No More Learning

It was moreover the work of a historical essayist rather than a his-
torian. The subjects treated made this a necessity; but either the
writing of this book made the historical essay the habit of Mr. Lecky's
mind, or his instinctive tendency to it was not to be escaped. We
have first an essay on Magic and Witchcraft,' next one on "Church
Miracles,' then a more extended one on Æsthetic, Scientific, and
Moral Developments of Rationalism,' a still more extended one on
(Persecution,' one on the "Secularization of Politics,' and one on the
Industrial History of Rationalism. ' All of these subjects are treated
with a fascinating directness and simplicity, which is the more remark-
able because the essays take up into themselves such a multitude of
facts and observations. The text is not impoverished to enrich the
notes, but a sure instinct seems to decide what can be assimilated
and what had better be left in the rough.
The object of the work, as declared in the introduction, was to
trace the
of the Spirit of Rationalism, not as a class of defi-
nite doctrines,
but rather as a certain cast of thought, or bias of reasoning, which has
during the last three centuries gained a marked ascendency in Europe );
which «leads men on all occasions to subordinate dogmatic theology to the
dictates of reason and conscience, and as a necessary consequence, greatly to
restrict its influence upon life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all
kinds of phenomena to natural rather than miraculous causes; in theology, to
esteem succeeding systems the expressions of the wants and aspirations of
that religious sentiment which is planted in all men; and in ethics, to regard
as duties only those which conscience reveals to be such. ”
Mr. Lecky traced this history with a fairness that went far to disarm
the prejudices of those least disposed to go along with him. He ex-
hibited a remarkable power of entering sympathetically into states
of mind entirely foreign to his own, and of disengaging in particular
characters — that of Voltaire, for example – the better elements from
the worse. But he could not be content to trace a process, however


## p. 8931 (#559) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8931
(
>
congenial to his sympathies. He had a doctrine to maintain, as defi-
nite as Buckle's doctrines of the determinism of natural conditions and
the unprogressive character of morality. It was, that the progress of
rationalism was
was mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible”;
that it appeared first of all in those least subject to theological in-
fluences, soon spread through the educated laity, and last of all took
possession of the clergy. ” Indeed, the rationalistic spirit seemed to
have for him the realistic character which ideas had for the school-
men before the Nominalists won their victory. If his doctrine had
been as true as he imagined it, much of his book would have been
superfluous. His great thinkers would have been merely marking
time, not leading the advance. The truth which it contained was,
that the effect of argument is not immediate; that it falls into the
ground and dies, and afterward bears fruit. Fortunately the value
of his work was quite as independent of his pet theory as was that
of Buckle's of his. It contains many tributes to the influence of one
thinker or another which are widely at variance with the doctrine of
their practical inefficiency; the tribute to Voltaire for “having done
more to destroy the greatest of human curses (persecution) than any
other of the sons of men ” being one of the most eloquent.
Mr. Lecky's History of European Rationalism is the work which
has done more than any other for his immediate reputation and to
perpetuate his fame; but hardly less significant was his History of
European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne,' which appeared in
1869. Had not his previous studies put him on the track of many
things which here are hunted down, four years would have been all
too short for the making of a book which covers so much ground.
Surely something of Mr. Lecky's praise of Gibbon's diligence may
be credited to his own account, when what he did in four years is
compared with what Gibbon did in twenty-four; especially when
we remember that what he has remarked as true of Gibbon must
have been true of his own methods of investigation. " Some of his
most valuable materials will be found in literatures that have no art-
istic merit; in writers who without theory, and almost without criti-
cism, simply relate the facts which they have seen, and express in
unsophisticated language the beliefs and impressions of their time. ”
Such literatures and writers must have been the main region of Mr.
Lecky's studies for his European Morals. ' In this book, as in the
Rationalism,' he had a thesis to maintain. Here it was the intuitive
character of morality; and it was maintained at great length, its dis-
cussion consuming more than one-third of his first volume. It was an
essay which was not intimately related to the matters following; and
while many of its criticisms of utilitarian ethics were well conceived
as against its earlier and grosser forms, they lose their point when


## p. 8932 (#560) ###########################################

8932
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
(
turned against such writers as Sidgwick and Stephen and others of
the present generation. In this preliminary discussion the formal
character of the whole work was foreshadowed. Again we have a
series of historical essays and not a continuous history. But these
essays are remarkable for their scope, and for their intelligent appre-
ciation of different systems of morality, pagan and Christian. One
of them, on the Pagan Empire, had for an essay within an essay a
thoroughly sympathetic study of Stoicism. The bias of Mr. Lecky's
intuitive morality was shown in his less adequate appreciation of what
was best in the Epicureans. Subsequent studies have done something
to modify the conclusions which he draws concerning the corruption
of the Empire.
Another essay in this book is on the Conversion of Rome. ) This
was the essay which did more than any other to make the book
a subject of wide popular interest, and much scholarly and theo-
logical debate. It coincided with the famous chapters of Gibbon on
the same subject; and while finding operative and important all
the causes which Gibbon named, found them inadequate to account
for the conversion of the Empire as it was actually accomplished.
At the same time Mr. Lecky finds this great event, or series of
events, “easily explicable » by purely natural causes.
«The apparent
anomalies of history are not inconsiderable, but they must be sought
in other quarters.
Never before was a religious transforma-
tion so manifestly inevitable. No other religion ever combined so
many forms of attraction as Christianity, both from its intrinsic excel-
lence and from its manifest adaptation to the special wants of the
time. ”
The stress of the second volume, excepting a concluding chapter
on the Position of Women, was upon the growth of asceticism and
the monastic orders. With a full appreciation of the distinctive ex-
cellences of the ascetic period, and the contributions that it made to
European civilization, Mr. Lecky has been thought by certain critics
to fail in comprehension of the “saints of the desert”; and it must
be admitted that where a saint had not washed himself for thirty
years, he found it difficult to identify his body as the temple of God
or to see the light of heaven shining in his face: but in general he
is remarkable for his sympathetic realization of the most various
manifestations of the religious spirit. He sees with equal clearness
what was most beautiful and noble in the pagan ethics, and what
was more tender and compassionate in the ethics of Christianity in
its earlier course. In the chapter on the Position of Women,' a
tentative argument for the public control of sexual vice excited much
contemporary discussion.
The argument was strangely utilitarian
n intuitive moralist, and many averred that it was not soundly
t;a
for an
***


## p. 8933 (#561) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8933
utilitarian. For once at least Mr. Lecky waxed sentimental when he
said of the prostitute, «Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ulti-
mately the most efficient guardian of virtue.
She remains,
while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of
humanity, blasted for the sins of the people. ”
Nine years elapsed after the publication of European Morals)
before Mr. Lecky again challenged the attention of the reading world.
In 1878 he published the first two volumes of his History of Eng-
land in the Eighteenth Century. ' Six more volumes, completing the
work, appeared in the course of the next ten years. It was now
more evident than ever before that Mr. Lecky's habit as a historical
essayist rather than a historian was inherent in the constitution of
his mind, and not in the particular subjects to which he might hap-
pen to apply himself. His object was, as he states it, “to disengage
from the great mass of facts those which relate to the permanent
forces of the nation, or which indicate some of the more enduring
features of national life. ” To this object in the earlier volumes he
was earnestly devoted; with distinct and admirable success discussing
in separate chapters, which were virtually separate essays, such
questions as the nature and power of the monarchy, the aristocracy,
the growth of democracy, the history of political ideas, the increas-
ing power of Parliament and the press, amusements, manners, and
beliefs. One of the best of these monographs was on religious
liberty; another on the causes of the French Revolution, which he
declared was not inevitable; another on the rise of Methodism, so
sympathetic as to be more flattering than such a Methodist history
as that of Tyerman. In the early volumes certain chapters were
devoted to Ireland; but midway of the sixth he returned to this sub-
ject and did not again leave it. In all we have about three volumes
devoted to Ireland, which were afterwards printed separately in five
smaller volumes as a history of Ireland. In these volumes Mr. Lecky
appears more distinctly as a historian than anywhere else. The
period covered, barring a brief introduction, is only five years long:
from 1795 to 1800, the period of the Rebellion and the Union. Even
here he cares much less for dramatic personalities and the regular suc-
cession of events than for the analysis of the policies and motives
that were at work in that unhappy time. Here his work stands in as
vivid contrast with that of Froude, treating the same subjects, as his
severe impartiality with Froude's blind and brutal partisanship. But
Froude is nothing if not picturesque, while Lecky hardly sees the
circumstances, so bent is he on the ideas they involve. His fairness
is the more remarkable because before his history was finished he
had left the Liberals and joined the Unionists, at the time of the
schism in 1886. Yet only a few passages bear any trace of party


## p. 8934 (#562) ###########################################

8934
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
spirit. The failure of England to govern Ireland wisely and success-
fully is not in the least disguised; and it is compared with her suc-
cess in governing India, with a population of 200,000,000 over against
Ireland's 5,000,000. The key of the enigma is found in the fact that
«Irish affairs have been in the very vortex of English party politics,
while India has hitherto lain outside their sphere. ”
In 1891 Lecky published a volume of poems which added noth-
ing to his reputation; and in 1896 a two-volume work, Democracy
and Liberty. A seat in Parliament had proved for him “the seat
of the scorner» so far as democracy is concerned. The work pro-
vokes comparison with Sir Henry Sumner Maine's Popular Govern-
ment. ' Like that, it is more of a political pamphlet than a dis-
passionate study of the great subjects with which it is concerned;
and it is related to Lecky's History of Rationalism and Euro-
pean Morals) very much as Maine's Popular Government is related
to his (Ancient Law. ' It contains much wholesome and important
criticism on democratic institutions and tendencies; but it has a
much keener eye for their defects than for their advantages, and it
measures them rather by the standard of an ideal Utopia than by
that of any political success which has been as yet accomplished.
But it would be unjust to compare a book which is so manifestly
the outcome of the author's immediate political irritation, with the
more serious performances of his unbiased scholarship, when he was
« beholding the bright countenance of Truth in the quiet and still air
of delightful studies. ”
Waiving for the present the claims of this passionate arraignment
of democracy, we find in Mr. Lecky a historical writer whose works
are among the most interesting and significant literary products of
his time. His place is neither with the annalists nor with the polit-
ical historians, but with those for whom the philosophy of history
has had a perennial fascination. And while it is pre-eminently with
such literary historians as Macaulay and Froude and Green,- in so
far as he has written to the end of being read, in a style which
has merits of its own comparing favorably with theirs,— he is widely
separated from these respectively: with less continuity than Macaulay,
far less dramatic energy than Froude, and nothing of Green's archi-
tectonic faculty. But few historians have excelled his diligence or
carefulness, or chosen greater themes, or handled them with a more
evident desire to bring the truth of history to bear upon our personal
and social life.
Item Cruze hadical


## p. 8935 (#563) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8935
The following extracts are taken from History of European Morals from
Augustus to Charlemagne, with the approval of D. Appleton & Co. ,
publishers.
THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF GLADIATORIAL SHOWS ON THE"
ROMAN PEOPLE
T"
E gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman
society which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in
its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced
period of civilization, - men and women who not only professed
but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals, - should
have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement, that all
this should have continued for centuries with scarcely a protest,
is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is how-
ever perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the
doctrine of natural moral perceptions; while it opens out fields
of ethical inquiry of a very deep though painful interest.
These games, which long eclipsed, both in interest and in
influence, every other form of public amusement at Rome, were
originally religious ceremonies celebrated at the tombs of the
great, and intended as human sacrifices to appease the manes of
the dead. They were afterwards defended as a means of sustain-
ing the military spirit by the constant spectacle of courageous
death; and with this object it was customary to give a gladiatorial
show to soldiers before their departure to a war. In addition to
these functions they had a considerable political importance; for
at a time when all the regular organs of liberty were paralyzed
or abolished, the ruler was accustomed in the arena to meet tens
of thousands of his subjects, who availed themselves of the oppor-
tunity to present their petitions, to declare their grievances, and
to censure freely the sovereign or his ministers. The games are
said to have been of Etruscan origin; they were first introduced
into Rome B. C. 264, when the two sons of a man named Brutus
compelled three pair of gladiators to fight at the funeral of their
father; and before the close of the Republic they were common
on great public occasions, and, what appears even more horrible,
at the banquets of the nobles. The rivalry of Cæsar and Pompey
greatly multiplied them, for each sought by this means to ingra-
tiate himself with the people. Pompey introduced a new form
of combat between men and animals. Cæsar abolished the old
custom of restricting the mortuary games to the funerals of men;


## p. 8936 (#564) ###########################################

8936
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
on
and his daughter was the first Roman lady whose tomb was dese-
crated by human blood. Besides this innovation, Cæsar replaced
the temporary edifices in which the games had hitherto been
held by a permanent wooden amphitheatre, shaded the spectators
by an awning of precious silk, compelled the condemned persons
one occasion to fight with silver lances, and drew so many
gladiators into the city that the Senate was obliged to issue
an enactment restricting their number. In the earliest years of
the Empire, Statilius Taurus erected the first amphitheatre of
stone. Augustus ordered that not more than one hundred and
twenty men should fight on a single occasion, and that no prætor
should give more than two spectacles in a single year; and Tibe-
rius again fixed the maximum of combatants: but notwithstanding
these attempts to limit them, the games soon acquired the most
gigantic proportions. They were celebrated habitually by great
men in honor of their dead relatives, by officials on coming into
office, by conquerors to secure popularity, and on every occasion
of public rejoicing, and by rich tradesmen who were desirous
of acquiring a social position. They were also among the attrac-
tions of the public baths. Schools of gladiators- often the private
property of rich citizens— existed in every leading city of Italy;
and besides slaves and criminals, they were thronged with free-
men who voluntarily hired themselves for a term of years.
the eyes of multitudes, the large sums that were paid to the
victor, the patronage of nobles and often of emperors, and still
more the delirium of popular enthusiasm that centred upon the
successful gladiator, outweighed all the dangers of the profession.
A complete recklessness of life was soon engendered both in the
spectators and the combatants. The 'lanistæ,' or purveyors of
gladiators, became an important profession. Wandering bands
of gladiators traversed Italy, hiring themselves for the provincial
amphitheatres. The influence of the games gradually pervaded
the whole texture of Roman life. They became the common.
place of conversation. The children imitated them in their play.
The philosophers drew from them their metaphors and illustra-
tions. The artists portrayed them in every variety of ornament.
The Vestal Virgins had a seat of honor in the arena. The Colos-
seum, which is said to have been capable of containing more than
eighty thousand spectators, eclipsed every other monument of
Imperial splendor, and is even now at once the most imposing
and the most characteristic relic of pagan Rome.
In


## p. 8937 (#565) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8937
In the provinces the same passion was displayed. From Gaul
to Syria, wherever the Roman influence extended, the spectacles
of blood were introduced; and the gigantic remains of amphi-
theatres in many lands still attest by their ruined grandeur the
scale on which they were pursued. In the reign of Tiberius,
more than twenty thousand persons are said to have perished by
the fall of the amphitheatre at the suburban town of Fidenæ.
Under Nero, the Syracusans obtained as a special favor an
exemption from the law which limited the number of gladiators.
Of the vast train of prisoners brought by Titus from Judea, a
large proportion were destined by the conqueror for the provin-
cial games. In Syria, where they were introduced by Antiochus
Epiphanes, they at first produced rather terror than pleasure; but
the effeminate Syrians soon learned to contemplate them with a
passionate enjoyment, and on a single occasion Agrippa caused
,
a
fourteen hundred men to fight in the amphitheatre at Berytus.
Greece alone was in some degree an exception. When an attempt
was made to introduce the spectacle into Athens, the cynic phi-
losopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better feelings of
the people by exclaiming:-'You must first overthrow the altar
of Pity. The games are said to have afterwards penetrated to
Athens, and to have been suppressed by Apollonius of Tyana;
but with the exception of Corinth, where a very large foreign
population existed, Greece never appears to have shared the
general enthusiasm.
One of the first consequences of this taste was to render the
people absolutely unfit for those tranquil and refined amusements
which usually accompany civilization. To men who were accus-
tomed to witness the fierce vicissitudes of deadly combat, any
spectacle that did not elicit the strongest excitement was insipid.
The only amusements that at all rivaled the spectacles of the
amphitheatre and the circus were those which appealed strongly
to the sensual passions; such as the games of Flora, the pos-
tures of the pantomimes, and the ballet. Roman comedy, indeed,
flourished for a short period; but only by throwing itself into
the same career. The pander and the courtesan are the lead-
ing characters of Plautus, and the more modest Terence never
attained an equal popularity. The different forms of vice have a
continual tendency to act and react upon one another; and the
intense craving after excitement which the amphitheatre must
necessarily have produced, had probably no small influence in


## p. 8938 (#566) ###########################################

8938
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
stimulating the orgies of sensuality which Tacitus and Suetonius
describe.
But if comedy could to a certain extent flourish with the
gladiatorial games, it was not so with tragedy. It is indeed true
that the tragic actor can exhibit displays of more intense agony
and of a grander heroism than were ever witnessed in the arena.
His mission is not to paint nature as it exists in the light of
day, but nature as it exists in the heart of man.
His gestures,
his tones, his looks, are such as would never have been exhibited
by the person he represents; but they display to the audience the
full intensity of the emotions which that person would have felt,
but which he would have been unable adequately to reveal. But
to those who were habituated to the intense realism of the amphi-
theatre, the idealized suffering of the stage was unimpressive.
All the genius of a Siddons or a Ristori would fail to move an
audience who had continually seen living men fall bleeding and
mangled at their feet. One of the first functions of the stage is
to raise to the highest point the susceptibility to disgust. When
Horace said that Medea should not kill her children upon the
stage, he enunciated not a mere arbitrary rule, but one which
grows necessarily out of the development of the drama. It is
an essential characteristic of a refined and cultivated taste to
be shocked and offended at the spectacle of bloodshed; and the
theatre, which somewhat dangerously dissociates sentiment from
action, and causes men to waste their compassion on ideal suffer-
ings, is at least a barrier against the extreme forms of cruelty by
developing this susceptibility to the highest degree. The gladia-
torial games, on the other hand, destroyed all sense of disgust,
and therefore all refinement of taste; and they rendered the per-
manent triumph of the drama impossible.
It is abundantly evident, both from history and from present
experience, that the instinctive shock or natural feeling of disgust
caused by the sight of the sufferings of men is not generically
different from that which is caused by the sight of the sufferings
of animals. The latter, to those who are not accustomed to it,
is intensely painful. The former continually becomes by use a
matter of absolute indifference. If the repugnance which is felt
in the one case appears greater than in the other, it is not on
account of any innate sentiment which commands us to reverence
our species, but simply because our imagination finds less diffi-
culty in realizing human than animal suffering, and also because


## p. 8939 (#567) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8939
education has strengthened our feelings in the one case much
more than in the other. There is, however, no fact more clearly
established than that when men have regarded it as not a crime
to kill some class of their fellow-men, they have soon learnt to
do so with no more natural compunction or hesitation than they
would exhibit in killing a wild animal. This is the normal con-
dition of savage men.
Colonists and Red Indians even now often
shoot each other with precisely the same indifference as they
shoot beasts of prey; and the whole history of warfare -- especially
when warfare was conducted on more savage principles than at
present - is an illustration of the fact. Startling, therefore, as
it may now appear, it is in no degree unnatural that Roman
spectators should have contemplated with perfect equanimity the
slaughter of men, The Spaniard, who is brought in infancy to
the bull-ring, soon learns to gaze with indifference or with pleasure
upon sights before which the unpracticed eye of the stranger
quails with horror; and the same process would be equally effica-
cious had the spectacle been the sufferings of men.
We now look back with indignation upon this indifference;
but yet, although it may be hard to realize, it is probably true
that there is scarcely a human being who might not by custom
be so indurated as to share it. Had the most benevolent person
lived in a country in which the innocence of these games was
deemed axiomatic, had he been taken to them in his very child-
hood and accustomed to associate them with his earliest dreams
of romance, and had he then been left simply to the play of the
emotions, the first paroxysm of horror would have soon subsided,
the shrinking repugnance that followed would have grown weaker
and weaker, the feeling of interest would have been aroused, and
the time would probably come in which it would reign alone.
But even this absolute indifference to the sight of human suffer-
ing does not represent the full evil resulting from the gladiatorial
games.
That some men are so constituted as to be capable of
taking a real and lively pleasure in the simple contemplation of
suffering as suffering, and without any reference to their own
interests, is a proposition which has been strenuously denied by
those in whose eyes vice is nothing more than a displacement,
or exaggeration, of lawful self-regarding feelings; and others,
who have admitted the reality of the phenomenon, have treated
it as a very rare and exceptional disease. That it is so — at least
in its extreme forms—in the present condition of society, may


## p. 8940 (#568) ###########################################

8940
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
reasonably be hoped; though I imagine that few persons who
have watched the habits of boys would question that to take pleas-
ure in giving at least some degree of pain is sufficiently common,
and though it is not quite certain that all the sports of adult men
would be entered into with exactly the same zest if their victims
were not sentient beings. But in every society in which atrocious
punishments have been common, this side of human nature has
acquired an undoubted prominence. It is related of Claudius that
his special delight at the gladiatorial shows was in watching the
countenances of the dying; for he had learnt to take an artistic
pleasure in observing the variations of their agony. When the
gladiator lay prostrate it was customary for the spectators to give
the sign with their thumbs, indicating whether they desired him
to be spared or slain; and the giver of the show reaped most
popularity when, in the latter case, he permitted no consideration
of economy to make him hesitate to sanction the popular award.
Besides this, the mere desire for novelty impelled the people
to every excess or refinement of barbarity. The simple combat
became at last insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised
to stimulate the flagging interest. At one time a bear and a
bull, chained together, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at
another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts were thrown
to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons or by darts
tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed on a
single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under
Claudius, Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and
elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were
slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of
the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under
Trajan, the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three
successive days. Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippo-
potami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were
employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of
human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave
twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and fifty
to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair
.
fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought
during the games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens during
the night by Christians burning in their pitchy shirts. Under
Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight;
and more than once, female gladiators descended to perish in the


## p. 8941 (#569) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8941
arena.
A criminal personating a fictitious character was nailed
to a cross, and there torn by a bear. Another, representing Scæ-
.
vola, was compelled to hold his hand in a real flame. A third,
as Hercules, was burnt alive upon the pile. So intense was the
craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular if he neg-
lected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games;
and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect,
was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman
multitude. Heliogabalus and Galerius are reported, when dining,
to have regaled themselves with the sight of criminals torn by
wild beasts. It was said of the latter that he never supped
without human blood. ”
It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They
display more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the
abyss of depravity into which it is possible for human nature to
sink. They furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the
moral progress we have attained; and they enable us in some
degree to estimate the regenerating influence that Christianity has
exercised in the world. For the destruction of the gladiatorial
games is all its work.
Philosophers indeed might deplore them,
gentle natures might shrink from their contagion; but to the
multitude they possessed a fascination which nothing but the new
religion could overcome.
SYSTEMATIC CHARITY AS A MORAL OUTGROWTH, PAST AND
PRESENT
THE
He history of charity presents so few salient features, so little
that can strike the imagination or arrest the attention, that
it is usually almost wholly neglected by historians; and it
is easy to conceive what inadequate notions of our existing chari-
ties could be gleaned from the casual allusions in plays or poems,
in political histories or court memoirs. There can, however, be
no question that neither in practice nor in theory, neither in the
institutions that were founded nor in the place that was assigned
to it in the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy a posi-
tion at all comparable to that which it has obtained by Christian-
ity.
Nearly all relief was a State measure, dictated much more
by policy than by benevolence; and the habit of selling young
children, the innumerable expositions, the readiness of the poor


## p. 8942 (#570) ###########################################

8942
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
to enroll themselves as gladiators, and the frequent famines, show
how large was the measure of unrelieved distress. A very few
pagan examples of charity have indeed descended to us. Among
the Greeks we find Epaminondas ransoming captives, and collect-
ing dowers for poor girls; Cimon feeding the hungry and cloth-
ing the naked; Bias purchasing, emancipating, and furnishing
with dowers some captive girls of Messina. Tacitus has described
with enthusiasm how, after a catastrophe near Rome, the rich
threw open their houses and taxed all their resources to relieve
the sufferers. There existed too among the poor, both of Greece
and Rome, mutual insurance societies, which undertook to provide
for their sick and infirm members. The very frequent reference
to mendicancy in the Latin writers shows that beggars, and there.
fore those who relieved beggars, were numerous. The duty of
hospitality was also strongly enjoined, and was placed under the
special protection of the supreme Deity. But the active, habitual,
and detailed charity of private persons, which is so conspicuous a
feature in all Christian societies, was scarcely known in antiquity,
and there are not more than two or three moralists who have
even noticed it. Of these the chief rank belongs to Cicero, who
devoted two very judicious but somewhat cold chapters to the
subject. Nothing, he said, is more suitable to the nature of man
than beneficence or liberality; but there are many cautions to be
urged in practicing it. We must take care that our bounty is a
real blessing to the person we relieve; that it does not exceed
our own means; that it is not, as was the case with Sylla and
Cæsar, derived from the spoliation of others; that it springs from
the heart and not from ostentation; that the claims of gratitude
are preferred to the mere impulses of compassion; and that due
regard is paid both to the character and to the wants of the
recipient.
Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary vir.
tue, giving it a leading place in the moral type and in the exhort.
ations of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating
the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by
regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian
Founder; and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love
of man, the principle of charity. Even in the days of persecu-
tion, collections for the relief of the poor were made at the Sun-
day meetings. The agapæ, or feasts of love, were intended mainly
for the poor; and food that was saved by the fasts was devoted to


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WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8943
their benefit. A vast organization of charity, presided over by the
bishops, and actively directed by the deacons, soon ramified over
Christendom, till the bond of charity became the bond of unity,
and the most distant sections of the Christian Church corre-
sponded by the interchange of mercy. Long before the era of
Constantine, it was observed that the charities of the Christians
were so extensive — it may perhaps be said so excessive — that
they drew very many impostors to the Church; and when the
victory of Christianity was achieved, the enthusiasm for charity
displayed itself in the erection of numerous institutions that were
altogether unknown to the pagan world. A Roman lady named
Fabiola, in the fourth century, founded in Rome as an act of
penance the first public hospital; and the charity planted by that
woman's hand overspread the world, and will alleviate to the
end of time the darkest anguish of humanity.
Another hospi-
tal was soon after founded by St. Pammachus; another of great
celebrity by St. Basil, at Cæsarea. St. Basil also erected at Cæsa.
rea what was probably the first asylum for lepers. Xenodochia,
or refuges for strangers, speedily arose, especially along the
paths of the pilgrims. St. Pammachus founded one at Ostia;
Paula and Melania founded others at Jerusalem. The Council of
Nice ordered that one should be erected in every city. In the
time of St. Chrysostom the Church of Antioch supported three
thousand widows and virgins, besides strangers and sick. Lega-
cies for the poor became common; and it was not unfrequent
or men and women who desired live a life of peculiar sanc-
tity, and especially for priests who attained the episcopacy, to
bestow their entire properties in charity. Even the early Orien-
tal monks, who for the most part were extremely removed from
the active and social virtues, supplied many noble examples of
charity. St. Ephrem, in a time of pestilence, emerged from his
solitude to found and superintend a hospital at Edessa. A monk
named Thalasius collected blind beggars in an asylum on the
banks of the Euphrates. A merchant named Apollonius founded
on Mount Nitria a gratuitous dispensary for the monks. The
monks often assisted by their labors, provinces that were suffer-
ing from pestilence or famine. We may trace the remains of the
pure socialism that marked the first phase of the Christian com-
munity, in the emphatic language with which some of the Fathers
proclaimed charity to be a matter not of mercy but of justice;
maintaining that all property is based on usurpation, that the


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8944
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
earth by right is common to all men, and that no man can claim
a superabundant supply of its goods except as an administrator
for others. A Christian, it was maintained, should devote at
least one-tenth of his profits to the poor.
The enthusiasm of charity thus manifested in the Church
speedily attracted the attention of the pagans. The ridicule of
Lucian, and the vain efforts of Julian to produce a rival system
of charity within the limits of paganism, emphatically attested
both its pre-eminence and its catholicity. During the pestilences
that desolated Carthage in A. D. 326, and Alexandria in the
reigns of Gallienus and of Maximian, while the pagans fled panic-
stricken from the contagion, the Christians extorted the admiration
of their fellow-countrymen by the courage with which they rallied
around their bishops, consoled the last hours of the sufferers, and
buried the abandoned dead. In the rapid increase of pauperism
arising from the emancipation of numerous slaves, their charity
found free scope for action, and its resources were soon taxed to
the utmost by the horrors of the barbarian invasions.
The con-
quest of Africa by Genseric deprived Italy of the supply of corn
upon which it almost wholly depended, arrested the gratuitous
distribution by which the Roman poor were mainly supported,
and produced all over the land the most appalling calamities.
The history of Italy became one monotonous tale of famine and
pestilence, of starving populations and ruined cities. But every-
where amid this chaos of dissolution we may detect the majestic
form of the Christian priest mediating between the hostile forces,
straining every nerve to lighten the calamities around him.
When the imperial city was captured and plundered by the
hosts of Alaric, a Christian church remained a secure sanctuary,
which neither the passions nor the avarice of the Goths trans-
gressed. When a fiercer than Alaric had marked out Rome for
his prey, the pope St. Leo, arrayed in his sacerdotal robes,
confronted the victorious Hun as the ambassador of his fellow-
countrymen; and Attila, overpowered by religious awe, turned
aside in his course. When, two years later, Rome lay at the
mercy of Genseric, the same pope interposed with the Vandal con-
queror, and obtained from him a partial cessation of the massa-
The archdeacon Pelagius interceded with similar humanity
and similar success, when Rome had been captured by Totila.
In Gaul, Troyes is said to have been saved from destruction
by the influence of St. Lupus, and Orleans by the influence of
cre.


## p. 8945 (#573) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8945
.
as
St. Agnan. In Britain an invasion of the Picts was averted by
St. Germain of Auxerre. The relations of rulers to their sub-
jects, and of tribunals to the poor, were modified by the same
intervention. When Antioch was threatened with destruction on
account of its rebellion against Theodosius, the anchorites poured
forth from the neighboring deserts to intercede with the minis-
ters of the Emperor, while the archbishop Flavian went himself
a suppliant to Constantinople. St. Ambrose imposed public
penance on Theodosius, on account of the massacre of Thessa-
lonica. Synesius excommunicated for his oppressions a governor
named Andronicus; and two French Councils, in the sixth cen-
tury, imposed the same penalty on all great men who arbitrarily
ejected the poor. Special laws were found necessary to restrain
the turbulent charity of some priests and monks, who impeded
the course of justice, and even snatched criminals from the hands
of the law. St. Abraham, St. Epiphanius, and St. Basil are all
said to have obtained the remission or reduction of oppressive
imposts. To provide for the interests of widows and orphans
was part of the official ecclesiastical duty, and a Council of Ma-
con anathematized any ruler who brought them to trial without
first apprising the bishop of the diocese. A Council of Toledo,
in the fifth century, threatened with excommunication all who
robbed priests, monks, or poor men, or refused to listen to their
expostulations. One of the chief causes of the inordinate power
acquired by the clergy was their mediatorial office; and their
gigantic wealth was in a great degree due to the legacies of
those who regarded them as the trustees of the poor. As time
rolled on, charity assumed many forms, and every monastery be-
came a centre from which it radiated. By the monks the nobles
were overawed, the poor protected, the sick tended, travelers
sheltered, prisoners ransomed, the remotest spheres of suffering
explored. During the darkest period of the Middle Ages, monks
founded a refuge for pilgrims amid the horrors of the Alpine
snows. A solitary hermit often planted himself, with his little
boat, by a bridgeless stream, and the charity of his life was to
ferry over the traveler. When the hideous disease of leprosy
extended its ravages over Europe, when the minds of men were
filled with terror, not only by its loathsomeness and its contagion,
but also by the notion that it was in a peculiar sense supernat-
ural, new hospitals and refuges overspread Europe, and monks
flocked in multitudes to serve in them. Sometimes, the legends
XV-560


## p. 8946 (#574) ###########################################

8946
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
are
say, the leper's form was in a moment transfigured; and he who
came to tend the most loathsome of mankind received his reward,
for he found himself in the presence of his Lord.
There is no fact of which an historian becomes more speedily
or more painfully conscious than the great difference between the
importance and the dramatic interest of the subjects he treats.
Wars or massacres, the horrors of martyrdom or the splendors of
individual prowess, are susceptible of such brilliant coloring that
with but little literary skill they can be so portrayed that their
importance is adequately realized, and they appeal powerfully to
the emotions of the reader. But this vast and unostentatious
movement of charity, operating in the village hamlet and in
the lonely hospital, stanching the widow's tears and following all
the windings of the poor man's griefs, presents few features the
imagination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression upon the
mind. The greatest things are often those which most
imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian
Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in
the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of man-
kind, it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the
sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances
of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to
the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It
has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, abso-
lutely unknown to the whole pagan world. It has indissolubly
united, in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with
that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed in every
parish a religious minister, who, whatever may be his other func-
tions, has at least been officially charged with the superintendence
of an organization of charity, and who finds in this office one of
the most important as well as one of the most legitimate sources
of his power.
THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
THE SEXES
T
HERE are few more curious subjects of inquiry than the dis-
tinctive differences between the sexes, and the manner in
which those differences have affected the ideal types of
different ages, nations, philosophies, and religions. Physically,
men have the indisputable superiority in strength, and women in


## p. 8947 (#575) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8947
beauty. Intellectually, a certain inferiority of the female sex can
hardly be denied when we remember how almost exclusively the
foremost places in every department of science, literature, and
art have been occupied by men, how infinitesimally small is the
number of women who have shown in any form the very highest
order of genius, how many of the greatest men have achieved
their greatness in defiance of the most adverse circumstances, and
how completely women have failed in obtaining the first position
even in music or painting, for the cultivation of which their cir-
cumstances would appear most propitious. It is as impossible to
find a female Raphael or a female Handel as a female Shake-
speare or Newton.
Women are intellectually more desultory and
volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular in-
stances than with general principles; they judge rather by intui-
tive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning or past experience.
They are, however, usually superior to men in nimbleness and
rapidity of thought, and in the gift of tact or the power of seiz-
ing speedily and faithfully the finer inflections of feeling; and
they have therefore often attained very great eminence in con-
versation, as letter-writers, as actresses, and as novelists.
Morally, the general superiority of women men is, I
think, unquestionable. If we take the somewhat coarse and in-
adequate criterion of police statistics, we find that while the male
and female populations are nearly the same in number, the
crimes committed by men are usually rather more than five times
as numerous as those committed by women; and although it may
be justly observed that men, as the stronger sex, and the sex
upon whom the burden of supporting the family is thrown, have
more temptations than women, it must be remembered, on the
other hand, that extreme poverty which verges upon starvation
is most common among women, whose means of livelihood are
most restricted, and whose earnings are smallest and most pre-
carious. Self-sacrifice is the most conspicuous element of a vir-
tuous and religious character; and it is certainly far less common
among men than among women, whose whole lives are usually
spent in yielding to the will and consulting the pleasures of
another. There are two great departments of virtue,- the im-
pulsive, or that which springs spontaneously from the emotions;
and the deliberative, or that which is performed in obedience to
the sense of duty; and in both of these I imagine women are
superior to men. Their sensibility is greater, they are more chaste
over


## p. 8948 (#576) ###########################################

8948
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
both in thought and act, more tender to the erring, more com-
passionate to the suffering, more affectionate to all about them.
On the other hand, those who have traced the course of the
wives of the poor, and of many who though in narrow circum-
stances can hardly be called poor, will probably admit that in no
other class do we so often find entire lives spent in daily per-
sistent self-denial, in the patient endurance of countless trials,
in the ceaseless and deliberate sacrifice of their own enjoyments
to the well-being or the prospects of others. Women, however,
though less prone than men to intemperance and brutality, are
in general more addicted to the petty forms of vanity, jealousy,
spitefulness, and ambition; and they are also inferior to men in
active courage.
In the courage of endurance they are commonly
superior; but their passive courage is not so much fortitude
which bears and defies, as resignation which bears and bends.
In the ethics of intellect they are decidedly inferior. To repeat
an expression I have already employed, women very rarely love
truth; though they love passionately what they call the truth,”
- or opinions they have received from others, and hate vehe-
mently those who differ from them. They are little capable of
impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is chiefly a mode of
feeling; though very generous in their acts, they are rarely gen-
erous in their opinions or in their judgments. They persuade
rather than convince, and value belief rather as a source of con-
solation than as a faithful expression of the reality of things.
They are less capable than men of perceiving qualifying circum-
stances, admitting the existence of elements of good in sys-
tems to which they are opposed, of distinguishing the personal
character of an opponent from the opinions he maintains. Men
lean most to justice and women to mercy.
Men excel in energy,
self-reliance, perseverance, and magnanimity; women in humility,
gentleness, modesty, and endurance. The realizing imagination
which causes us to pity and to love is more sensitive in women
than in men, and it is especially more capable of dwelling on
the unseen. Their religious or devotional realizations are incon-
testably more vivid; and it is probable that while a father is
most moved by the death of a child in his presence, a mother
generally feels most the death of a child in some distant land.
But though more intense, the sympathies of women are commonly
less wide than those of men. Their imaginations individualize
more; their affections are in consequence concentrated rather on


## p. 8949 (#577) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8949
leaders than on causes; and if they care for a great cause, it is
generally because it is represented by a great man, or connected
with some one whom they love. In politics, their enthusiasm is
more naturally loyalty than patriotism. In history, they are
even more inclined than men to dwell exclusively upon biograph-
ical incidents or characteristics as distinguished from the march
of general causes. In benevolence, they excel in charity, which
alleviates individual suffering, rather than in philanthropy, which
deals with large masses and is more frequently employed in pre-
venting than in allaying calamity.
It was a remark of Winckelmann that “the supreme beauty
of Greek art is rather male than female”; and the justice of this
remark has been amply corroborated by the greater knowledge
we have of late years attained of the works of the Phidian period,
in which art achieved its highest perfection, and in which, at the
same time, force and freedom and masculine grandeur were its
pre-eminent characteristics. A similar observation may be made
of the moral ideal of which ancient art was simply the expres-
sion. In antiquity the virtues that were most admired were
almost exclusively those which are distinctively masculine. Cour-
age, self-assertion, magnanimity, and above all, patriotism, were
the leading features of the ideal type; and chastity, modesty, and
charity, the gentler and the domestic virtues, which are especially
feminine, were greatly undervalued. With the single exception
of conjugal fidelity, none of the virtues that were very highly
prized were virtues distinctively or pre-eminently feminine. With
this exception, nearly all the most illustrious women of antiquity
were illustrious chiefly because they overcame the natural con-
ditions of their sex. It is a characteristic fact that the favorite
female ideal of the artists appears to have been the Amazon. We
may admire the Spartan mother and the mother of the Gracchi,
repressing every sign of grief when their children were sacrificed
upon the altar of their country; we may wonder at the majestic
courage of a Porcia and an Arria: but we extol them chiefly
because, being women, they emancipated themselves from the
frailty of their sex, and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of
the strongest and the bravest of men. We may bestow an equal
admiration upon the noble devotion and charity of a St. Elizabeth
of Hungary or of a Mrs. Fry; but we do not admire them because
they displayed these virtues, although they were women, for we
feel that their virtues were of the kind which the female nature


## p. 8950 (#578) ###########################################

8950
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
is most fitted to produce. The change from the heroic to the
.
saintly ideal, from the ideal of paganism to the ideal of Christ-
ianity, was a change from a type which was essentially male to
one which was essentially feminine. Of all the great schools of
philosophy, no other reflected so faithfully the Roman concep-
tion of moral excellence as Stoicism; and the greatest Roman
exponent of Stoicism summed up its character in a single sen-
tence when he pronounced it to be beyond all other sects the
most emphatically masculine. On the other hand, an ideal type
in which meekness, gentleness, patience, humility, faith, and
love are the most prominent features, is not naturally male but
female. A reason probably deeper than the historical ones which
are commonly alleged, why sculpture has always been peculiarly
pagan and painting peculiarly Christian, may be found in the
fact that sculpture is especially suited to represent male beauty,
or the beauty of strength, and painting female beauty, or the
beauty of softness; and that pagan sentiment was chiefly a glori-
fication of the masculine qualities of strength and courage and
conscious virtue, while Christian sentiment is chiefly a glorifica-
tion of the feminine qualities of gentleness, humility, and love.
The painters whom the religious feeling of Christendom has
recognized as the most faithful exponents of Christian sentiment
have always been those who infused a large measure of feminine
beauty even into their male characters; and we never, or scarcely
ever, find that the same artist has been conspicuously successful
in delineating both Christian and pagan types. Michael Angelo,
whose genius loved to expatiate on the sublimity of strength and
defiance, failed signally in his representations of the Christian
ideal; and Perugino was equally unsuccessful when he sought
to portray the features of the heroes of antiquity. The position
that was gradually assigned to the Virgin, as the female ideal
in the belief and the devotion of Christendom, was a consecration
or an expression of the new value that was attached to the femi-
nine virtues.
The general superiority of women to men in the strength of
their religious emotions, and their natural attraction to a reli-
gion which made personal attachment to its Founder its central
duty, and which imparted an unprecedented dignity and afforded
an unprecedented scope to their characteristic virtues, account
for the very conspicuous position that female influence assumed in
the great work of the conversion of the Roman Empire. In no


## p. 8951 (#579) ###########################################

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
8951
>
other important movement of thought was it so powerful or so
acknowledged. In the ages of persecution, female figures occupy
many of the foremost places in the ranks of martyrdom; and
pagan and Christian writers alike attest the alacrity with which
women flocked to the Church, and the influence they exercised
in its favor over the male members of their families. The
mothers of St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory
Nazianzen, and Theodoret, had all a leading part in the conver-
sion of their sons. St. Helena the mother of Constantine, Fla-
cilla the wife of Theodosius the Great, St. Pulcheria the sister
of Theodosius the Younger, and Placidia the mother of Valen-
tinian III. , were among the most conspicuous defenders of the
faith. In the heretical sects the same zeal was manifested; and
Arius, Priscillian, and Montanus were all supported by troops of
zealous female devotees. In the career of asceticism, women
took a part little if at all inferior to men; while in the organ-
ization of the great work of charity they were pre-eminent. For
no other field of active labor are women so admirably suited as
for this; and although we may trace from the earliest period, in
many creeds and ages, individual instances of their influence in
allaying the sufferings of the distressed, it may be truly said that
their instinct and genius of charity had never before the dawn
of Christianity obtained full scope for action. Fabiola, Paula,
Melania, and a host of other noble ladies devoted their time and
fortunes mainly to founding and extending vast institutions of
charity, some of them of a kind before unknown in the world.
The Empress Flacilla was accustomed to tend with her own
hands the sick in the hospitals; and a readiness to discharge such
offices was deemed the first duty of a Christian wife.
to age the impulse thus communicated has been felt. There
has been no period however corrupt, there has been no church
however superstitious, that has not been adorned by many Christ-
ian women devoting their entire lives to assuaging the suffer-
ings of men; and the mission of charity thus instituted has not
been more efficacious in diminishing the sum of human wretch-
edness, than in promoting the moral dignity of those by whom
it was conducted.
From age


## p. 8952 (#580) ###########################################

8952
CHARLES MARIE RENÉ LECONTE DE LISLE
(1818-1894)
ECONTE DE LISLE, according to the judgment of his fellow-
poets, will live in French literature for the classic perfection
of his verse. Yet he has never been popular, although he
longed to touch men's hearts. His distinction is the rare imaginative
pleasure he offers those who can enjoy abstract beauty.
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle was born in 1818 on the
Island of Bourbon, where the luxuriance of the tropics fostered his
passion for natural beauty. His education finished, his father wished
him to become a planter like himself; but
the son longed to see the world. He went
to France; studied law at Rennes; traveled
for some time; and when nearly thirty,
settled at Paris. He was an ardent classi-
cist. To his knowledge of antique art and
literature he had added his personal im-
pressions of many lands, many peoples, and
many religions. Now he became intimately
acquainted with agitated, worldly Paris;
and she repelled him.
His circumstances aided to depress him.
His parents had never understood his im-
LECONTE DE LISLE
practical aspirations; and possibly the deter-
mined self-repression evident in his poems
results in part from his lack of home sympathy. Soon after his
arrival in Paris, he earnestly supported an insurrection of slaves in
his island home. This rash generosity provoked his father to stop
his allowance; and he was obliged to teach for his living.
The remainder of his life was outwardly uneventful,- its chief
events the distinctions which gradually came to him. Created an
officer of the Legion of Honor, in 1886 he was chosen to the French
Academy as the successor of Victor Hugo. Nine years earlier, when
defeated, he had proudly declared that the vote received from Hugo
meant as much to him as election. From 1873 until his death in 1894
he was assistant librarian at the Library of the Luxembourg; and
there, in the fine old Palace set in the ancient garden, he drew con-
genial friends about him and spoke with the authority of a master to
young disciples in poetry.

-


## p. 8953 (#581) ###########################################

CHARLES MARIE RENÉ LECONTE DE LISLE
8953
He first became known for skillful translations of Homer, Theo-
critus, Horace, and Sophocles, for which he was not well paid. But
the reputation they brought him induced Napoleon III. to offer him
a handsome pension if he would dedicate his work to the Prince
Imperial. This De Lisle refused to do; and he was then granted a
pension of three hundred francs a month, which he drew until the
fall of the Empire. With a brilliant group of young poets, who,
surfeited with the exaggerated romanticism which had had its day,
were seeking finer, more artistic forins of expression, he published
(Le Parnasse Contemporain (Modern Parnassus), several volumes of
verse, which gained its authors the title of Parnassians, and consti-
tuted theirs a distinct school of poetry. Its primary tenet was the
impersonality of art. The Parnassians maintained that Rousseau-like
confessions of joys and sins and sufferings- egotistic demands for
sympathy — should not be thrust upon the public. They agreed that
the emotional element in poetry did not mean individual vagaries,
but universal human experience expressed with all possible beauty
and delicacy of form, and with convincing truth. This creed was
abused; but unquestionably (Le Parnasse Contemporain' refined pub-
lic taste and inspired poets with more definite ideals.
Among the first to note De Lisle's merit was Sainte-Beuve, who
gave a reception in his honor, and introduced him to the poet La-
prade; from whom, as from Gautier, he learned a lesson of vivid
description, and of the exquisite precision which, as Brunetière says,
makes his verse as imperishable as marble.
He was too painstaking a craftsman to compose rapidly; and even
after they were written, the Poèmes Antiques) awaited a publisher
for several years. From its appearance in 1852, this volume received
distinguished treatment from critics and fellow-poets. In it, as in
(Poèmes et Poésies (1854), Poèmes Barbares' (1862), — to which the
Academy awarded the Jean Regnard prize of ten thousand francs,-
and Poèmes Tragiques) (1884), De Lisle sought his theme in the re-
mote; for he had a bitterly disillusioned spirit, and knew the solitary
suffering of a nature unfitted for modern society. It was because he
was tortured by self-consciousness that this first of the Impassives »
longed to forget himself, and make his poems an impersonal reflec-
tion of universal life. Hence the relief with which his imagination
escapes to the mere physical sensation of brute creation. Hence the
glowing power with which he draws the dying lion, the sleeping con-
dor, and the stealthy beasts of the jungle.
Because he could not bear the imperfection of his actual envi-
ronment, he searched in Greece and India, in the far north and
in southern seas, among primitive savages as in ancient art, for a
nourishing dream of beauty.