No More Learning

How suited
to the historic spirit! How appropriate to the style! When he had got a
little way on, he compared our ruler to Achilles, and the Parthian king
to Thersites; he forgot that Achilles would have done better if he had
had Hector instead of Thersites to beat, if there had been a man of might
fleeing in front,

But at his heels a mightier far than he.

He next proceeded to say something handsome about himself, as a fit
chronicler of such brilliant deeds. As he got near his point of
departure, he threw in a word for his native town of Miletus, adding that
he was thus improving on Homer, who never so much as mentioned his
birthplace. And he concluded his preface with a plain express promise to
advance our cause and personally wage war against the barbarians, to the
best of his ability. The actual history, and recital of the causes of
hostilities, began with these words:--'The detestable Vologesus (whom
Heaven confound! ) commenced war on the following pretext. '

Enough of him. Another is a keen emulator of Thucydides, and by way of
close approximation to his model starts with his own name--most graceful
of beginnings, redolent of Attic thyme! Look at it: 'Crepereius
Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis wrote the history of the war between Parthia
and Rome, how they warred one upon the other, beginning with the
commencement of the war. ' After that exordium, what need to describe the
rest--what harangues he delivers in Armenia, resuscitating our old friend
the Corcyrean envoy--what a plague he inflicts on Nisibis (which would
not espouse the Roman cause), lifting the whole thing bodily from
Thucydides--except the Pelasgicum and the Long Walls, where the victims
of the earlier plague found shelter; there the difference ends; like the
other, 'it began in Ethiopia, whence it descended to Egypt,' and to most
of the Parthian empire, where it very discreetly remained. I left him
engaged in burying the poor Athenians in Nisibis, and knew quite well how
he would continue after my exit. Indeed it is a pretty common belief at
present that you are writing like Thucydides, if you just use his actual
words, _mutatis mutandis_. [Footnote: Omitting, with Dindorf, the words
which appear in the Teubner text, after emendation, as: mikra rakia, opos
kai autos au phaiaes, on di autaen. ] Ah, and I almost forgot to mention
one thing: this same writer gives many names of weapons and military
engines in Latin--_phossa_ for trench, _pons_ for bridge, and so forth.
Just think of the dignity of history, and the Thucydidean style--the Attic
embroidered with these Latin words, like a toga relieved and picked out
with the purple stripe--so harmonious!

Another puts down a bald list of events, as prosy and commonplace as a
private's or a carpenter's or a sutler's diary. However, there is more
sense in this poor man's performance; he flies his true colours from the
first; he has cleared the ground for some educated person who knows how
to deal with history. The only fault I have to find with him is that he
inscribes his volumes with a solemnity rather disproportioned to the rank
of their contents--'Parthian History, by Callimorphus, Surgeon of the 6th
Pikemen, volume so-and-so. ' Ah, yes, and there is a lamentable preface,
which closes with the remark that, since Asclepius is the son of Apollo,
and Apollo director of the Muses and patron of all culture, it is very
proper for a doctor to write history. Also, he starts in Ionic, but very
soon, for no apparent reason, abandons it for every-day Greek, still
keeping the Ionic _es_ and _ks_ and _ous_, but otherwise writing like
ordinary people--rather too ordinary, indeed.

Perhaps I should balance him with a philosophic historian; this
gentleman's name I will conceal, and merely indicate his attitude, as
revealed in a recent publication at Corinth. Much had been expected of
him, but not enough; starting straight off with the first sentence of the
preface, he subjects his readers to a dialectic catechism, his thesis
being the highly philosophic one, that no one but a philosopher should
write history. Very shortly there follows a second logical process,
itself followed by a third; in fact the whole preface is one mass of
dialectic figures. There is flattery, indeed, _ad nauseam_, eulogy
vulgar to the point of farce; but never without the logical trimmings;
always that dialectical catechism. I confess it strikes me as a vulgarity
also, hardly worthy of a philosopher with so long and white a beard, when
he gives it in his preface as our ruler's special good fortune that
philosophers should consent to record his actions; he had better have
left us to reach that conclusion for ourselves--if at all.

Again, it would be a sinful neglect to omit the man who begins like
this:--'I devise to tell of Romans and Persians'; then a little later,
'For 'twas Heaven's decree that the Persians should suffer evils'; and
again, 'One Osroes there was, whom Hellenes name Oxyroes'--and much more
in that style. He corresponds, you see, to one of my previous examples;
only he is a second Herodotus, and the other a second Thucydides.

There is another distinguished artist in words--again rather more
Thucydidean than Thucydides--, who gives, according to his own idea, the
clearest, most convincing descriptions of every town, mountain, plain, or
river. I wish my bitterest foe no worse fate than the reading of them.
Frigid? Caspian snows, Celtic ice, are warm in comparison. A whole book
hardly suffices him for the Emperor's shield--the Gorgon on its boss,
with eyes of blue and white and black, rainbow girdle, and snakes twined
and knotted. Why, Vologesus's breeches or his bridle, God bless me, they
take up several thousand lines apiece; the same for the look of Osroes's
hair as he swims the Tigris--or what the cave was like that sheltered
him, ivy and myrtle and bay clustered all together to shut out every ray
of light. You observe how indispensable it all is to the history; without
the scene, how could we have comprehended the action?

It is helplessness about the real essentials, or ignorance of what should
be given, that makes them take refuge in word-painting--landscapes,
caves, and the like; and when they do come upon a series of important
matters, they are just like a slave whose master has left him his money
and made him a rich man; he does not know how to put on his clothes or
take his food properly; partridges or sweetbreads or hare are served; but
he rushes in, and fills himself up with pea soup or salt fish, till he is
fit to burst. Well, the man I spoke of gives the most unconvincing wounds
and singular deaths: some one has his big toe injured, and dies on the
spot; the general Priscus calls out, and seven-and-twenty of the enemy
fall dead at the sound. As to the numbers killed, he actually falsifies
dispatches; at Europus he slaughters 70,236 of the enemy, while the
Romans lose two, and have seven wounded! How any man of sense can tolerate
such stuff, I do not know.

Here is another point quite worth mention. This writer has such a passion
for unadulterated Attic, and for refining speech to the last degree of
purity, that he metamorphoses the Latin names and translates them into
Greek; Saturninus figures as Cronius, Fronto must be Phrontis, Titianus
Titanius, with queerer transmogrifications yet. Further, on the subject
of Severian's death, he accuses all other writers of a blunder in putting
him to the sword; he is really to have starved himself to death, as the
most painless method; the fact, however, is that it was all over in three
days, whereas seven days is the regular time for starvation; are we
perhaps to conceive an Osroes waiting about for Severian to complete the
process, and putting off his assault till after the seventh day?

Then, Philo, how shall we class the historians who indulge in poetical
phraseology? 'The catapult rocked responsive,' they say; 'Loud thundered
the breach'; or, somewhere else in this delectable history, 'Thus Edessa
was girdled with clash of arms, and all was din and turmoil,' or, 'The
general pondered in his heart how to attack the wall. ' Only he fills up
the interstices with such wretched common lower-class phrases as 'The
military prefect wrote His Majesty,' 'The troops were procuring the
needful,' 'They got a wash [Footnote: It was suggested in the Introduction
that Lucian's criticism is for practical purposes out of date; but
Prescott writes: 'He was surrounded by a party of friends, who had
_dropped in_, it seems, after mass, to inquire after the state of his
health, some of whom had remained to partake of his repast. '] and put in
an appearance,' and so on. It is like an actor with one foot raised on a
high buskin, and the other in a slipper.

You will find others writing brilliant high-sounding prefaces of
outrageous length, raising great expectations of the wonders to follow--
and then comes a poor little appendix of a--history; it is like nothing
in the world but a child--say the Eros you must have seen in a picture
playing in an enormous mask of Heracles or a Titan; _parturiunt montes_,
cries the audience, very naturally. That is not the way to do things; the
whole should be homogeneous and uniform, and the body in proportion to the
head--not a helmet of gold, a ridiculous breastplate patched up out of
rags or rotten leather, shield of wicker, and pig-skin greaves. You will
find plenty of historians prepared to set the Rhodian Colossus's head on
the body of a dwarf; others on the contrary show us headless bodies, and
plunge into the facts without exordium. These plead the example of
Xenophon, who starts with 'Darius and Parysatis had two children'; if they
only knew it, there is such a thing as a _virtual_ exordium, not realized
as such by everybody; but of that hereafter.

However, any mistake in mere expression or arrangement is excusable; but
when you come to fancy geography, differing from the other not by miles
or leagues, but by whole days' journeys, where is the classical model for
that? One writer has taken so little trouble with his facts--never met a
Syrian, I suppose, nor listened to the stray information you may pick up
at the barber's--, that he thus locates Europus:--'Europus lies in
Mesopotamia, two days' journey from the Euphrates, and is a colony from
Edessa. ' Not content with that, this enterprising person has in the same
book taken up my native Samosata and shifted it, citadel, walls, and all,
into Mesopotamia, giving it the two rivers for boundaries, and making
them shave past it, all but touching the walls on either side. I suspect
you would laugh at me, Philo, if I were to set about convincing you that
I am neither Parthian nor Mesopotamian, as this whimsical colony-planter
makes me.

By the way, he has also a very attractive tale of Severian, learnt, he
assures us on oath, from one of the actual fugitives. According to this,
he would not die by the sword, the rope, or poison, but contrived a death
which should be tragic and impressive. He was the owner of some large
goblets of the most precious glass; having made up his mind to die, he
broke the largest of these, and used a splinter of it for the purpose,
cutting his throat with the glass. A dagger or a lancet, good enough
instruments for a manly and heroic death, he could not come at, forsooth!

Then, as Thucydides composed a funeral oration over the first victims of
that old war, our author feels it incumbent on him to do the same for
Severian; they all challenge Thucydides, you see, little as he can be
held responsible for the Armenian troubles. So he buries Severian, and
then solemnly ushers up to the grave, as Pericles's rival, one Afranius
Silo, a centurion; the flood of rhetoric which follows is so copious and
remarkable that it drew tears from me--ye Graces! --tears of laughter;
most of all where the eloquent Afranius, drawing to a close, makes
mention, with weeping and distressful moans, of all those costly dinners
and toasts. But he is a very Ajax in his conclusion. He draws his sword,
gallantly as an Afranius should, and in sight of all cuts his throat over
the grave--and God knows it was high time for an execution, if oratory
can be felony. The historian states that all the spectators admired and
lauded Afranius; as for me, I was inclined to condemn him on general
grounds--he had all but given a catalogue of sauces and dishes, and shed
tears over the memory of departed cakes--, but his capital offence was
that he had not cut the historian-tragedian's throat before he left this
life himself.

I assure you, my friend, I could largely increase my list of such
offenders; but one or two more will suffice, before proceeding to the
second part of my undertaking, the suggestions for improvement. There are
some, then, who leave alone, or deal very cursorily with, all that is
great and memorable; amateurs and not artists, they have no selective
faculty, and loiter over copious laboured descriptions of the veriest
trifles; it is as if a visitor to Olympia, instead of examining,
commending or describing to his stay-at-home friends the general
greatness and beauty of the Zeus, were to be struck with the exact
symmetry and polish of its footstool, or the proportions of its shoe, and
give all his attention to these minor points.

For instance, I have known a man get through the battle of Europus in
less than seven whole lines, and then spend twenty mortal hours on a dull
and perfectly irrelevant tale about a Moorish trooper. The trooper's name
was Mausacas; he wandered up the hills in search of water, and came upon
some Syrian yokels getting their lunch; at first they were afraid of him,
but when they found he was on the right side, they invited him to share
the meal; for one of them had travelled in the Moorish country, having a
brother serving in the army. Then come long stories and descriptions of
how he hunted there, and saw a great herd of elephants at pasture, and
was nearly eaten up by a lion, and what huge fish he had bought at
Caesarea. So this quaint historian leaves the terrible carnage to go on
at Europus, and lets the pursuit, the forced armistice, the settling of
outposts, shift for themselves, while he lingers far into the evening
watching Malchion the Syrian cheapen big mackarel at Caesarea; if night
had not come all too soon, I dare say he would have dined with him when
the fish was cooked. If all this had not been accurately set down in the
history, what sad ignorance we should have been left in! The loss to the
Romans would have been irreparable, if Mausacas the Moor had got nothing
to quench his thirst, and come back fasting to camp. Yet I am wilfully
omitting innumerable details of yet greater importance--the arrival of a
flute-girl from the next village, the exchange of gifts (Mausacas's was a
spear, Malchion's a brooch), and other incidents most essential to the
battle of Europus. It is no exaggeration to say that such writers never
give the rose a glance, but devote all their curiosity to the thorns on
its stem.

Another entertaining person, who has never set foot outside Corinth, nor
travelled as far as its harbour--not to mention seeing Syria or Armenia
--, starts with words which impressed themselves on my memory:--'Seeing
is believing: I therefore write what I have seen, not what I have been
told. ' His personal observation has been so close that he describes the
Parthian 'Dragons' (they use this ensign as a numerical formula--a
thousand men to the Dragon, I believe): they are huge live dragons, he
says, breeding in Persian territory beyond Iberia; these are first
fastened to great poles and hoisted up aloft, striking terror at a
distance while the advance is going on; then, when the battle begins,
they are released and set on the enemy; numbers of our men, it seems,
were actually swallowed by them, and others strangled or crushed in their
coils; of all this he was an eye-witness, taking his observations,
however, from a safe perch up a tree. Thank goodness he did not come to
close quarters with the brutes! we should have lost a very remarkable
historian, and one who did doughty deeds in this war with his own right
hand; for he had many adventures, and was wounded at Sura (in the course
of a stroll from the Craneum to Lerna, apparently). All this he used to
read to a Corinthian audience, which was perfectly aware that he had
never so much as seen a battle-picture. Why, he did not know one weapon
or engine from another; the names of manoeuvres and formations had no
meaning for him; flank or front, line or column, it was all one.

Then there is a splendid fellow, who has boiled down into the compass of
five hundred lines (or less, to be accurate) the whole business from
beginning to end--campaigns in Armenia, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, on the
Tigris, and in Media; and having done it, he calls it a history. His
title very narrowly misses being longer than his book: 'An account of the
late campaigns of the Romans in Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Media, by
Antiochianus, victor at the festival of Apollo'; he had probably won some
junior flat race.

I have known one writer compile a history of the future, including the
capture of Vologesus, the execution of Osroes (he is to be thrown to the
lions), and, crowning all, our long-deferred triumph. In this prophetic
vein, he sweeps hastily on to the end of his work; yet he finds time for
the foundation in Mesopotamia of a city, greatest of the great, and
fairest of the fair; he is still debating, however, whether the most
appropriate name will be Victoria, Concord, or Peacetown; that is yet
unsettled; we must leave the fair city unnamed for the present; but it is
already thickly populated--with empty dreams and literary drivellings. He
has also pledged himself to an account of coming events in India, and a
circumnavigation of the Atlantic; nay, the pledge is half redeemed; the
preface to the _India_ is complete; the third legion, the Celtic
contingent, and a small Moorish division, have crossed the Indus in full
force under Cassius; our most original historian will soon be posting us
up in their doings--their method of 'receiving elephants,' for instance--
in letters dated Muziris or Oxydracae.

These people's uneducated antics are infinite; they have no eyes for the
noteworthy, nor, if they had eyes, any adequate faculty of expression;
invention and fiction provide their matter, and belief in the first word
that comes their style; they pride themselves on the number of books they
run to, and yet more on their titles; for these again are quite absurd:
_--So-and-so's so many books of Parthian victories; The Parthis_, book I;
_The Parthis_, book II--quite a rival to the _Atthis_, eh? Another does it
(I have read the book) still more neatly--'_The Parthonicy of Demetrius of
Sagalassus_. ' I do not wish to ridicule or make a jest of these pretty
histories; I write for a practical purpose: any one who avoids these and
similar errors is already well on the road to historical success; nay, he
is almost there, if the logical axiom is correct, that, with
incompatibles, denial of the one amounts to affirmation of the other.

_Well_, I may be told, _you have now a clear field; the thorns and
brambles have all been extirpated, the debris of others' buildings has
been carted of, the rough places have been made smooth; come, do a little
construction yourself, and show that you are not only good at destroying,
but capable of yourself planning a model, in which criticism itself shall
find nothing to criticize. _

Well then, my perfect historian must start with two indispensable
qualifications; the one is political insight, the other the faculty of
expression; the first is a gift of nature, which can never be learnt; the
second should have been acquired by long practice, unremitting toil, and
loving study of the classics. There is nothing technical here, and no
room for any advice of mine; this essay does not profess to bestow
insight and acumen on those who are not endowed with them by nature;
valuable, or invaluable rather, would it have been, if it could recast
and modify like that, transmute lead into gold, tin into silver, magnify
a Conon or Leotrophides into Titormus or Milo.

But what is the function of professional advice? not the creation of
qualities which should be already there, but the indication of their
proper use. No trainer, of course,--let him be Iccus, Herodicus, Theon,
or who he may--will suggest that he can take a Perdiccas [Footnote:
Omitting, with Dindorf, a note on Perdiccas which runs thus: 'if
Perdiccas it was, and not rather Seleucus's son Antiochus, who was wasted
to a shadow by his passion for his step-mother. '] and make an Olympic
victor of him, fit to face Theagenes of Thasos or Polydamas of Scotussa;
what he _will_ tell you is that, given a constitution that will
stand training, his system will considerably improve it. So with us--we
are not to have every failure cast in our teeth, if we claim to have
invented a system for so great and difficult a subject. We do not offer
to take the first comer and make a historian of him--only to point out to
any one who has natural insight and acquired literary skill certain
straight roads (they may or may not be so in reality) which will bring
him with less waste of time and effort to his goal.

I do not suppose you will object that the man with insight has no need of
system and instruction upon the things he is ignorant of; in that case he
might have played the harp or flute untaught, and in fact have been
omniscient. But, as things are at present, he cannot perform in these
ways untaught, though with some assistance he will learn very easily, and
soon be able to get along by himself.

You now know what sort of a pupil I (like the trainer) insist upon. He
must not be weak either at understanding or at making himself understood,
but a man of penetration, a capable administrator--potentially, that is,
--with a soldierly spirit (which does not however exclude the civil
spirit), and some military experience; at the least he must have been in
camp, seen troops drilled or manoeuvred, know a little about weapons and
military engines, the differences between line and column, cavalry and
infantry tactics (with the reasons for them), frontal and flank attacks;
in a word, none of your armchair strategists relying wholly on hearsay.

But first and foremost, let him be a man of independent spirit, with
nothing to fear or hope from anybody; else he will be a corrupt judge
open to undue influences. If Philip's eye is knocked out at Olynthus by
Aster the Amphipolite archer, it is not his business to exclaim, but just
to show him as he is; he is not to think whether Alexander will be
annoyed by a circumstantial account of the cruel murder of Clitus at
table. If a Cleon has the ear of the assembly, and a monopoly of the
tribune, he will not shrink on that account from describing him as a
pestilent madman; all Athens will not stop him from dwelling on the
Sicilian disaster, the capture of Demosthenes, the death of Nicias, the
thirst, the foul water, and the shooting down of the drinkers. He will
consider very rightly that no man of sense will blame him for recounting
the effects of misfortune or folly in their entirety; he is not the
author, but only the reporter of them. If a fleet is destroyed, it is not
he who sinks it; if there is a rout, he is not in pursuit--unless perhaps
he ought to have prayed for better things, and omitted to do so. Of
course, if silence or contradiction would have put matters right,
Thucydides might with a stroke of the pen have knocked down the
counterwall on Epipolae, sent Hermocrates's trireme to the bottom, let
daylight through the accursed Gylippus before he had done blocking the
roads with wall and trench, and, finally, have cast the Syracusans into
their own quarries and sent the Athenians cruising round Sicily and Italy
with Alcibiades's first high hopes still on board. Alas, not Fate itself
may undo the work of Fate.

The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened. This he
cannot do, if he is Artaxerxes's physician [Footnote: See Ctesias in
Notes] trembling before him, or hoping to get a purple cloak, a golden
chain, a horse of the Nisaean breed, in payment for his laudations. A
fair historian, a Xenophon, a Thucydides, will not accept that position.
He may nurse some private dislikes, but he will attach far more
importance to the public good, and set the truth high above his hate; he
may have his favourites, but he will not spare their errors. For history,
I say again, has this and this only for its own; if a man will start upon
it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his
sole rule and unerring guide is this--to think not of those who are
listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.

Any one who is intent only upon the immediate effect may reasonably be
classed among the flatterers; and History has long ago realized that
flattery is as little congenial to her as the arts of personal adornment
to an athlete's training. An anecdote of Alexander is to the point. 'Ah,
Onesicritus,' said he, 'how I should like to come to life again for a
little while, and see how your stuff strikes people by that time; at
present they have good enough reason to praise and welcome it; that is
their way of angling for a share of my favour. ' On the same principle
some people actually accept Homer's history of Achilles, full of
exaggerations as it is; the one great guarantee which they recognize of
his truth is the fact that his subject was not living; that leaves him no
motive for lying.

There stands my model, then: fearless, incorruptible, independent, a
believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade,
make no concession to likes and dislikes, nor spare any man for pity or
respect or propriety; an impartial judge, kind to all, but too kind to
none; a literary cosmopolite with neither suzerain nor king, never
heeding what this or that man may think, but setting down the thing that
befell.

Thucydides is our noble legislator; he marked the admiration that met
Herodotus and gave the Muses' names to his nine books; and thereupon he
drew the line which parts a good historian from a bad: our work is to be
a possession for ever, not a bid for present reputation; we are not to
seize upon the sensational, but bequeath the truth to them that come
after; he applies the test of use, and defines the end which a wise
historian will set before himself: it is that, should history ever repeat
itself, the records of the past may give present guidance.

Such are to be my historian's principles. As for diction and style, he is
not to set about his work armed to the teeth from the rhetorician's
arsenal of impetuosity and incisiveness, rolling periods, close-packed
arguments, and the rest; for him a serener mood. His matter should be
homogeneous and compact, his vocabulary fit to be understanded of the
people, for the clearest possible setting forth of his subject.

For to those marks which we set up for the historic spirit--frankness and
truth--corresponds one at which the historic style should first of all
aim, namely, a lucidity which leaves nothing obscure, impartially
avoiding abstruse out-of-the-way expressions, and the illiberal jargon of
the market; we wish the vulgar to comprehend, the cultivated to commend
us. Ornament should be unobtrusive, and never smack of elaboration, if it
is not to remind us of over-seasoned dishes.

The historian's spirit should not be without a touch of the poetical; it
needs, like poetry, to employ impressive and exalted tones, especially
when it finds itself in the midst of battle array and conflicts by land
or sea; it is then that the poetic gale must blow to speed the vessel on,
and help her ride the waves in majesty. But the diction is to be content
with _terra firma_, rising a little to assimilate itself to the beauty and
grandeur of the subject, but never startling the hearer, nor forgetting a
due restraint; there is great risk at such times of its running wild and
falling into poetic frenzy; and then it is that writers should hold
themselves in with bit and bridle; with them as with horses an
uncontrollable temper means disaster. At these times it is best for the
spirit to go a-horseback, and the expression to run beside on foot,
holding on to the saddle so as not to be outstripped.

As to the marshalling of your words, a moderate compromise is desirable
between the harshness which results from separating what belongs
together, and the jingling concatenations--one may almost call them--
which are so common; one extreme is a definite vice, and the other
repellent.

Facts are not to be collected at haphazard, but with careful, laborious,
repeated investigation; when possible, a man should have been present and
seen for himself; failing that, he should prefer the disinterested
account, selecting the informants least likely to diminish or magnify
from partiality. And here comes the occasion for exercising the judgement
in weighing probabilities.

The material once complete, or nearly so, an abstract should be made of
it, and a rough draught of the whole work put down, not yet distributed
into its parts; the detailed arrangement should then be introduced, after
which adornment may be added, the diction receive its colour, the
phrasing and rhythm be perfected.

The historian's position should now be precisely that of Zeus in Homer,
surveying now the Mysians', now the Thracian horsemen's land. Even so
_he_ will survey now his own party (telling us what we looked like
to him from his post of vantage), now the Persians, and yet again both at
once, if they come to blows. And when they are face to face, his eyes are
not to be on one division, nor yet on one man, mounted or afoot--unless
it be a Brasidas leading the forlorn hope, or a Demosthenes repelling it;
his attention should be for the generals first of all; their exhortations
should be recorded, the dispositions they make, and the motives and plans
that prompted them. When the engagement has begun, he should give us a
bird's-eye view of it, show the scales oscillating, and accompany
pursuers and pursued alike.

All this, however, with moderation; a subject is not to be ridden to
death; no neglect of proportion, no childish engrossment, but easy
transitions. He should call a halt here, while he crosses over to another
set of operations which demands attention; that settled up, he can return
to the first set, now ripe for him; he must pass swiftly to each in turn,
keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly
from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take
wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick of time.

He has to make of his brain a mirror, unclouded, bright, and true of
surface; then he will reflect events as they presented themselves to him,
neither distorted, discoloured, nor variable. Historians are not writing
fancy school essays; what they have to say is before them, and will get
itself said somehow, being solid fact; their task is to arrange and put
it into words; they have not to consider what to say, but how to say it.
The historian, we may say, should be like Phidias, Praxiteles, Alcamenes,
or any great sculptor. They similarly did not create the gold, silver,
ivory, or other material they used; it was ready to their hands, provided
by Athens, Elis, or Argos; they only made the model, sawed, polished,
cemented, proportioned the ivory, and plated it with gold; that was what
their art consisted in--the right arrangement of their material. The
historian's business is similar--to superinduce upon events the charm of
order, and set them forth in the most lucid fashion he can manage. When
subsequently a hearer feels as though he were looking at what is being
told him, and expresses his approval, then our historical Phidias's work
has reached perfection, and received its appropriate reward.

When all is ready, a writer will sometimes start without formal preface,
if there is no pressing occasion to clear away preliminaries by that
means, though even then his explanation of what he is to say constitutes
a virtual preface.

When a formal preface is used, one of the three objects to which a public
speaker devotes his exordium may be neglected; the historian, that is,
has not to bespeak goodwill--only attention and an open mind. The way to
secure the reader's attention is to show that the affairs to be narrated
are great in themselves, throw light on Destiny, or come home to his
business and bosom; and as to the open mind, the lucidity in the body of
the work, which is to secure that, will be facilitated by a preliminary
view of the causes in operation and a precise summary of events.

Prefaces of this character have been employed by the best historians--by
Herodotus, 'to the end that what befell may not grow dim by lapse of
time, seeing that it was great and wondrous, and showed forth withal
Greeks vanquishing and barbarians vanquished'; and by Thucydides,
'believing that that war would be great and memorable beyond any previous
one; for indeed great calamities took place during its course. '

After the preface, long or short in proportion to the subject, should
come an easy natural transition to the narrative; for the body of the
history which remains is nothing from beginning to end but a long
narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues--
smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and
the charm of lucidity--which is attained, as I remarked above, partly by
the diction, and partly by the treatment of connected events. For, though
all parts must be independently perfected, when the first is complete the
second will be brought into essential connexion with it, and attached
like one link of a chain to another; there must be no possibility of
separating them; no mere bundle of parallel threads; the first is not
simply to be next to the second, but part of it, their extremities
intermingling.

Brevity is always desirable, and especially where matter is abundant; and
the problem is less a grammatical than a substantial one; the solution, I
mean, is to deal summarily with all immaterial details, and give adequate
treatment to the principal events; much, indeed, is better omitted
altogether. Suppose yourself giving a dinner, and extremely well
provided; there is pastry, game, kickshaws without end, wild boar, hare,
sweetbreads; well, you will not produce among these a pike, or a bowl of
peasoup, just because they are there in the kitchen; you will dispense
with such common things.

Restraint in descriptions of mountains, walls, rivers, and the like, is
very important; you must not give the impression that you are making a
tasteless display of word-painting, and expatiating independently while
the history takes care of itself. Just a light touch--no more than meets
the need of clearness--, and you should pass on, evading the snare, and
denying yourself all such indulgences. You have the mighty Homer's
example in such a case; poet as he is, he yet hurries past Tantalus and
Ixion, Tityus and the rest of them. If Parthenius, Euphorion, or
Callimachus had been in his place, how many lines do you suppose it would
have taken to get the water to Tantalus's lip; how many more to set Ixion
spinning? Better still, mark how Thucydides--a very sparing dealer in
description--leaves the subject at once, as soon as he has given an idea
(very necessary and useful, too) of an engine or a siege-operation, of
the conformation of Epipolae, or the Syracusan harbour. It may occur to
you that his account of the plague is long; but you must allow for the
subject; then you will appreciate his brevity; _he_ is hastening on;
it is only that the weight of matter holds him back in spite of himself.

When it comes in your way to introduce a speech, the first requirement is
that it should suit the character both of the speaker and of the occasion;
the second is (once more) lucidity; but in these cases you have the
counsel's right of showing your eloquence.

Not so with praise or censure; these should be sparing, cautious,
avoiding hypercriticism and producing proofs, always brief, and never
intrusive; historical characters are not prisoners on trial. Without
these precautions you will share the ill name of Theopompus, who delights
in flinging accusations broadcast, makes a business of the thing in fact,
and of himself rather a public prosecutor than a historian.

It may occasionally happen that some extraordinary story has to be
introduced; it should be simply narrated, without guarantee of its truth,
thrown down for any one to make what he can of it; the writer takes no
risks and shows no preference.

But the general principle I would have remembered--it will ever be on my
lips--is this: do not write merely with an eye to the present, that those
now living may commend and honour you; aim at eternity, compose for
posterity, and from it ask your reward; and that reward? --that it be said
of you, 'This was a man indeed, free and free-spoken; flattery and
servility were not in him; he was truth all through. ' It is a name which
a man of judgement might well prefer to all the fleeting hopes of the
present.

Do you know the story of the great Cnidian architect? He was the builder
of that incomparable work, whether for size or beauty, the Pharus tower.
Its light was to warn ships far out at sea, and save them from running on
the Paraetonia, a spot so fatal to all who get among its reefs that
escape is said to be hopeless. When the building was done, he inscribed
on the actual masonry his own name, but covered this up with plaster, on
which he then added the name of the reigning king. He knew that, as
happened later, letters and plaster would fall off together, and reveal
the words:

SOSTRATUS SON OF DEXIPHANES OF CNIDUS ON BEHALF OF ALL MARINERS TO THE
SAVIOUR GODS

_He_ looked not, it appears, to that time, nor to the space of his
own little life, but to this time, and to all time, as long as his tower
shall stand and his art abide.

So too should the historian write, consorting with Truth and not with
flattery, looking to the future hope, not to the gratification of the
flattered.

There is your measuring-line for just history. If any one be found to use
it, well; I have not written in vain: if none, yet have I rolled my tub
on the Craneum.




THE TRUE HISTORY


INTRODUCTION

Athletes and physical trainers do not limit their attention to the
questions of perfect condition and exercise; they say there is a time for
relaxation also--which indeed they represent as the most important
element in training. I hold it equally true for literary men that after
severe study they should unbend the intellect, if it is to come perfectly
efficient to its next task.

The rest they want will best be found in a course of literature which
does not offer entertainment pure and simple, depending on mere wit or
felicity, but is also capable of stirring an educated curiosity--in a way
which I hope will be exemplified in the following pages. They are
intended to have an attraction independent of any originality of subject,
any happiness of general design, any verisimilitude in the piling up of
fictions. This attraction is in the veiled reference underlying all the
details of my narrative; they parody the cock-and-bull stories of ancient
poets, historians, and philosophers; I have only refrained from adding a
key because I could rely upon you to recognize as you read.

Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus of Cnidus, in his work on India and its
characteristics, gives details for which he had neither the evidence of
his eyes nor of hearsay. Iambulus's _Oceanica_ is full of marvels;
the whole thing is a manifest fiction, but at the same time pleasant
reading. Many other writers have adopted the same plan, professing to
relate their own travels, and describing monstrous beasts, savages, and
strange ways of life. The fount and inspiration of their humour is the
Homeric Odysseus, entertaining Alcinous's court with his prisoned winds,
his men one-eyed or wild or cannibal, his beasts with many heads, and his
metamorphosed comrades; the Phaeacians were simple folk, and he fooled
them to the top of their bent.

When I come across a writer of this sort, I do not much mind his lying;
the practice is much too well established for that, even with professed
philosophers; I am only surprised at his expecting to escape detection.
Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something
to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive
freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record,
having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood--but falsehood
of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you
are to expect--that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full
defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither
seen, experienced, nor been told, what neither exists nor could
conceivably do so. I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity.

BOOK I

Starting on a certain date from the Pillars of Heracles, I sailed with a
fair wind into the Atlantic. The motives of my voyage were a certain
intellectual restlessness, a passion for novelty, a curiosity about the
limits of the ocean and the peoples who might dwell beyond it. This being
my design, I provisioned and watered my ship on a generous scale. My crew
amounted to fifty, all men whose interests, as well as their years,
corresponded with my own. I had further provided a good supply of arms,
secured the best navigator to be had for money, and had the ship--a
sloop--specially strengthened for a long and arduous voyage.

For a day and a night we were carried quietly along by the breeze, with
land still in sight. But with the next day's dawn the wind rose to a
gale, with a heavy sea and a dark sky; we found ourselves unable to take
in sail. We surrendered ourselves to the elements, let her run, and were
storm-driven for more than eleven weeks. On the eightieth day the sun
came out quite suddenly, and we found ourselves close to a lofty wooded
island, round which the waves were murmuring gently, the sea having
almost fallen by this time. We brought her to land, disembarked, and
after our long tossing lay a considerable time idle on shore; we at last
made a start, however, and leaving thirty of our number to guard the ship
I took the other twenty on a tour of inspection.

We had advanced half a mile inland through woods, when we came upon a
brazen pillar, inscribed in Greek characters--which however were worn and
dim--'Heracles and Dionysus reached this point. ' Not far off were two
footprints on rock; one might have been an acre in area, the other being
smaller; and I conjecture that the latter was Dionysus's, and the other
Heracles's; we did obeisance, and proceeded.
Before we had gone far, we
found ourselves on a river which ran wine; it was very like Chian; the
stream full and copious, even navigable in parts. This evidence of
Dionysus's sojourn was enough to convince us that the inscription on the
pillar was authentic. Resolving to find the source, I followed the river
up, and discovered, instead of a fountain, a number of huge vines covered
with grapes; from the root of each there issued a trickle of perfectly
clear wine, the joining of which made the river. It was well stocked with
great fish, resembling wine both in colour and taste; catching and eating
some, we at once found ourselves intoxicated; and indeed when opened the
fish were full of wine-lees; presently it occurred to us to mix them with
ordinary water fish, thus diluting the strength of our spirituous food.

We now crossed the river by a ford, and came to some vines of a most
extraordinary kind. Out of the ground came a thick well-grown stem; but
the upper part was a woman, complete from the loins upward. They were
like our painters' representations of Daphne in the act of turning into a
tree just as Apollo overtakes her. From the finger-tips sprang vine
twigs, all loaded with grapes; the hair of their heads was tendrils,
leaves, and grape-clusters. They greeted us and welcomed our approach,
talking Lydian, Indian, and Greek, most of them the last. They went so
far as to kiss us on the mouth; and whoever was kissed staggered like a
drunken man. But they would not permit us to pluck their fruit, meeting
the attempt with cries of pain. Some of them made further amorous
advances; and two of my comrades who yielded to these solicitations found
it impossible to extricate themselves again from their embraces; the man
became one plant with the vine, striking root beside it; his fingers
turned to vine twigs, the tendrils were all round him, and embryo grape-
clusters were already visible on him.

We left them there and hurried back to the ship, where we told our tale,
including our friends' experiment in viticulture. Then after taking some
casks ashore and filling them with wine and water we bivouacked near the
beach, and next morning set sail before a gentle breeze. But about
midday, when we were out of sight of the island, a waterspout suddenly
came upon us, which swept the ship round and up to a height of some three
hundred and fifty miles above the earth. She did not fall back into the
sea, but was suspended aloft, and at the same time carried along by a
wind which struck and filled the sails.

For a whole week we pursued our airy course, and on the eighth day
descried land; it was an island with air for sea, glistening, spherical,
and bathed in light. We reached it, cast anchor, and landed; inspection
soon showed that it was inhabited and cultivated. In the daytime nothing
could be discerned outside of it; but night revealed many neighbouring
islands, some larger and some smaller than ours; there was also another
land below us containing cities, rivers, seas, forests, and mountains;
and this we concluded to be our Earth.

We were intending to continue our voyage, when we were discovered and
detained by the Horse-vultures, as they are called. These are men mounted
on huge vultures, which they ride like horses; the great birds have
ordinarily three heads. It will give you some idea of their size if I
state that each of their quill-feathers is longer and thicker than the
mast of a large merchantman. This corps is charged with the duty of
patrolling the land, and bringing any strangers it may find to the king;
this was what was now done with us. The king surveyed us, and, forming
his conclusions from our dress, 'Strangers,' said he, 'you are Greeks,
are you not? ' we assented. 'And how did you traverse this vast space of
air? ' In answer we gave a full account of ourselves, to which he at once
replied with his own history. It seemed he too was a mortal, named
Endymion, who had been conveyed up from our Earth in his sleep, and after
his arrival had become king of the country; this was, he told us, what we
knew on our Earth as the moon. He bade us be of good cheer and entertain
no apprehensions; all our needs should be supplied.

'And if I am victorious,' he added, 'in the campaign which I am now
commencing against the inhabitants of the Sun, I promise you an extremely
pleasant life at my court. ' We asked about the enemy, and the quarrel.
'Phaethon,' he replied, 'king of the Sun (which is inhabited, like the
Moon), has long been at war with us. The occasion was this: I wished at
one time to collect the poorest of my subjects and send them as a colony
to Lucifer, which is uninhabited. Phaethon took umbrage at this, met the
emigrants half way with a troop of Horse-ants, and forbade them to
proceed. On that occasion, being in inferior force, we were worsted and
had to retreat; but I now intend to take the offensive and send my
colony. I shall be glad if you will participate; I will provide your
equipment and mount you on vultures from the royal coops; the expedition
starts to-morrow. ' I expressed our readiness to do his pleasure.

That day we were entertained by the king; in the morning we took our
place in the ranks as soon as we were up, our scouts having announced the
approach of the enemy. Our army numbered 100,000 (exclusive of camp-
followers, engineers, infantry, and allies), the Horse-vultures amounting
to 80,000, and the remaining 20,000 being mounted on Salad-wings. These
latter are also enormous birds, fledged with various herbs, and with
quill-feathers resembling lettuce leaves. Next these were the Millet-
throwers and the Garlic-men. Endymion had also a contingent from the
North of 30,000 Flea-archers and 50,000 Wind-coursers. The former have
their name from the great fleas, each of the bulk of a dozen elephants,
which they ride. The Wind-coursers are infantry, moving through the air
without wings; they effect this by so girding their shirts, which reach
to the ankle, that they hold the wind like a sail and propel their
wearers ship-fashion. These troops are usually employed as skirmishers.
70,000 Ostrich-slingers and 50,000 Horse-cranes were said to be on their
way from the stars over Cappadocia. But as they failed to arrive I did
not actually see them; and a description from hearsay I am not prepared
to give, as the marvels related of them put some strain on belief.

Such was Endymion's force. They were all armed alike; their helmets were
made of beans, which grow there of great size and hardness; the
breastplates were of overlapping lupine-husks sewn together, these husks
being as tough as horn; as to shields and swords, they were of the Greek
type.

When the time came, the array was as follows: on the right were the
Horse-vultures, and the King with the _elite_ of his forces,
including ourselves. The Salad-wings held the left, and in the centre
were the various allies. The infantry were in round numbers 60,000,000;
they were enabled to fall in thus: there are in the Moon great numbers of
gigantic spiders, considerably larger than an average Aegean island;
these were instructed to stretch webs across from the Moon to Lucifer; as
soon as the work was done, the King drew up his infantry on this
artificial plain, entrusting the command to Nightbat, son of Fairweather,
with two lieutenants.

On the enemy's side, Phaethon occupied the left with his Horse-ants; they
are great winged animals resembling our ants except in size; but the
largest of them would measure a couple of acres. The fighting was done
not only by their riders; they used their horns also; their numbers were
stated at 50,000. On their right was about an equal force of Sky-gnats--
archers mounted on great gnats; and next them the Sky-pirouetters, light-
armed infantry only, but of some military value; they slung monstrous
radishes at long range, a wound from which was almost immediately fatal,
turning to gangrene at once; they were supposed to anoint their missiles
with mallow juice. Next came the Stalk-fungi, 10,000 heavy-armed troops
for close quarters; the explanation of their name is that their shields
are mushrooms, and their spears asparagus stalks. Their neighbours were
the Dog-acorns, Phaethon's contingent from Sirius. These were 5,000 in
number, dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns. It was reported that
Phaethon too was disappointed of the slingers whom he had summoned from
the Milky Way, and of the Cloud-centaurs. These latter, however, arrived,
most unfortunately for us, after the battle was decided; the slingers
failed altogether, and are said to have felt the resentment of Phaethon,
who wasted their territory with fire. Such was the force brought by the
enemy.

As soon as the standards were raised and the asses on both sides (their
trumpeters) had brayed, the engagement commenced. The Sunite left at once
broke without awaiting the onset of the Horse-vultures, and we pursued,
slaying them. On the other hand, their right had the better of our left,
the Sky-gnats pressing on right up to our infantry. When these joined in,
however, they turned and fled, chiefly owing to the moral effect of our
success on the other flank. The rout became decisive, great numbers were
taken and slain, and blood flowed in great quantities on to the clouds,
staining them as red as we see them at sunset; much of it also dropped
earthwards, and suggested to me that it was possibly some ancient event
of the same kind which persuaded Homer that Zeus had rained blood at the
death of Sarpedon.

Relinquishing the pursuit, we set up two trophies, one for the infantry
engagement on the spiders' webs, and one on the clouds for the air-
battle. It was while we were thus engaged that our scouts announced the
approach of the Cloud-centaurs, whom Phaethon had expected in time for
the battle. They were indeed close upon us, and a strange sight, being
compounded of winged horses and men; the human part, from the middle
upwards, was as tall as the Colossus of Rhodes, and the equine the size
of a large merchantman. Their number I cannot bring myself to write down,
for fear of exciting incredulity. They were commanded by Sagittarius.
Finding their friends defeated, they sent a messenger after Phaethon to
bring him back, and, themselves in perfect order, charged the disarrayed
Moonites, who had left their ranks and were scattered in pursuit or
pillage; they routed the whole of them, chased the King home, and killed
the greater part of his birds; they tore up the trophies, and overran the
woven plain; I myself was taken, with two of my comrades. Phaethon now
arrived, and trophies were erected on the enemy's part. We were taken off
to the Sun the same day, our hands tied behind with a piece of the
cobweb.

They decided not to lay siege to the city; but after their return they
constructed a wall across the intervening space, cutting off the Sun's
rays from the Moon. This wall was double, and built of clouds; the
consequence was total eclipse of the Moon, which experienced a continuous
night. This severity forced Endymion to negotiate. He entreated that the
wall might be taken down, and his kingdom released from this life of
darkness; he offered to pay tribute, conclude an alliance, abstain from
hostilities in future, and give hostages for these engagements. The
Sunites held two assemblies on the question, in the first of which they
refused all concessions; on the second day, however, they relented, and
peace was concluded on the following terms.

Articles of peace between the Sunites and their allies of the one part,
and the Moonites and their allies of the other part.

1. The Sunites shall demolish the party-wall, shall make no further
incursion into the Moon, and shall hold their captives to ransom at a
fixed rate.

2. The Moonites shall restore to the other stars their autonomy, shall
not bear arms against the Sunites, and shall conclude with them a mutual
defensive alliance.

3. The King of the Moonites shall pay to the King of the Sunites,
annually, a tribute of ten thousand jars of dew, and give ten
thousand hostages of his subjects.

4. The high contracting parties shall found the colony of Lucifer in
common, and shall permit persons of any other nationality to join the
same.

5. These articles shall be engraved on a pillar of electrum, which shall
be set up on the border in mid-air.

Sworn to on behalf of the Sun by Firebrace, Heaton, and Flashman; and on
behalf of the Moon by Nightwell, Monday, and Shimmer.

Peace concluded, the removal of the wall and restoration of captives at
once followed. As we reached the Moon, we were met and welcomed by our
comrades and King Endymion, all weeping for joy. The King wished us to
remain and take part in founding the colony, and, women not existing in
the Moon, offered me his son in marriage. I refused, asking that we might
be sent down to the sea again; and finding that he could not prevail, he
entertained us for a week, and then sent us on our way.

I am now to put on record the novelties and singularities which attracted
my notice during our stay in the Moon.

When a man becomes old, he does not die, but dissolves in smoke into the
air. There is one universal diet; they light a fire, and in the embers
roast frogs, great numbers of which are always flying in the air; they
then sit round as at table, snuffing up the fumes which rise and serve
them for food; their drink is air compressed in a cup till it gives off a
moisture resembling dew. Beauty with them consists in a bald head and
hairless body; a good crop of hair is an abomination. On the comets, as I
was told by some of their inhabitants who were there on a visit, this is
reversed. They have beards, however, just above the knee; no toe-nails,
and but one toe on each foot. They are all tailed, the tail being a large
cabbage of an evergreen kind, which does not break if they fall upon it.

Their mucus is a pungent honey; and after hard work or exercise they
sweat milk all over, which a drop or two of the honey curdles into
cheese. The oil which they make from onions is very rich, and as fragrant
as balsam. They have an abundance of water-producing vines, the stones of
which resemble hailstones; and my own belief is that it is the shaking of
these vines by hurricanes, and the consequent bursting of the grapes,
that results in our hailstorms. They use the belly as a pouch in which to
keep necessaries, being able to open and shut it. It contains no
intestines or liver, only a soft hairy lining; their young, indeed, creep
into it for protection from cold.

The clothing of the wealthy is soft glass, and of the poor, woven brass;
the land is very rich in brass, which they work like wool after steeping
it in water. It is with some hesitation that I describe their eyes, the
thing being incredible enough to bring doubt upon my veracity. But the
fact is that these organs are removable; any one can take out his eyes
and do without till he wants them; then he has merely to put them in; I
have known many cases of people losing their own and borrowing at need;
and some--the rich, naturally--keep a large stock. Their ears are plane-
leaves, except with the breed raised from acorns; theirs being of wood.

Another marvel I saw in the palace. There is a large mirror suspended
over a well of no great depth; any one going down the well can hear every
word spoken on our Earth; and if he looks at the mirror, he sees every
city and nation as plainly as though he were standing close above each.
The time I was there, I surveyed my own people and the whole of my native
country; whether they saw me also, I cannot say for certain. Any one who
doubts the truth of this statement has only to go there himself, to be
assured of my veracity.

When the time came, we took our leave of King and court, got on board,
and weighed anchor. Endymion's parting gifts to me were two glass shirts,
five of brass, and a suit of lupine armour, all of which, however, I
afterwards left in the whale's belly; he also sent, as our escort for the
first fifty miles, a thousand of his Horse-vultures.

We passed on our way many countries, and actually landed on Lucifer, now
in process of settlement, to water. We then entered the Zodiac and passed
the Sun on the left, coasting close by it. My crew were very desirous of
landing, but the wind would not allow of this. We had a good view of the
country, however, and found it covered with vegetation, rich, well-
watered, and full of all good things. The Cloud-centaurs, now in
Phaethon's pay, espied us and pounced upon the ship, but left us alone
when they learned that we were parties to the treaty.

By this time our escort had gone home. We now took a downward course, and
twenty-four hours' sailing brought us to Lampton. This lies between the
atmospheres of the Pleiads and the Hyads, though in point of altitude it
is considerably lower than the Zodiac. When we landed, we found no human
beings, but numberless lamps bustling about or spending their time in the
market-place and harbour; some were small, and might represent the lower
classes, while a few, the great and powerful, were exceedingly bright and
conspicuous. They all had their own homes or lodgings, and their
individual names, like us; we heard them speak, and they did us no harm,
offering us entertainment, on the contrary; but we were under some
apprehension, and none of us accepted either food or bed. There is a
Government House in the middle of the city, where the Governor sits all
night long calling the roll-call; any one not answering to his name is
capitally punished as a deserter; that is to say, he is extinguished. We
were present and witnessed the proceedings, and heard lamps defending
their conduct and advancing reasons for their lateness. I there
recognized our own house lamp, accosted him, and asked for news of my
friends, in which he satisfied me. We stayed there that night, set sail
next morning, and found ourselves sailing, now, nearly as low as the
clouds. Here we were surprised to find Cloud-cuckoo-land; we were
prevented from landing by the direction of the wind, but learned that the
King's name was Crookbeak, son of Fitz-Ousel. I bethought me of
Aristophanes, the learned and veracious poet whose statements had met
with unmerited incredulity. Three days more, and we had a distinct view
of the Ocean, though there was no land visible except the islands
suspended in air; and these had now assumed a brilliant fiery hue. About
noon on the fourth day the wind slackened and fell, and we were deposited
upon the sea.

The joy and delight with which the touch of water affected us is
indescribable; transported at our good fortune, we flung ourselves
overboard and swam, the weather being calm and the sea smooth. Alas, how
often is a change for the better no more than the beginning of disaster!
We had but two days' delightful sail, and by the rising sun of the third
we beheld a crowd of whales and marine monsters, and among them one far
larger than the rest--some two hundred miles in length. It came on open-
mouthed, agitating the sea far in front, bathed in foam, and exhibiting
teeth whose length much surpassed the height of our great phallic images,
all pointed like sharp stakes and white as elephants' tusks. We gave each
other a last greeting, took a last embrace, and so awaited our doom. The
monster was upon us; it sucked us in; it swallowed ship and crew entire.
We escaped being ground by its teeth, the ship gliding in through the
interstices.

Inside, all was darkness at first, in which we could distinguish nothing;
but when it next opened its mouth, an enormous cavern was revealed, of
great extent and height; a city of ten thousand inhabitants might have
had room in it. Strewn about were small fish, the _disjecta membra_
of many kinds of animal, ships' masts and anchors, human bones, and
merchandise; in the centre was land with hillocks upon it, the alluvial
deposit, I supposed, from what the whale swallowed. This was wooded with
trees of all kinds, and vegetables were growing with all the appearance
of cultivation. The coast might have measured thirty miles round. Sea-
birds, such as gulls and halcyons, nested on the trees.

We spent some time weeping, but at last got our men up and had the ship
made fast, while we rubbed wood to get a fire and prepared a meal out of
the plentiful materials around us; there were fragments of various fish,
and the water we had taken in at Lucifer was unexhausted. Upon getting up
next day, we caught glimpses, as often as the whale opened his mouth, of
land, of mountains, it might be of the sky alone, or often of islands; we
realized that he was dashing at a great rate to every part of the sea. We
grew accustomed to our condition in time, and I then took seven of my
comrades and entered the wood in search of information. I had scarcely
gone half a mile when I came upon a shrine, which its inscription showed
to have been raised to Posidon; a little further were a number of graves
with pillars upon them, and close by a spring of clear water; we also
heard a dog bark, saw some distant smoke, and conjectured that there
must be a habitation.

We accordingly pressed on, and found ourselves in presence of an old man
and a younger one, who were working hard at a plot of ground and watering
it by a channel from the spring. We stood still, divided between fear and
delight. They were standing speechless, no doubt with much the same
feelings. At length the old man spoke:--'What are you, strangers; are you
spirits of the sea, or unfortunate mortals like ourselves? As for us, we
are men, bred on land; but now we have suffered a sea change, and swim
about in this containing monster, scarce knowing how to describe our
state; reason tells us we are dead, but instinct that we live. ' This
loosed my tongue in turn. 'We too, father,' I said, 'are men, just
arrived; it is but a day or two since we were swallowed with our ship.
And now we have come forth to explore the forest; for we saw that it was
vast and dense. Methinks some heavenly guide has brought us to the sight
of you, to the knowledge that we are not prisoned all alone in this
monster. I pray you, let us know your tale, who you are and how you
entered. ' Then he said that, before he asked or answered questions, he
must give us such entertainment as he could; so saying, he brought us to
his house--a sufficient dwelling furnished with beds and what else he
might need--, and set before us green-stuff and nuts and fish, with wine
for drink. When we had eaten our fill, he asked for our story. I told him
all as it had passed, the storm, the island, the airy voyage, the war,
and so to our descent into the whale.

It was very strange, he said, and then gave us his history in return. 'I
am a Cyprian, gentlemen. I left my native land on a trading voyage with
my son here and a number of servants. We had a fine ship, with a mixed
cargo for Italy; you may have seen the wreckage in the whale's mouth. We
had a fair voyage to Sicily, but on leaving it were caught in a gale, and
carried in three days out to the Atlantic, where we fell in with the
whale and were swallowed, ship and crew; of the latter we two alone
survived. We buried our men, built a temple to Posidon, and now live this
life, cultivating our garden, and feeding on fish and nuts. It is a great
wood, as you see, and in it are vines in plenty, from which we get
delicious wine; our spring you may have noticed; its water is of the
purest and coldest. We use leaves for bedding, keep a good fire, snare
the birds that fly in, and catch living fish by going out on the
monster's gills; it is there also that we take our bath when we are
disposed. There is moreover at no great distance a salt lake two or three
miles round, producing all sorts of fish; in this we swim and sail, in a
little boat of my building. It is now seven and twenty years since we
were swallowed.

'Our lot might have been endurable enough, but we have bad and
troublesome neighbours, unfriendly savages all. ' 'What,' said I, 'are
there other inhabitants? ' 'A great many,' he replied, 'inhospitable and
abhorrent to the sight. The western part of the wood (so to name the
caudal region) is occupied by the Stockfish tribe; they have eels' eyes
and lobster faces, are bold warriors, and eat their meat raw. Of the
sides of the cavern, the right belongs to the Tritonomendetes, who from
the waist upwards are human, and weazels below; their notions of justice
are slightly less rudimentary than the others'. The left is in possession
of the Crabhands and the Tunnyheads, two tribes in close alliance. The
central part is inhabited by the Crays and the Flounderfoots, the latter
warlike and extremely swift. As to this district near the mouth, the
East, as it were, it is in great part desert, owing to the frequent
inundations. I hold it of the Flounderfoots, paying an annual tribute of
five hundred oysters.

'Such is the land; and now it is for you to consider how we may make head
against all these tribes, and what shall be our manner of life. ' 'What
may their numbers be, all told? ' I asked. 'More than a thousand. ' 'And
how armed? ' 'They have no arms but fishbones. ' 'Why then,' I said, 'let
us fight them by all means; we are armed, and they are not; and, if we
win, we shall live secure. ' We agreed on this course, and returned to the
ship to make our preparations. The pretext for war was to be non-payment
of the tribute, which was on the point of falling due. Messengers, in
fact, shortly came to demand it, but the old man sent them about their
business with an insolent answer. The Flounderfoots and Crays were
enraged, and commenced operations with a tumultuous inroad upon
Scintharus--this was our old man's name.

Expecting this, we were awaiting the attack in full armour. We had put
five and twenty men in ambush, with directions to fall on the enemy's
rear as soon as they had passed; they executed their orders, and came on
from behind cutting them down, while the rest of us--five and twenty
also, including Scintharus and his son--met them face to face with a
spirited and resolute attack. It was risky work, but in the end we routed
and chased them to their dens. They left one hundred and seventy dead,
while we lost only our navigating officer, stabbed in the back with a
mullet rib, and one other.

We held the battlefield for the rest of that day and the night following,
and erected a trophy consisting of a dolphin's backbone upright. Next day
the news brought the other tribes out, with the Stockfish under a general
called Slimer on the right, the Tunnyheads on the left, and the Crabhands
in the centre; the Tritonomendetes stayed at home, preferring neutrality.
We did not wait to be attacked, but charged them near Posidon's temple
with loud shouts, which echoed as in a subterranean cave.