out every day,
as we are disposed to do, that never under the sun were such storms
known as we are enduring. To get away from the present state of
feeling, to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us
read every evening a page of Montaigne.

A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, and it
bears equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher says somewhere
that he knows a fair number of men possessing various good
qualities--one, intelligence; another, heart; another, address,
conscience or knowledge, or skill in languages, each has his share:
"but of a great man as a whole, having so many good qualities
together, or one with such a degree of excellence that we ought to
admire him, or compare him with those we honour in the past, my
fortune has never shown me one. " He afterwards made an exception in
favour of his friend Etienne de la Boetie, but he belonged to the
company of great men dead before attaining maturity, and showing
promise without having time to fulfil it. Montaigne's criticism
called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly great man in his
time, the age of L'Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. Well! how does
ours seem to you? We have as many great men as in Montaigne's time,
one distinguished for his intellect, another for his heart, a third
for skill, some (a rare thing) for conscience, many for knowledge
and language. But we too lack the perfect man, and he is greatly to
be desired. One of the most intelligent observers of our day
recognised and proclaimed it some years ago: "Our age," said M. de
Remusat, "is wanting in great men. " [Footnote: Essais de
Philosophie, vol. i, p. 22]

How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first magistrate
of a great city? If we take him literally and on a hasty first
glance we should believe he discharged them slackly and languidly.
Did not Horace, doing the honours to himself, say that in war he one
day let his shield fall (relicta non bene parmula)? We must not be
in too great a hurry to take too literally the men of taste who have
a horror of over-estimating themselves. Minds of a fine quality are
more given to vigilance and to action than they are apt to confess.
The man who boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost sure,
be less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the
council board than Montaigne.

On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the aldermen of
Bordeaux not to expect to find in him more than there really was; he
presented himself to them without affectation. "I represented to
them faithfully and conscientiously all that I felt myself to be,--a
man without memory, without vigilance, without experience, and
without energy; but also, without hate, without ambition, without
avarice, and without violence. " He should be sorry, while taking the
affairs of the town in hand, that his feelings should be so strongly
affected as those of his worthy father had been, who in the end had
lost his place and health. The eager and ardent pledge to satisfy an
impetuous desire was not his method. His opinion was "that you must
lend yourself to others, and only give yourself to yourself. " And
repeating his thought, according to his custom in all kinds of
metaphors and picturesque forms, he said again that if he some times
allowed himself to be urged to the management of other men's
affairs, he promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs and
liver. " We are thus forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor
and Montaigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office
he reserved to himself a certain freedom and secret security. He
continued to judge things in his own fashion and impartially,
although acting loyally for the cause confided to him. He was far
from approving or even excusing all he saw in his party, and he
could judge his adversaries and say of them: "He did that thing
wickedly, and this virtuously. " "I would have," he added, "matters
go well on our side; but if they do not, I shall not run mad. I am
heartily for the right party; but I do not affect to be taken notice
of for an especial enemy to others. " And he entered into some
details and applications which at that time were piquant. Let us
remark, however, in order to explain and justify his somewhat
extensive profession of impartiality, that the chiefs of the party
then in evidence, the three Henris, were famous and considerable men
on several counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri,
King of Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King Henri III.
in whose name Montaigne was mayor, who wavered between the two. When
parties have neither chief nor head, when they are known by the body
only, that is to say, in their hideous and brutal reality, it is
more difficult and also more hazardous to be just towards them and
to assign to each its share of action.

The principle which guided him in his administration was to look
only at the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to noise and
outward show: "How much more a good effect makes a noise, so much I
abate of the goodness of it. " For it is always to be feared that it
was more performed for the sake of the noise than upon the account
of goodness: "Being exposed upon the stall, 'tis half sold. " That
was not Montaigne's way: he made no show; he managed men and affairs
as quietly as he could; he employed in a manner useful to all alike
the gifts of sincerity and conciliation; the personal attraction
with which nature endowed him was a quality of the highest value in
the management of men. He preferred to warn men of evil rather than
to take on himself the honour of repressing it: "Is there any one
who desires to be sick that he may see his physician's practice? And
would not that physician deserve to be whipped who should wish the
plague amongst us that he might put his art into practice? " Far from
desiring that trouble and disorder in the affairs of the city should
rouse and honour his govern ment, he had ever willingly, he said,
contributed all he could to their tranquillity and ease. He is not
of those whom municipal honours intoxicate and elate, those
"dignities of office" as he called them, and of which all the noise
"goes from one cross-road to another. " If he was a man desirous of
fame, he recognised that it was of a kind greater than that. I do
not know, however, if even in a vaster field he would have changed
his method and manner of proceed ing. To do good for the public
imperceptibly would always seem to him the ideal of skill and the
culminating point of happiness. "He who will not thank me," he said,
"for the order and quiet calm that has accompanied my administration,
cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me by the
title of my good fortune. " And he is inexhaustible in describing in
lively and graceful expressions the kinds of effective and imperceptible
services he believed he had rendered--services greatly superior to
noisy and glorious deeds: "Actions which come from the workman's
hand carelessly and noiselessly have most charm, that some honest
man chooses later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into
the light for their own sake. " Thus fortune served Montaigne to
perfection, and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult
conjunctures, he never had to belie his maxim, nor to step very far
out of the way of life he had planned: "For my part I commend a gliding,
solitary, and silent life. " He reached the end of his magistracy almost
satisfied with himself, having accomplished what he had promised
himself, and much more than he had promised others.

The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel
corroborates the chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and criticises
himself in the period of his public life. "That letter," says M.
Payen, "is entirely on affairs. Montaigne is mayor; Bordeaux, lately
disturbed, seems threatened by fresh agitations; the king's
lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 22, 1585; it is night,
Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the governor of the province. "
The letter, which is of too special and local an interest to be
inserted here, may be summed up in these words:--Montaigne regretted
the absence of Marshal de Matignon, and feared the consequences of
its prolongation; he was keeping, and would continue to keep, him
acquainted with all that was going on, and begged him to return as
soon as his circumstances would permit. "We are looking after our
gates and guards, and a little more carefully in your absence. . . .
If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall send you a messenger
immediately, so that if you hear no news from me, you may consider
that nothing has happened. " He begs M. de Matignon to remember,
however, that he might not have time to warn him, "entreating you to
consider that such movements are usually so sudden, that if they do
occur they will take me by the throat without any warning. " Besides,
he will do everything to ascertain the march of events beforehand.
"I will do what I can to hear news from all parts, and to that end
shall visit and observe the inclinations of all sorts of men. "
Lastly, after keeping the marshal informed of everything, of the
least rumours abroad in the city, he pressed him to return, assuring
him "that we spare neither our care, nor, if need be, our lives to
preserve everything in obedience to the king. " Montaigne was never
prodigal of protestations and praises, and what with others was a
mere form of speech, was with him a real undertaking and the truth.

Things, however, became worse and worse: civil war broke out;
friendly or hostile parties (the difference was not great) infested
the country. Montaigne, who went to his country house as often as he
could, whenever the duties of his office, which was drawing near its
term, did not oblige him to be in Bordeaux, was exposed to every
sort of insult and outrage. "I underwent," he said, "the
inconveniences that moderation brings along with it in such a
disease. I was pitied on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a
Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline. " In the midst of his
personal grievances he could disengage and raise his thoughts to
reflections on the public misfortunes and on the degradation of
men's characters. Considering closely the disorder of parties, and
all the abject and wretched things which developed so quickly, he
was ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and debase themselves by
cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances we know, like him,
"that in the word of command to march, draw up, wheel, and the like,
we obey him indeed; but all the rest is dissolute and free. " "It
pleases me," said Montaigne ironically, "to observe how much
pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by how abject and
servile ways it must arrive at its end. " Despising ambition as he
did, he was not sorry to see it unmasked by such practices and
degraded in his sight. However, his goodness of heart overcoming his
pride and contempt, he adds sadly, "it displeases me to see good and
generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day
corrupted in the management and command of this confusion. . . . We
had ill-contrived souls enough without spoiling those that were
generous and good. " He rather sought in that misfortune an
opportunity and motive for fortifying and strengthening himself.
Attacked one by one by many disagreeables and evils, which he would
have endured more cheerfully in a heap--that is to say, all at once-
-pursued by war, disease, by all the plagues (July 1585), in the
course things were taking, he already asked himself to whom he and
his could have recourse, of whom he could ask shelter and
subsistence for his old age; and having looked and searched
thoroughly all around, he found himself actually destitute and
RUINED. For, "to let a man's self fall plumb down, and from so great
a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
fortunate friendship. They are very rare, if there be any. " Speaking
in such a manner, we perceive that La Boetie had been some time
dead. Then he felt that he must after all rely on himself in his
distress, and must gain strength; now or never was the time to put
into practice the lofty lessons he spent his life in collecting from
the books of the philosophers. He took heart again, and attained all
the height of his virtue: "In an ordinary and quiet time, a man
prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the
confusion wherein we have been for these thirty years, every
Frenchman, whether in particular or in general, sees himself every
hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his fortune. "
And far from being discouraged and cursing fate for causing him to
be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly congratulated himself: "Let
us thank fortune that has not made us live in an effeminate, idle
and languishing age. " Since the curiosity of wise men seeks the past
for disturbances in states in order to learn the secrets of history,
and, as we should say, the whole physiology of the body social, "so
does my curiosity," he declares, "make me in some sort please myself
with seeing with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public
death, its forms and symptoms; and, seeing I could not hinder it, am
content to be destined to assist in it, and thereby to instruct
myself. " I shall not suggest a consolation of that sort to most
people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the heroic and
eager curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, the two intrepid
men who went straight to the volcanoes and the disturbances of
nature to examine them at close quarters, at the risk of destruction
and death. But to a man of Montaigne's nature, the thought of that
stoical observation gave him consolation even amid real evils.
Considering the condition of false peace and doubtful truce, the
regime of dull and profound corruption which had preceded the last
disturbances, he almost congratulated himself on seeing their
cessation; for "it was," he said of the regime of Henri III. , "an
universal juncture of particular members, rotten to emulation of one
another, and the most of them with inveterate ulcers, that neither
required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore did
really more animate than depress me. " Note that his health, usually
delicate, is here raised to the level of his morality, although what
it had suffered through the various disturbances might have been
enough to undermine it. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he
had some hold against fortune, and that it would take a greater
shock still to crush him.

Another consideration, humbler and more humane, upheld him in his
troubles, the consolation arising from a common misfortune, a
misfortune shared by all, and the sight of the courage of others.
The people, especially the real people, they who are victims and not
robbers, the peasants of his district, moved him by the manner in
which they endured the same, or even worse, troubles than his. The
disease or plague which raged at that time in the country pressed
chiefly on the poor; Montaigne learned from them resignation and the
practice of philosophy. "Let us look down upon the poor people that
we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon
their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor
precept. Even from these does nature every day extract effects of
constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools. " And he goes on to describe them
working to the bitter end, even in their grief, even in disease,
until their strength failed them. "He that is now digging in my
garden has this morning buried his father, or his son. . . . They
never keep their beds but to die. " The whole chapter is fine,
pathetic, to the point, evincing noble, stoical elevation of mind,
and also the cheerful and affable disposition which Montaigne said,
with truth, was his by inheritance, and in which he had been
nourished. There could be nothing better as regards "consolation in
public calamities," except a chapter of some not more human, but of
some truly divine book, in which the hand of God should be
everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne, but
actually and lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Montaigne
gives himself and others is perhaps as lofty and beautiful as human
consolation without prayer can be.

He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the midst of
the evils described, and before they were ended. He concluded it in
his graceful and poetical way with a collection of examples, "a heap
of foreign flowers," to which he furnished only the thread for
fastening them together.

There is Montaigne to the life; no matter how seriously he spoke, it
was always with the utmost charm. To form an opinion on his style
you have only to open him indifferently at any page and listen to
his talk on any subject; there is none that he did not enliven and
make suggestive. In the chapter "Of Liars," for instance, after
enlarging on his lack of memory and giving a list of reasons by
which he might console himself, he suddenly added this fresh and
delightful reason, that, thanks to his faculty for forgetting, "the
places I revisit, and the books I read over again, always smile upon
me with a fresh novelty. " It is thus that on every subject he
touched he was continually new, and created sources of freshness.

Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great
poets, Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne! " How true it is
of Montaigne! No French writer, including the poets proper, had so
lofty an idea of poetry as he had. "From my earliest childhood," he
said, "poetry had power over me to transport and transpierce me. " He
considered, and therein shows penetration, that "we have more poets
than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than
to understand. " In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies
definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern
of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance
of a flash of lightning. " In the constitution and continuity of his
style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes,
naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the
thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that
join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying his own genius, he
has gone beyond and some times exceeded the genius of language. His
concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy,
emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that
it is a continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that
has only been successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne
himself. If we wanted to imitate him, supposing we had the power and
were naturally fitted for it--if we desired to write with his
severity, exact proportion, and diverse continuity of figures and
turns--it would be necessary to force our language to be more
powerful, and poetically more complete, than is usually our custom.
Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied in the series and
assortment of the metaphors, exacts the creation of a portion of the
tissue itself to hold them. It is absolutely necessary that in
places the woof should be enlarged and extended, in order to weave
into it the metaphor; but in defining him I come almost to write
like him. The French language, French prose, which in fact always
savours more or less of conversation, does not, naturally, possess
the resources and the extent of canvas necessary for a continued
picture: by the side of an animated metaphor it will often exhibit a
sudden lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness and
invention as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the expression
and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear equally
finished. Style a la Montaigne would, in many respects, be openly at
war with that of Voltaire. It could only come into being and
flourish in the full freedom of the sixteenth century, in a frank,
ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and refined mind, of an unique
stamp, that even for that time, seemed free and somewhat licentious,
and that was inspired and emboldened, but not intoxicated by the
pure and direct spirit of ancient sources.

Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace; he is Horatian in the
groundwork, often in the form and expression, although in that he
sometimes approaches Seneca. His book is a treasure-house of moral
observations and of experience; at whatever page it is opened, and
in what ever condition of mind, some wise thought expressed in a
striking and enduring fashion is certain to be found. It will at
once detach itself and engrave itself on the mind, a beautiful
meaning in full and forcible words, in one vigorous line, familiar
or great. The whole of his book, said Etienne Pasquier, is a real
seminary of beautiful and remarkable sentences, and they come in so
much the better that they run and hasten on without thrusting them
selves into notice. There is something for every age, for every hour
of life: you cannot read in it for any time without having the mind
filled and lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully armed and
clothed. We have just seen how much useful counsel and actual
consolation it contains for an honourable man, born for private
life, and fallen on times of disturbance and revolution. To this I
shall add the counsel he gave those who, like myself and many men of
my acquaintance, suffer from political disturbances without in any
way provoking them, or believing ourselves capable of averting them.
Montaigne, as Horace would have done, counsels them, while
apprehending everything from afar off, not to be too much
preoccupied with such matters in advance; to take advantage to the
end of pleasant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come
his piquant and wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, with
the most delightful one of all, and one, besides, entirely
appropriate and seasonable: it is folly and fret, he said, "to take
out your furred gown at Saint John because you will want it at
Christmas. "




WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be
given according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it
to me, and I intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine
and discuss it face to face with my readers, were it only to
persuade them to answer it for themselves, and, if I can, to make
their opinion and mine on the point clear. And why, in criticism,
should we not, from time to time, venture to treat some of those
subjects which are not personal, in which we no longer speak of some
one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well
succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the
modest title of "Essays. " It is true that in writing of such
subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to
speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own
attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of
calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even
when she is desirous of being wise and is not making revolutions,
her brilliant genius can scarcely tolerate them.

A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author
canonised by admiration, and an authority in his particular style.
The word classic was first used in this sense by the Romans. With
them not all the citizens of the different classes were properly
called classici, but only those of the chief class, those who
possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who possessed a
smaller income were described by the term infra classem, below the
preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative sense
by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and
distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of
account, has real property, and is not lost in the proletariate
crowd. Such an expression implies an age sufficiently advanced to
have already made some sort of valuation and classification of
literature.

At first the only true classics for the moderns were the ancients.
The Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of
mind, had no classics but themselves. They were at first the only
classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to
imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after
Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who
became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries
which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin
antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste,
confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and
Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long
chaos to order, and then only was admiration rightly proportioned.
Thenceforth the true classical authors of Greek and Latin antiquity
stood out in a luminous background, and were harmoniously grouped on
their two heights.

Meanwhile modern literatures were born, and some of the more
precocious, like the Italian, already possessed the style of
antiquity. Dante appeared, and, from the very first, posterity
greeted him as a classic. Italian poetry has since shrunk into far
narrower bounds; but, whenever it desired to do so, it always found
again and preserved the impulse and echo of its lofty origin.
It is
no indifferent matter for a poetry to derive its point of departure
and classical source in high places; for example, to spring from
Dante rather than to issue laboriously from Malherbe.

Modern Italy had her classical authors, and Spain had every right to
believe that she also had hers at a time when France was yet seeking
hers. A few talented writers en dowed with originality and
exceptional animation, a few brilliant efforts, isolated, without
following, interrupted and recommenced, did not suffice to endow a
nation with a solid and imposing basis of literary wealth. The idea
of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence,
and which produces unity and tradition fashions and transmits
itself, and endures. It was only after the glorious years of Louis
XIV. that the nation felt with tremor and pride that such good
fortune had happened to her. Every voice in formed Louis XIV. of it
with flattery, exaggeration, and emphasis, yet with a certain
sentiment of truth. Then arose a singular and striking contradiction:
those men of whom Perrauit was the chief, the men who were most
smitten with the marvels of the age of Louis the Great, who even
went the length of sacrificing the ancients to the moderns, aimed at
exalting and canonising even those whom they regarded as inveterate
opponents and adversaries. Boileau avenged and angrily upheld the
ancients against Perrault, who extolled the moderns--that is to say,
Corneille, Moliere, Pascal, and the eminent men of his age, Boileau,
one of the first, included. Kindly La Fontaine, taking part in the
dispute in behalf of the learned Huet, did not perceive that, in
spite of his defects, he was in his turn on the point of being held
as a classic himself.

Example is the best definition. From the time France possessed her
age of Louis XIV. and could contemplate it at a little distance, she
knew, better than by any arguments, what to be classical meant. The
eighteenth century, even in its medley of things, strengthened this
idea through some fine works, due to its four great men. Read
Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV. , Montesquieu's Greatness and Fall of
the Romans, Buffon's Epochs of Nature, the beautiful pages of
reverie and natural description of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar, and
say if the eighteenth century, in these memorable works, did not
understand how to reconcile tradition with freedom of development
and independence. But at the be ginning of the present century and
under the Empire, in sight of the first attempts of a decidedly new
and somewhat adventurous literature, the idea of a classic in a few
resist ing minds, more sorrowful than severe, was strangely nar
rowed and contracted. The first Dictionary of the Academy (1694)
merely defined a classical author as "a much-approved ancient
writer, who is an authority as regards the subject he treats. " The
Dictionary of the Academy of 1835 narrows that definition still
more, and gives precision and even limit to its rather vague form.
It describes classical authors as those "who have become models in
any language whatever," and in all the articles which follow, the
expressions, models, fixed rules for composition and style, strict
rules of art to which men must conform, continually recur. That
definition of classic was evidently made by the respectable
Academicians, our predecessors, in face and sight of what was then
called romantic--that is to say, in sight of the enemy. It seems to
me time to renounce those timid and restrictive definitions and to
free our mind of them. A true classic, as I should like to hear it
defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its
treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some
moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in
that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed
his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only
provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and
beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar
style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a
style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with
all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at
least have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted
whatever prevented the restoration of the balance of order and
beauty.

If it is desired, names may be applied to this definition which I
wish to make purposely majestic and fluctuating, or in a word, all-
embracing. I should first put there Corneille of the Polyeucte,
Cinna, and Horaces. I should put Moliere there, the fullest and most
complete poetic genius we have ever had in France. Goethe, the king
of critics, said:--

"Moliere is so great that he astonishes us afresh every time we read
him. He is a man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one
has the courage to try and imitate him. His Avare, where vice
destroys all affection between father and son, is one of the most
sublime works, and dramatic in the highest degree. In a drama every
action ought to be important in itself, and to lead to an action
greater still. In this respect Tartuffe is a model. What a piece of
exposition the first scene is! From the beginning everything has an
important meaning, and causes something much more important to be
foreseen. The exposition in a certain play of Lessing that might be
mentioned is very fine, but the world only sees that of Tartuffe
once. It is the finest of the kind we possess. Every year I read a
play of Moliere, just as from time to time I contemplate some
engraving after the great Italian masters. "

I do not conceal from myself that the definition of the classic I
have just given somewhat exceeds the notion usually ascribed to the
term. It should, above all, include conditions of uniformity,
wisdom, moderation, and reason, which dominate and contain all the
others. Having to praise M. Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat said--"If
he derives purity of taste, propriety of terms, variety of
expression, attentive care in suiting the diction to the thought,
from our classics, he owes to himself alone the distinctive
character he gives it all. " It is here evident that the part
allotted to classical qualities seems mostly to depend on harmony
and nuances of expression, on graceful and temperate style: such is
also the most general opinion. In this sense the pre-eminent
classics would be writers of a middling order, exact, sensible,
elegant, always clear, yet of noble feeling and airily veiled
strength. Marie-Joseph Chenier has described the poetics of those
temperate and accomplished writers in lines where he shows himself
their happy disciple:--

"It is good sense, reason which does all,--virtue, genius, soul,
talent, and taste. --What is virtue? reason put in practice;--talent?
reason expressed with brilliance;--soul? reason delicately put
forth;--and genius is sublime reason. "

While writing those lines he was evidently thinking of Pope,
Boileau, and Horace, the master of them all. The peculiar
characteristic of the theory which subordinated imagination and
feeling itself to reason, of which Scaliger perhaps gave the first
sign among the moderns, is, properly speaking, the Latin theory, and
for a long time it was also by preference the French theory. If it
is used appositely, if the term reason is not abused, that theory
possesses some truth; but it is evident that it is abused, and that
if, for instance, reason can be confounded with poetic genius and
make one with it in a moral epistle, it cannot be the same thing as
the genius, so varied and so diversely creative in its expression of
the passions, of the drama or the epic. Where will you find reason
in the fourth book of the AEneid and the transports of Dido? Be that
as it may, the spirit which prompted the theory, caused writers who
ruled their inspiration, rather than those who abandoned themselves
to it, to be placed in the first rank of classics; to put Virgil
there more surely than Homer, Racine in preference to Corneille. The
masterpiece to which the theory likes to point, which in fact brings
together all conditions of prudence, strength, tempered boldness,
moral elevation, and grandeur, is Athalie. Turenne in his two last
campaigns and Racine in Athalie are the great examples of what wise
and prudent men are capable of when they reach the maturity of their
genius and attain their supremest boldness.

Buffon, in his Discourse on Style, insisting on the unity of design,
arrangement, and execution, which are the stamps of true classical
works, said:--"Every subject is one, and however vast it is, it can
be comprised in a single treatise. Interruptions, pauses, sub-
divisions should only be used when many subjects are treated, when,
having to speak of great, intricate, and dissimilar things, the
march of genius is interrupted by the multiplicity of obstacles, and
contracted by the necessity of circumstances: otherwise, far from
making a work more solid, a great number of divisions destroys the
unity of its parts; the book appears clearer to the view, but the
author's design remains obscure. " And he continues his criticism,
having in view Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, an excellent book at
bottom, but sub-divided: the famous author, worn out before the end,
was unable to infuse inspiration into all his ideas, and to arrange
all his matter. However, I can scarcely believe that Buffon was not
also thinking, by way of contrast, of Bossuet's Discourse on
Universal History, a subject vast indeed, and yet of such an unity
that the great orator was able to comprise it in a single treatise.
When we open the first edition, that of 1681, before the division
into chapters, which was introduced later, passed from the margin
into the text, very thing is developed in a single series, almost in
one breath. It might be said that the orator has here acted like the
nature of which Buffon speaks, that "he has worked on an eternal
plan from which he has nowhere departed," so deeply does he seem to
have entered into the familiar counsels and designs of providence.

Are Athalie and the Discourse on Universal History the greatest
masterpieces that the strict classical theory can present to its
friends as well as to its enemies? In spite of the admirable
simplicity and dignity in the achievement of such unique
productions, we should like, nevertheless, in the interests of art,
to expand that theory a little, and to show that it is possible to
enlarge it without relaxing the tension. Goethe, whom I like to
quote on such a subject, said:--

"I call the classical healthy, and the romantic sickly. In my
opinion the Nibelungen song is as much a classic as Homer. Both are
healthy and vigorous. The works of the day are romantic, not because
they are new, but because they are weak, ailing, or sickly. Ancient
works are classical not because they are old, but because they are
powerful, fresh, and healthy. If we regarded romantic and classical
from those two points of view we should soon all agree. "

Indeed, before determining and fixing the opinions on that matter, I
should like every unbiassed mind to take a voyage round the world
and devote itself to a survey of different literatures in their
primitive vigour and infinite variety. What would be seen? Chief of
all a Homer, the father of the classical world, less a single
distinct individual than the vast living expression of a whole epoch
and a semi-barbarous civilisation. In order to make him a true
classic, it was necessary to attribute to him later a design, a
plan, literary invention, qualities of atticism and urbanity of
which he had certainly never dreamed in the luxuriant development of
his natural inspirations. And who appear by his side? August,
venerable ancients, the AEschyluses and the Sophocles, mutilated, it
is true, and only there to present us with a debris of themselves,
the survivors of many others as worthy, doubtless, as they to
survive, but who have succumbed to the injuries of time. This
thought alone would teach a man of impartial mind not to look upon
the whole of even classical literatures with a too narrow and
restricted view; he would learn that the exact and well-proportioned
order which has since so largely prevailed in our admiration of the
past was only the outcome of artificial circumstances.

And in reaching the modern world, how would it be? The greatest
names to be seen at the beginning of literatures are those which
disturb and run counter to certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful
and appropriate in poetry. For example, is Shakespeare a classic?
Yes, now, for England and the world; but in the time of Pope he was
not considered so. Pope and his friends were the only pre-eminent
classics; directly after their death they seemed so for ever. At the
present time they are still classics, as they deserve to be, but
they are only of the second order, and are for ever subordinated and
relegated to their rightful place by him who has again come to his
own on the height of the horizon.

It is not, however, for me to speak ill of Pope or his great
disciples, above all, when they possess pathos and naturalness like
Goldsmith: after the greatest they are perhaps the most agreeable
writers and the poets best fitted to add charm to life. Once when
Lord Bolingbroke was writing to Swift, Pope added a postscript, in
which he said--"I think some advantage would result to our age, if
we three spent three years together. " Men who, without boasting,
have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly:
the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things,
then no chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the
name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense
of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer
protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only to
well how in our untrammelled times, through the instability and
storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated.
Nevertheless, let us acknowledge our age's part and superiority in
greatness. True and sovereign genius triumphs over the very
difficulties that cause others to fail: Dante, Shakespeare, and
Milton were able to attain their height and produce their
imperishable works in spite of obstacles, hardships and tempests.
Byron's opinion of Pope has been much discussed, and the explanation
of it sought in the kind of contradiction by which the singer of Don
Juan and Childe Harold extolled the purely classical school and
pronounced it the only good one, while himself acting so
differently. Goethe spoke the truth on that point when he remarked
that Byron, great by the flow and source of poetry, feared that
Shakespeare was more powerful than himself in the creation and
realisation of his characters. "He would have liked to deny it; the
elevation so free from egoism irritated him; he felt when near it
that he could not display himself at ease. He never denied Pope,
because he did not fear him; he knew that Pope was only a low wall
by his side. "

If, as Byron desired, Pope's school had kept the supremacy and a
sort of honorary empire in the past, Byron would have been the first
and only poet in his particular style; the height of Pope's wall
shuts out Shakespeare's great figure from sight, whereas when
Shakespeare reigns and rules in all his greatness, Byron is only
second.

In France there was no great classic before the age of Louis XIV. ;
the Dantes and Shakespeares, the early authorities to whom, in times
of emancipation, men sooner or later return, were wanting. There
were mere sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like
Rabelais, without any ideal, without the depth of emotion and the
seriousness which canonises. Montaigne was a kind of premature
classic, of the family of Horace, but for want of worthy
surroundings, like a spoiled child, he gave himself up to the
unbridled fancies of his style and humour. Hence it happened that
France, less than any other nation, found in her old authors a right
to demand vehemently at a certain time literary liberty and freedom,
and that it was more difficult for her, in enfranchising herself, to
remain classical. However, with Moliere and La Fontaine among her
classics of the great period, nothing could justly be refused to
those who possessed courage and ability.

The important point now seems to me to be to uphold, while
extending, the idea and belief. There is no receipt for making
classics; this point should be clearly recognised. To believe that
an author will become a classic by imitating certain qualities of
purity, moderation, accuracy, and elegance, independently of the
style and inspiration, is to believe that after Racine the father
there is a place for Racine the son; dull and estimable role, the
worst in poetry. Further, it is hazardous to take too quickly and
without opposition the place of a classic in the sight of one's
contemporaries; in that case there is a good chance of not retaining
the position with posterity. Fontanes in his day was regarded by his
friends as a pure classic; see how at twenty-five years' distance
his star has set. How many of these precocious classics are there
who do not endure, and who are so only for a while! We turn round
one morning and are surprised not to find them standing behind us.
Madame de Sevigne would wittily say they possessed but an evanescent
colour. With regard to classics, the least expected prove the best
and greatest: seek them rather in the vigorous genius born immortal
and flourishing for ever. Apparently the least classical of the four
great poets of the age of Louis XIV. was Moliere; he was then
applauded far more than he was esteemed; men took delight in him
without understanding his worth. After him, La Fontaine seemed the
least classical: observe after two centuries what is the result for
both. Far above Boileau, even above Racine, are they not now
unanimously considered to possess in the highest degree the
characteristics of an all-embracing morality?

Meanwhile there is no question of sacrificing or depreciating
anything. I believe the temple of taste is to be rebuilt; but its
reconstruction is merely a matter of enlargement, so that it may
become the home of all noble human beings, of all who have
permanently increased the sum of the mind's delights and
possessions. As for me, who cannot, obviously, in any degree pretend
to be the architect or designer of such a temple, I shall confine
myself to expressing a few earnest wishes, to submit, as it were, my
designs for the edifice. Above all I should desire not to exclude
any one among the worthy, each should be in his place there, from
Shakespeare, the freest of creative geniuses, and the greatest of
classics without knowing it, to Andrieux, the last of classics in
little. "There is more than one chamber in the mansions of my
Father;" that should be as true of the kingdom of the beautiful here
below, as of the kingdom of Heaven. Homer, as always and everywhere,
should be first, likest a god; but behind him, like the procession
of the three wise kings of the East, would be seen the three great
poets, the three Homers, so long ignored by us, who wrote epics for
the use of the old peoples of Asia, the poets Valmiki, Vyasa of the
Hindoos, and Firdousi of the Persians: in the domain of taste it is
well to know that such men exist, and not to divide the human race.
Our homage paid to what is recognized as soon as perceived, we must
not stray further; the eye should delight in a thousand pleasing or
majestic spectacles, should rejoice in a thousand varied and
surprising combinations, whose apparent confusion would never be
without concord and harmony. The oldest of the wise men and poets,
those who put human morality into maxims, and those who in simple
fashion sung it, would converse together in rare and gentle speech,
and would not be surprised at understanding each other's meaning at
the very first word. Solon, Hesiod, Theognis, Job, Solomon, and why
not Confucius, would welcome the cleverest moderns, La Rochefoucauld
and La Bruyere, who, when listening to them, would say "they knew
all that we know, and in repeating life's experiences, we have
discovered nothing. " On the hill, most easily discernible, and of
most accessible ascent, Virgil, surrounded by Menander, Tibullus,
Terence, Fenelon, would occupy himself in discoursing with them with
great charm and divine enchantment: his gentle countenance would
shine with an inner light, and be tinged with modesty; as on the day
when entering the theatre at Rome, just as they finished reciting
his verses, he saw the people rise with an unanimous movement and
pay to him the same homage as to Augustus. Not far from him,
regretting the separation from so dear a friend, Horace, in his
turn, would preside (as far as so accomplished and wise a poet could
preside) over the group of poets of social life who could talk
although they sang,--Pope, Boileau, the one become less irritable,
the other less fault-finding. Montaigne, a true poet, would be among
them, and would give the finishing touch that should deprive that
delightful corner of the air of a literary school. There would La
Fontaine forget himself, and becoming less volatile would wander no
more. Voltaire would be attracted by it, but while finding pleasure
in it would not have patience to remain. A little lower down, on the
same hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple bearing, looking in no
way like a general, but rather resembling a priest of the Muses,
would be seen gathering round him the Attics of every tongue and of
every nation, the Addisons, Pellissons, Vauvenargues--all who feel
the value of an easy persuasiveness, an exquisite simplicity, and a
gentle negligence mingled with ornament. In the centre of the place,
in the portico of the principal temple (for there would be several
in the enclosure), three great men would like to meet often, and
when they were together, no fourth, however great, would dream of
joining their discourse or their silence. In them would be seen
beauty, proportion in greatness, and that perfect harmony which
appears but once in the full youth of the world. Their three names
have become the ideal of art--Plato, Sophocles, and Demosthenes.
Those demi-gods honoured, we see a numerous and familiar company of
choice spirits who follow, the Cervantes and Molieres, practical
painters of life, indulgent friends who are still the first of
benefactors, who laughingly embrace all mankind, turn man's
experience to gaiety, and know the powerful workings of a sensible,
hearty, and legitimate joy. I do not wish to make this description,
which if complete would fill a volume, any longer. In the middle
ages, believe me, Dante would occupy the sacred heights: at the feet
of the singer of Paradise all Italy would be spread out like a
garden; Boccaccio and Ariosto would there disport themselves, and
Tasso would find again the orange groves of Sorrento. Usually a
corner would be reserved for each of the various nations, but the
authors would take delight in leaving it, and in their travels would
recognise, where we should least expect it, brothers or masters.
Lucretius, for example, would enjoy discussing the origin of the
world and the reducing of chaos to order with Milton. But both
arguing from their own point of view, they would only agree as
regards divine pictures of poetry and nature.

Such are our classics; each individual imagination may finish the
sketch and choose the group preferred. For it is necessary to make a
choice, and the first condition of taste, after obtaining knowledge
of all, lies not in continual travel, but in rest and cessation from
wandering. Nothing blunts and destroys taste so much as endless
journeyings; the poetic spirit is not the Wandering Jew. However,
when I speak of resting and making choice, my meaning is not that we
are to imitate those who charm us most among our masters in the
past. Let us be content to know them, to penetrate them, to admire
them; but let us, the late-comers, endeavour to be ourselves. Let us
have the sincerity and naturalness of our own thoughts, of our own
feelings; so much is always possible. To that let us add what is
more difficult, elevation, an aim, if possible, towards an exalted
goal; and while speaking our own language, and submitting to the
conditions of the times in which we live, whence we derive our
strength and our defects, let us ask from time to time, our brows
lifted towards the heights and our eyes fixed on the group of
honoured mortals: what would that say of us?

But why speak always of authors and writings? Maybe an age is coming
when there will be no more writing. Happy those who read and read
again, those who in their reading can follow their unrestrained
inclination! There comes a time in life when, all our journeys over,
our experiences ended, there is no enjoyment more delightful than to
study and thoroughly examine the things we know, to take pleasure in
what we feel, and in seeing and seeing again the people we love: the
pure joys of our maturity. Then it is that the word classic takes
its true meaning, and is defined for every man of taste by an
irresistible choice. Then taste is formed, it is shaped and
definite; then good sense, if we are to possess it at all, is
perfected in us. We have neither more time for experiments, nor a
desire to go forth in search of pastures newf We cling to our
friends, to those proved by long intercourse. Old wine, old books,
old friends. We say to ourselves with Voltaire in these delightful
lines:--"Let us enjoy, let us write, let us live, my dear Horace! . . . I
have lived longer than you: my verse will not last so long. But on
the brink of the tomb I shall make it my chief care--to follow the
lessons of your philosophy--to despise death in enjoying life--to
read your writings full of charm and good sense--as we drink an old
wine which revives our senses. "

In fact, be it Horace or another who is the author preferred, who
reflects our thoughts in all the wealth of their maturity, of some
one of those excellent and antique minds shall we request an
interview at every moment; of some one of them shall we ask a
friendship which never deceives, which could not fail us; to some
one of them shall we appeal for that sensation of serenity and
amenity (we have often need of it) which reconciles us with mankind
and with ourselves.




THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES

BY ERNEST RENAN


TRANSLATED BY W. G. HUTCHISON




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Ernest Renan was born in 1823, at Treguier in Brittany. He was
educated for the priesthood, but never took orders, turning at first
to teaching. He continued his studies in religion and philology,
and, after traveling in Syria on a government commission, he
returned to Paris and became professor of Hebrew in the College de
France, from which he was suspended for a time on account of
protests against his heretical teachings. He died in 1892.

Renan's activity divides itself into two parts. The first culminated
in his two great works on the "Origins of Christianity" and on the
"History of Israel. " As to the scientific value of these books there
is difference of opinion, as was to be expected in a treatment of
such subjects to the exclusion of the miraculous. But the delicacy
and vividness of his portraits of the great personalities of Hebrew
history, and the acuteness of his analysis of national psychology,
are not to be denied.

The other part of his work is more miscellaneous, but most of it is
in some sense philosophical or autobiographical. Believing
profoundly in scientific method, Renan was unable to find in science
a basis for either ethics or metaphysics, and ended in a skepticism
often ironical, yet not untinged with mysticism.

"He was an amazing writer," says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted
criticism by the impossibility of explaining his methods of
procedure; he was luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding;
beneath his apparently effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of
character would suddenly make itself felt; he had, more than any
nineteenth-century writer, the quality of charm; he exercised a
caressing innuence which enveloped, and finally conquered, the
reader. "

In no kind of writing was Renan's command of style more notable than
in the description of scenery; and in his pictures of his native
Brittany in the essay on "The Poetry of the Celtic Races," as well
as in his analysis of national qualities, two of his most
characteristic powers are admirably displayed.




THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES

Every one who travels through the Armorican peninsula experiences a
change of the most abrupt description, as soon as he leaves behind
the district most closely bordering upon the continent, in which the
cheerful but commonplace type of face of Normandy and Maine is
continually in evidence, and passes into the true Brittany, that
which merits its name by language and race. A cold wind arises full
of a vague sadness, and carries the soul to other thoughts; the
tree-tops are bare and twisted; the heath with its monotony of tint
stretches away into the distance; at every step the granite
protrudes from a soil too scanty to cover it; a sea that is almost
always sombre girdles the horizon with eternal moaning. The same
contrast is manifest in the people: to Norman vulgarity, to a plump
and prosperous population, happy to live, full of its own interests,
egoistical as are all these who make a habit of enjoyment, succeeds
a timid and reserved race living altogether within itself, heavy in
appearance but capable of profound feeling, and of an adorable
delicacy in its religious instincts. A like change is apparent, I am
told, in passing from England into Wales, from the Lowlands of
Scotland, English by language and manners, into the Gaelic
Highlands; and too, though with a perceptible difference, when one
buries oneself in the districts of Ireland where the race has
remained pure from all admixture of alien blood. It seems like
entering on the subterranean strata of another world, and one
experiences in some measure the impression given us by Dante, when
he leads us from one circle of his Inferno to another.

Sufficient attention is not given to the peculiarity of this fact of
an ancient race living, until our days and almost under our eyes,
its own life in some obscure islands and peninsulas in the West,
more and more affected, it is true, by external influences, but
still faithful to its own tongue, to its own memories, to its own
customs, and to its own genius. Especially is it forgotten that this
little people, now concentrated on the very confines of the world,
in the midst of rocks and mountains whence its enemies have been
powerless to force it, is in possession of a literature which, in
the Middle Ages, exercised an immense influence, changed the current
of European civilisation, and imposed its poetical motives on nearly
the whole of Christendom. Yet it is only necessary to open the
authentic monuments of the Gaelic genius to be convinced that the
race which created them has had its own original manner of feeling
and thinking, that nowhere has the eternal illusion clad itself in
more seductive hues, and that in the great chorus of humanity no
race equals this for penetrative notes that go to the very heart.
Alas! it too is doomed to disappear, this emerald set in the Western
seas. Arthur will return no more from his isle of faery, and St.
Patrick was right when he said to Ossian, "The heroes that thou
weepest are dead; can they be born again? " It is high time to note,
before they shall have passed away, the divine tones thus expiring
on the horizon before the growing tumult of uniform civilisation.
Were criticism to set itself the task of calling back these distant
echoes, and of giving a voice to races that are no more, would not
that suffice to absolve it from the reproach, unreasonably and too
frequently brought against it, of being only negative?

Good works now exist which facilitate the task of him who undertakes
the study of these interesting literatures. Wales, above all, is
distinguished by scientific and literary activity, not always
accompanied, it is true, by a very rigorous critical spirit, but
deserving the highest praise. There, researches which would bring
honour to the most active centres of learning in Europe are the work
of enthusiastic amateurs. A peasant called Owen Jones published in
1801-7, under the name of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, the
precious collection which is to this day the arsenal of Cymric
antiquities. A number of erudite and zealous workers, Aneurin Owen,
Thomas Price of Crickhowell, William Rees, and John Jones, following
in the footsteps of the Myvyrian peasant, set themselves to finish
his work, and to profit from the treasures which he had collected. A
woman of distinction, Lady Charlotte Guest, charged herself with the
task of acquainting Europe with the collection of the Mabinogion,
[Footnote: The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch O Hergest and other
ancient Welsh Manuscripts, with an English Translation and Notes. By
Lady Charlotte Guest. London and Llandovery, 1837-49. The word
Mabinogi (in the plural Mabinogion) designates a form of romantic
narrative peculiar to Wales. The origin and primitive meaning of
this word are very uncertain, and Lady Guest's right to apply it to
the whole of the narratives which she has published is open to
doubt.