THE OBSERVER: BEING A COLLECTION OF MORAL, LITERARY AND FAMILIAR ESSAYS.
VOLUME THE SECOND.
—MULTORUM PROVIDUS URBES
UT MORES NOMINUM INSPEXIT.—
(HORAT.)
LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. DILLY IN THE POULTRY. M.DCC.LXXXVI.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
NUMBER XXXI. THE story of Melissa PAGE 1
NUMBER XXXII. Mellissa's story concluded PAGE 12
NUMBER XXXIII. Account of magic from the old Christian writers, with several anecdotes of magicians &c. PAGE 28
NUMBER XXXIV. Continuation of the above. The forms and ceremonies used by sorcerers, collected from the above writers PAGE 41
NUMBER XXXV. Athenian subject resumed. Compilation of the Iliad and Odyssey, by Pisistratus. Explanation of the term Tyrant PAGE 54
NUMBER XXXVI. Of the early Greek poets of the names of Orpheus and Musaeus. Of Thamyris and others. Of Hesiod and the Sybils PAGE 63
NUMBER XXXVII. Of Homer and his works PAGE 76
NUMBER XXXVIII. Of the originality of Homer's Epic, and of his translator Mr. Pope. A sample of translation in heroic metre PAGE 86
NUMBER XXXIX. Of Hesiod as compared with Homer; the causes of his popularity. More particular account of the bards of the name of Musaeus. Of Archilochus, Stesichorus, Epimenides, Aristeas, Simonides, Alcaeus and others PAGE 93
NUMBER XL. Fragment of Hermesianax of Colophon, addressed to his mistress Leontium, describing the amours of the Greek poets, &c. Of the seven wise men. Of the calendar of the Greeks and other nations. Of Thales. A letter from Pherecydes to that philosopher PAGE 103
NUMBER XLI. Of the origin and introduction of the drama. Of Thespis's pretensions to be considered as the father of tragedy PAGE 115
NUMBER XLII. Of the nature and character of the first drama PAGE 124
NUMBER XLIII. Letter to the author from Benevolus, giving an account of a Damper: Also one signed Pro bono publico, describing a club of Dampers and Puffers, with their invention of an instrument, called The Thermometer of Merit PAGE 133
NUMBER XLIV. Of the lama of Tibet PAGE 140
NUMBER XLV. History and account of Mr. Jedediah Fish, a teacher of the art of hearing PAGE 145
NUMBER XLVI. Remarks upon novels, and particularly of Richardson's Clarissa. A poem on Dorinda PAGE 152
NUMBER XLVII. Upon modern marriages: Several instances adduced. Advice upon that subject PAGE 162
NUMBER XLVIII. Athenian history resumed, and continued from the death of Pisistratus to that of Hipparchus PAGE 169
NUMBER XLIX. The same continued to the expulsion of Hippias PAGE 178
NUMBER L. Concluded with the battle of Marathon PAGE 185
NUMBER LI. The subject of the drama resumed; of the old tragic poets Pratinas and Phrynichus PAGE 191
NUMBER LII. Of the poet Aeschylus PAGE 200
NUMBER LIII. Of Aeschylus as compared with Sophocles and Euripides PAGE 209
NUMBER LIV. Of the tragedies of Aeschylus PAGE 216
NUMBER LV. A delineation of Shakespeare's characters of Macbeth and Richard; a parallel between him and Aeschylus PAGE 225
NUMBER LVI. The subject continued PAGE 235
NUMBER LVII. Further continuation PAGE 245
NUMBER LVIII. Conclusion of the subject PAGE 255
NUMBER LIX. Of actors; their merit and importance: Advice to that fraternity PAGE 265
NUMBER LX. Sketch of a delineation of the life and actions of Tiberius; recommendation as an useful lesson for the study of a young prince PAGE 272
THE OBSERVER.
No XXXI.
MELISSA was the daughter of a weak indulgent mother, who was left a young widow with two children; she had a handsome person, a tolerable fortune and good natural parts; uncontrouled in her education, she was permitted to indulge herself in studies of a romantic turn, and before she compleated her sixteenth year was to be found in all the circles of prating sentimentalists, who fill the silly heads of young women with female friendship and platonic love.
The ordinary pleasures and accomplishments of her own sex were below the notice of Melissa; from the tumult of a noisy country-dance she revolted with horror, as from the orgies of Bacchus; a soul of her seraphic cast could not descend to the vulgar employment of the needle, and the ornaments of dress claimed no share in the attention of a being so engaged in studies of a sublimer sort: She loved music, but they were plaintive Lydian airs with dying cadences, warbled by some female friend at the side of a rivulet, or under the shade of an arbour; and if the summer zephyrs murmured to the melody, it was so much the better for Melissa; then she would sit rapt in pensive pleasure with the hand of her friend fast closed in her's, and call it the soul's harmony: To these nymph-like retirements that filthy satyr man was never admitted; he was not thought or spoken of but with terror and aversion: When the strain was finished, she would break out into some poetic rhapsody upon
friendship, contemplation, night,
or some such subject, which her memory supplied her with very readily on such occasions.
In the mean time the impertinence of suitors occasionally interrupted the more refined enjoyments of Melissa's soul: One of these was a gentleman of good birth, considerable fortune, and an unexceptionable character; but the florid health of the robust creature was an insuperable objection, and having casually let fall a hint that he was fond of hunting, she dismist him to his vulgar sports with a becoming disdain: Her second suitor was a handsome young officer the cadet of a noble house; this attack was carried on very briskly, and Melissa was only saved from the horrors of matrimony by luckily discovering that her lover was so devoid of taste and understanding, as to profess a preference for that rake Tom Jones before the moral Sir Charles Grandison; such a sin against sentiment would have been enough to have undone him for ever with Melissa, if no other objection had arisen; but this being followed up with many like instances of bad taste in the belles-lettres, he was peremptorily discarded: A third offer came from a man of high rank and fortune, and was pressed upon her by her mother with much earnest solicitation; for in fact it was a very advantageous proposal; the lover was polite, good-natured, generous and of an amiable character, but in the unguarded warmth of his heart he let fall the distant expression of a hope, that he might have an heir to his estate and titles; the sensuality of which idea was such a gross affront to the delicate Melissa, that he, like the others, was sent off with a refusal.
The report of these rebuffs set Melissa free from any future solicitations, and it appeared as if she was destined to enjoy a sabbath of virginity for the rest of her days: So many years elapsed, that she now began to tread the down-hill path of life, grew slatternly and took snuff: Still the gentle passion of friendship did not abate, her attachment for Parthenissa grew closer than ever, and if by evil accident these tender companions were separated for a day, eight sides of letter-paper could not contain the effusions of their affection.
I should have told the reader that Melissa had a sister some years younger than herself, brought up from her childhood by a maiden aunt, who was what the polite world calls in contempt a good sort of woman, so that poor Maria was educated accordingly, and justly held in sovereign contempt for her vulgar endowments by Melissa; there were other trifling reasons which helped to put her out of favour with her more accomplished sister; for, as I have already hinted, she was several years younger, and in some opinions rather handsomer; they seldom met however and never corresponded, for Maria had no stile and little sentiment; she dressed her own caps, mended her own linen, and took charge of her aunt's household: It was therefore with some degree of surprize, that Melissa received the news of Maria's being on the point of marrying a nobleman, and that surprize was probably enhanced upon hearing, that this noble person was the very man, who some years ago had vainly aspired to solicit the impregnable Melissa herself: If she turned pale upon the receipt of this intelligence, eat no dinner that day and took no sleep that night, candour will impute it to the excess of Melissa's sensibility and the kind interest she took in the happy prospect of her sister's marriage; but a censorious world gives strange interpretations, and some people were ready enough to say ill-natured things on the occasion; the behaviour of that amiable lady soon confuted such insinuations, for she immediately set out for her aunt's, where Maria was receiving his lordship's visits every day, and where Melissa's presence must have greatly added to the felicity of both parties.
Her preparations for this visit were such as she had never made before, for though in general she was rather negligent of her dress, she put her art to the utmost stretch on this occasion, and left no effort untried that might do credit to her sister by setting off her own appearance in his lordship's eyes upon the meeting: Whilst she gave her person full display she did not spare her wit, and to make up for the taciturnity of Maria kept my lord in full discourse all the time he staid; she likewise from her love of information set Maria right in many particulars, which that young lady through want of education was ignorant of, and plainly shewed the lover, that there was some understanding in the family on her part at least, whatever the deficiency might be where he had fixt his choice.
Whether it was owing to these sisterly endeavours of Melissa, or to what other cause does not appear, but it should seem as if my lord's attention to Maria grew stronger in proportion as Melissa strove to attract it towards herself; and upon her hinting with some degree of raillery at what had formerly passed between them, his lordship looked her steadily in the face for some moments, then turned his eyes upon her sister, and silently walked out of the room.
As it is not to be suspected, that Melissa, with a soul superior to all vulgar passions, could be envious of so mean a rival as Maria, it is not easy to account for the sudden change of her behaviour to the noble suitor on his next visit to her sister: Instead of those studied attentions she had paid him at their first meeting, she now industriously took no notice of him, and sate rapt in her own happy meditations; till upon his presenting to her sister a magnificent suit of jewels, the lustre of those sparkling gems so dazzled her sight, that the tears started in her eyes, the colour fled from her cheeks, and she hurried out of the room in evident perturbation of spirit.
Upon entering her bedchamber she discovered on her toilette a pacquet from her beloved Parthenissa; nothing was ever so seasonable; she snatched it up with eagerness, hastily broke it open, kissed it, and began to read. This valuable manuscript was rather of the longest; it set out with a great deal of ingenious ridicule at the expence of the fond couple on the point of marriage; then digressed into an animated description of the more refined enjoyments of female friendship, and concluded as follows:
After all I have been saying, how shall I gain credit with Melissa, and what will she think of her friend, when I tell her, that I have at last met with one of the male sex, who is not absolutely disagreeable! perhaps I might even add, that Count Ranceval is so amiable a man, that were I possessed of Melissa's charms—but whither am I running? He is rich, generous, and of noble rank.—And what are these but feathers, you will say?—True, yet such feathers have their weight in the world's scale.—Well, but Melissa is above the world.—No matter; still it is a galling thing to yield precedence to a chit like Maria: What, tho' nature has endowed you with pre-eminence of talents, tho' your soul moves in a superior sphere to her's, still you know respect will follow rank; but Countess Ranceval would set all to rights, and keep your natural superiority unquestioned—So now the mischief's out; you have my heart upon my paper.
You will wonder what should bring a noble stranger into so obscure a corner of the world as ours: Health, my dear, is the Count's pretence: He may give Melissa probably a better reason, but this is the oftensible one; and certainly he is of a slim and delicate habit; he seems to be all soul and sentiment; nothing earthy or corporeal about him: A compleat master of the English language, and well versed in our English authors, particularly the dramatic ones, of whose works he is passionately fond. If our Dorsetshire downs and gentle exercise restore his health, he is soon to leave us, unless Melissa's company should detain him, for his father, the old Count, writes pressing letters for him to return to Strasbourg, of which city he is a native, and of the first family in it. He lodges in our house with my uncle with one valet-de-chambre only, having left his servants in town, as our family could not receive his suite.
He is impatient to be known to you, and I suppose you think I have said all the fine things in the world to make him so; not I, believe me; on the contrary I have not spared for abuse, whenever you was talked of, for I have let him fully into your character; I have fairly warned him what he is to look for, if he presumes to make love to you; for that you are the most inexorable, exceptious, determined spinster in England. Now as I know you love a little contradiction at your heart, you have a fair opportunity to come hither without delay and disprove all I have been saying of you: But if you had rather be the bride-maid to Lady L. than the bride of Count Ranceval, stay where you are, and enjoy the elegant pastime of throwing the stocking and drawing plumb-cake through the wedding-ring.
Farewell.
Your's ever, PARTHENISSA.
If the gentle spirits of Melissa were somewhat fluttered by what had passed before she took up this letter from her friend, they were considerably more so, when she laid it down: After pondering for a time in deep meditation on its contents, she started up, took several turns in her chamber, sate down again, then adjusted her dress, then ran to the glass, looked at herself, put her cap in order, and at last rang the bell with great violence for her servant; her first resolution had been to order her chaise instantly to be made ready and return home; these were the natural dictates of friendship; but upon her woman's entering the room a second thought struck her and alarmed her delicacy, lest Parthenissa should impute her immediate compliance to any other, than the pure motives of affection and good-nature: This thought exceedingly embarrassed her; however after several contradictory resolutions, she finally directed her servant to order the equipage and put things in train for her departure without delay.
The bustle, which this sudden order of Melissa occasioned in the family, soon brought Maria into her chamber, who with much anxiety enquired into the cause of her hasty departure; Melissa having again fallen into a profound reverie gave no answer to this enquiry; upon which Maria repeated it, adding that she hoped her mother was well and that the letter brought no bad news from home.—
"My mother is well and the letter brings no bad news from home,"
answered Melissa.—
"Then I hope, sister,"
says Maria,
"nothing has happened here to give you any offence."
—Melissa looked her steadily in the face, and after some time relaxed her features into that sort of smile, which conscious superiority sometimes deigns to bestow upon importunate insignificance. Maria, in whose composition the inflammable particles did not predominate, answered this smile of insult no otherwise than by a blush of sensibility, and with a faultering voice said—
"If it is I, who am in the fault, sister, I am heartily sorry for it, and entreat you to believe that nothing can be further from my intentions, than to give you just cause of offence at any time."
—
"Lord, child,"
replied Melissa with infinite composure,
"how vanity has turned thy poor head upside down: I dare say you think it mighty pretty to practise the airs of a great lady and to be gracious to your inferiors; but have the goodness to stay till I am your inferior; perhaps that may never be the case; perhaps—but I shall say no more upon the subject; it is not your childish triumph in displaying a parcel of baubles, that can move me; no—you might recollect methinks that those diamonds had been mine, if I would have taken them with the incumbrance appertaining to them—but I look higher, be assured, so I wish your ladyship a good morning, for I see my chaise is waiting."
—Having thus said, the accomplished Melissa without staying for an answer, flounced out of the room, took a hasty leave of her aunt below stairs, and, throwing herself into her chaise, drove from the door without further ceremony.
No XXXII.
THE amiable Melissa having performed the duties of a sister in the manner above related, eagerly flew to enjoy the delights of a friend, and upon her return home immediately betook herself to her beloved Parthenissa. It so happened that she found that young lady
tête-à-tête
with Count Ranceval; Melissa, upon discovering a stranger with her friend, started back, blushed and hastily exclaimed—
"Bless me! Parthenissa, I thought you had been alone."
She was now retiring, when Parthenissa by gentle compulsion obliged her to return: The conversation soon grew interesting, in the course of which many fine things were said by the Count, of which nothing was original but the application, for they were mostly to be found in the prompter's library. Whilst Melissa was amusing her friend with an account of what had passed at her aunt's, the Count sate for some time silent with his eyes fixt upon her, and drawing up a deep sigh, that seemed to throw a delicate frame into great convulsion, exclaimed—
"My God!"
—Upon this explosion of the soul, Melissa, tho' in the midst of a narrative, in which she had not neglected doing justice to her own sweetness of temper and sisterly affection, stopt short, and, casting a look of infinite sensibility on the sighing Count, eagerly asked if he was well.—The Count, instead of answering her question, turned himself to Parthenissa, and in the most moving tone of voice said—
"You told me she was fair—
True she is fair; oh! how divinely fair!
But still the lovely maid improves her charms
With inward greatness, unaffected wisdom,
And sanctity of manners.—
Here
Cato's soul
stood in his way, and stopt the further progress of his speech.
Whilst this was passing, his valet entered the room, and delivered a pacquet into his hands, bowing very devoutly and saying—
"My Lord Count, a courier is arrived from Strasbourg, who brings you letters from his excellency your father."
—The Count snatcht them from his hand with extacy, and ordered a liberal reward to the courier on the spot. Melissa now rose from her seat and would have retired, but he implored her to stay, if it were only to gratify her benevolence in an occasion of felicitating him, should he be so happy as to find his honoured parent in good health. He now opened the letter, throwing the
envelope
carelessly on the table; Parthenissa took it up, and examining the seal, bade Melissa take notice of the coat of arms, which indeed was most splendidly engraven with trophies, mantle, and every proper badge of high nobility; whilst Count Ranceval was reading, he threw aside some inclosed papers, one of which fell upon the floor; Parthenissa stooped and took it up; the Count, whose attention had been drawn off by the letter he was perusing, was exceedingly shocked in point of politeness, when that young lady presented it to him, and with many apologies for his inattention begged she would accept the paper she had had the trouble of taking up, declaring in the most peremptory manner that he could never forgive himself upon any other terms: Parthenissa opened the paper, and looking at it, exclaimed—
"Heavens! Count Ranceval, what do you mean? It is a bill for a thousand pounds."
—
"I am sorry for it, Madam,"
said the generous Count,
"I wish it had been one of the others, to have been more worthy your acceptance; but I hope you will make no difficulty of receiving such a trifle at my hands; there is but one good thing in the world, which I abound in, and that is the only one you have not; therefore I must insist upon your accepting what I can so easily spare, and can never more worthily employ."
—The Count now rose from his seat, and in the most graceful manner imaginable forced the paper into Parthenissa's hands, holding them both fast closed within his own: A struggle now ensued between the generosity of one party and the modesty of the other, which was so obstinately maintained on each side, that it was impossible to foresee which would prevail, when the Count, recollecting himself on the sudden, struck upon a new expedient for overcoming this amiable young lady's delicacy, by delivering the paper to Melissa, and beseeching her to stand his advocate on the occasion.—
"From you, divine Melissa,"
says the generous foreigner,
"she will not refuse this trifle in dispute between us: To whom should I refer my cause, but to that angelic being, to whom I have surrendered my heart, and at whose feet I dedicate my life, fortune, happiness and all things valuable in this world with a devotion that no suppliant ever felt before?"
—As he was uttering these words, he threw himself on his knees, snatcht the hand of Melissa, pressed it eagerly to his lips, and smothered it with ardent kisses; then applying his handkerchief to his eyes, dropped his head upon Melissa's knee, and in a trembling voice cried out—
"Speak, loveliest of thy sex, pronounce my fate, determine me for life or death; for, by the power that made me, I will not survive the sentence of despair."
—
"Oh generous youth! oh noble Count!"
replied the amiable Melissa,
"you confound me; you distress me: What must I reply?"
—
"Bless me with hope; encourage me to live; or let me fall at once,"
said the enamoured youth.—Melissa paused; the tears started in her eyes; her heart was softened, and her tongue refused to utter the fatal sentence of death; she was silent.—In this awful moment of suspence, the lovely Parthenissa, whose gentle heart overflowed with gratitude to her benefactor, dropt on her knee also, and, clasping Melissa round the waist, with tears beseeched her for the love of Heaven to save a noble youth, who doated on her to distraction.—
"Think of his virtues, think of his affection,"
said the beauteous pleader;
"Can that soft heart, so full of pity, suffer him to die? Does not such generosity deserve to live? Am I not bound to speak in his behalf? Where can Melissa find a man so worthy of her choice? Shall the insipid Maria start into nobility, and move in a superior sphere, whilst her accomplished sister lives in humble solitude beneath her? No, no, the world demands Melissa.—Shall Maria glitter in the circles of the great, shall she blaze with diamonds, whilst my lovely friend—? But why do I talk this language to Melissa, whose soul looks down upon these vanities with just contempt? There are nobler motives, there are worthier reasons, that plead the cause of love on this occasion. Rise, Count Ranceval, this moment rise, receive a blessing to your arms, embrace your happiness; she yields! she's your's! I see that she consents."
—Obedient to the word, the enraptured lover rose, and throwing his arms round the unresisting fair one, clasped her to his heart, and whilst he held her thus in close embrace, exclaimed—
"Oh paradise of sweets! Oh soul of bliss! Oh heavenly, charming maid! and art thou mine? Speak to me, lovely creature! art thou mine?"
—
"For ever!"
answered the blushing Melissa, and dropt her head upon his neck.—
"Hear it, earth, sea and heaven! Hear it, sun, moon and stars!"
cried the enraptured lover,
Hear it, ye days and nights, and all ye hours;
That fly away with down upon your feet,
As if your business were to count my passion—
I'll love thee all the day, and every day,
And every day shall be but as the first,
So eager am I still to love thee more.
This rhapsody was seconded by another embrace more ardent than the former: Parthenissa then took her turn, and saluting her friend, cried out—
"Joy to you, my dearest Countess; all joy befall you both."
—
"Now,"
says Count Ranceval,
"my beloved Melissa has a right in every thing I possess, and her friend will no longer oppose the tender of that trifling sum; it is an earnest, that seals our engagement; the form, that is to follow, cannot make us one more firmly, than honour now unites us; and considering you now already as the daughter-in-law of this noble father, I must beg leave to shew you what his letter further contains."
—He then produced bills of exchange, which the old Count had remitted for very considerable sums.—
"The purpose of this remittance,"
says he,
"is to purchase a set of jewels in addition to the family stock of a newer fashion with a recommendation to bestow them upon some English woman, if I should be happy enough to engage the affection of such an one in this kingdom, and behold how the description of my father's wish tallies with the adorable person, who has now honoured me with her hand!"
—He then read the following paragraph from his father's letter, translating it as he went on—
If you should chuse a wife in England (which I know it is your wish to do) I charge you to be as attentive to the charms of her mind, as to those of her person: Let her temper be sweet, her manners elegant, her nature modest and her wit brilliant but not satyrical; above all things chuse no woman who has not a sensibility of soul, in which the delicacy of the sex consists. If you are fortunate enough to match with such an one, bring your spouse to Strasbourg, and I will jointure her in my rich barony of Lavasques; in the mean time I remit you the inclosed bills for five thousand pounds sterling, to lay out in such jewels and bijouterie, as befits a person of your rank and fortune to bestow upon the lady of your heart in a country where those things are in perfection. As for the lady's fortune, I make no stipulations on that score; but it is an indispensable condition, that she be a woman well-born, thoroughly accomplished, and above all of the Protestant communion, according to the religious principles of our noble house.
When the Count had read this paragraph, turning to Melissa, he said—
"Behold the full completion of my father's model in this lovely person!"
The union of this happy couple being thus decided upon, no time was to be lost in carrying it into effect, for the Count was hastening homewards, and Melissa had no objection to be beforehand with her sister: Of her mother there was no doubt to be had, or, if there was, her fortune was in her own power, and she of full age to chuse for herself. Secrecy however was resolved upon for various reasons, and the joy of surprizing Maria was not amongst the least. The uncle of Parthenissa, who was an attorney, was instructed to make a short deed, referring it to the old Count at Strasbourg to compleat Melissa's settlement, when she arrived at that city; this worthy gentleman was accordingly let into the secret, and at the same time undertook to get the licence and to prepare the parson of Melissa's parish for the ceremony. The adjusting so many particulars drew the business into such length, that the evening was now far spent, and as Melissa was in the habit of sharing occasionally the bed of her beloved friend, she dispatched a messenger to her mother, signifying that she should sleep at Parthenissa's that night.
When this matter was settled, Parthenissa quitted the room to give her orders for supper, and the happy lovers were left to themselves for no inconsiderable time. The enamoured Count lost not a moment of this precious interval, and with the help of Dryden, Otway, and Rowe kept up his rhapsodies with great spirit: Now it was that love, which Melissa had so long kept at distance, took full revenge, and, like a griping creditor, exacted his arrears with ample interest from his vanquished debtor. When Parthenissa returned she strove to make her presence as little interruption as possible to these tender endearments, by rallying Melissa on her prudery, and frequently reminding her, that contracted lovers were in effect man and wife; in short, nothing could be more considerate and accommodating than this amiable friend.
An elegant but small repast was now served, at which no domestic was admitted; the Count was in the happiest flow of spirits; Melissa's heart could not resist the festivity of the moment, and all was love and gaiety, till night was far spent and the hour reminded them of separating. Parthenissa again retired to prepare her chamber, and Melissa was again left with her lover. How it came to pass that Parthenissa omitted so necessary a point of ceremony, as that of informing Melissa when her chamber was ready, I cannot pretend to account, but so it was, and that young lady, with a negligence, which friendship is sometimes apt to contract, retired to her repose, and never thought more of poor Melissa, who was left in a situation very new to her, to say no worse of it, but who had sweetness of temper nevertheless to let her friend off with a very gentle reproof, when after a long time past in expectation of her coming, she was at length obliged to submit to the impropriety of suffering Count Ranceval to conduct her to her bed-chamber door.
The next day produced the licence and Melissa was, or appeared to be, as impatient to conclude the ceremony as Count Ranceval himself. This is to be imputed to the timid sensibility of her nature, which rather wished to precipitate an awful act, than to remain in terror and suspense. Awful as it was to Melissa, it was auspicious to the happy Count, for it put him in possession of his amiable bride. The mother was let into the secret and with joy consented to give Melissa away, and receive Countess Ranceval in return. The matter passed in secret as to the neighbourhood, and Parthenissa's uncle, to accommodate the parties, sate up all night to compleat the deed, which gave the Count possession of the lady's fortune, and referred her for a settlement to be made at Strasbourg in the barony of Lavasques.
A very happy company were now assembled at dinner, consisting of the bride and bridegroom, Parthenissa, her uncle and the old lady, when a coach and six drove to the door, and, as if fortune had determined to compleat the domestic felicity of this family in the same moment, Maria, who was now Lady L—, followed by her aunt and his lordship, ran into the room, and falling on her knee, asked blessing of her mother, whilst Lord L— presented himself as her son-in-law, having driven from the church door to her house to pay his duty on this occasion, meaning to return directly, for which purpose the equipage was ordered to wait.
Whilst Maria approached to embrace Melissa and to present to her a very fine bridal favour, embroidered with pearls, Count Ranceval whispered his lovely bride, that he must hastily retire; being suddenly seized with a violent attack of the tooth-ach; being a perfect man of fashion, he contrived to retire without disturbing the company, and putting up his handkerchief to his face to prevent the cold air affecting the part in pain, ran up to his lady's bed-chamber, whilst Parthenissa and her uncle very considerately retired from a family party, in which they were no longer interested.
Melissa received the bridal favour from Maria with a condescending inclination of her body, without rising from her seat.—
"You must permit me, sister,"
says she,
"to transfer your present to the noble personage, who has just left the room; for having now the honour and happiness to share the name and title of Count Ranceval, I have no longer any separate property; neither can I with any becoming decorum as Countess Ranceval and a bride myself, wear the pretty bauble you have given me, and which I can assure you I will return with interest, as soon as I go to London in my way to Strasbourg, where the Count's immense possessions principally lie."
"Good heavens!"
exclaimed Maria,
"how delighted am I to hear you have married a man of such rank and fortune! What a blessing to my mother, to me, to my lord!"
—So saying, she threw her arms round her neck and embraced her, she next embraced her mother, and turning to Lord L—, said—
"My lord, you will congratulate the Countess."
—
"I hope so,"
replied Lord L—,
"every thing that contributes to the happiness of this house will be matter of congratulation for me; but let me ask where Count Ranceval is; I shall be proud to pay my compliments to him, and by the glimpse I had of his person think I have had the honour of seeing him before."
—
"Very likely,"
answered Melissa,
"the Count has been some time in London."
—
"I think so,"
said Lord L—,
"but I am impatient to make my bow to him."
—
"I hope he will soon come down,"
replied Melissa,
"but he is suddenly seized with a dreadful tooth-ach, and gone up stairs in great pain."
—
"Alas, poor Count,"
said Lord L—,
"'tis a horrid agony, and what I am very subject to myself, but I have a nostrum in my pocket which is very safe, and never fails to give ease; permit me, dear sister, to walk up stairs with you and relieve the Count from his distress."
So saying, he followed Melissa up stairs, and was accompanied by the whole party. Upon their entering the chamber, Count Ranceval made a slight bow to the company, and again put up his handkerchief to his face: As soon as Lord L— approached him, he said—
"I believe I can soon cure this gentleman."
—Whereupon, snatching the handkerchief from his cheek, with one kick, pretty forcibly bestowed upon the seat of dishonour, he laid the puisny Count sprawling on the floor. The ladies with one consent gave a shriek, that brought the whole family to the door, Melissa ran with agony to the fallen hero, who hid his face between his hands, whilst Lord L— cried out—
"Take no pity on him, Madam, for the rascal was my footman."
—This produced a second scream from Melissa, who, turning to Lord L—, with a look of horror, exclaimed—
"What do I hear? Count Ranceval a footman! What then am I?"
—By this time the Count had recollected himself sufficiently to make reply—
"My lawful wife; and as such I demand you: let me see who will venture to oppose it."
—This menace would have been followed with a second chastisement from my lord, had not Maria interposed, and taking her sister tenderly by the hand, with a look of pity and benevolence, asked her if she was actually married.—
"Irrecoverably,"
said Melissa, and burst into tears.—
"Yes, yes,"
resumed the impostor,
"I believe all things are pretty safe in that quarter; I have not taken my measures by halves."
—
"Rascal! villain!"
exclaimed my lord, and was again with difficulty held back by his lady from laying hands on him.—
"Have patience, I conjure you,"
said Maria,
"if it be so, it is past redemption; leave me with my sister, take my poor mother out of the room, and if this gentleman will give me leave to converse a few minutes with my sister—"
"Gentleman!"
said Lord L—, and immediately taking him by the collar, dragged him out of the chamber, followed by the mother and the aunt. A scene now ensued between the sisters, in which as I feel my pen unable to render justice to the divine benevolence of Maria, I will charitably drop the curtain over the fall of pride. There was no need for any negotiation with the Count, for he and his accomplice Parthenissa, with the lawyer her uncle, set off for London with their credentials to take possession of Melissa's fortune in the funds, which the lawyer had but too effectually secured, having in a pretended counterpart of the deed he read to Melissa and her mother, inserted the real name of the impostor. Melissa has as yet had no further trouble from her husband, and lives in retirement in a small house belonging to Lord L—, under his protection: She experiences daily instances of the bounty of Maria, and here, if envy (which yet rankles at her heart) would permit her, reflection might teach her
how superior virtue shines in its natural simplicity, and how contemptible pride appears, though disguised under the mask of false delicacy and affected refinement.
No XXXIII.
ALTHOUGH the subject of
Witchcraft
has been treated seriously as well as ludicrously in so full a manner, as to anticipate in some measure what can be now offered to the reader's curiosity, yet I am tempted to add something on this topic, which I shall endeavour to put together in such shape and method, as may perhaps throw fresh light upon a subject that ignorance and superstition have in all past ages of the world conspired to keep in darkness and obscurity.
The reader will recollect so much said of sorcerers and daemons both in the old and new parts of the sacred writings, that I need not now recapitulate the instances, but take them as they occur in course of my discussion.
Theologicians, who have treated the subject seriously and logically, have defined magic to be
An art or faculty, which, by evil compact with daemons, performs certain things wonderful in appearance and above the ordinary comprehension of mankind.
—According to this definition we are to look for the origin of this art to the author of all evil, the devil: Heathen writers have ascribed the invention of magic to Mercury: Some of the early Christians, who have wrote on the subject, speak of Zabulus as the first magician, but this is only another name for the devil, and is so used by St. Cyprian: Some give the invention to Barnabas a magician of Cyprus, but who this Barnabas was, and in what time he lived, they have not shewn; though they have taken pains to prove he was not St. Barnabas the coadjutor of the apostle Paul: Some of the Spanish writers maintain that magic was struck out in Arabia, and that a certain ancient volume of great antiquity was brought from thence by the Moors into Spain, full of spells and incantations, and by them and the Jews bequeathed to their posterity, who performed many wonderful things by its aid, till it was finally discovered and burned by the Inquisition.
These are some amongst many of the accounts, which pious men in times of superstition have offered to the world; the defenders of the art on the contrary derive its doctrines from the angel, who accompanied Tobit, and revealed them to him on the way, and they contend that these doctrines are preserved in certain books written by Honorius, Abbertus Magnus, Cyprian, Paul, Enoch and others. Tostatus thinks that Jezebel, who inchanted Ahab with charms and filtres, was the first, who practised sorcery; that from her time the Samaritans were so addicted to sorcery, that a Samaritan and a sorcerer became one and the same term; which opinion he is confirmed in by that passage in scripture, where the Pharisees accuse Christ of being
a Samaritan, and having a devil
; a charge, says he, implied in the very first position of his being a Samaritan: He admits jointly with St. Austin, that Pythonissa, or the Witch of Endor, actually raised the spirit of Samuel, not by magic incantations, but by express permission of God, for the punishment of Saul's impiety, and to provoke him to immediate repentance by the denunciation of his impending fate; whilst other authorities in the church of early date maintain that it was not the spirit of Samuel, but a daemon that appeared in his likeness: He admits also, that the rods of the Egyptian sorcerers were like that of Moses turned into serpents by the art and contrivance of the devil; in like manner the said magicians turned the rivers into blood and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt; but though they kept pace with Moses in producing these plagues, their power, he observes, did not reach, as his did, to the subsequent extirpation of them.
As to Simon the magician, whom Philip converted in Samaria, wonderful things are said of him by the fathers of the Christian church; this man, Justin Martyr informs us, was born in the city of Gitta in Samaria, travelled to Rome in the time of Claudius, and by the aid of the devil performed such astonishing feats, as caused him to be believed and worshipped as a god, the Romans erecting a statue to him on the banks of the Tiber between the bridges, with this inscription,
Simoni Deo Sancto.
The sacred historians record no particulars of Simon's sorceries; but if the reader has curiosity to consult
lib.
2.
recognition: & lib.
6.
constit. Apost. in Clem. Rom.
he will find many strange stories of this sorcerer, viz. That he created a man out of the air; that he had the power of being invisible; that he could render marble as penetrable as clay; animate statues; resist the force of fire; present himself with two faces, like Janus; metamorphose himself into a sheep or a goat; fly through the air at pleasure; create vast sums of gold in a moment and upon a wish; take a scythe in his hand and mow a field of standing corn almost at a stroke, and bring the dead, unjustly murdered, into life: He adds that as a famous courtesan named Selene was looking out of a certain castle, and a great croud had collected to gaze at her, he caused her first to appear, and afterwards to fall down from every window at one and the same time.
Anastasius Nicenus's account agrees in many particulars with the above, and adds, that Simon was frequently preceded by spectres, which he said were the spirits of certain persons deceased. I shall make no further remark upon these accounts, except in the way of caution to readers of a certain description, to keep in mind that the scriptural history says only—
That Simon used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one.
The evidences of holy writ are simple and in general terms, but the accounts of the fathers of the church go much beyond them, and the superstition of the dark ages was so extravagant and unbounded, that there is no end to the tales invented, or inserted in the Roman legends.
Though it appears from the scriptural account that Simon was converted by Philip, the arts he had imparted to his scholars did not cease in the world, but were continued by Menander, one of his said scholars, and a Samaritan also, who practised sorceries and went to Antioch, where he deluded many people: Irenaeus relates that Marcus, another of Simon's scholars, was a very powerful magician and drew many followers; that Anaxilaus pretended to cure madness by the same art, turned white wine into red, and prophecied by the help of a familiar; and that Carpocrates and his pupils practised magical incantations and love-charms, and had absolute power over men's minds by the force of superstition. The charge of sorcery became in after times so strong a weapon in the hands of the church of Rome, that they employed it against all in their turns, who separated themselves from the established communion. When Priscillian carried the heresy of the Gnosties into Spain he was twice brought to trial and convicted of sorcery, which Severus Sulpitius in his epistle to Ctesiphon says he confessed to have learned of Marcus the Egyptian abovementioned; this Priscillian was a great adept in Zoroastrian magic, and though a magician was promoted to the episcopacy. The same Severus in his life of Saint Martin relates that there was a young man in Spain, who by false miracles imposed upon the people to believe he was the prophet Elias, afterwards he feigned himself to be Christ, and drew Rufus, though a bishop, to give credit to his blasphemous imposition, and to pay him worship accordingly. Paul the deacon also relates that there were three other Pseudo-Christs in France, one of which was a Briton, whom Gregory of Tours calls Eun (probably Evan) of whom Robert the Chronologer and William of Newberry record many miracles; all these Paul tells us were heretics.
In the pontificate of Innocent VI. there was one Gonsalvo a Spaniard in the diocese of Concha, who wrote a book, which he intitled
Virginalem,
with a daemon visibly standing at his elbow, and dictating to him as he copied it from his mouth; in which book he announced himself to be Christ, the immortal saviour of the world; this man was put to death as a heretic and blasphemer. Sergius, the author of the Armenian heresy, was charged with keeping a daemon in the shape of a dog constantly attending upon him; and Berengarius, chief of the Sacramentarian heresy, was in like manner accused of being a magician: Many more instances might be adduced, but Tertullian takes a shorter course, and fairly pronounces that all heretics were magicians, or had commerce with magicians.
The Infidels escaped no better from this charge than the Heretics; for the Moors who brought many arts and inventions into Spain, of which the natives were in utter ignorance, universally fell under the same accusation, and Martin Delrius the Jesuit, who taught theology in Salamanca at the close of the sixteenth century, says he was shewn the place where a great cave had been stopped up in that city by order of Queen Isabella, which the Moors had used for the purposes of necromancy; that the Hussites in Bohemia and the followers of the arch-heretic Luther in Germany confounded men's senses by the power of magic and the assistance of the devil, to whom they had devoted themselves; that some of them voluntarily recanted and confessed their evil practices, and others, being seized and examined at the tribunal of Treves, made like public confession, at which time, he adds—
"That terrible and tartarean prop of Lutheranism, Albert of Brandeburgh, himself a notorious magician, was in the act of laying waste that very country with fire and sword."
—
Tetrum illud et tartareum Lutheranismi fulcrum, ipse quoque magicae nomine famosus, Albertus Brandeburgicus, provinciam illam flammâ ferro
que
praedabundus vastabat.
—He adds, that wherever the heresy of Calvin went, whether to England, France or Holland, the black and diabolic arts of necromancy kept pace with it. That the daemons take their abode in heretics as naturally as they did in heathen idols, or in the herd of swine, when commanded; nay Hieronymus declares that they got into worse quarters by the exchange; Cassian, (
Collat.
7.
cap.
31.) an ancient writer of great gravity, affirms that he had himself interrogated a daemon, who confessed to him that he had inspired Arius and Eunomius with the first ideas of their sacrilegious tenets: That it is demonstrable by reason, that all heretics must in the end be either atheists or sorcerers; because heresy can only proceed from the passion of pride and self-sufficiency, which lead to atheism; or from curiosity and love of novelty, which incline the mind to the study of magical arts: That sorcery follows heresy, as the plague follows famine; for heresy is nothing else but a famine, as described by the prophet Amos, chap. viii. verse 11.
Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
—Moreover heresy is a harlot, as Isaiah expresseth himself—
How is the faithful city become a harlot?
—And as harlots, when past their beauty, take up the trade of procuresses, so daemons, (as these good catholics inform us) turn old and obdurate heretics into sorcerers: Father Maldonatus sees the heretics again in the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse come out of the smoke in form of locusts upon the earth, and as Joel the prophet writes in the fourth verse of his first chapter—
That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the locust eaten; and that, which the locust hath left, hath the canker-worm eaten; and that, which the canker-worm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten.
— So in these gradations of vermin may be seen the stages of heresy, for what the heretics have left the sorcerers by the devil's aid have destroyed; and what the sorcerers have left the atheists have destroyed.
Having stated the charge, which my heretical readers will perceive is pretty general against them, I shall proceed to some facts in proof. One of the most stubborn amongst these is the case of an heretical woman in the town of Paderborn, who brought forth a male infant in a parson's gown and beaver—
palliatum et pileatum, modo ecclesiasticorum
—who from his natural antipathy to papists always reviled them wherever he met them; this Father Delrius assures us was a fact of general notoriety, and a just judgment from God on the heresy of the mother. Niderius in the chapter upon witches
in Formicario
says that an heretical young witch at Cologn, by the help of a daemon, took a handkerchief and in presence of a great company of noble spectators tore it into pieces, and immediately afterwards produced it whole and entire; this wicked jade then took up a glass, threw it against the wall, broke it into a thousand fragments, and instantly shewed it to the company as whole as at first: Niderius concludes, with just indignation against such diabolical practices, that this girl was well handled by the Fathers of the Inquisition, where her tricks could stand her in no stead; which indeed is not to be wondered at, as the devil himself would not chuse to venture before that tribunal. Bodinus in his treatise upon daemons relates that a conjurer named Triscalinus performed some tricks before Charles the ninth of France, and by the black art contrived to draw into his hand several rings from the fingers of a courtier, who stood at a distance from him, and that every body saw these rings fly through the air to the conjurer, whereupon the whole company rising up against him for the performance of such diabolical feats
(quae nec arte, nec actu humano, nec naturâ fieri poterant)
fell upon him and by force brought him to confess that he conspired with the devil, which at first this hardened sinner was very unwilling to do; Bodinus with great candour observes, that this was indeed a blot in the fame of Charles the ninth, who in all other respects was a praise-worthy monarch;
(aliàs laudato rege.)
When my readers recollect the meritorious part that Charles the ninth acted in the massacre of Paris, he will own with me that the candour of Bodinus is extraordinary in producing a story so much to the discredit of a praise-worthy prince.
There was one Zedekiah a Jew physician, who in presence of the Emperor Lodowick the pious in the year 876 swallowed a prize-fighter on horseback, horse and all,
(hoplomachum equitem devoravit)
—Nay he did more, he swallowed a cart loaded with hay, horses and driver,
(currum quoque onustum foeno cum equis et aurigâ)
—he cut off people's heads, hands and feet, which he fastened on again in the eyes of all the court, whilst the blood was running from them, and in a moment the man so maimed appeared whole and unhurt; he caused the Emperor to hear the sound of hounds in full chace with shouts of huntsmen and many other noises in the air; and in the midst of winter shewed him a garden in full bloom with flowers and fruits and birds singing in the trees; a most detestable piece of magic and very unworthy of an emperor to pass over with impunity, for he suffered the Jew doctor to escape.—As it is always right when a man deals in the marvellous to quote his authority, I beg leave to inform the incredulous reader, (if any there be) that I take these facts upon the credit of the learned Joannes Trithemius, a very serious and respectable author.—One more case in point occurs to me, which I shall state, and then release my readers from the conjurers circle, and this is the case of one Diodorus, vulgarly called Liodorus, a Sicilian conjurer, who by spells and inchantments turned men into brute animals and metamorphosed almost every thing he laid his hands on; this fellow, when the inhabitants of Catana would have persuaded him to let them hang him quietly and contentedly, as a conjurer and heretic ought, took counsel of the devil and cowardly flew away to Byzantium by the shortest passage through the air to the great disappointment of the spectators; being pursued by the officers of justice, not indeed through the air, but as justice is accustomed to travel
pede claudo,
he took a second flight, and alighting in the city of Catana was providentially caught by Leo the good bishop of that city, who throwing him into a fiery furnace, roasted this strange bird to the great edification of all beholders
(sed tandem a Leone Catanensi episcopo, divinâ virtute ex improviso captus, frequenti in mediâ urbe populo, in fornacem igneam injectus, ignis incendio consumptus est)
—This anecdote is to be found in Thomas Fazellus, (
lib.
5.
c.
2. and again
lib.
3.
deca.
1.
rerum Sicularum
) who closes his account with the following pious remark, naturally arising from his subject, and which I shall set down in his own words—
Sic divina justitia praevaluit, et qui se judicibus forte minus justo zelo motis eripuerat, e sancti viri manibus elobi non potuit.
"Thus,"
says he,
"divine justice prevailed; and he, who had snatched himself out of the hands of judges, who perhaps were actuated by a zeal not so just as it should be, could not escape from this holy person."
No XXXIV.
Quis labor hic superis cantus herbas
que
sequendi,
Spernendi
que
timor? Cujus commercia pacti
Obstrictos habuere Deos? Parere necesse est,
An juvat? Ignotâ tantum pietate merentur,
An tacitis valuere minis? Hoc juris in omnes
Est illis superos? An habent haec carmina certum
Imperiosa Deum, qui mundum cogere, quicquid
Cogitur ipse, potest?
(LUCAN. lib. vi. 491, &c.)
HAVING in my preceding paper stated some of the proofs, by which the orthodox theologicians make good their charge of sorcery against Heretics, Jews and Mahometans, and shewn from their authorities, faithfully and correctly quoted, how naturally the devil and his agents take to all those, who separate from the mother church of Rome; having also briefly deduced the history of magic from its origin and invention, and taken some notice of those passages in holy writ, where sorcerers and magicians are made mention of, I shall now proceed to a more interesting part of my subject, in which I shall lay open the arcana of the art magic, and shew what that wicked and mysterious compact is, on which it depends, and explain the nature of those diabolical engagements, which a man must enter into before he can become an adept in sorcery.
This compact or agreement, as grave and learned authors inform us, is sometimes made expressly with the great devil himself in person, corporally present before witnesses, who takes an oath of homage and allegiance from his vassal, and then endows him with the powers of magic: This was the case with a certain Arragonese nobleman, which Heisterback in his treatise upon miracles tells us he was a witness to, also of the Vidame Theophylus in the year 537, as related by Sigisbert: Sometimes it is done by memorial or address in writing, in the manner of certain Norman heretics, who wrote a petition to the Sybills, as chief of the necromancers: This petition sets forth that,
WHEREAS the parties undersigning had entered into certain articles and conditions and by solemn engagement bound themselves faithfully to perform the same, they now pray in the first place the ratification of those articles and conditions on the part of the Sybills; and that they would be pleased in conformity thereunto to order and direct their under-agents and familiars to do suit and service to the contracting parties agreeably to condition; and that when they were summoned and invoked to appear, they would be promptly forth-coming, not in their own shapes, to the annoyance and offence of the contracting parties, but sprucely and handsomely, like personable gentlemen; also that the petitioners might be discharged from the ceremony of compelling them by the drawing of a circle, or of confining themselves or their familiars within the same.
Secondly, That the Sybills would be pleased to affix some seal or signature to the convention, by which its power and efficacy with their subservient familiars might be rendered more secure and permanent.
Thirdly, That the petitioners may be exempted from all danger, which might otherwise accrue to them, from the civil authority of magistrates or the inquisitorial power of the church.
Fourthly, that all the temporal undertakings and pursuits of the petitioners in the courts and councils of princes may prosper and succeed; and that good luck may attend them in all kinds of gaming to their suitable profit and advantage.
Lastly, That their enemies of all sorts may have no power over them to do them hurt.
That these conditions being granted and performed, the petitioners on their part solemnly promise and vow perpetual fealty and allegiance to their sovereigns, the Sybills, as in the convention itself is more fully set forth; and that they will faithfully, and so long as they shall live, make a sacrifice and oblation of one human soul, every year to be offered up on the day and hour of the day, in which this convention shall be ratified and confirmed by the Sybilline powers; Provided always, That the said high and mighty powers shall fully and
bona fide
perform what is therein stipulated and agreed to on their parts in the premises.
This document is faithfully translated from Father Delrius's Latin treatise
Disquisitionum Magicarum, Lib.
2.
Quest.
4: He says that it was publicly burned at Paris together with the books of magic it refers to, and he quotes the authority of
Crespetus de odio Satanae Discursu
15. for a more particular account; but as Crespetus's book is not in my reach I can trace the story no further.
In both these cases, whether the parties contract
viva voce,
or proceed by petition, the conditions are the same and consist, as we are told, in an express renunciation of the Christian creed; the baptismal rites are reversed, and the devil, or his representative, scratches out the cross from the forehead with his nails, and re-baptizes his vassal by a name of his own devising; these are indispensable conditions: The devil also exacts some rag or remnant of his vassal's garment, as a badge of allegiance, and compels him to make the oath within a circle drawn upon the ground, (which being a figure without beginning or end is a symbol of divinity) in this circle the figure of a cross is to be traced out, on which the magician elect tramples and kicks with disdain; he then requests the devil to strike his name out of the book of life, and inscribe it in the book of death; he next promises to make monthly or quarterly sacrifices to the devil, which female magicians or witches perform by sucking out the breath of a new-born male infant; he proceeds to put some secret mark upon himself with the point of a needle, as the sign of the Beast or Antichrist, in which mark there is great potency, and in some cases, according to Irenaeus, it appears that the devil insists upon cauterizing his disciples in the upper membrane of the right ear; in others, according to Tertullian, in the forehead; this being done the magician elect vows eternal enmity against the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, the Holy Relics and Images, and forswears confession for ever; upon which the devil ratifies his part of the compact, and the magic ceremony is complete.
On these conditions the devil seldom, if ever, takes a terrific form, for fear of deterring his votaries, and oftentimes appears in great beauty and with a very winning address, as he did to Theodore Maillot, deputy governor of Lorraine, visiting him in the shape of a very pretty girl,
(lepidâ et liberali formâ puella)
and promising him a certain great lady in marriage, with whom Maillot was distractedly in love; the conditions stipulated by the devil on this visit were of a piece with the lovely form he assumed, for they consisted in injunctions only to perform all the Christian and moral duties, to observe his meagre days, to say his masses, and be regular in his confessions: These unexpected stipulations threw Maillot into so deep a melancholy, that his domestic chaplain, observing it, extorted from him a confession of all that had passed, and piously dissuaded him from any further interviews of that sort: Remigius, who relates the story in his Daemonolatria, gravely observes the judgment of heaven soon overtook him in a very extraordinary manner, for his horse fell down upon smooth ground, and Maillot broke his neck by the fall.
As to the magic powers, which the devil imparts in return for these concessions of his votaries, theologicians have different opinions, some giving more and some less credit to the miracle; but the general opinion amongst them is that they are performed by the devil and his daemons by the celerity of art and motion with which one thing is substituted for another, but that there is no new creation in the case. They do not doubt but that there are certain figures, names and characters, which have a magical power, as the nine cauldrons, the names of the four principal hinges of the world, the threetimes-seven characters of Mahometan device and many others; that there are rings and seals, which are amulets and charms, inscribed with the names of Raphael, Salomon, Zachariah, Elizeus, Constantine, The Maccabees and others; that certain signs in the Zodiac engraved upon gems have good or evil properties, for instance, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius make a man beloved; Virgo, Taurus and Capricornus make him religious; Gemini, Libra and Aquarius produce friendship; whilst Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces create falsehood: The character of Saturn gives strength; Jupiter good fortune; Mars victory; Sol riches; Venus prevents drowning, and Luna has the same virtue with Venus: The figure of an ass, engraved on a chrysolite, imparts the gift of prophecy; that of a dragon gives riches, and that of a frog gives friendship: It was the prevailing opinion in Flanders that a man born on Easter-eve had the gift of curing fevers; so had the seventh son, where no daughter interposed; whereas the gift, which the kings of England had of touching for the evil, expired upon the heresy of Henry the eighth, though William Tooker wrote books to prove that Queen Elizabeth, then on the throne, inherited this virtue with the crown; this doctrine of Tooker is strenuously controverted by Delrius the Jesuit of Salamanca, and his argument is very logical and decisive:
Miracula propria sunt ecclesiae Catholicae; sed Elizabetha est extra ecclesiam Catholicam, et nulli dantur qui sit extra ecclesiam Catholicam; ergo Elizabethae non dantur miracula.
Q. E. D. Again,
Non possunt miracula
fieri ad confirmationem falsae fidei; sed fides, quam profitetur Elizabetha, est falsa fides; ergo ad confirmationem fidei, quam profitetur Elizabetha, non possunt fieri miracula
—And who now shall
defend
our
defenders
of the faith?
It is acknowledged that sorcerers and magicians can blight the grain, destroy the fruits of the earth and make a bad harvest, which Remigius assures us is done by sprinkling certain dust in the air, which the daemon makes up and supplies them with for the purpose.—
Carmine laesa Ceres sterilem venescit in herbam;
Deficiunt laesi carmine fontis aquae;
Ilicibus glandes, cantata
que
vitibus uva
Decidit, et nullo poma movente fluunt.
OVID.
Witches can blight out corn by magic spell,
And with enchantments dry the springing well,
Make grapes and acorns fall at their command,
And strip our orchards bare without a hand.
Remigius says the daemons do not only make up this powder or dust for the witches, but are particularly indulgent to them in the article of ground-mice, with which they devour all the roots of the grass and grain; that the gad-fly is always within call, and that they have plenty of wolves at command to send into any sold or flock they think proper to destroy: The learned author doubts if the devil actually makes these wolves
de novo,
but rather thinks that he hunts them up together, and drives the country; if this sport does not succeed to his wish, he thinks it probable the daemons themselves execute the mischief in the shapes of wolves—
(verisimile videtur daemones esse, qui specie lupinâ talem pauperiem faciunt)
—He tells us that he has brought many witches to confess these things, and though he acknowledges the power of their spells for producing meats and viands, that have the appearance of a sumptuous feast, which the devil furnishes, still he gives a bad account of his cookery, for that divine providence seldom permits the meat to be good, but that it has generally some bad taste or smell, mostly wants salt, and the feast is often without bread.
Though heretics have obstinately denied the copulation of wizards with the female daemons called Succubae; and of witches with the males, or Incubi, yet the whole authority of the Catholic church with the bull of Pope Innocent VIII. expressly affirms it for a fact—
(Communis tamen haec est sententia Patrum, Theologorum et Philosophorum doctorum—et pro eâdem pugrat bulla Innocentii
VIII.
Pontificis contra maleficos).
—It is also an orthodox opinion, that children may be begotten by this diabolical commerce, and there is little doubt but that Luther was the son of an Incubus. That witches are carried through the air by certain spells is confirmed by a host of witnesses, and the operation is generally performed by smearing the body with a certain ointment, prepared by the daemons; this ointment several people have innocently made use of, particularly husbands of ladies using witchcraft, and have found themselves wafted up chimnies and through windows at a furious rate and transported sometimes an hundred miles from their own homes: Many curious instances might be enumerated, but having related so many I forbear to trespass on my reader's patience any longer.
I should be loth to have it supposed that I have selected these anecdotes and quotations for the purpose merely of casting a ridicule on the superstition of the Catholic church; I can truly declare I did not take up the subject with any such design, and hold the principle of religious animosity in as much abhorrence as any man living. When I have said this in my own defence, I think it necessary to add, that all the accounts I have turned over, which are pretty voluminous, are replete with the same or greater absurdities, than these I have produced; all the reasoning is nothing but a mass of ignorance, refined upon by subtlety, inspired by superstition, and edged with acrimony against schismatics and heretics, upon whom this terrible engine of sorcery has been turned with a spirit of persecution, that does no credit to the parties who employed it.
The fact is that the Christian church in the early ages soon discovered two important matters of faith in the sacred writings, which might be made useful weapons in her possession; I mean miracles and sorceries; the one she reserved to herself, the other she bestowed upon her enemies; and though there is every reason to conclude that both had ceased in the world, she found her own interest was concerned in prolonging their existence: The ages that succeeded to the introduction of Christianity were soon cast into the profoundest ignorance by the irruptions of the barbarous nations, and credulity naturally follows ignorance: the terrors of magic in those dark times readily took hold of superstitious minds; every thing that the dawnings of science struck out in that night of reason, every thing that reviving art invented, even the little juggling tricks and deceptions, that slight of hand performed to set the crowd agape and support a vagrant life in idleness, were charged to sorcery, and tortures were employed to force out confessions of secret dealings and compacts with the devil and his agents. Those confessions were undoubtedly made, and as full and circumstantial as the inquisitor chose to prescribe, and being published with the authority of office had their influence with mankind and were believed; nay, it is but fair to suppose that the fathers and doctors of the church themselves believed them, and were sincere in their endeavours to extirpate sorcery, thinking that they did God service.
When we read of people being thrown alive into the flames for playing a few juggling tricks, which now would not pass upon the vulgar at a country fair, and the devil himself brought in to father the performance, it is shocking to humanity and a violence to reason; but we shall cruelly err against both by ascribing all these acts to persecution, when ignorance and credulity are entitled to so great a share of them: The churchmen of those ages were not exempt from the errors and darkness of the time they lived in, and very many of them not only believed the sorceries of the heretics, but swallowed the miracles of the saints: The genius of the Catholic religion in this illuminated and liberal period is of a different complexion from what the nature of my subject has obliged me to display; of the enlarged and truly Christian principles, which now prevail amongst the professors of that system of faith, the world abounds with examples, and I am persuaded, that if the tribunal of the Inquisition was put aside, (a tribunal so directly adverse to the religion of Christ) the hateful tenet of intolerancy would soon be done away, and a spirit of meekness and mercy, more consentaneous to the principles of the present Catholics, would universally prevail.
No XXXV.
BY revising what history has delivered of the first poets of Greece we shall be able to form a very tolerable conjecture of the authors, whose works Pisistratus collected at the time he instituted his library in Athens; but before I undertake this, it is proper to remark that some authorities, ancient as well as modern, have ascribed the honour of compiling Homer's rhapsodies to Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus, and not to Pisistratus himself: I am not willing therefore to pass over the question without some explanation of it.
The ancient authorities I allude to are those of Plato in his Hipparchus, and Aelian in the second article of his eighth book: The first is a naked assertion; the second sets forth more circumstantially—
That Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus was the first, who brought Homer's poems to Athens and made the rhapsodists rehearse them in the general assembly of the Grecian states
—But this author, who is generally a faithful though a minute collector of anecdotes, expressly contradicts himself in the fourteenth article of the thirteenth book, and tells us that Pisistratus compiled the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer: Cicero in the quotation from his Orator mentioned in a preceding paper gives the credit of the work to Pisistratus; Suidas under the article of Homer says—
That various persons were at the pains of collecting and arranging these books in succeeding times, but of these Pisistratus of Athens was the first.
—Eustathius in his commentary on the Iliad concurs in the same testimony; he says—
That the grammarians who compiled the Iliad, did it, as it is said, by command of Pisistratus; that they corrected it at discretion, and that the principal of these was Aristarchus, and next to him Zenodotus.
(
Comm. ad Iliad, lib.
1.) In this latter particular the learned commentator has fallen into an error; for it is well known that the celebrated critic Aristarchus, as well as Zenodotus, lived many years after the time of Pisistratus: I shall mention only one authority more on the same side of the question, which I take to be more decisive than any of the foregoing, and this is an ancient epigrammatist, who in a distich upon a statue of Pisistratus celebrates him on this very account, and gives a very probable conjecture, that this statue was erected in commemoration of the great work of the above-mentioned compilation. (
Anthol. lib.
iv.
cap.
iv.)
From these authorities, as well as from strength of circumstance, it seems highly probable that the founder of the first public library should be studious to enrich his collection with the poems of the Iliad and Odyssey.
This important work was both extremely difficult to execute, and attended with very considerable expence in the progress of it. The rhapsodies of Homer were scattered up and down amongst the cities of Greece, which the itinerant poet had visited, and were necessarily in a very mutilated state or recorded in men's memories after an imperfect manner and by piecemeal only: In some places these inestimable reliques had been consumed by fire; and in the lapse of time it is natural to suppose they had suffered many injuries by accident, and not a few by interpolation. Solon himself is accused of having made insertions in favour of the Athenians for political purposes. Nothing but the most timely exertions could have rescued them from oblivion, and Pisistratus by restoring Homer has justly made his own name the companion of the poet's in immortality: To his ardour we are indebted for their present existence. Understanding that there were rhapsodists, who went about the several Grecian states reciting, some an hundred, some a thousand lines in detached passages of the Iliad and Odyssey, he caused public proclamation to be made of his design to collect those famous poems, offering a reward to every man, who should bring him any fragment to assist his intended compilation, and appointing proper persons to receive their respective contributions. The resort on this occasion soon became prodigious; Pisistratus however, still intent upon the work, adhered to his conditions, and let no man go away without his reward, though the same passages had been furnished ever so often by others before him: The inspectors of the work by these means had an opportunity of collating one with the other, and rejecting what appeared spurious upon collation: This was an office of great delicacy, and the ablest men of the time were selected for that purpose, with liberal allowances for their trouble; they were many in number, and when each had made his separate collection, and the rhapsodists ceased to come in, Pisistratus caused them all to assemble and produce their several copies for general review: The whole was now arranged according to the natural order of the poems, and in that order submitted to the final supervision of two persons, who were judged most competent: The poem, thus compiled and corrected according to their judgment and discretion, was fairly transcribed and the copy with great solemnity deposited in the library: Had the like care been extended to the
Margites
and the rest of Homer's poems, the world would probably have now been in possession of them also; and it is fair to conclude from the circumstance of their extinction, that both the Iliad and Odyssey would have shared the same fate, had not this event so happily taken place under the patronage of Pisistratus. Let us mark this aera therefore as the most important in the annals of literature, and let every man, who admires the genius of Homer, revere the memory of Pisistratus.
Lycurgus we know brought Homer's poems out of Asia, and dispersed them amongst his countrymen at Lacedaemon; but Lycurgus considered these poems as a collection of maxims moral and political; he knew the influence, which poetry has over rude uncivilized tempers, and the same reasons, that engaged him to employ the songs of Thales the Cretan in his first preludes towards a constitution of government, led him to adopt and import the epic poems of the Iliad and Odyssey: He saw they were of a sublime and animating cast, inspiring principles of religion, love of our country, contempt of death and every heroic virtue, that can dignify man's nature; that they manifested to Greece what misfortunes attended the disunion of her powers, and what those powers were capable of performing, when united; he wished to see an indissoluble alliance and compact of all the states of Greece for their common glory and defence, but he wished to see the state of Sparta, like the sons of Atreus, at the head of the league: In all these particulars the poems of Homer fully met his wishes and fell in with his views, and as he had made his observations on the manners and characters of the Asiatics during his travels amongst them, he persuaded himself the time might come, when the united arms of Greece would again prevail over the nations of the East, especially when the natural bravery of the Greeks was stimulated by an heroic poem so flattering to their country and so encouraging to their hopes.
Pisistratus on the other hand was actuated by no such public principles; but, though he had not a patriotic, yet he had an elegant mind, and the same love of learning, which had dictated the thought of erecting a public repository for such works of genius as were worthy to be preserved, inspired him with the ambition of being the editor of Homer's scattered remains: This never once occurred to the Spartan legislator, who valued them not as poems, but as precepts, in which light they were no less beneficial in their separated state than when complete.
The Athenian tyrant contemplated them with the eye of a critic, and perceiving they would make the sublimest and most perfect compilation the world had ever seen, he ushered them into it with all the passion of an enthusiast: As he evidently perceived they inculcated no doctrines inimical to monarchy, on the contrary that they recommended acquiescence under rule and obedience to discipline, he obliged the rhapsodists to rehearse them publicly in the ears of Greece at the great festival of the Panathenaea.
The publication of Homer's poems in this state of perfection was the cause that produced such a flow of compositions, especially in the dramatic line; for, as I before observed, it operated to the discouragement of epic writing, and few instances of any poems under that description occur after the compilation of the Iliad and Odyssey: Men of genius are not easily disposed to imitate what they despair of equalling, and the contemplation of a perfect work in any branch of composition will of course deter other adventurers from inferior attempts.
The drama was now in its dawn and had made some advances before the compilation of the Iliad and Odyssey, but it received such improvement from those poems, that it is generally asserted, and by Aristotle amongst others, to have derived its origin from Homer; in the further progress of these papers I shall fully examine how that question stands, for the present it will be my purpose to take a review of the state of literature in Greece at this remarkable period, when Pisistratus founded his library in Athens; a disquisition, which, although it will carry us into times of very remote antiquity and of doubtful history, will I hope prove not devoid of entertainment even to such of my readers, as have not habituated themselves to studies of this nature.
It is for the sake of such, and in justice to the opinion I would wish to impress of the amiable character of Pisistratus, that I subjoin to this paper some explanation of the term
Tyrant,
by which in conformity to history I have been obliged to denominate him: The word according to our construction of it conveys the most odious idea, but when it was applied to Pisistratus it was a title of royalty and not a term of reproach: In the age of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek poets of that date the word was not in use; they used no term but
Basileus,
which they applied even to the cruelest of despots, as the learned reader may be convinced of, if he will consult the Odyssey, (
Rhap. E.
84.) This is a point of criticism so well agreed upon by all philologists, that the Hymn to Mars, which some have attributed to Homer, is by internal evidence now fully convicted of being posterior to him, because the term
Tyrannus
is found in it. The word is said to be derived from the Tyrrhenians and to have come into use about the age of Archilochus, who flourished in the eighteenth Olympiad, many years subsequent to Homer and prior to Pisistratus, at which time, (viz. the age of Archilochus) Gyges, Tyrant of Lydia, was the first so intitled: For this we have the authority of Euphorion, a writer born in the cxxvi Olympiad, and librarian to Antiochus the Great, king of Syria; also of Clemens the historian, (
Strom.
1.)
No XXXVI.
I NOW propose to review the state of literature in Greece antecedent to the time when Pisistratus founded his library in Athens.
Letters, or the alphabet, were probably imported into Greece from Phoenicia: This is ascribed to the poet
Linus
; this poet, according to the fabulous taste of the times, was of divine origin, being reputed the son of Apollo by Terpsichore, according to other accounts of either Mercury, or Amphimarus, by Urania: If in a pedigree so doubtful we may chuse for ourselves, Mercury, as inventor of the lyre, seems to have a preferable claim to Amphimarus or Apollo, for Linus is said to have been the father of lyric poetry; he is also recorded as the instructor of Hercules in letters, but if the elder Orpheus was also his disciple, he must have been of too early an age to have been contemporary with Hercules, for Orpheus is placed eleven ages before the siege of Troy. Hercules may have been instructed by the Theban Linus, who was considerably junior to this of Chalcedon; Linus of Thebes was the son of the poet Eumolpus, and imparted to Greece the knowledge of the globes; he also before the time of Hesiod composed a poem, in which he gives the genealogy of the deities; all we know respecting it is that it differs in some particulars from Hesiod's Theogony: He paid dearly for the honour of being Hercules's preceptor, for that deified hero put Linus to death; though he gave the genealogy of the heathen gods, he is supposed to have taught a sublimer doctrine of the Unity of the Supreme Being.
Of the name of
Orpheus
grammarians reckon no fewer than five epic poets; their histories are involved in fable, and their distinctions uncertain and obscure. The Thracian Orpheus, who is the elder of the name, is said to have been the disciple of Linus and to have lived before the Trojan war eleven ages: He was a prophet as well as a poet, and instituted many ceremonies in the Pagan theology; he delivered precepts in verse relative to the modes of initiation: The mysterious rites of Ceres and Bacchus are supposed to have originated with him, but as it is pretty clear that these rites were Egyptian, they might be introduced, but not invented, by Orpheus.
The second Orpheus was sirnamed Ciconaeus or Arcas, and was also of Thracian extraction; he is said to have flourished two generations before the siege of Troy; he also was an heroic poet and wrote fables and hymns addressed to the deities. Orpheus Odrysius and Orpheus Camarinaeus were epic poets, but he, who was sirnamed Crotoniates, was contemporary with Pisistratus and lived in great favour and familiarity at the Athenian court; he is said to have written the Argonautics, the hymns and the poems
de Lapidibus
now in our hands.
The antients, in the true spirit of fable, ascribed miraculous powers to the harmony of Orpheus's lyre, and almost all the Roman poets have echoed his praises in the same fanciful strain. Ovid gives us a list of forest trees that danced to his lyre, as long as a gardener's calendar: (
Metam. fab.
2.
lib.
10.) Seneca in his
Hercules Furens
gives him power over woods, rivers, rocks, wild beasts and infernal spirits, (
Herc. Fur.
569.) Horace adds to these the winds, and Manilius places his lyre amongst the constellations, having enumerated all its supernatural properties in the following short but comprehensive and nervous description,
At lyra diductis per coelum cornibus inter
Sidera conspicitur, quâ quondam ceperat Orpheus
Omne quod attigerat cantu; Manes
que
per ipsos
Fecit iter, domuit
que
infernas carmine leges.
Huic similis honos, similis
que
potentia causae:
Tunc silvas et saxa trahens, nunc sidera ducit,
Et rapit immensum mundi revolubilis orbem.
MANIL.
Of the name of
Musaeus
there were also several poets; the elder, or Athenian Musaeus, son of Antiphemus, was the scholar of Orpheus. The poetry of these antient bards was chiefly addressed to the services of religion; their hymns were chaunted as parts of divine worship, and the power of divination was ascribed to them, as the natural tribute of a barbarous multitude to men of superior and enlightened talents: The knowledge of simples and their use in healing diseases or wounds was amongst the arts, by which these early benefactors to mankind attracted the reverence of the vulgar, and Musaeus is said to have composed a poem on the cure of diseases: This Musaeus was the father of Eumolpus, and it will be found by them, who have curiosity to search into the records of these antient bards, that the great prerogatives of prophet and poet descended regularly through certain families after the manner of the Eastern and Jewish casts.
Eumolpus,
who was of this family, besides the hymns and verses he composed upon the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, possessed the art of divination by inspection of the human palm; an art of Egyptian origin.
Thamyris,
the son of Philammon, is reckoned amongst the epic poets, who flourished before the time of Homer: He composed a long poem, consisting of nearly three thousand lines, intitled The Theology; but as this could not be denominated an epic poem, and as no record remains of any composition of his in that branch of poetry, it is a great doubt whether it is not owing to the fictions of the early grammarians, who were industrious to detract from the originality of Homer's epic, that Thamyris and so many others are enumerated under that description of poets antecedent to Homer; for some accounts make Thamyris the eighth epic poet prior to Homer, an authority to which no credit seems due.
Marsyas
and
Olympus
are supposed to have lived in the time of the Argonautic expedition, but they, as well as
Amphion,
are more celebrated for their musical talents and inventions, than for their skill in poetry: Of
Demodocus, Phemius
and
Asbolus
the Centaur, supposed to have been poets antecedent to Homer, I find no particulars.
The exact time, in which
Hesiod
lived, as referring to the age of Homer, remains a point of controversy in the chronology of the poets: They, who give credit to the verses he is by some supposed to have written in competition with Homer, must place him as his contemporary; the best authorities fix him in a period somewhat antecedent to Homer's; Aulus Gellius inclines to the opinion of Hesiod being posterior to Homer, but Aristophanes in his comedy of The Frogs places Homer in order of time after Hesiod: He introduces the poet Aeschylus reciting the praises of Orpheus in the first place, secondly of Musaeus, thirdly of Hesiod, and lastly of Homer, which order of placing them the old scholiast interprets to apply to the times, in which they lived; the passage is as follows:
The holy rites of worship Orpheus taught,
And warned me to abstain from human blood:
In divination and the healing arts
Musaeus was my master: Hesiod gave
The useful lesson how to till the earth,
And mark'd the seasons when to sow the grain,
And when to reap; but Homer, bard divine!
Gods, to what heighth he soars, whilst he arrays
The warrior bright in arms, directs the fight,
And with heroic virtue fires the soul!
(ARISTOPH. FROGS.)
The bards of the Orphean family and others of high antiquity employed their talents in composing hymns and offices of devotion; and it is natural that such should be the first use and application of the powers of poetry; the reason is good on both sides why there should in all times have subsisted an alliance between poetry and prayer. Metre aids and is adapted to the memory; it accords to music and is the vehicle of enthusiasm; it makes the moral doctrines of religion more sublime, and the mysterious ones more profound; it can render truth more awful and superstition more imposing: If the eastern nations have set apart a language for their priests and dedicated it as sacred to the purposes of prayer, we may well believe that the antient heathen bards, who were chiefly Asiatic Greeks, performed religious rites and ceremonies in metre, with accompaniments of music, to which they were devoted in the extreme: The hymns of David and the patriarchal prophecies were in metre, and speak for themselves; we have the same authority for knowing that the Chaldean worship was accompanied with music; the fact does not need illustration; the divinations of Musaeus and the hymns of Orpheus were of the same character; initiations were performed, oracles were delivered and even laws promulgated in verse: The influence of poetry over the human heart is coeval with it, not limited by time or country, but universal to the world in all its parts and all its periods; it is the language of rapture, springs with invention and flows with devotion; the enthusiast in love or glory breaks forth into it spontaneously, and the voice of lamentation, attuned by sensibility, falls naturally into numbers.
When I am speaking of the Oracular Poets, or Diviners, it is not possible to pass over the
Sybills,
the most extraordinary in this order of bards; their oracles have been agitated by the learned in all ages, and received with the utmost veneration and respect by the Greeks first, and afterwards by the Romans: Heathen writers and some of the first and most respectable fathers of the Christian Church refer to them without hesitation, and the fact of their existence rests upon such strength of testimony, as seems to amount to historical demonstration and universal assent. It appears that the Delphic and Erythrean Sybills, who were the oldest of the name, lived before the Trojan war: The verses of the Erythrean Sybill, foretelling the coming of Christ, are seriously referred to by Eusebius and St. Austin; they are thirty-three in number, and now in our hands. She, who was supposed to have offered the nine volumes of oracles to Tarquinius Priscus at Rome, was the Cumaean; the Chaldaean, Persic or Hebrew Sybill prophesied of Alexander of Macedon; the Hellespontic was coeval with Solon; the Samian and others lived in later periods.
Of the Capitoline Oracles there is ample room to doubt; such a political engine in the hands of the priests and to a certain degree under the direction of the Patrician order, offered opportunities for abuse too tempting to be withstood in a constitution so subject to popular commotions; it is true they were sparingly applied to, and never brought out but in pressing exigencies, yet those exigencies and the blind idolatry of the people encouraged the abuse by its practicability as well as by its expedience. There is a passage in Cicero's private letters, which makes confession to this very point. The original oracles were destroyed by fire together with the Capitol itself, in which they were deposited; the substitutes, which were collected in Greece and many other parts of the world to replace them, were finally burned by Stilicho in the reign of the emperor Honorius.
The lines, which have come down to us under the character of Sybilline Oracles, must be cautiously admitted; their authenticity is dubious in most parts, evidently fictitious in many, but some passages have by great authorities been considered as genuine: The great critic Bentley, speaking of them generally in his dissertations on Phalaris, calls the Sybilline Oracles now extant
clumsy cheats:
The learned professor Whiston has investigated them with much industry and some address; he separates certain parts, which he believes to be genuine, and his argument merits serious consideration: I am aware that this author must be heard with reserve in matters of prediction, forasmuch as he lived long enough to see two completions of his own Milennium: He traces the interpolated passages however with considerable sagacity and imputes them with good appearance of reason to the heretical sectaries of the fourth century; those, which he adopts as genuine, he translates into literal prose, and they are curious records. External testimonies make strongly in favour of these passages, and it is remarkable that the sagacity of critics have urged no internal characters in evidence against them. The elder Sybill has predictions of Homer and the Trojan war; their stile much resembles that of Homer himself, and antient writers do not scruple to say that Homer borrowed several of these Sybilline lines and inserted them in his poem, as the Sybill herself foretells he would do in the following words, viz.—
Then an old lying writer shall appear in that time again, counterfeiting his country, being also dim-sighted: He shall have much wit and eloquence, and shall compose
a wise poem, made up of two parts, and he shall say he was born at Chios; and he shall use the same verse: He shall be the first that shall much adorn the commanders in the war by his praises, Priamus's son Hector and Achilles the son of Peleus and all others who are famous in war, and he shall make the Gods to assist them, writing falsely in every thing.
(
Sib. Or. lib.
viii.
v.
357
ad
368.)
This is amongst the passages which Mr. Whiston thinks genuine; it is curious at least, and the reader must subscribe as much or little of his belief to it, as he thinks it deserves; but of the actual existence of these antient prophetesses he will find sufficient testimony, and if he chuses to close with the translator in his deductions, he will conclude that—
Whilst God sent his Jewish prophets to the nation of the Jews from Moses to Malachi, he seems also to have sent all along these Gentile prophetesses to the Gentiles, for their guidance and direction and caution in religious matters.
I shall observe in general, that these Sybilline oracles are illuminated and supported by the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which by the best opinions is decided not to allude to Hesiod's poems, as some have interpreted it. The Sybill chaunted her oracles, standing on a stone, in a wild manner and with the voice of one that was frantic: These oracles declare the desolation of empires, and the various convulsions of nature by earthquakes, inundations and volcanoes: Some revolutions are distinctly pointed out, other things are shadowed distantly and in obscurity; but what is most extraordinary upon the whole is, that certain events in times, that must have been posterior to the composition of these verses, even admitting them to be spurious, seem to fulfil these predictions in a very singular manner. The following passage, relative to the conflagration, resurrection and renovation of all things is selected from the fourth book of oracles, which Mr. Whiston judges to be genuine; I give the translation in his words, viz.
If you will not be persuaded by me, O men of an evil heart! but love unrighteousness and receive these advices with a perverse mind, a fire shall come into the world, and these signs shall appear in it, swords and the sound of a trumpet, when the sun rises, and all the world shall hear a bellowing and vehement noise, and the earth shall burn; and after the fire hath destroyed all mankind, and all cities and rivers and seas shall be soot and ashes, and God shall extinguish this immense fire, which he had kindled, out of those bones and ashes God shall again form men; and when he hath made them as they were before, then shall the judgment be; in which God shall act justly,
judging the world again; and those men, who have lived wickedly, the earth shall cover them; but they who are righteous shall live again on the earth, God giving the pious spirit and life and sufficient provisions; and then all men shall see themselves. Most happy is that man! who shall be in being at that time.
In conclusion I think it a fair remark to be made upon these famous Sybilline verses, that the evidence there is of interpolations in several parts of them makes strongly for the presumption, that there did really exist certain antient and genuine verses, uttered by true or pretended prophetesses, called Sybills, whereupon these several forgeries were grounded: The assent of the learned, both Heathen and Christian, corroborates this opinion; but whether the copy now in our hand does or does not contain any genuine lines of these Sybills, is a question I will not now take on myself to discuss; all that need be said on this point at present is, that there are some passages, whose antiquity is established by the references and quotations of the old Heathen writers, and against which no objections can be drawn from the internal characters and marks of the text.
No XXXVII.
THE first effusions of poetry having been addressed to prayer and worship, to the mysteries and genealogies of the deities, to religious rites, sacrifices and initiations, and to the awful promulgation of oracles by enthusiastic Sybills, chaunting forth to the astonished multitude their tremendous denunciations, the time was now in approach, when that portion of divine inspiration, which seems to be the moving spring of poetry, should branch into a new department.
When the human genius was more matured and better qualified by judgment and experience, and the thoughts, instead of being hurried along by the furious impulse of a heated fancy, began to take into sober contemplation the worldly actions of men, and the revolutions and changes of human events, operating upon society, the poet began to prepare himself by forethought and arrangement of ideas for the future purposes of composition: It became his first business to contrive a plan and ground-work for the structure of his poem; he saw that it must have uniformity, simplicity and order, a beginning, a middle and an end; that the main object must be interesting and important, that the incidents and accessary parts must hinge upon that object, and not wander from the central idea, on which the whole ought to rest; that a subject corresponding thereto, when elevated by language, superior to the phrase and dialogue of the vulgar, would constitute a work more orderly and better constructed, than what arose from the sudden and abrupt effusions of unpremeditated verse.
In this manner
Homer,
the great poet of antiquity, and the father and founder, as I must think, of epic poetry, revolving in his capacious mind the magnificent events of the Grecian association for the destruction of Troy, then fresh in the tradition, if not in the memories of his contemporaries, planned the great design of his immortal Iliad. With this plan arranged and settled in his thoughts beforehand, he began to give a loose to the force and powers of his imagination in strains and rhapsodies, which by frequent recitation fixed upon his memory, and, as he warmed with the advancing composition, he sallied forth in search of hearers, chaunting his verses in the assemblies and cities, that received him; his fancy working out those wonderful examples of the sublime, as he took his solitary migrations from place to place: When he made his passages by sea, and committed himself to the terrors of the ocean, the grandest scenes in nature came under his view, and his plastic fancy, seizing every object that accorded to its purposes, melted and compounded it into the mass and matter of the work, on which his brain was labouring: Thus with nature in his eye, inspiration at his heart and contemplation ever active, secured by solitude against external interruption, and undisturbed by worldly cares and concerns from within, the wandering bard performed what time has never equalled and what to all posterity will remain the standard of perfection.—
Hunc nemo in magnis sublimitate, in parvis proprietate, superaverit: Idem latus ac pressus, jucundus et gravis, tum copia tum brevitate mirabilis; nec poeticâ modo sed oratoriâ virtute eminentissimus.
(
Quint. lib.
x.)
"Him no one ever excelled in sublimity on great topics, in propriety on small ones; whether diffused or compressed, gay or grave, whether for his abundance or his brevity, he is equally to be admired, nor is he supereminent for poetical talents only but for oratorical also."
There is no doubt but Homer composed other poems besides his Iliad and Odyssey: Aristotle in his Poetics decidedly ascribes The Margites to Homer; but as to the Ilias Minor and the Cypriacs, though it is evident these poems were in his hands, yet he seems ignorant of their author; the passage I allude to will be found in the twenty-third chapter of his Poetics; he is comparing these two poems with the Iliad and Odyssey, as furnishing subjects for the drama, and observes that the stage could not properly draw above one or at most two plots for tragedy from the Iliad and Odyssey respectively, whereas many might be taken from the Cypriacs, and he enumerates to the amount of ten, which might be found in the Ilias Minor: It is evident by the context, that he does not think either of these poems were composed by Homer, and no less evident that he does not know to whom they are to be ascribed; their high antiquity therefore is the only point, which this celebrated critic has put out of doubt.
The Ilias Minor appears to have been a poem, which includes the taking of Troy and the return of the Greeks: The incidents of the Aeneid, as far as they refer to the Trojan story, seem to have been taken from this poem, and in particular the episode of Sinon, which is amongst the dramatic subjects mentioned by Aristotle: The controversy between Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles was copied by Ovid from the same poem. If this work is not to be given to Homer, we must believe it was written since the Iliad, from the evidence of its title; but if the author's name was lost in Aristotle's time, his antiquity is probably little short of Homer's: Some scholiasts have given this poem to Lesches, but when Lesches lived and of what country he was I find no account.
The Cypriacs are supposed to contain the love-adventures of the Trojan ladies during the siege, and probably was a poem of fiction. Herodotus has an observation in his second book upon a passage in this poem, in which Paris is said to have brought Helen from Sparta to Troy in the space of three days, whereas Homer says they were long driven about on their voyage from place to place; from this want of correspondence in a fact of such consequence, Hero dotus concludes upon fair grounds of criticism, that Homer was not author of the Cypriacs, though Pindar ascribes it to him: Some give the Cypriacs to Hegesias of Salamis, others to Stasinus a poet of Cyprus, and by some Homer is said to have given this poem, written by himself, by way of portion to his daughter married to Stasinus; this daughter of Homer was called Arsephone, and his sons Theriphon and Theolaus: Naevius translated the Cypriacs into Latin verse: Many more poems are ascribed to Homer, which would be tedious to particularize, they are enumerated by Suidas, whom the reader, if his curiosity so inclines him, may readily consult.
As to any other information personally respecting this great poet, it has been given to the world so ably by the late Mr. Wood in his essay
on the original genius and writings of Homer,
that I can add nothing on the occasion, except the humble recommendation of my judgment in its favour. The internal evidence which this essayist adduces to fix the birth-place and early residence of his poet in Ionia, is both learnedly collected and satisfactorily applied: He observes that Homer in his general manner of describing the geography of countries, speaks of them as more or less distant in proportion to their bearing from Ionia; he describes Zephyrus as a rude and boisterous wind, blowing from Thrace; this circumstance had been urged against Homer as a proof of his error in geography, and the soft and gentle quality of Zephyrus, so often celebrated by poets in all times, is quoted in aid of the charge; but the sagacity and local knowledge of Mr. Wood divert the accusation, and turn it into an argument for ascertaining the spot of Homer's nativity and residence, by reminding us, that when the poet describes the wind blowing from the Thracian mountains upon the Aegean sea, it must of course be a West wind in respect to Ionia, from which circumstance he draws his consequence that Homer was an Ionian. This argument must surely be satisfactory as to the place, in which the poem was written; and when we have located Homer in Ionia, whilst he was employed in writing his poem, we have one point of doubt at least cleared up in his history to our conviction, and his accuracy in one branch of knowledge vindicated from the cavils of critics.
Having established this point, viz. that Homer was an Asiatic Greek, inhabiting the sea coast, or an island on the coast of Ionia, and having vindicated his accuracy in geographical knowledge, the ingenious author of the essay proceeds to shew, by way of corollary from his proposition thus demonstrated, that Homer must have been a great traveller; that geographical knowledge was in those days no otherwise to be acquired; that he appears to have been thoroughly conversant in the arts of building and navigating ships, as then understood and practised; and that his map of Greece, which both Strabo, Apollodorus the Athenian, Menogenes and Demetrius of Scepsis illustrated in so diffusive a manner, puts it out of doubt, that he must have visited the several countries and surveyed them with attention, before he could have laid them down with such geographical accuracy: Certain it is, that so great was the authority of Homer's original chart, that it was a law in some cities that the youth should learn it by heart; that Solon appealed to it for establishing the right of Athens to Salamis in preference to the claims of the Megarensians; and that territorial property and dominion were in several instances decided by referring to this Homeric chart: Another evidence of Homer's travels he derives from his lively delineations of national character, which he observes are marked with such precision and supported throughout with such consistency, as not to allow us to think that he could have acquired this knowledge of mankind from any other source but his own observations.
It is more than probable Homer did not commit his poems to writing; it is mere conjecture whether that invention was actually in existence at the time he lived; there is nothing in his works that favours this conjecture, and in such a case silence is something more than negative: The retention of such compositions is certainly an astonishing effort of the human memory, but instances are not wanting of the like nature in early and uncivilized states, and the memory is capable of being expanded by habit and exercise to an extraordinary and almost unlimited compass. Unwritten compositions were always in verse; and metre was certainly used in aid of memory. It must not however be taken for a consequence, that writing first came into use when Pherecydes and Cadmus first composed in prose, as some have imagined; for it undoubtedly obtained before their time, and was probably brought into Greece from Phoenicia.
The engraving of the laws of Draco is supposed to have been the first application of that art; but it was a work of labour, and required the tool of the artist, rather than the hand of the penman. Thales and Pythagoras left us no writings behind them, though they spread their learning over Greece and from their schools peopled it with philosophers. The unwritten drama was long in existence before any compositions of that sort were committed to writing. Solon's laws were engraved in wood or stone, and there appears to have been but one table of them. Of Lycurgus's regulations there was no written record; the mind of the judge was the depositary of the law. Draco published his laws in Olymp. xxxix; Pisistratus died in Olymp. lxiii: A century had nearly passed between the publication of these laws and the first institution of a public library at Athens; great advances no doubt were made within that period in the art of writing; nevertheless it was by no means an operation of facility in Pisistratus's time, and his compilation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey was a work of vast labour and of royal expence: The book remained at Athens as a princely monument of his munificence and love of letters; his library was resorted to by all men of science in Greece, but copies of the work were not circulated till the time of the Ptolemies; even Alexander of Macedon, when he had possessed himself of a compleat copy of his favorite poet, locked it up in the rich chest, of which he had despoiled King Darius, as the most worthy case, in which he could inclose so inestimable a treasure: When a copy of Homer was considered by a prince as a possession so rare, it cannot be supposed his written works were in many hands: As for the detached rhapsodies, which Lycurgus in more early times brought with him out of Asia, they must have been exceeding imperfect, though it is to be presumed they were in writing.
No XXXVIII.
FROM the scarcity of transcribers in the time of Pisistratus, and the difficulties of collecting and compiling poems, which existed only in the memories of the rhapsodists, we are led to consider the institution of the Athenian Library, as a most noble and important work; at the same time, when we reflect how many compositions of the earliest poets depended on the fidelity of memory, we cease to wonder that we have so many more records of names than of works. Many poets are enumerated antecedent to the time of Homer; some of these have been already mentioned, and very few indeed of their fragments are now in existence.
Conjecture, and even fiction, have been enviously set to work by grammarians and others within the Christian aera to found a charge of plagiarism against Homer, and to dispute his title to originality. We are told that Corinnus, who was a scholar of Palamedes, inventor of the Doric letters, composed a poem called the Iliad, whilst Troy was standing, in which he celebrates the war of Dardanus against the Paphlagonians, and that Homer formed himself upon his model, closely copying him: It is asserted by others, that he availed himself of the poems of Dictys the Cretan, who was of the family of Idomeneus, and lived in the time of the Trojan war: But these fables are still less probable than the story of his contest with Hesiod, and of the prize being decreed against him; Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus and Thamyris, all of Thrace; Marsyas, Olympus, and Midas, all of the Ionian side of the Meander, were poets antecedent to Homer; so were Amphion, Demodocus, Philammon, Phemius, Aristaeus author of the Arimaspia, Isatides, Drymon, Asbolus the Centaur, Eumiclus the Cyprian, Horus of Samos, Prosnautis of Athens, and the celebrated Sybill.
The five poets, who are generally stiled the masters of epic poetry, are Homer, Antimachus the Colophonian, Panyasis of Halicarnassus, Pisander of Camirus, and Hesiod of Cumae: And all these were natives of the Asiatic coast.
Before I cease speaking of Homer, I cannot excuse myself from saying something on the subject of Mr. Pope's translation, which will for ever remain a monument of his excellence in the art of versification: It was an arduous undertaking, and the translator entered upon it with a candid confession that he was—
utterly incapable of doing justice to Homer:
he also says—
That if Mr. Dryden had translated the whole work, he would no more have attempted Homer after him than Virgil, his version of whom (notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited translation he knows in any language.
This is a declaration, that reflects as much honour on Mr. Pope, as it does on Mr. Dryden; great as his difficulties were, he has nevertheless executed the work in such a manner as to leave stronger reasons why no man should attempt a like translation of Homer after him, than there were why he should not have undertaken it after Mr. Dryden. One thing above all surprizes me in his execution of it, which is
The Catalogue of the ships
; a difficulty that I should else have thought infurmountable in rhime; this however he has accomplished in the smoothest metre, and a very curious poem it is: No further attempt therefore remained to be made upon Homer, but of a translation in blank verse or in literal prose; a contemporary of eminence in the republic of letters has lately given a prose translation of the Iliad, though Mr. Pope had declared in his preface that
no literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior language.
—It is easy to see what Mr, Pope aims to obtain by this position, and we must interpret the expression of the word
just
to mean that no such literal translation can be equal to the spirit, though it shall be
just
to the sense of its original: He knew full well, that no translation in rhime could be literal, and he was therefore interested to premise that no literal translation could be
just
; whether he has hereby vindicated his own deviations from the sense of his author and those pleonasms, which the shackles of rhime have to a certain degree driven him into, and probably would have driven any other man much more, must be left with the classical reader to judge for himself; some of this description, and in particular a learned Lecturer in Rhetoric, who has lately favoured the public with a collection of essays, pronounce of Mr. Pope's poem
that it is no translation of Homer:
The same author points out the advantages of Miltonic verse; and it must be confessed that Miltonic verse seems to be that happy medium in metre, which stands the best chance of giving the compressed sense of Homer without debasing its spirit: It is a stern criticism to say that Mr. Pope's
is no translation of Homer
; his warmest admirers will admit that it is not a close one, and probably they will not dispute but that it might be as
just,
if it had a closer resemblance to its original, notwithstanding what he says in the passage I have quoted from his preface. It is agreed therefore that an opening is still left between literal prose and settered rhyme; I should conceive it might be a pleasant exercise for men of talents to try a few specimens from such passages in the Iliad, as they might like best, and these perhaps might engage some one or more to proceed with the work, publishing a book at a time (as it were experimentally) by which means they might avail themselves of the criticisms of their candid judges, and make their final compilation more correct: If this was ably executed, a very splendid work might in time be compleated to the honour of our nation and language, embellished with engravings of designs by our eminent masters from select scenes in each rhapsody, according to the judgment of the artist.
Small engines may set great machines in motion, as weak advocates sometimes open strong causes; in that hope, and with no other presumption whatever, I shall conclude this paper with a few lines translated from the outset of the Iliad, which the reader, whose patience has hitherto kept company with me, may or may not peruse as he thinks fit.
SING, Goddess Muse, the wrath of Peleus' son,
Destructive source of all the numerous ills
That vex'd the sons of Greece, and swept her host
Of valiant heroes to untimely death;
But their unburied bodies left to feast
The dogs of Troy and carrion birds of prey;
So Jove decreed (and let Jove's will be done!)
In that ill hour, when first contention sprang
'Twixt Agamemnon, of the armies chief,
And goddess-born Achilles. Say, what power
'Mongst heav'n's high synod stirr'd the fatal strife?—
Son of Latona by almighty Jove—
He, for the King's offence, with mortal plague
Smote the contagious camp, vengeance divine
For the insulted honour of his priest,
Sage Chryses; to the station'd fleet of Greece,
With costly ransom off'ring to redeem
His captive daughter, came the holy seer;
The laurel garland, ensign of his God,
And golden sceptre in his hand he bore;
And thus to all, but chief the kingly sons
Of Atreus, suppliant he address'd his suit.
"Kings, and ye well-appointed warriors all!
"So may the Gods, who on Olympus' heighth
"Hold their celestial mansions, aid your arms
"To level yon proud towers, and to your homes
"Restore you, as to me you shall restore
"My captive daughter, and her ransom take,
"In awful reverence of the God I serve."
He ceas'd; th' assembled warriors all assent,
All but Atrides, he, the general voice
Opposing, with determined pride rejects
The proffer'd ransom and insults the suit.
"Let me not find thee, Priest!—if thou presum'st
"Or here to loiter, or henceforth to come,
"'Tis not that sceptre, no, nor laurel crown
"Shall be thy safeguard: Hence! I'll not restore
"The captive thou demand'st; doom'd for her life
"In distant Argos, where I reign, to ply
"The housewife's loom and spread my nightly couch;
"Fly, whilst thy flight can save thee, and begone!"
No more; obedient to the stern decree,
The aged suitor turns his trembling steps
To the surf-beaten shore; there calls his God,
And in the bitterness of anguish prays.
"Hear me, thou God, who draw'st the silver bow;
"Hear thou, whom Chrysa worships; hear, thou king
"Of Tenedos, of Cilla; Smintheus, hear!
"And, if thy priest hath ever deck'd thy shrine
"Or on thy flaming altars offer'd up
"Grateful oblations, send thine arrows forth;
"Strike, strike these tyrants and avenge my tears!"
Thus Chryses pray'd, nor was the pray'r unheard;
Quick at his call the vengeful God uprear'd
His tow'ring stature on Olympus' top;
Behind him hung his bow; onward he strode
Terrific, black as night, and as he shook
His quiver'd arrows, the affrighted air
Echo'd the dreadful knell: Now from aloft
Wide o'er the subject fleet he glanc'd his eye,
And from his silver bow with sounding string
Launch'd th' unerring shaft: On mules and dogs
The missile death alighted; next to man
Spread the contagion dire; then thro' the camp
Frequent and sad gleam'd the funereal fires.
Nine mournful days they gleam'd; haply the tenth
With better omens rose; Achilles now
Conven'd the Grecian chiefs, thereto inspir'd
By Jove's fair consort, for the Goddess mourn'd
The desolating mischief: At the call
Of great Achilles none delay'd to come,
And in full council thus the hero spake.
"If quick retreat from this contagious shore
"Might save a remnant of our war-worn host,
"My voice, Atrides, wou'd advise retreat;
"But not for me such counsels: Call your seers,
"Prophets and priests, interpreters of dreams,
"For Jove holds commerce with mankind in sleep,
"And let that holy convocation say
"Why falls Apollo's vengeance on our heads;
"And if oblations can avail for peace
"And intermission from this wasting plague,
"Let victims bleed by hecatombs, and glut
"His altars, so his anger be appeas'd."
No XXXIX.
HESIOD
's heroic holds a middle place between the Orphean and Homeric stile; his Genealogy of the Deities resembling the former, and his Shield of Hercules at due distance following the latter: His famous poem in praise of illustrious women is lost; from the words
, with which it opened, it came in time to be generally known by the name of the
Eoics,
or
The Great Eoics,
and this title by misinterpretation has been construed to refer to the proper name of some favorite mistress, whom he chose to make the heroine of his poem; the poet being born at Ascra, a small village in the neighbourhood of Mount Helicon,
Eoa
was supposed to have been a beautiful damsel of Ascra, whom he was in love with: This poem seems to have been considered as the best work of the author, at least it was that which brought him most in favour with his contemporaries, and gained him some admirers, who even preferred him to Homer; we cannot wonder if that sex at least who were the objects of his panegyric, were the warmest in his praise. I suspect that Homer did not pay much court to the ladies in his Margites, and as for the Cypriacs they were professedly written to expose the gallantries of the fair sex; the character of Penelope however in the Odyssey is a standard of conjugal fidelity, and Helen, though a frail heroine in the Iliad, is painted with such delicate touches as to recommend her in the most interesting manner to our pity and forgiveness.
Hesiod's address carried every thing before it, and the choice of his subjects shews that popularity was his study, for not content with engaging the fair sex in his favour by the gallantry of
The Great Eoics,
he flattered the heroes of his time, or at least the descendants of heroes, by a poem, which he intitled
The Heroic Genealogy:
As one was a professed panegyric of beautiful and illustrious women, the other was written in the praise of brave and distinguished men: If this heroic catalogue comprized only the great and noble of his own sex, his
Times and Seasons
were addressed to the community at large and conveyed instruction to the husbandman and labourer; nor was this all, for great authorities have given to Hesiod the fables commonly ascribed to Aesop, who is supposed only to have made some additions to Hesiod's collection; if this were so, we have another strong reason for his popularity—
For fables,
as Quintilian well observes,
are above all things calculated to win the hearts of the vulgar and unlearned, who delight in pleasing tales and fictions, and are easily led away with what they delight in.
—In short Hesiod seems to have written to all ranks, degrees and descriptions of people; to rich and poor, to the learned and unlearned, to men, women and even to the deities themselves.
Can we be surprized then if this politic and pleasing author was the idol of his time, and gained the prize even though Homer was his competitor? His contemporaries gave judgment in his favour, but posterity revokes the decree: Quintilian, who probably had all his works before him, pronounces of Hesiod,—
That he rarely soars; that great part of his works are nothing else but catalogues and strings of names, intermixed however with useful precepts gracefully delivered and appositely addressed; in fine, that his merit consists in the middle stile of writing.
—Talents of this sort probably recommended him to the unreserved applause of all, whom superiority of genius in another affects with envy and provokes to detraction. Many such, besides the grammarian Daphidas, were found to persecute the name of Homer with malevolence, whilst he rose superior to their attacks: The rhapsodists, whose vocation it was in public and private to entertain the company with their recitations, were so constantly employed in repeating Homer's poems preferably to all others, that in time they were universally called Homerists; Demetrius Phalereus at length introduced them into the theatres and made them chaunt the poems of his favorite author on the stage: The poet Simonides, celebrated for his memory, repeated long passages of Homer, sitting in the public theatre on a seat erected for him on the stage for that purpose; Cassander, king of Macedonia, had the whole Iliad and Odyssey by heart, and was continually repeating, not in company only, but in his private hours to himself: Stesichorus also, the sublimest of all poets next to Homer and his greatest imitator, was remarkably fond of chaunting forth passages in the Iliad and Odyssey; it is related also that he used frequently to repeat verses of Hesiod, Archilochus, Mimnermus, and Phocylides the Milesian, who is the supposed author of the poem intitled
Paraenesis,
yet extant. We are obliged to the grammarians for many scraps or fragments from the wrecks of authors, but in the case of Hesiod's Eoics meet with one remnant only preserved by Pausanias, and this relates to Iphigenia, who, by Hesiod's account, was by the favour of Diana reprieved from extinction and immortalized in the person of the goddess Hecate.
As for the bards of the Orphean family, it is difficult to adjust their chronologies and descents; I have already enumerated five poets of the name of Orpheus, and said in general terms, that there were several of the name of Musaeus; they may be thus described; viz. first, Musaeus, son of Antiphemus and disciple of Orpheus, stiled an epic poet; he wrote a long poem of four thousand verses containing precepts, addressed to his son Eumolpus, and thence intitled
The Eumolpiad
; he wrote a hymn to Ceres, a poem on the cure of diseases, and published certain prophetic verses, though his title to these has been brought into dispute by the artifices of one Onomacritus, a plagiarist and pretended diviner in the time of Hipparchus, who put off these verses of Musaeus as his own. The second Musaeus was grandson of the first and son of Eumolpus; various poems are given to this Musaeus, particularly The Theogony, The Sphere, the Mysteries of Initiation and Lustration, The Titans, &c. The third Musaeus a Theban was son of Thamyris and grandson of Philammon; he flourished about the time of the Trojan war: His father Thamyris is recorded by Homer.
And Dorion fam'd for Thamyris' disgrace,
Superior once of all the tuneful race,
Till vain of mortals' empty praise he strove
To match the seed of cloud-compelling Jove;
Too daring bard! whose unsuccessful pride
Th' immortal Muses in their art defy'd;
Th' avenging Muses of the light of day
Depriv'd his eyes, and snatch'd his voice away;
No more his heav'nly voice was heard to sing,
His hand no more awak'd the silver string.
(POPE, Il. 2.)
Such was the fate of blind Thamyris, but he has double security for immortality, having a place not only in the Iliad of Homer, but also in the Paradise Lost of Milton:
Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides.
(BOOK 3d.)
Thus, although the works of this famous bard have totally perished, and
his heavenly voice is no more heard to sing,
yet it has been his singular good fortune to be celebrated by the greatest poet of antiquity, and ranked with that very poet by the greatest of the moderns; and all three involved in the same visitation of blindness; an extraordinary concurrence!
The fourth Musaeus was son of Orpheus and President of the Eleusynian Mysteries: This is the Musaeus, whom Justin Martyr says was instructed by his father in a more rational religion than he practised in the temple of Ceres, and taught the knowledge and worship of one supreme God, creator of all things. The fifth was Musaeus of Ephesus, an epic poet; the sixth a grammarian, whose treatise on the Isthmian games is quoted by Euripides; and the seventh and last, is that Musaeus, whom the poet Martial mentions for having written
Pathicissimos libellos,
and the author as it is probable of the little poem upon Hero and Leander, now extant, which Scaliger so much admires.
Archilochus
flourished in Olymp. xxiii. and was a very early writer of Iambics;—
He excels,
says Quintilian,
in energy of stile; his periods strong, compressed and brilliant, replete with life and vigour: so that if he is second to any it is from defect of subject, not from natural inferiority of genius.
He adds, that—
Aristarchus was of opinion, that of all the writers of Iambic verse Archilochus alone carried it to perfection.
—Athenaeus has preserved a little epigram of his no otherwise worth recording than as it is the only relick of his muse, except one distich in long and short verse purporting that he was devoted to Mars and the Muses; the epigram may be translated as follows:—
Glutton, we ask thee not to be our guest,
It is thy belly bids thee to our feast.
ARCHIL.
Archilochus fell in battle by the hand of Calondas, who immolated his own son to the manes of the poet to atone the vengeance of Apollo: He was a man of great private virtue and distinguished courage, but a severe unsparing satirist.
Tisias,
commonly called
Stesichorus
from his invention of the chorus, which he sung to the accompaniment of his harp, was contemporary with Solon, and born at Himera in the island of Sicily; as a lyric poet he was unequalled by any of the Greeks but Pindar; his subjects were all of the epic cast, and he oftentimes rose to a sublimity, that rivalled Homer, upon whose model he formed himself; this he would have done throughout according to the opinion of Quintilian, if his genius had not led him into a redundancy, but his characters are drawn with great dignity and preserved justly. He did not visit Greece till he was far advanced in age, and died in Olymp. lvi. in the city of Catana in his native island of Sicily, where he was buried at the public cost with distinguished ceremony and magnificence. A tomb was erected to his memory near one of the city gates, which was thenceforward called the gate of Stesichorus; this tomb was composed of eight columns, had eight steps and eight angles after the cabalistical numbers of Pythagoras, whose mysterious philosophy was then in general vogue; the cubic number of eight was emblematic of strength, solidity and magnificence, and from this tomb of Stesichorus arose the Greek proverb
, by which was meant any thing perfect and compleat, Phalaris of Agrigentum erected a temple to his name and decreed him divine honours; all the cities in Sicily conspired in lamenting the death of their favorite poet, and vied with each other in the trophies they dedicated to his memory.
Epimenides
of Crete, the epic poet, was contemporary with Solon, and there is a letter in the life of that great man inserted by the sophists, which is feigned to have been written by Solon in his exile to Epimenides: This poet as well as his contemporary Aristaeas is said to have had the faculty of stopping the functions of life and recalling them at pleasure:
Aristaeas
wrote a poem intitled Arimaspea, containing the history of the northern Arimaspeans, a people of Scythia, whom he describes as the fiercest of all human beings and pretends that they have only one eye; he also composed an heroic poem on the genealogy of the deities: Strabo says, if ever there was a quack in the world, this Aristaeas was one.
Simonides
the poet lived in the court of Hipparchus and was much caressed by that elegant prince; he was a pleasing courtly writer, and excelled in the pathetic.
Alcaeus
was poet, musician and warrior; Quintilian gives him great praise for the boldness of his satire against tyrants, and occasionally for the moral tendency of his writings, but admits that sometimes his muse is loose and wanton: It appears from some fragments preserved by Athenaeus, that he wrote several poems or sonnets in praise of drinking; there is also a fragment in the martial stile, describing the variety of armour, with which his house was adorned.
Callimachus, Theocritus, Anacreon
and
Sappho,
are to a certain degree known to us by their remains: Every branch of poetry, but the drama, was at this aera at its greatest perfection.
No XL.
THERE is a considerable fragment in Athenaeus of a love-poem written by
Hermesianax
of Colophon to his mistress Leontium; the poet recommends his passion by telling her how love has triumphed over all the great geniuses in their turns, and begins with the instances of Orpheus and Musaeus, and brings them down to Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, and Socrates. This Hermesianax must have been a contemporary of Epicurus, forasmuch as Leontium was the mistress of that philosopher as well as of his disciple Metrodorus: It is plain therefore that the learned Gerard John Vossius did not advert to this circumstance, when he puts Hermesianax amongst the poets of a doubtful age. Leontium was an Athenian courtezan, no less celebrated for science than beauty, for she engaged in a philosophical controversy with Theophrastus, of which Cicero takes notice (
lib.
1.
de Nat. Deor.
) Pliny also records an anecdote of her being painted by Theodorus sitting in a studious attitude.
This fragment may not improperly be called the amours of the Greek poets, and as it relates to many, of whom we have been speaking, and is withal a very curious specimen of an author very little known even by name, I have inserted the following translation in the hope that it will not be unacceptable to my readers.
—
&c.
(
Athen. lib.
xiii.)
SUCH was the nymph, whom
Orpheus
led
From the dark mansions of the dead,
Where Charon with his lazy boat
Ferries o'er Lethe's sedgy moat;
Th' undaunted minstrel smites the strings,
His strain thro' hell's vast concave rings:
Cocytus hears the plaintive theme,
And refluent turns his pitying stream;
Three-headed Cerberus, by fate
Posted at Pluto's iron gate,
Low-crouching rolls his haggard eyes
Ecstatic and foregoes his prize:
With ears erect at hell's wide doors
Lies list'ning as the songster soars;
Thus music charm'd the realms beneath,
And beauty triumph'd over death.
The bard, whom night's pale regent bore
In secret on the Athenian shore,
Musaeus,
felt the sacred flame,
And burnt for the fair Theban dame
Antiope, whom mighty Love
Made pregnant by imperial Jove;
The poet plied his amorous strain,
Press'd the fond fair, nor press'd in vain,
For Ceres, who the veil undrew,
That screen'd her mysteries from his view,
Propitious this kind truth reveal'd,
That woman close besieg'd will yield.
Old
Hesiod
too his native shade
Made vocal to th' Ascrean maid,
The bard his heav'n-directed lore
Forsook, and hymn'd the Gods no more:
Soft love-sick ditties now he sung,
Love touch'd his harp, love tun'd his tongue,
Silent his heliconian lyre,
And love's put out religion's fire.
Homer,
of all past bards the prime
And wonder of all future time,
Whom Jove with wit sublimely blest,
And touch'd with purest fire his breast,
From gods and heroes turn'd away
To warble the domestic lay,
And wand'ring to the desart isle,
On whose parch'd sands no seasons smile,
In distant Ithaca was seen
Chaunting the suit-repelling Queen.
Mimnermus
tun'd his am'rous lay,
When time had turn'd his temples grey;
Love revell'd in his aged veins,
Soft was his lyre, and sweet his strains;
Frequenter of the wanton feast,
Nanno his theme, and youth his guest.
Antimachus
with tender art
Pour'd forth the sorrows of his heart;
In her Dardanian grave he laid
Chryseis his beloved maid;
And thence returning sad beside
Pactolus' melancholy tide,
To Colophon the minstrel came,
Still sighing forth the mournful name,
Till lenient time his grief appeas'd,
And tears by long indulgence ceas'd.
Alcaeus
strung his sounding lyre,
And smote it with a hand of fire,
To Sappho, fondest of the fair,
Chaunting the loud and lofty air.
Whilst old
Anaereon,
wet with wine,
And crown'd with wreaths of Lesbian vine,
To his unnatural minion sung
Ditties, that put to blush the young.
Ev'n
Sophocles,
whose honey'd lore
Rivals the bee's delicious store,
Chorus'd the praise of wine and love,
Choicest of all the gifts of Jove.
Euripides,
whose tragic breast
No yielding fair one ever prest,
At length in his obdurate heart
Felt love's revengeful rankling dart,
Thro' Macedon with furious joy
Panting he chas'd the pathic boy;
Till vengeance met him in the way,
And blood-hounds made the bard their prey.
Philoxenus,
by wood-nymphs bred
On fam'd Cithaeron's sacred head,
And train'd to music, wine and song,
'Midst orgies of the frantic throng,
When beauteous Galatea died,
His flute and thyrsus cast aside;
And wand'ring to thy pensive coast,
Sad Melos, where his love was lost,
Each night thro' the responsive air
Thy echoes witness'd his despair:
Still, still his plaintive harp was heard,
Soft as the nightly-singing bird.
Philotas
too in Battis' praise
Sung his long-winded roundelays;
His statue in the Coan grove
Now breathes in brass perpetual love.
The mortified abstemious sage,
Deep read in learning's crabbed page,
Pythagoras,
whose boundless soul
Scal'd the wide globe from pole to pole,
Earth, planets, seas and heav'n above,
Yet found no spot secure from love;
With love declines unequal war,
And trembling drags his conqueror's car,
Theano clasp'd him in her arms,
And wisdom's stoop'd to beauty's charms.
Ev'n
Socrates,
whose moral mind
With truth enlighten'd all mankind,
When at Aspatia's side he sate,
Still found no end to love's debate,
For strong indeed must be that heart
Where love finds no unguarded part.
Sage
Aristippus
by right rule
Of logic purg'd the Sophist's school,
Check'd folly in its headlong course,
And swept it down by reason's force;
'Till Venus aim'd the heart-felt blow,
And laid the mighty victor low.
A little before the time that Pisistratus established his tyranny at Athens, the people of Greece had distinguished certain of their most eminent sages by the denomination of the Seven Wise Men. This flattering pre-eminence seems to have been distributed with more attention to the separate claims of the different states, than to the particular pretensions of the persons, who composed this celebrated junto: If any one community had affected to monopolize the prerogative of wisdom, others would hardly have subscribed their assent to so partial a distribution; and yet when such distinguished characters as Pythagoras, Anacharsis the Scythian, Mison, Pherecydes, Epimenides, and Pisistratus himself, were excluded, or at best rated only as wisemen-extraordinary, many of their admirers complained of the exclusion, and insisted on their being rated in the list; hence arises a difficulty in determining the precise number of the principals: The common account however is as follows, viz.
Solon
of Athens,
Thales
of Miletus,
Periander
of Corinth,
Cleobulus
the Rhodian,
Chilon
the Lacedaemonian,
Bias
of Priene, and
Pittacus
of Mitylene.
This distribution was well calculated to inspire emulation amongst rival states, and to that emulation Greece was indebted for the conspicuous figure she made in the world of letters. The Ionic and Italian schools of philosophy were established under Thales and Pythagoras; the first was supported by Anaximander the successor of Thales, by Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Diogenes, Zeno and other illustrious men; Pythagoras's school devolved upon Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zenophanes, Democritus, Pyrrho and Epicurus. The original tenets of the first masters were by no means adhered to by their descendants; the wanderings of error are not to be restrained by system; hypothesis was built upon hypothesis, and the labyrinth at length became too intricate to be unravelled: Sparks of light were in the mean time struck out by the active collision of wit; noble truths occasionally broke forth, and sayings, worthy to be registered amongst the doctrines of Christian revelation, sell from heathen lips: in the lofty spirit of philosophy they insulted pain, resisted pleasure, and set at defiance death itself. Respect is due to so much dignity of character; the meek forgiving tenets, which Christianity inculcates, were touched upon but lightly and by few; some however by the force of intellect followed the light of reason into a future state of immortality; they appear to have contemplated the Divine Essence, as he is, simple and supreme, and not filtered into attributes corruptly personified by a synod of divinities. Of such men we must think and speak with admiration and affection.
Thales,
the founder of the Ionic school, was a great man and a good citizen; he studied geometry under Egyptian masters, and introduced some new discoveries in astronomy and the celestial sphere, regulating and correcting the Greek calendar, which Solon, about the same time, made some attempts to reform at Athens. This he did by bringing it to a conformity with the Hebrew calendar, except that his year began with the summer solstice, and that of the Hebrews with the vernal. Now the Hebrew calendar comprised twelve months, and each month severally comprised the same, or nearly the same, number of days as our's. This appears by an examination of Moses's account of the deluge in the seventh chapter of Genesis.
Amongst other nations the calendar was exceedingly vague and unsettled: The Egyptians measured their year by four months; the Arcadians by three; the Carians and Acarnanians by six, and the people of Alba by ten; at the same time all these nations were in the practice of making up the year to its natural completion by intercalendary months or days. In the time of Romulus the Romans followed the calendar of the Albanians; and of the ten months, which their year consisted of, four comprized thirty-one days each, viz. Martius, Maius, Quintilis, October; the six other consisted of thirty days, and were named Aprilis, Junius, Sextilis, September, November, December. By this calendar Romulus's year regularly consisted of only 304 days, and to compleat the natural period he was obliged to resort to the expedient of intercalendary days.
Numa was too much of a philosopher not to seek a remedy for these deficiencies, and added two months to his year: The former of these he named Januarius from bifrons Janus, one of whose faces was supposed to look towards the past, and the other towards the succeeding year; the other new month he called Februarius, from Februus, the deity presiding over lustrations; this being the month for the religious rites of the Dii Manes, it was made to consist of twenty-eight days, being an even number; all the others, conformably to the superstition of the times, consisted of odd numbers as more propitious, and accordingly Martius, Maius, Quintilis, October, had each thirty-one days, and the other seven, twenty-nine days, so that the year, thus regulated, had 355 days, and it was left to the priests to make up the residue with supplementary days.
This commission became a dangerous prerogative in the hands of the sacerdotal order, and was executed with much irregularity and abuse; they lengthened and shortened the natural period of the year, as interest influenced them to accord to the prolongation or abbreviation of the annual magistracies dependant thereupon. In this state things were suffered to remain till Julius Caesar succeeded to the pontificate; he then undertook a reform of the calendar, being in his third consulate, his colleague being Oemilius Lepidus. Assisted by the best astronomers of the time, particularly the philosopher Sosigenes, he extended the year of his reform to 442 days, and thenceforward ordained that the year should consist of 365 days, distributed into months as it now stands, except that he added one day to February every fifth year, and not every third.
Thales died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad in extreme old age: The famous philosopher Pherecydes died a few years before him of that horrible distemper called the
Morbus Pediculosus,
and in his last illness wrote, or is supposed to have written, to Thales as follows:—
PHERECYDES to THALES.
May your death be easy, when the hour shall come! for my part, when your letter reached me, I was sinking under the attack of a most loathsome disease accompanied with a continual fever. I have therefore given it in charge to my friends, as soon as they shall have committed my remains to the earth, to convey my manuscripts to your hands. If you and the rest of your wise fraternity shall on perusal approve of making them public, do so; otherwise let them not see the light; certainly they do not satisfy my judgment in all particulars; the best of us are liable to error; the truth of things is not discoverable by human sagacity, and I am justly doubtful of myself: Upon questions of theology I have been cautious how I have committed myself; other matters I have treated with less reserve; in all cases however I suggest rather than dictate.
Though I feel my dissolution approaching and inevitable, I have not absolutely dismissed my physicians and friends; but as my disease is infectious, I do not let them enter my doors, but have contrived a signal for informing them of my condition, and have warned them to prepare themselves for paying the last offices to my corpse to-morrow.
Farewell for ever!
No XLI.
Ignotum Tragicae genus invenisse Camenae
Dicitur, et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis
Qui canerent agerentque peruncti faecibus ora.
(HORAT.)
HAVING carried down the history of Athens to that period, when a new species of poetry made its appearance, I propose in this place to treat of the origin and introduction of the drama; in doing this, my chief study will be to methodize and arrange the matter, which other writers have thrown out, sensible that in a subject so often exhausted very little else can now remain to be done.
Aristotle says—
That Homer alone properly deserves the name of poet, not only as being superior to all others so called, but as the first who prepared the way for the introduction of the drama; and this he did, not merely by the display of his powers on grave and tragic subjects, but inasmuch as he suggested the first plot and device for comedy also; not founding it upon coarse and opprobrious invective, but upon wholesome and facetious ridicule: So that his Margites bears the same analogy to comedy, as his Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy.
This assertion in favour of Homer coming from such high authority has been adopted by the scholiasts, critics and commentators, who have treated either of that great poet or of the drama from the time when it was made to the present: But it should be observed that Aristotle is not here speaking of the drama professedly as a chronologist, but reviewing it as an object of criticism, and under this view it can no otherwise come into contemplation than in its more advanced and perfect state, when built upon the model of Homer's fables and characters; after it had thrown off the barbarous traces of its real origin, and had quitted Bacchus and the Satyrs. Of tragedy, as a written and consistent poem, Homer may well be stiled the father; for when Phrynichus and Aeschylus introduced on the scene
, the stories and calamities of heroes, tragedy became Homeric, or in other words assumed a dignity of tone and character, that was copied from the epic of Homer, as comedy was from his iambic; and agreeably to this Aristotle names Epicharmus as the first comic poet, who was professedly a copyist of the Margites.
Now by settling the dates of a few well-established facts we shall bring this question into closer view. Pisistratus after a broken reign of thirty-three years died in Olymp. lxiii. whereas the Marmor Chronicon records, that the first tragedy at Athens was made my Thespis, and acted on a waggon in Olymp. lxi. Suidas confirms this record: From the same authority (viz. Mar. Chron.) we collect that Susarion made the first comedy at Athens, and acted it on a moveable scaffold in the middle of Olymp. liv. being one year before Pisistratus established his tyranny. By these dates it appears that comedy was made and acted at Athens several years before the compilation of Homer's epic poems, and tragedy before or at that time, admitting for the present that Thespis was the first who made tragedies, and that the record above cited was the date of his first tragedy.
I am aware that these facts alone will not prove that the inventors of the drama did not copy from Homer; for it cannot be denied that Thespis and even Susarion might have resorted to his poems, before they were compiled by Pisistratus; and as for Thespis, if we were to admit the tragedies, which Suidas ascribes to him, to be genuine, it is evident from their titles that some of them were built upon Homeric fables; but good critics find strong reasons to object to this list, which Suidas has given us, and I must think it a fair presumption against their authenticity, that Aristotle, who gives Homer the credit of furnishing the first suggestions of the drama, does not instance Thespis's tragedies; for had they been what Suidas reports, it can hardly be supposed that Aristotle would have overlooked an instance so much to his purpose, or failed to have quoted Thespis, as the first tragic writer, when he names Epicharmus as the first comic one, who copied from Homer.
Plutarch in his Symposia says—
That when Phrynichus and Aeschylus first turned the subject of tragedy to fables and doleful stories, the people said, What's this to Bacchus?
—According to this anecdote how could Thespis, who was anterior to Phrynichus and Aeschylus, be a writer of such tragedies, as Suidas has ascribed to him.
Another very ingenious argument for their confutation is drawn from a short fragment, which the same author has quoted from the
Pentheus,
one of those tragedies which Suidas gives to Thespis: This fragment purports that—
The Deity is situated remote from all pleasure or pain
: A passage of this cast can never have been part of a Judicrous drama belonging to Bacchus and the Satyrs, and therefore either Plutarch must be mistaken in his anecdote above cited, or Suidas in his author of
The Pentheus
; but it is further urged by a sagacious critic that this fragment bears internal evidence of a forgery, being doctrine of a later date than Thespis, and plainly of the fabrication of Plato's academy: In confirmation of this remark, circumstances of a more positive nature are adduced, and Diogenes Laertius is brought forward, who actually charges Heraclides of writing certain tragedies and fathering them upon Thespis, and this charge Laertius grounds upon the authority of Aristoxenus the musician: The credit of Aristoxenus as a philosopher, historian, and faithful relater of facts, is as well established with the learned world, as the character of Heraclides is notorious for plagiarism, falsehood and affectation; he was a vain rich man, a great juggler in literature, aspiring to rival Plato in his writings, and one who was detected in bribing the Pythia, to decree a crown of gold and divine honours to him after his decease; a man as apt to palm his own productions upon others, as he was to assume other men's productions to himself, which he was convicted of by Chamaeleon in his spurious treatise upon Homer and Hesiod.
This practice of fathering tragedies upon great names obtained in more instances than one; for Dionysius wrote a tragedy called Parthenopaeus and palmed it upon Sophocles, a bolder forgery than this of Heraclides; and it is remarkable, that Heraclides himself was caught by this forgery, and quotes the Parthenopaeus as genuine.
Plato speaking of The Diety uses these words—
—
The Deity is situated remote from all pleasure and pain:
A sentiment so coincident with the fragment quoted by Plutarch from the Pentheus ascribed to Thespis, seems to warrant the remark before made, which supposes it to have been fabricated in the academy of Plato: This with the authority of Aristoxenus for the general forgery, and Plutarch's assertion that tragedy was satyric before Phrynichus and Aeschylus, will have its weight against the titles of Thespis's tragedies, as they are given in Suidas; and accordingly I find that the editor of Suidas, commenting upon this very article, in effect admits the error of his author: This argument moreover accounts for the silence of Aristotle as to Thespis's tragedies.
I am aware that it has been a question with some critics, whether tragedy originated with Thespis, notwithstanding the record of the Marmor Chronicon, and Suidas states the pretensions of Epigenes the Sicyonian prior to Thespis; but in this he is single and unsupported by any evidence, except what Plato asserts generally in his Minos—
That tragedy was extremely antient at Athens, and that it is to be dated neither from Thespis, nor from Phrynichus
;—Some authorities also place Thespis's first tragedy in a higher period than Olymp. lxi. as it stands in the Marmor; for Laertius says—
That Solon hindered Thespis from acting his tragedies, believing those feigned representations to be of no use.
—And Plutarch tells us—
That Solon saw one of Thespis's plays, but disliking the manner of it, forbade him to act any more.
—I need not observe that this must have passed before Pisistratus established his tyranny, which did not take place till the last year of Olymp. liv. but if these facts be admitted, they seem to be decisive as to the tragedy's being allusive to Bacchus and the Satyrs in its first instance at least; because it can hardly be supposed that so profest an admirer of Homer as Solon was known to be, and himself a poet, would have objected to any drama formed upon his model.
As to Plato's general assertion with respect to the high antiquity of the Athenian tragedy, it seems thrown out as a paradox, which he does not attempt to illustrate or support, and I cannot think it stands in the way of Thespis's pretensions to be considered as the father of tragedy, confirmed by so many authorities.
All these seeming difficulties will be reconciled, if we concur with the best opinions in the following particulars, viz. That tragedy, which was concerned about Bacchus and the Satyrs, was in no instance committed to writing: That Thespis's first tragedy, which Solon saw and disliked, was of this unwritten and satyric sort: That in process of time the same author actually wrote tragedy, and first acted it on a waggon in Olymp. lxi. within the aera of Pisistratus, and according to the record of the Marmor Chronicon, so often referred to.
I will not disguise that Dr. Bentley, whose criticism is so conclusive for the forgery of those tragedies quoted by Plutarch and enumerated by Suidas, Julius Pollux and Clemens of Alexandria, is of opinion
Thespis himself published nothing in writing
; but as there are so many testimonies for his being the father of tragedy in general, and some which expressly say he was the first
writer
of tragedy, I hope I shall not trespass too far on my reader's patience, if I lay the chief of these authorities before him.
The Arundel Marble, which is of date as high as Olymp. cxxix. sets forth that
Thespis was the first, who gave being to tragedy.
The epigram of Dioscorides, printed in Mr. Stanley's edition of Aeschylus, gives the invention to Thespis. In the Anthologia there are two epigrams, which expressly say the same; one begins—
—the other—
. Plutarch in his Solon says—
That Thespis gave rise and beginning to the very rudiments of tragedy.
Clemens of Alexandria makes Thespis the contriver of tragedy, as Susarion was of comedy. Athenaeus says both comedy and tragedy were struck out at Icarius, a place in Attica, where Thespis was born. Suidas records to the same effect, and Donatus speaks expressly to the point of written tragedy—
Thespis autem primas
haec scripta
in omnium notitiâ protulit.
—What Horace says of Thespis in his Art of Poetry, and more particularly in the Epistle to Augustus, where he classes him with Aeschylus and Sophocles, certainly implies that he was a
writer
of tragedy, and is so interpreted by Cruquius and the old commentator preserved in his edition. I shall add one circumstance to the above authorities, which is, that the Chorus alone performed the whole drama, till Thespis introduced one actor to their relief; this reform could hardly be made, much less be recorded by Aristotle, unless Thespis had
written
tragedies and published them to the world.
Upon the whole I incline to consider Thespis as the first author of the written tragedy and to place him in Olymp. lxi. From him tragedy descended through Pratinas, Carcinus and Phrynichus to Aeschylus, and this is the first age of the tragic drama.
No XLII.
ABOUT two centuries had elapsed from the date of Thespis's tragedy to the time when Aristotle wrote his poetics; which must have been after he quitted the service of Alexander, to whom he sent a copy of that treatise: The chain of dramatists from Thespis to Euripedes had been continued in regular succession, and it is not to be supposed, but that he might have given a more particular and methodical account of the first inventors of tragedy, if it had fallen within the scope of his work; but this being merely critical, he takes his account of tragedy and comedy from Aeschylus and Epicharmus, contenting himself with a brief detail of such vague and dubious traditions relative to the first inventors, as common fame seems to have thrown in his way.
He loosely observes—
That the people of Megaris claim the invention of comedy; that there is reason to think it took its origin in a popular and free form of government, which that of Megaris then was: That Epicharmus the Sicilian was far senior to Chionides and Magnes, the first Athenian writers of comedy
:—He also throws out an idle suggestion from the etymology of the words
comedy
and
drama,
the former of which he derives from
, villages, and the latter from the verb
.—Now the people of Peloponnesus he tells us use the words
and
in their dialect, whereas the Athenians express themselves by those of
and
, and upon this rests the Peloponnesians' pretensions to be considered as the inventors of the drama: He then refers to what he considers as the true source and foundation of the drama, the works of Homer; and throwing aside all others, as tales not worth relating, proceeds to the execution of his plan, viz. The definition and elucidation of the tragic poem.
These suggestions were thrown out by Aristotle for no other purpose, as it should seem, but to cast a ridicule upon every other account of the discovery of the drama, but his own; for he might as well have given the invention of comedy to the Megarensians for their being notorious laughers;
,
to laugh like a Megarensian
being a phrase in vulgar use with the Athenians; nay indeed he might have gone a step further and given them tragedy also, for
Megarensian tears
were as proverbial as
Megarensian laughter
; but a true Athenian would have answered, that the former alluded only to the onions, which their country abounded in, and was applied in ridicule of those who counterfeited sorrow: In short the Megarensians seem to have been the butts and buffoons of the Athenians, and held in sovereign contempt by them. As for the Peloponnesian etymologies, Aristotle must have known that neither the one nor the other had the least foundation; and that there is not a comedy of Aristophanes, in which he does not use the verb
frequently and in the mouths of Athenian speakers; in his
Birds
I find it within a few lines of the verb
, and used by one and the same speaker; I have no doubt the like is true of
, but I did not think the search worth following.
Bacchus and the Satyrs were both source and subject of the first drama, and the jocund rites of that deity were celebrated at all times and under all governments with the same unrestrained festivity: This celebration was too closely interwoven with popular superstition to be checked by the most jealous of tyrants; the privileged seasons of Bacchus were out of the reach of the magistrate; nor was the old satyrical masque of the Athenians in Pisistratus's time less licentious than that of the Megarensians in their freest state; though it soon happened that the republic of Megara became an oligarchy, and the monarchy of Athens was converted into a republic.
The manner in which the drama was struck out may naturally be accounted for. The Greeks from early time were in the habit of chanting songs and extemporary verses in the villages in praise of Bacchus at the
Trina Dyonisia,
which times answer to March, April, and January; afterwards they performed these songs or dithyrambs at the Panathenaea, which were celebrated in the month of August. The Athenians were of all people living the most addicted to raillery and invective; these village-songs and festivities of Bacchus gave a scope to the wildest extravagancies of mummery and grimace, mixt with coarse but keen raillery from the labourers and peasants concerned in the vintage
The women from their carts, masked and disguised with lees of wine, and men accoutred in rude grotesque habits like satyrs, and crowned with garlands of ivy and violets, vented such prompt and irregular sallies, as their inebriated fancies furnished on the instant, or else rehearsed such little traditional and local ballads in iambic metre, as were in fashion at the time; accompanying them with extravagant gesticulations and dances incidental to the subject, and suitable to the character of the deity they were celebrating.
The drunken festivities of the antient Danes, when they sacrificed to their rural deities—
Annuae ut ipsis contingeret felicitas, frugumque et annonae uberrimus proventus
—and the Highland ceremonies and libations of the
Bel-tein
are of this character.
The Athenian calendar was crowded with these feasts: Drinking-matches were rewarded with prizes and even crowns of gold; their phallic ceremonies were of this description: They used vehement gesticulations in reading and speaking; their rhapsodists carried this habit to excess, and in the dithyrambie hymn every outragious gesture, which enthusiasm inspires, was put in practice: The dithyramb was conceived in a metaphorical inflated stile, stuffed with an obscure jargon of sounding phrases and performed in honour of Bacchus.
In these dithyrambic verses and phallic songs we have the foundation of tragedy and comedy; the solemn and swelling tone of the first and the petulant vivacity of the latter appositely point to the respective character of each. The satire and scurrility they indulged from their vintage waggons, their masks and disguises in the hairy habits of satyrs, their wanton songs and dances at the Phallic ceremonies, and the dark bombast of the dithyramb chanted by the rhapsodists with every tumid and extravagant action, all together form a compleat outline of the first drama: As soon as dialogue and repartee were added, it became to all intents a masque, and in this state it is discovered in very early times throughout the villages of Greece. When it had reached this period and got something like the shape of a drama, it attracted the curiosity of the villagers, who in reward for their amusement in the spectacle decreed a prize to the performance agreeable to the object in view and the means of the spectators; this prize consisted of a cask of wine, and the performance before named simply
Comoedia
or the
village-song,
was thenceforward called
Trugoedia,
or the
song for the cask,
compounded of
and
.
These names are descriptive of the drama in its progressive stages from a simple
village-song,
till it took a more complicated form by introducing the satyrs and employing the chorus in recitation through a whole fable, which had a kind of plot or construction, though certainly not committed to writing. In this stage, and not before, the prize of
the cask of wine
was given, and thence it proceeded to attract not the husbandmen and labourers only but the neighbours of better degree. The drama under the designation of
Trugoedia
was satyric, and wholly occupied in the praise of Bacchus; it was unwritten, jocose, and confined to the villages at the seasons of the
Trina Dionysia
; but after a prize however inconsiderable had been given, that prize created emulation, and emulation stimulated genius.
The village bards now attempted to enlarge their walk, and not confining their spectacles merely to Bacchus and the Satyrs began to give their drama a serious cast, diverting it from ludicrous and lascivious subjects to grave and doleful stories, in celebration of illustrious characters amongst their departed heroes; which were recited throughout by a chorus, without the intervention of any other characters than those of the satyrs with the dances proper thereunto.
This spur to emulation having brought the drama a step forward, that advance produced fresh encouragement, and a new prize was now given, which still was, in conformity to the rustic simplicity of the poem and its audience, a
Goat,
, a new prize created a new name, and the serious drama became distinguished by the name of
Tragoedia,
or
the song for the goat:
Thus it appears that
Tragedy,
properly so called, was posterior in its origin to comedy; and it is worthy of remark that
Trugoedia
was never applied to the tragic drama, nor
Tragoedia
to the comic: After this comedy lost its general designation of
Trugoedia,
and was called by its original name of
the village-song
or
Comoedia.
The next step was a very material one in point of advance, for the village-poets having been excited by emulation to bring their exhibitions into some shape and consistence, meditated an excursion from the villages into the cities, and particularly into Athens: Accordingly in Olymp. liv.
Susarion,
a native of Icarius, presented himself and his comedy at that capital, rehearsing it on a moveable stage or scaffold, presuming on the hope that what had given such delight to the villagers would afford some amusement to the more refined spectators in Athens: This was the first drama there exhibited, and we should naturally expect that a composition to be acted before the citizens of the capital should be committed to writing, if we did not know that the author was on these occasions the actor of his own piece; the rude interludes of Bacchus and the Satyrs being introduced upon the scene according to their old extemporary manner by the
Sileni
and
Tityri,
whose songs and dances were episodical to the drama: It continued to be the custom for authors to act their own plays in the times of Phrynichus and Aeschylus, and I therefore think it probable Susarion's comedy was not a
written
drama; and I close with the authorities for Epicharmus being the first
writer
of comedy, who, being retained in an elegant court at Syracuse, chusing his plots from the
Margites,
and rejecting the mummeries of the satyrs, would naturally compose his drama upon a more regular and elaborate plan.
No XLIII.
TO THE OBSERVER.
SIR,
THERE is an old gentleman of my acquaintance who annoys me exceedingly with his predictions: I have reason to believe he bears me good will in the main, and does not know to what a degree he actually disturbs my peace of mind, I would therefore fain put up with his humour if I could; but when he is for ever ringing his knell in my ears, he sometimes provokes me to retort upon him, oftentimes to laugh at him, and never fails to put me out of patience or out of spirits.
I have read your account of the
Dampers
with great fellow-feeling, and perceive that my old gentleman is very deep in that philosophy; but as I unfortunately have very little philosophy of any sort to set against it, I find myself frequently at his mercy and without defence.
I do not think this proceeds so much from any radical vice in his nature, as from a foolish vanity to seem wiser than his neighbours, and to put himself off for a man who knows the world: The fact is he is an old bachelor, lives in absolute retirement, and has scarcely stept out of the precincts of his own village three times in his life; yet he is ever telling me of his experience and his observations: If I was to put implicit faith in what he says, common honesty in mankind would be a miracle, and happiness a disappointment; as for hope, that moonshine diet as he calls it, which is so plentifully served up in the fanciful repasts of the poets, and which is too often the only standing dish at their tables, I should never get a taste of it; and yet if ruining a merchant's credit is tantamount to robbing him of his property, I must think the
Damper,
who blasts my hope, is in fact little better than a thief.
I have a natural prejudice for certain people at first sight, where a countenance impresses me in its favour, for I am apt to fancy that honesty sets a mark upon its owners; there is not a weakness incident to human nature, for which he could hold my understanding in more sovereign contempt: If I was to be advised by him, I should not trust my wife out of my sight, for it is a maxim with him, that no love-matches can be happy; mine was of that sort and I am happy; still I am out of credit with my
Damper.
I was bound for a relation in public trust some years ago; there I confess his augury sometimes staggered me, and he urged me with proverbs out of holy writ, which I was rather puzzled to parry; my friend however has done well in the world, discharged his obligation, and repaid it with grateful returns; still I am out of credit with my
Damper.
I invested a small sum in a venture to the East Indies; he descanted upon the risque of the sea; I insured upon the ship, he denounced bankruptcy against the underwriter, the ship came home and I doubled the capital of my investment; still I am out of credit with my
Damper,
and he shakes his head at my folly.
I can plainly perceive that his predictions oftentimes are as troublesome to himself as to me; he loses many a fine morning's walk by foreseeing a change of weather; he never goes to church because he has had a suit with the parson; and part of his estate remains untenanted, because a farmer some time ago broke in his debt.
Though I am no philosopher, I am not such a simpleton, as not to know how little we ought to depend upon worldly events in general; yet it appears to me that what a man has already enjoyed, he can no longer be said to depend upon: If therefore I have had real pleasure in any innocent and agreeable expectation, disappointment can at worst do no more than remove the meat after I have made my meal.
Though I do not know how to define hope as a metaphysician, I am inclined to speak of it with respect, because I find it has been a good friend to me in my life; it has given me a thousand things, which malice and misfortune would have ravished from me, if I had not fairly worn them out before they could lay their fingers upon them:
Spe pascit inani
—says the poet, and contradicts himself in the same breath; for my part, if it was not for the fear of appearing paradoxical, I should say upon experience that hope, though called a shadow, is together with that other phantom death, the sole reality beneath the sun; the unfaithfulness of friends, from whom I had the claim of gratitude, can never rob me of those pleasures I enjoyed, when I served them, loved them, and confided in them; and, in spite of all my friend the
Damper
can say to the contrary, it is not on my own account I am sorry to have thought better of mankind than they deserve.
I am, Sir, &c. BENEVOLUS.
TO THE OBSERVER.
SIR,
I HAVE the honour to belong to a club of gentlemen of public spirit and talents, who make it a rule to meet every Sunday evening, in a house of entertainment behind St. Clement's, for the regulation of literature in this metropolis. Our fraternity consists of two distinct orders,
The Dampers
and
The Puffers
; and each of these are again classed into certain interior subdivisions. We take notice that both these descriptions of persons have in turn been the objects of your feeble raillery; but I must fairly tell you, we neither think worse of ourselves nor any better of you for those attempts. We consider the republic of letters under obligations to us for its very existence, for how could it be a republic, unless its members were kept upon an equality with each other? Now this is the very thing which our institution professes to do.
We have an ingenious member of our society, who has invented a machine for this purpose, which answers to admiration: He calls it—
The Thermometer of Merit:
This machine he has set in a frame, and laid down a very accurate scale of gradations by the side of it: One glance of the eye gives every author's altitude to a minute. The middle degree on this scale, and which answers to
temperate
on a common thermometer, is that standard, or common level of merit, to which all contemporaries in the same free community ought to be confined; but as there will always be some eccentric beings in nature, who will either start above standard heighth, or drop below it; it is our duty by the operation of the daily
press
either to screw them down, or to screw them up, as the case requires; and this brings me to explain the uses of the two grand departments of our fraternity: Authors above par fall to the province of the
Dampers,
all below par appertain to the
Puffers.
The daily press being common to all men, and both the one class and the other having open access thereto, we can work either by
forcers
or
repellers,
as we see fit; and I can safely assure you our process seldom fails in either case, when we apply it timely, and especially to young poets in their
veal-bones,
as the saying is: With this view we are always upon terms with the conductors of the said press, who are fully sensible of the benefits of our institution, and live with us in the mutual interchange of friendly offices, like Shakespear's Zephyrs—
Stealing and giving odours.—
As we act upon none but principles of general justice, and hold it right that parts should be made subservient to the whole, our scheme of equalization requires, that accordingly as any individual rises on the scale, our depressing powers should counteract and balance his ascending powers: This process, as I said before, belongs to the
Dampers'
office, and is by them termed
pressing
an author, or more literally committing him to the
press:
This is laid on more or less forcibly, according to his degree of ascension; in most cases a few turns squeeze him down to his proper bearing, but this is always done with reasonable allowance for the natural reaction of elastic bodies, so that it is necessary to bring him some degrees below standard, lest he should mount above it when the
press
is taken off: If by chance his ascending powers run him up to
sultry
or
fever-heat,
the
Dampers
must proportion their discipline accordingly; in like manner the
Puffers
have to blow an author up by mere strength of lungs, when he is heavy in ballast, and his sinking powers fall below the
freezing-point,
as sometimes happens even to our best friends: In that case the
Puffers
have
bursts of applause
and
peals of laughter
in petto, which, though they never reach vulgar ears, serve his purpose effectually—But these are secrets, which we never reveal but to the
Initiated,
and I shall conclude by assuring you I am your's as you deserve.
PRO BONO PUBLICO.
No XLIV.
Unde nil majus generatur ipso,
Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum.
(HORAT.)
THERE is a great sovereign now upon earth, who, though an infant, is the oldest of all souls alive by many centuries.
This extraordinary personage is a living evidence of the soul's immortality, or at least has advanced so far in proof, as to convince the world by his own example, that it is not necessarily involved in the extinction of the body. Though he is the greatest genealogist living, and can with certainty make out the longest and clearest pedigree of any potentate now reigning, yet he is properly speaking without ancestors. As I cannot doubt but that so striking an event as the general deluge must be fresh in his memomory, though a pretty many years have since elapsed, he must of necessity have been none other than Noah himself; for as he has always been his own son, and that son can never have been living at the same moment with his father, it is plain he must have been that very identical patriarch, when he survived the flood.
As he was but eighteen months old according to his corporeal computation, when he was last visited, he was not very communicative in conversation, but I have hope upon the next meeting he will have the goodness to set us right about Pythagoras, who I am persuaded sunk some part of his travels upon us, and was actually in his court, where he acted the part of a plagiary, and in the school-boy's phrase
cribb'd
a foul copy of his holiness's transmigration; but with such strong marks of a counterfeit, that after a short trip to the Trojan war, and a few others not worth relating, it is to be presumed he has given up the frolic; for I do not hear that he is at present amongst us, at least not amongst us of this kingdom, where to say the truth I do not see any thing that resembles him. In the mean time the religious sovereign of Tibet (for the reader perceives I have been speaking of
Teéshoo Lama
) in the spirit of an original keeps his seat upon the Musnud of Terpâling, which throne he has continued to press ever since his descent from Mount Ararat.
After all we must acknowledge this was a bold creed for priestcraft to impose, but credulity has a wide swallow, and if the doctrine passed upon a nation so philosophical and inquisitive as the Greeks, it may well obtain unquestioned by Calmuc Tartars; and superstition, now retiring from Rome, may yet find refuge in the mountains of Tibet. This may be said for the system of Teéshoo Lama, that imposition cannot be put to a fairer test, than when committed to the simplicity of a child; and the
Gylongs,
or priests, attendant upon this extraordinary infant, paid no small compliment to the faith of their followers, when they set him upon the Musnud.
I forbear entering into a further account of this infant pontiff, because I hope the very ingenious traveller, who has already circulated some curious particulars of his audiences and interviews at the monastery of Terpâling, will indulge the public with a more full and circumstantial narrative of his very interesting expedition into a country so little visited by Europeans, and where the manners and habits of the people, no less than the sacred character of the sovereign, furnish a subject of so new and entertaining a nature.
When a genius like that, which actuates the illustrious character, who lately administered the government of Bengal, is carried into the remotest regions of the earth, it diffuses an illumination around it, which reaches even to those nations, where arts and sciences are in their highest cultivation; and we accordingly find that besides this embassy, so curious of its kind, the same pervading spirit has penetrated into the sacred and till now inaccessible mysteries of the Brahmins, and by the attainment of a language which religion has interdicted from all others but the sacerdotal cast, has already began to lay open a volume, superior in antiquity, and perhaps in merit not inferior, to Homer himself.
Happy inhabitants of Tibet! If happiness can arise from error, your innocent illusion must be the source of it; for priestcraft, which has plunged our portion of the globe in wars and persecutions, has kept you in perpetual peace and tranquillity; so much more wise and salutary is your religious system of pontifical identity, than ours of pontifical infallibility. The same unchangeable, indivisible object of faith secures universal acquiescence under the commodious imposition: No Anti-Lama can distract your attention or divide your duty, for individuality is his essence; no councils can reverse his decrees or over-rule his supremacy, for he is coeval with religion, nay he is religion itself. Such as he was in his praeterient body, such he must be in his present; the same monastic, peaceful, unoffending, pious being; a living idol, drawn forth upon occasional solemnities to give his blessing to adoring prostrate hordes of Tartars, and to receive their offerings; and whether this blessing be given by the hands of unreasoning infancy, or superannuated age, it matters little at which degree the moment points, when the scale is undeterminable.
You see me here
(said the Lama in his praeterient body to one of our countrymen, whom he admitted to a conversation)
a mere idol of state: You are of a more active nation; take your wonted exercise without reserve: Walk about my chamber: I am sedentary by necessity, and the habit of indolence is become to me a second nature
—This is a true anecdote, and shews how mild a soul it is, which has now transmigrated into the body of this infant.
Could this extraordinary personage communicate his property to all his brother sovereigns through the world, should we, or should we not, congratulate mankind upon the event? Let the nations speak for themselves! I answer for one, that cannot name a period in its monarchy more in favour of the dispensation.
No XLV.
(SOPHOCLES, ALEASI.)
Hold thy tongue, good boy! There are many great advantages in keeping silence.
I HAVE now the satisfaction to inform my countrymen, that after long and diligent search I have at last discovered a very extraordinary person in this metropolis, at present in some obscurity; but if I shall luckily be the means of drawing him into more notice by publishing what has come to my knowledge of his talents and performances, I shall think myself happy not only in serving a meritorious individual, but also in furnishing a suggestion through the mode I shall recommend for his employ, that may be of the greatest benefit to society.
The gentleman, in whose favour I would fain interest my candid readers, is
Mr. Jedediah Fish,
of whose history I shall recount a few particulars. He was bred to the law, and many years ago went over to New England, where he practised in the courts at Boston: Upon the breaking out of the troubles he came over to England, tho' from his prudent deportment he might safely have remained where he was, for Mr. Fish made it a rule never to lend any thing but an ear to either side of the question: I cannot speak with certainty as to his real motives for leaving America, as he has not been communicative on that head, but I could collect from hints he has dropt of the extraordinary length and protraction of the pleadings in those provincial courts, that his health was a good deal impaired by his attendance upon causes, though I cannot discover that he was actually employed as an advocate in any. This may seem singular to such as are unacquainted with those proceedings, but Mr. Fish, though no pleader, was of indispensable use to his clients during the somnolency of the court; for by means of his vigilance the efficient counsel could indulge themselves in their natural rest, and recruit their spirits for a reciprocal exertion of prolixity, when the opposite party had come to a conclusion: This happy faculty of wakefulness in Mr. Jedediah Fish was accompanied with the further very useful talent of abridgement, by which in a very few words he could convey into the ear of a pleader, when he had once thoroughly wakened him, the whole marrow of an argument, though it had been spread out ever so widely.
When he came over to his native country, he threw himself in the way of preferment, and regularly attended the sittings at Westminster, Guildhall, and elsewhere; but being a modest man, and one who made no acquaintance, he was no otherwise taken notice of, than as being the only person in court, who did not yawn, when a certain learned serjeant got beyond his usual quota of cases in point. Nothing offering here, Mr. Fish presented himself during the sitting of Parliament both at the bar of the Peers, and in the gallery of the House of Commons; he gave great attention to the clerks, when they were reading Acts of Parliament in the upper house, and never quitted his post in the lower, when certain gentlemen were on their legs, and gave the signal to others to get on theirs and go to dinner: By being thus left alone this modest attendant lost his labour, and remained unnoticed through a whole session.
Defeated in all these efforts he began to frequent Coffee-houses, where he observed most talking prevail, and few or no hearers to be found: Fortune now began to smile upon his patient endeavours, and he particularly recommended himself to a circle at Saint Paul's, where by his address in posting himself between two parties, one of which was very circumstantially explaining a will, and the other going step by step through a bill of enclosure, where the glebe lands of the rector were in great peril of infringement, he so contrived as to lend one ear to the divine and the other to the civilian, by which he got a dinner at each of their houses; and as they found him a most agreeable companion, and one whose chearing smile enlivened their own conversation, he soon became free of their families under a standing invitation.
It was in one of these houses I first became acquainted with Mr. Fish, and as it seemed to me a great pity that a man possessed of such companionable talents (for I can safely aver I had never heard the tone of his voice) should be any longer buried in obscurity, or at best confined to a narrow circle of admirers, I began to reflect within myself what amazing improvements society might receive, if he could be induced to stand forth in the public character of
A Master of Silence,
or in other words
A Teacher of the Art of Hearing.
As I knew my friend was not a man to speak for himself, I took a convenient occasion one day of breaking my proposal to him, which I introduced by saying I had something to disclose to him, which I conceived would not only be of public benefit, but might also be turned to his particular emolument and advantage. He paused some time and seemed to expect when I would proceed to explain myself; but being at last convinced that I was really waiting for his consent, he opened his lips for the first time, and in a very soft agreeable tone of voice delivered himself as follows—
"
Say on!
"
—The conversation being now fairly on foot, I said that experience must have convinced him how great a scarcity of hearers there were in this metropolis, at the same time what great request they were in, and how much conversation and society were at a loss for a proper proportion of them: That where one man now made his fortune by his tongue, hundreds might in less time establish their's by a prudent use of their ears: That a desire of
shining
in company was now become so general, that there was no body left to shine upon: That no way could be so sure of providing for younger sons and people of small fortunes, as to qualify them well in
the art of hearing
; but by a fatal neglect in our system of education, and the loquacity of nurses and servants, no attention was paid to this useful accomplishment: I observed to him that our parsons were in some degree in the fault by shortening their sermons and quickening their prayers, whereas in times past, when homilies were in use, and the preacher turned the hour-glass twice or thrice before his discourse was wound up, the world was in better habits of hearing: That in Oliver's days the grace was oftentimes as long as the meal, now they sate down without any grace at all, and talked without ceasing: That the discontinuance of smoking tobacco contributed much to put hearing out of fashion, and that a club of people now was like a pack of hounds in full cry, where all puppies open at the same time, whether they have got the scent or not: In conclusion I demanded of him if he agreed with me in these observations, or not: He again took some time to consider and very civilly replied—
"
I do.
"
—
'If you do agree with me,'
rejoined I,
'in acknowledging the complaint, tell me if you will concur in promoting the cure.'
He nodded assent,
'And who is so fit as Mr. Jedediah Fish,'
added I,
'to teach that art to others, which he possesses in such perfection himself? It shall be my business to seek out for scholars, your's to instruct them, and I don't despair of your establishing an Academy of Silence in as general repute as the school of Pythagoras.'
This institution is now fairly on foot, and school is opened in Magpye-Court, Cheapside, No 4, name on the door, where the professor is to be spoken to by all persons wanting his advice and instructions. The remarkable success, which has already attended Mr. Jedediah Fish, would warrant my laying before the public some extraordinary cures, but these I shall postpone to some future opportunity, and conclude with a passage from Horace, which shews that ingenious poet, though perhaps he had as much to say for himself as most of our modern prattlers, was nevertheless a perfect adept in the art, which it has been the labour of this paper to recommend.
Septimus octavo proprior jam fugerit annus,
Ex quo Mecaenas me caepit habere suorum
In numero; duntaxat ad hoc, quem tollere rheda
Vellet, iter faciens, et cui concredere nugas
Hoc genus, Hora quota est? Threx est Gallina Syro par:
Matutina parum cautos jam frigora mordent:
Et quae rimosâ bene deponuntur in aure.
'Tis (let me see) three years and more,
(October next it will be four)
Since Harley bade me first attend,
And chose me for an humble friend;
Wou'd take me in his coach to chat,
And question me of this and that;
As "What's o'clock?" and "How's the wind?"
"Who's chariot's that we left behind?"
Or gravely try to read the lines
Writ underneath the country signs;
Or, "Have you nothing new to-day
"From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay?"
Such tattle often entertains
My lord and me as far as Staines,
As once a week we travel down
To Windsor, and again to town,
Where all that passes
inter nos
Might be proclaim'd at Charing-Cross.
SWIFT.
No XLVI.
A NOVEL, conducted upon one uniform plan, containing a series of events in familiar life, in which no episodical story is interwoven, is in effect a protracted comedy, not divided into acts. The same natural display of character, the same facetious turn of dialogue and agreeable involution of incidents are essential to each composition. Novels of this description are not of many years standing in England, and seem to have succeeded after some interval to romance, which to say no worse of it is a most unnatural and monstrous production. The
Don Quixote
of Cervantes is of a middle species; and the
Gil Blas,
which the Spaniards claim and the French have the credit of, is a series of adventures rather than a novel, and both this and Don Quixote abound in episodical stories, which separately taken are more properly novels than the mother work.
Two authors of our nation began the fashion of novel-writing, upon different plans indeed, but each with a degree of success, which perhaps has never yet been equalled: Richardson disposed his fable into letters, and Fielding pursued the more natural mode of a continued narration, with an exception however of certain miscellaneous chapters, one of which he prefixed to each book in the nature of a prologue, in which the author speaks in person: He has executed this so pleasantly, that we are reconciled to the interruption in his instance; but I should doubt if it is a practice in which an imitator would be wise to follow him.
I should have observed, that modern novelists have not confined themselves to comic fables or such only as have happy endings, but sometimes, as in the instance of
The Clarissa,
wind up their story with a tragical catastrophe; to subjects of this sort perhaps the epistolary mode of writing may be best adapted, at least it seems to give a more natural scope to pathetic descriptions; but there can be no doubt that fables replete with humorous situations, characteristic dialogue and busy plot are better suited to the mode, which Fielding has pursued in his inimitable novel of
The Foundling,
universally allowed the most perfect work of its sort in ours, or probably any other, language.
There is something so attractive to readers of all descriptions in these books, and they have been sought with such general avidity, that an incredible number of publications have been produced, and the scheme of circulating libraries lately established, which these very publications seem to have suggested, having spread them through the kingdom, novels are now become the amusing study of every rank and description of people in England.
Young minds are so apt to be tinctured by what they read, that it should be the duty of every person, who has the charge of education, to make a proper choice of books for those who are under their care; and this is particularly necessary in respect to our daughters, who are brought up in a more confined and domestic manner than boys. Girls will be tempted to form themselves upon any characters, whether true or fictitious, which forcibly strike their imaginations, and nothing can be more pointedly addressed to the passions than many of these novel heroines. I would not be understood to accuse our modern writers of immoral designs; very few I believe can be found of that description; I do not therefore object to them as corrupting the youthful mind by pictures of immorality, but I think some amongst them may be apt to lead young female readers into affectation and false character by stories, where the manners, though highly charged, are not in nature; and the more interesting such stories are, the greater will be their influence: In this light a novel heroine, though described without a fault, yet, if drawn out of nature, may be a very unfit model for imitation.
The novel, which of all others is formed upon the most studied plan of morality, is
Clarissa,
and few young women I believe are put under restriction by their parents or others from gratifying their curiosity with a perusal of this author; guided by the best intentions, and conscious that the moral of his book is fundamentally good, he has taken all possible pains to weave into his story incidents of such a tragical and affecting nature, as are calculated to make a strong and lasting impression on the youthful heart. The unmerited sufferings of an innocent and beautiful young lady, who is made a model of patience and purity; the unnatural obduracy of her parents; the infernal arts of the wretch, who violates her, and the sad catastrophe of her death, are incidents in this affecting story better conceived than executed: Failing in this most essential point, as a picture of human nature, I must regard the novel of Clarissa as one of the books, which a prudent parent will put under interdiction; for I think I can say from observation, that there are more artificial pedantic characters assumed by sentimental Misses in the vain desire of being thought
Clarissa Harlows,
than from any other source of imitation whatsoever: I suspect that it has given food to the idle passion for those eternal scribblings, which pass between one female friend and another, and tend to no good point of education. I have a young lady in my eye, who made her will, wrote an inscription for the plate of her own coffin, and forswore all mankind at the age of sixteen. As to the characters of Lovelace, of the heroine herself, and the heroine's parents, I take them all to be beings of another world. What Clarissa is made to do, and what she is allowed to omit, are equally out of the regions of nature. Fathers and mothers, who may oppose the inclinations of their daughters, are not likely to profit from the examples in this story, nor will those daughters be disposed to think the worse of their own rights, or the better of their parents, for the black and odious colours in which these unnatural characters are painted. It will avail little to say, that Clarissa's miseries are derivable from the false step of her elopement, when it is evident that elopement became necessary to avoid compulsion. To speak with more precision my opinion in the case, I think Clarissa dangerous only to such young persons, whose characters are yet to be formed, and who from natural susceptibility may be prone to imitation, and likely to be turned aside into errors of affectation. In such hands, I think a book, so addressed to the passions, and wire-drawn into such prolixity, is not calculated to form either natural manners or natural stile; nor would I have them learn of Clarissa to write long pedantic letters
on their bended knees,
and beg
to kiss the hem of their ever-honoured Mamma's garment,
any more than I would wish them to spurn at the addresses of a worthy lover with the pert insult of a
Miss How.
The natural temper and talents of our children should point out to our observation and judgment the particular mode, in which they ought to be trained: The little tales told to them in infancy, and the books to be put into their hands in a forwarder age, are concerns highly worth attending to. Few female hearts in early youth can bear being softened by pathetic and affecting stories without prejudice. Young people are all imitation, and when a girl assumes the pathos of Clarissa without experiencing the same afflictions, or being put to the same trials, the result will be a most insufferable affectation and pedantry.
Whatever errors there may be in our present system of education, they are not the errors of neglect; on the contrary perhaps they will be found to consist in over-diligence and too great solicitude for accomplishment; the distribution of a young lady's hours is an analysis of all the arts and sciences; she shall be a philosopher in the morning, a painter at noon, and a musician at night; she shall sing without a voice, play without an ear, and draw without a talent. A variety of masters distract the attention and overwhelm the genius; and thus an indiscriminate zeal in the parent stops the cultivation and improvement of those particular branches, to which the talents of the child may more immediately be adapted. But if parents, who thus press the education of their children, fall into mistakes from too great anxiety, their neglect is without excuse, who, immersed in dissipation, delegate to a hireling the most sacred and most natural of all duties: To these unprofitable and inconsiderate beings I shall not speak in plain prose, but will desire them to give the following little poem a perusal.
DORINDA and her spouse were join'd,
As modern men and women are,
In matrimony not in mind,
A fashionable pair.
Fine clothes, fine diamonds, and fine lace,
The smartest vis-a-vis in town,
With title, pin-money, and place
Made wedlock's pill go down.
In decent time by Hunter's art
The wish'd-for heir Dorinda bore;
A girl came next; she'd done her part,
Dorinda bred no more.
Now education's care employs
Dorinda's brain—but ah! the curse,
Dorinda's brain can't bear the noise—
"Go, take 'em to the nurse!—"
The lovely babes improve apace
By dear Ma'amselle's prodigious care;
Miss gabbles French with pert grimace,
And Master learns to swear.
"Sweet innocents!" the servants cry,
"So natural he and she so wild:
"Laud, Nurse, do humour 'em—for why?
"'Twere sin to snub a child."
Time runs—"My God!"—Dorinda cries,
"How monstrously the girl is grown!
"She has more meaning in her eyes
"Than half the girls in town."
Now teachers throng; Miss dances, sings,
Learns every art beneath the sun,
Scrawls, scribbles, does a thousand things
Without a taste for one.
Lapdogs and parrots paints, Good lack!
Enough to make Sir Joshua jealous,
Writes rebusses, and has her clack
Of small-talk for the fellows:
Mobs to the milliners for fashions,
Reads every tawdry tale that's new,
Has fits, opinions, humours, passions,
And dictates in virtú.
Ma'amselle to Miss's hand conveys
A billet-doux; she's tres commode,
The Dancing-master's in the chaise,
They scower the northern road.
Away to Scottish land they post,
Miss there becomes a lawful wife;
Her frolick over, to her cost
Miss is a wretch for life.
Master meanwhile advances fast
In modern manners and in vice,
And with a school-boy's heedless haste,
Rattles the desperate dice.
Travels no doubt by modern rules
To France, to Italy, and there
Commences adept in the schools
Of Rousseau and Voltaire.
Returns in all the dernier goût
Of Brussels-point and Paris clothes,
Buys antique statues vampt anew,
And busts without a nose.
Then hey! at dissipation's call
To every club that leads the ton,
Hazard's the word; he flies at all,
He's pigeon'd and undone.
Now comes a wife, the stale pretence,
The old receipt to pay new debts;
He pockets City-Madam's pence,
And doubles all his betts.
He drains his stewards, racks his farms,
Annuitizes, fines, renews,
And every morn his levée swarms
With swindlers and with Jews.
The guinea lost that was his last,
Desperate at length the maniac cries—
"This thro' my brain!"—'tis done; 'tis past;
He fires—he falls—he dies!
No XLVII.
HIPPONAX.
To a wise husband, when possessing
A virtuous wife, wedlock's a blessing.
THOUGH I do not like paradoxes, and can readily acknowledge the respect due to general opinions, yet I am bold to aver to the face of all those fine gentlemen, who, if they think as they act, will laugh me to scorn for the notion, that marriage is a measure of some consequence. I do not mean to say that it is necessary, in the choice of a wife, that she should be of any particular stature or complexion, brown or fair, tall or short; neither do I think a man of family need absolutely to insist upon as many clear descents, as would satisfy a German Count, before he quarters arms with a lady; nor do I article for fortune, or connection, or any other worldly recommendation as indispensable; satisfied only if it will be granted to me that the parties ought not to unite without some mutual explanation, some previous understanding of each other's temper, and some reasonable ground of belief, that the contract they are about to enter into for life is likely to hold good to the end of the term, for which it is made.
I am not so ignorant of the world as not to know how many specious reasons may be given on the other side of the question; and being sensible I have a hard point to drive, I am willing to conciliate my opponents by all reasonable concessions.
Lord Faro
married to pay off a mortgage, that encumbered his estate, and to discharge certain debts of honour, that encumbered his mind still more: His match therefore was a match of principle; and though a run of bad luck defeated his good intentions towards his creditors, and though the vulgar manners of his lady smelt so strong of the city, that she became insupportable, yet all the world allowed that the measure was judicious, justifiable, and in his lordship's situation indispensable.
Lady Bab Pettish
married
Colonel Spectre
because he haunted her in all assemblies, was for ever at her back in the Opera-house, glided into the church when she was at her devotions, and declared in all companies that he was determined to have her. Lady Bab married to be revenged of him; nobody denied but she took the right method, and all the world allowed that she had her revenge: The colonel is literally a
spectre
at this moment.
Sir Harry Bluster
and
Miss Hornet
were first cousins, and though brought up together in the same house like brother and sister, squabbled and fought like dog and cat: Sir Harry's face bore the marks of her nails, and Miss's head-dress was the frequent victim of his fury. This young pair made a match in the laudable expectation of a better agreement after wedlock: All the world applauded their motives, and the event fully answered their expectation—for they parted
by consent.
Old
Lady Lucy Lumbago
was told by a fortune-teller that she should die a maid: When she was at least sixty years in advance towards fulfilling the prediction, she drew a piece of wedding cake through a bride's gold ring, and dreamt of her own footman: She married him the next week to thwart the Destinies: The footman went off with her strong-box, and left her behind to compleat the prophecy.
Lord Calomel
had a plentiful estate and a very scanty constitution, but he had two reasons for marrying, which all the world gave him credit for; the first was to get an heir, which he wanted, and the second was to get rid of a mistress he was tired of: He made his choice of
Miss Frolick,
and every body allowed the odds were in his favour for an heir: The lady brought him a full-grown boy at five months end; his lordship drove his wife out of his house and reinstated his mistress.
Jack Fanciful
had a blind-side towards a fine eyebrow. It was his humour, and he had a right to please himself:
Signora Falsetta
struck an arrow to his heart from a pair of full-drawn bows, that would have done honour to Cleopatra herself, whose stage representative the Signora then was: Jack made overtures of a certain sort, which her majesty repulsed with the dignity that became her; in short, the virtue of Cleopatra was impregnable, or at least it was plain she was not
every body's Cleopatra.
What could Jack do? It was impossible to give up the eyebrows, and it was no less impossible to have them upon any terms, but terms of honour. Jack married her: It was his humour, and all the world allowed he was in the right to indulge it: The happy knot was tied; Jack flew with lips of ardour to his lovely Cleopatra; the faithless eyebrow deserted from the naked forehead of its owner, and (O sad exchange!) took post upon Jack's chin.
These, and many more than these, may be called cases in point, and brought to prove that matrimony is a mere whim, a caprice of the moment, and by people who know the world treated with suitable indifference; but still I must hope that such of my readers at least, who do not know the world, or know perhaps just so much of it as not to wish for a more intimate familiarity with its fashions, will think this same bargain for life a bargain of some consequence.
The court of Catherine of Medicis, but more particularly that of Anne of Austria, brought the characters of women into much greater consequence and display, than had before been allowed to them: The female genius called forth from its obscurity soon assumed its natural prerogatives: A woman's wit was found the finest engine to cut the knot of intricacy, or if possible to disentangle it: The ladies in that famous regency were no less fitted to direct a council than to adorn a court: The enlightened state of present times, and the refinement of modern manners, have happily discovered, that in the proper intercourse of the sexes are centered all the charms of society; it seems as if a new world had been found out within the limits of the old one: Associated as we now are, we are left without excuse when we mistake their characters, or betray them into unsuitable connections by disguising our own: Every unmarried man has time enough to look about him, and opportunities enough for the fullest information: It can be nothing therefore but the misguiding impulse of some sordid and unworthy passion, that can be the moving cause of so many unhappy matches. I will never believe, in the corruption of the present times, though there are as many bills of divorce as bills of enclosure, but that the husband, I will not say in every, but in almost every, case is in the first fault. It were an easy thing to point out a thousand particulars amongst the reigning habits of high life, which seem as if invented by the very demon of seduction for his own infernal purposes: There is not one of all these habits, which a wise man can fail to despise, or an honest man neglect to reform; no plan so easy as the prevention of them; no system so absurd, so undignified, so destructive of all the pleasures of life, as the system of dissipation.
Look at a man of this sort! He has not even the credit of being a voluptuary; there is not one feature of pleasure in his face; all is languor,
nonchalance
and
ennui.
(I help out my description with French, for, thank Heaven! we have yet no words in our language to express it.) The travels of such a man in the purlieus only of St. James's-street and Pall Mall would suffice to have carried him round the pyramids of Egypt: He might have visited the ruins of Herculaneum in half the number of paces that he spends in sauntering up to Rotten-row: He posts from town to country as if the fate of Europe depended on his dispatch; he reconnoitres the heels of some favorite hunter and returns with the same expedition to town; you would think that life or death depended on his speed, and you would not be much out in the guess, for he has just killed so much time and perhaps a post-horse or two into the bargain. Are we to suppose there is no emulation in the ladies?
Is it not possible to employ the revenue of a great estate in a more agreeable manner? For I am now speaking of riches in no other light, but as the means of procuring pleasures to their owner. May not every hour of life present some new or agreeable occupation to a man who is possessed of a large fortune and knows how to use it? I need not point out the endless source of delightful employment, which a well-projected system of improvement must furnish to the man of landed property: This nation abounds in artists of all descriptions; gardening, planting, architecture, music, painting, the whole circle of arts are open to his use and service; wherever his taste or humour points, there are professors in every department of the highest talents: He may seat himself in a paradise of his own creating, and collect a society to participate with him worthy the enjoyment of it: The capital might then be his visiting and not his abiding-place; his dearest friend and the companion of his happiest hours might be his wife; the duties of a parent might open fresh sources of delight, and I, who profess myself to be an
Observer
and a friend of mankind, might contemplate his happiness, and cry out with the vanity of an author—
There is one convert to my system!
Vivite concordes, et nostrum discite munus!
CLAUDIAN.
No XLVIII.
IN the plan, which I have laid down for treating of the literature of the Greeks, and to which I have devoted part of these papers, I have thought it adviseable for the sake of perspicuity to preface the account with an abstract of the Athenian history within those separate periods, which I mean to review. In conformity to this plan I have already brought down my narration to the death of Pisistratus, and this has been followed with a state of the drama at that period: I now propose to proceed with the history to the battle of Marathon inclusive, beyond which I shall have no occasion to follow it, and shall then resume my account of the literature of the Greeks, which will comprehend all the dramatic authors, both tragic and comic, to the death of Menander.
At the decease of Pisistratus the government of Athens devolved quietly upon Hipparchus, who associated his brother Hippias with him in power. Pisistratus had two other sons by a second wife, who were named Jophon and Thessalus; the elder died in his father's life time, and the other, who was of a turbulent and unruly spirit, did not long survive him.
Hipparchus was no less devoted to science and the liberal arts than his father had been: The famous Phaea, who had personated Minerva, shared his throne, and though he communicated with his brother Hippias on matters of government, and imparted to him so great a portion of authority, that they were jointly stiled Tyrants of Athens, yet it seems evident that the supreme power was actually vested in Hipparchus; and it is extraordinary, for the space of fourteen years until his death, his government was undisturbed by any disagreement with his brother or complaint from his subjects.
The most virtuous citizens of Athens, in the freest hours of their republic, look back upon this reign as the most enviable period in their history. Plato himself asserts that all the fabulous felicity of the golden reign of Saturn was realized under this of Hipparchus: Thucydides gives the same testimony, and says that his government was administered without envy or reproach: The tradition of the golden days of Hipparchus was delivered down through many generations, and became proverbial with the Athenians. A prince, who had deserved so well of letters, was not likely to be forgotten by poets, historians, or philosophers; but such was the public tranquillity under his administration, that the patriots and declaimers for freedom in the most popular times have not scrupled to acknowledge and applaud it.
Hipparchus not only augmented the collection of books in the public library, but engaged several eminent authors to reside at Athens: He took Simonides of Ceos into his pay at a very high stipend, and sent a fifty-oared galley for Anacreon to Teos, inviting him with many princely gifts to live at his court: He caused the poems of Homer to be publicly recited at the great assembly of the Panathenaea, and is generally supposed to have suggested the plan of collecting the scattered rhapsodies of the Iliad and Odyssey, so happily executed by his father. His private hours he devoted to the society of men of letters, and on these occasions was accompanied by Simonides the lyric poet, Onomacritus, Anacreon and others. He did not confine his attention to the capital of his empire, but took a method, well adapted to the times he lived in, of reforming the understandings of his more distant and less enlightened subjects in the villages, by erecting in conspicuous parts of their streets or market-places statues of the god Mercury, placed upon terms or pedestals, on which he caused to be inscribed some brief sentence or maxim, such as—
Know thyself—Love justice—Be faithful to thy friend
—and others of the like general utility.
It is not easy to devise a project better calculated for the edification of an ignorant people than these short but comprehensive sentences, so easy to be retained in the memory, and which, being recommended both by royal and divine authority, claimed universal attention and respect.
This excellent and most amiable prince was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton, and a revolution being in the end effected favourable to the popular government of Athens, the assassins were celebrated to all posterity as the asserters of liberty and the deliverers of their country. Of all the rulers of mankind, who have fallen by the hand of violence, how few have been sacrificed in the public spirit of justice, and how many have fallen by the private stab of revenge! When we contemplate the elder Brutus brandishing the dagger of Lucretia, we cannot help recollecting that Tarquinius Superbus had murdered his brother. Hipparchus is said to have put an affront upon Harmodius's sister by dismissing her from a religious procession, in which she was walking at the festival of the Panathenaea: Harmodius was the handsomest youth in Attica, and the prince is by the same account charged with having conceived an unnatural passion for him, in which he was repulsed. If this account were to be credited in the whole, it would be an incident of so unmanly a sort on the part of Hipparchus, as to leave an everlasting mark of disgrace upon a character, otherwise meritorious.
The general prevalence of a turpitude, which neither the religion nor the laws of Greece actually prohibited, may induce our belief of the charge against Hipparchus, as far as concerns Harmodius; but the supposed insult to the sister is irreconcileable to his character. It were far more natural to suppose his resentment should have been pointed against Aristogiton, who was the favorite of Harmodius; such circumstances as we have now related would have carried their own consutation upon the face of them, even though historians had not greatly varied in their accounts of the transaction; but when so respectable an author as Plato gives the narrative a turn entirely opposite to the above, whilst modern historians have only retailed vulgar errors without examining testimonies of better credit, I hope I may be allowed the equitable office of summing up the evidences in this mysterious transaction, for the purpose of rescuing a most amiable character from misrepresentation.
Plato in his Hipparchus says—
That the current account above given was not the account believed and adopted by people of the best condition and repute; that the insult vulgarly supposed to have been put upon the sister of Harmodius by Hipparchus was ridiculous and incredible upon the face of it; that Harmodius was the disciple of Aristogiton, a
man of ordinary rank and condition; that there was a mutual affection between the pupil and his master; that they had admitted into their society a young Athenian of distinction, whose name had escaped his memory, of whom they were very fond, and whom they had by their conversation and instructions impressed with high ideas of their talents and crudition; that this young Athenian having found access to the person of Hipparchus, attached himself to his society and began to fall off from his respect for his former preceptors, and even treated their inferiority of understanding with contempt and ridicule; that thereupon they conceived such hatred and resentment against the prince for this preference shewn by their pupil for his company, and for the method he had taken of mortifying their vanity, that they determined upon dispatching Hipparchus by assassination, which they accordingly effected.
Justin gives a different account and says—
That the affront was put upon the sister of Harmodius not by Hipparchus but by his brother Diocles; that Harmodius with his friend Aristogiton entered into a conspiracy for cutting off all the reigning family at once, and pitched upon the festival of the Panathenaea as a convenient time for the execution of their plot, the citizens being then allowed to wear arms; that the complete execution of their design was frustrated by one of their party being observed in
earnest discourse with Hippias, which occasioned them to suspect a discovery, and so precipitated their attack before they were ready; that in this attack however they chanced upon Hipparchus, and put him to death.
There are other accounts still differing from these, but they have no colour of probability, and only prove an uncertainty in the general story.
Plutarch relates—
That Venus appeared to Hipparchus before his assassination in a dream, and from a phial, which she held in her hand, sprinkled his face with drops of blood.
Herodotus also says—
That he was warned by a vision on the eve of his murder, being addressed in sleep by a man of extraordinary stature and beauty, in verses of an enigmatical import, which he had thoughts of consulting the interpreters upon next morning, but afterwards passed it off with contempt as a vapour of the imagination, and fell a sacrifice to his incredulity.
This at least is certain, that he governed the capricious inhabitants of Attica with such perfect temper and discretion, that their tranquillity was without interruption; nor does it appear that the people, who were erecting statues and trophies to his murderers, in commemoration of the glorious re-establishment of their freedom, could charge him with one single act of oppression; and perhaps if Hippias, who survived him, had not galled them with the yoke of his tyranny during the few years he ruled in Athens after the death of Hipparchus, the public would not have joined in stiling th
se assassins the deliverers of their country, who were known to be guided by no other motives than private malice and resentment.
Harmodius was killed on the spot; Aristogiton fled and was seized in his flight. The part, which Hippias had now to act, was delicate in the extreme; he was either to punish with such rigour, as might secure his authority by terror, or endear himself to the people by the virtue of forbearance: He had the experience of a long administration conducted by his brother on the mildest and most merciful principles; and, if these assassins had been without accomplices, it is reasonable to suppose he would not have reversed a system of government, which had been found so successful; but as it appeared that Harmodius and Aristogiton were joined by others in their plot, he thought the Athenians were no longer to be ruled by gentle means, and that no other alternative remained, but to resign his power, or enforce it with rigour.
No XLIX.
HIPPIAS began his measures by putting Aristogiton to the torture; he seized the person of Leaena a courtezan, who was in the secret of the conspiracy, but whilst he was attempting to force her to a confession, she took the resolute method of preventing it by biting off her tongue. Aristogiton with revengeful cunning impeached several courtiers and intimates of the tyrant. Athens now became a scene of blood; executions were multiplied, and many principal citizens suffered death, till the informer having satiated his vengeance upon all, who were obnoxious to him or friendly to Hippias, at length told the tyrant that he had been made the dupe of false accusations, and triumphed in the remorse that his confession occasioned: Some accounts add that he desired to whisper to Hippias, and in the act suddenly seized his ear with his teeth, and tore it from his head.
Hippias henceforward became a tyrant in the worst sense of the word; he racked the people with taxes, ordered all the current coin into the royal coffers upon pretence of its debasement, and for the period of three years continued to oppress the state by many grievous methods of exaction and misrule. His expulsion and escape at length set Athens free, and then it was that the Athenians began to celebrate the action of Harmodius and Aristogiton with rapture and applause; from this period they were regarded as the saviours of their country; a public edict was put forth, directing that no slave, or person of servile condition, should in future bear the names of these illustrious citizens; assignments were made upon the Prytaneum for the maintenance of their descendants, and order was given to the magistrate stiled Polemarchus to superintend the issue of the public bounty; their posterity were to rank in all public spectacles and processions as the first members of the state, and it was delivered in charge to the superintendants of the Panathenaea, that Harmodius and Aristogiton should be celebrated in the recitations chaunted on that solemnity. There was a popular ode or song composed for this occasion, which was constantly performed on that festival, and is supposed to have been written by Callistratus: It grew so great a favourite with the Athenians, that it became a general fashion to sing it at their private entertainments; some fragments of the comic poets are found to allude to it, and some passages in the plays of Aristophanes. It is a relick of so curious a sort, that, contrary to the practice I shall usually observe, I shall here insert it in the original with a translation.
He is not dead, our best belov'd
Harmodius is not lost,
But with Troy's conquerors remov'd
To some more happy coast.
Bind then the myrtle's mystic bough,
And wave your swords around,
For so they struck the tyrant low,
And so their swords were bound.
Perpetual objects of our love
The patriot pair shall be,
Who in Minerva's sacred grove
Struck and set Athens free.
The four last lines of this ode are quoted by Athenaeus, and I also find amongst the adulatory verses made in commemoration of these illustrious tyrannicides a distich written by Simonides of Ceos, congratulating with the Athenians on their delivery from the tyranny of Hipparchus: This poet is made famous to posterity for his memory, which was almost miraculous; it is to be lamented that it should fail to remind him of such a patron and benefactor. The lines are not worth translating; the author and the subject reflect no honour upon each other.
The first statues, which the Athenian artists ever cast in metal, were the brazen statues erected in honour of Harmodius and Aristogiton, in the first year of Olymp. lxviii. thirteen years after the murder of Hipparchus, when Isagoras was archon, and the memorable aera of Rome, when Tarquinius Superbus was dethroned and expelled: They were conspicuously placed in the forum of Athens, and it was a curious event, after the revolution of five centuries, that the statue of the younger Brutus, when he had killed Caesar, was placed between these very statues, erected in the year when his ancestor expelled the Tarquins: They were the workmanship of Antenor; and Xerxes, when he plundered Athens, removed them out of Greece from other motives probably than of respect to their intrinsic merit: They were in succeeding time restored to the city, but whether by Alexander after his defeat of Darius, by Antiochus, or by the munificence of Seleucus, authorities are not agreed; I am inclined to think they were given back by Seleucus. There were two others of the same materials afterwards cast by Critias, and again two others, the workmanship of the celebrated Praxiteles. Pliny says these last-mentioned statues were of consummate beauty and excellence, and there is reason to think they were the first performances of that great master in metal. The honour of a statue in brass was rarely decreed by the Athenians to any of their most illustrious citizens, and few other instances occur, except one to Solon, and one to Conon for his services against the Lacedaemonians. The expedient made use of to perpetuate the heroic constancy of Leaena was ingenious, for as it was not fitting to erect a public statue to a courtezan, they devised the figure of a lioness in allusion to her name, which they cast in brass, and without a tongue in memory of the resolute method she had taken to prevent confession; this figure was placed in the porch of the citadel, where it kept its station for many generations.
Pisistratus and his sons maintained their usurpation during a period of sixty-eight years, including those of Pisistratus's secessions from Athens: Had Hippias shared the fate of his brother, their annals would have been unstained by any other act of violence or injustice, except that of reviving a regal authority, which by gradual revolutions had been finally abolished. The measures of Hippias during the time he reigned alone, which scarce exceeded three years, blasted the merits of his predecessors, and embittered the minds of the Athenians against his family to the latest posterity.
Clisthenes and Isagoras, two rich and leading citizens, finding themselves unsafe under his government, left Athens and took shelter amongst the Phocians. They were in fact no less ambitious than himself, turbulent partisans, and tho' they proved the instruments of extricating their country from his tyranny, they were no more actuated by a pure love of liberty, as a general principle, than Harmodius and his accomplice were, when they assassinated Hipparchus.
The state of Lacedaemon both in point of resource and of its alliances, was at this time in condition to assume a leading share in the affairs of Greece, and it was the first object of Clisthenes and Isagoras to engage the Lacedaemonians in their party for the emancipation of Athens; to carry this point with a people, so jealous of the Athenian greatness, required some engine of persuasion more powerful than philanthropy or the dictates of common justice; the Temple of Delphi opened a resource to them, and by a seasonable bribe to the Pythia they engaged her to give such responses to her Lacedaemonian clients on all occasions, as should work upon their superstition to accord to their wishes.
The plot succeeded, and an expedition was set on foot for the expulsion of Hippias, sanctified by the authority of Apollo, but it miscarried; the effort was repeated, and when things were in that doubtful posture as seemed to menace a second disappointment, chance produced the unexpected success. Hippias and his adherents, foreseeing that the capital would be invested, sent their women and children to a place of better security, and the whole party fell into the hands of the enemy. Such hostages brought on a treaty, and the parent consented to renounce his power for the redemption of his children; Hippias upon this retired from Athens to the court of his kinsman Hegesistratus, in the city of Sigeum, in the Troade on the Asiatic coast.
No L.
CLISTHENES and Isagoras had now effected a complete revolution in favour of liberty, but being men of ambitious spirit and of equal pretensions, the state was soon thrown into fresh convulsion by their factions. Clisthenes made his court to the people, Isagoras again had recourse to the Lacedaemonians.
Lacedaemon, always disposed to controul the growing consequence of her neighbours, and sensible of the bad policy of her late measures, had opened her eyes to the folly of expelling Hippias upon the forged responses of the Pythia, of whose corruption and false dealing she had now the proofs: She complied with the requisitions of Isagoras so far as related to her interference at large, but in the mo
e of that interference she by no means met his wishes, for it was immediately resolved to invite Hippias into Sparta, where he was publicly acknowledged and received, and a herald sent to Athens with a haughty message to Clisthenes and his party. The Athenians, intimidated and divided, threw themselves upon new and desperate resources, sending an embassy, or rather petition, to the Persian satrap Artaphernes, brother of the reigning king Darius, and governor of Lydia.
The Persian had not at this time ever heard the name of Athens, and peremptorily demanded homage; the ambassadors yielded to the demand, but the state revoked it at their return with indignation; for the Corinthians had in the mean time taken measures very favourable to their interests, by separating from the Lacedaemonian alliance and protesting strongly against the proposal of restoring Hippias; their opposition seems to have been founded in principle, having lately experienced a tyranny of the same sort in their own persons, and they carried their point by compelling Hippias to return in despair to Sigeum, from whence he betook himself to Lampfacus, where he began to cabal in the court of Aeantides the tyrant, who was in great favour with the Persian monarch. By this channel Hippias introduced himself to Darius, and with all the inveteracy of an exiled sovereign, not abated by age or length of absence, became a principal instrument for promoting his expedition into Greece, which concluded in the memorable battle of Marathon, at which he was present, twenty years after his expulsion.
It was fortunate for the liberties of Athens, that, when she sent her embassy to Artaphernes, he required as an indispensable condition of his aid that Hippias should be re-established in his tyranny. A more dangerous step could not have been resolved upon than this of inviting the assistance of the Persian, and in this applauded aera of liberty it is curious to remark such an instance of debasement, as this embassy into Lydia: The memory however of past oppression was yet too fresh and poignant to suffer the Athenians to submit to the condition required, and nothing remained but to prepare themselves to face the resentment of this mighty power: With this view they gave a favourable reception to Aristogaras the Milesian, who was canvassing the several states of Greece to send supplies to the Ionians, then on the point of falling under the dominion of Persia: Lacedaemon had refused to listen to him, and peremptorily dismissed him out of their territory: From Athens he obtained the succours he solicited, in twenty gallies well manned and appointed: The Athenian forces, after some successful operations, suffered a defeat by sea, and the breach with Persia became incurable. Before the storm broke immediately upon Athens, the Persian armies were employed against the frontier colonies and islands of Greece with uninterrupted success: They defeated the Phoenician fleet and reduced Cyprus; many cities on the Hellespontic coast were added to their empire; in the confines of the Troade several places were taken; impressions were made upon Ionia and Aeolia by the forces of Artamenes and Otanes, and in further process of the war the rich and beautiful city of Miletus was besieged and taken, and the inhabitants of both sexes removed into the Persian territery, and colonized upon new lands: The isles of Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos shared the same fate, and not a city in Ionia, that had been involved in the defection, but was subjected in its turn: In the Hellespont and Propontis every thing on the European shore was reduced, together with the important station of Chalcedon; the like success followed their arms in the Thracian Chersonesus. These operations were succeeded by the next year's campaign under the conduct of Mardonius, the son of a sister of Darius, a young and inexperienced general; and the check, which the power of Persia received this year by the wreck and dispersion of their fleet off the coast of Macedonia, under Mount Athos, in the Singitic bay, afforded the first seasonable respite from the ill-fortune of the war.
At length the formidable torrent, which had so long threatened Athens at a distance, seemed ready to burst upon her, and surely a more unequal contest never occupied the attention of mankind. Mardonius, who had been so unsuccessful in his first campaign, was now superseded, and the vast army of Persia was put under the joint command of Datis a Mede, and the younger Artaphernes, nephew to king Darius and son to the Prefect of Lydia. These commanders pursued a different route by sea from what Mardonius had taken, avoiding the unlucky coast of Macedonia, and falling upon Euboea in the neighbourhood of Attica by a strait course through the Aegean Sea. Having reduced the city of Carystus, they laid siege to Eretria the capital of Euboea; the Athenians had reinforced the garrison with four thousand troops; but although the Eretrians for a time stood resolutely to the defence of their city, it was given up by treachery on the seventh day and pillaged and destroyed in a most barbarous manner, the very temples being involved in the common ruin and conflagration.
Having struck this stroke of terror under the very eye of Athens, the Persians embarked their troops, and passing them over the narrow channel, which separates Attica from Euboea, landed for the first time on Athenian ground, and encamped their vast army upon the sandy plain of Marathon.
Hippias, who had been now twenty years in exile, and in whose aged bosom the fires of ambition were not yet extinguished, accompanied the Persian forces into his native country, and according to the most probable accounts was slain in action. If any death can be glorious in a guilty cause, this of Hippias may be so accounted; to have brought three hundred thousand men in arms, after a career of victory, landed them on the Athenian territory, and there to have put the very existence of his country to the issue of a combat, was an astonishing effort both of mind and body, at a period of life which human nature rarely attains to. Ten thousand Greeks under the command of Miltiades discomfited this overgrown host in a pitcht battle upon an open plain, where all the Persian numbers could act; but it has often happened that a small band of disciplined warriors have worsted an irregular multitude, how great soever. The army of Darius was broken and repulsed; six thousand were left on the field, and the fugitives returned into Asia overwhelmed with shame and disappointment.
This memorable day established the liberty and the glory of Athens, and from this we are to look forward to the most illuminated age in the annals of mankind. Though Hippias had several children, who survived him, yet as his descendants never gave any further disturbance to the liberties and constitution of Athens, we are henceforward to consider the race of Pisistratus as historically extinct.
The friend of freedom, who reviews them as tyrants, will dismiss them with reproach; we, who have regarded them only as patrons of literature, may take leave of them with a sigh.
No LI.
Graiis ingenium; Graiis dedit ore rotund
Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris.
(HORAT.)
THE advances, which the drama had made within the period now reviewed, were considerable; for the tragic poets Pratinas, Chaerilus, Phrynichus and Aeschylus were in possession of the stage, whilst Epicharmus and Phormis in Sicily, Chionides, Dinolochus, Evetes, Euxenides, Mylus and others in Attica, were writing comedy. Bacchus and his Satyrs were expelled, and a new species of composition, built upon short fables selected from the poems of Homer, succeeded to the village masque, and numbers of ingenious competitors began to apply themselves to the work.
Thespis
had been acting tragedies, but Thespis was one of those early dramatists, who come under the description of
,
writers about Bacchus.
Pratinas
succeeded Thespis, and wrote fifty tragedies, if they may be so called, when two and thirty of the number were
satyric,
or allusive to the satyrs. He was a Peloponnesian of the celebrated city of Phlius, but resorted to Athens for the purpose of representing his dramas: He entered the lists with Chaerilus and Aeschylus about the time of Olymp. lxx. some years antecedent to the battle of Marathon: He bore away the prize from his competitors with one composition only; on all other occasions he saw the palm decreed to the superior merit or better interest of his rivals.
Plays were still exhibited upon scaffolds or in booths, where the spectators as well as the performers were placed, till upon the representation of one of Pratinas's tragedies the scaffolding broke down under the weight of the crowd, and much mischief ensued upon the accident: From this time the Athenians set about building a theatre in proper form and of more solid materials, and the drama, like the edifice, assumed a more dignified character and a better construction.
Pratinas struck out a considerable improvement in the orchestral part of his drama, by revoking the custom of allowing the minstrels to join in the chaunt or strain with the chorus, and suffering them only to accompany with their pipes; The recitative was by this alteration given more distinctly to the audience, and the clamorous confusion of voices avoided: The people however, not yet weaned from their old prejudice for the noisy Bacchanalian songs of their village masques, opposed themselves violently against this refined innovation, and the whole theatre was thrown into confusion, when in the midst of the tumult Pratinas appeared on the stage in person, and in a kind of Salian song, accompanied with dancing, addressed his audience to the following effect.
WHAT means this tumult? Why this rage?
What thunder shakes th' Athenian stage?
'Tis frantic Bromius bids me sing,
He tunes the pipe, he smites the string;
The Dryads with their chief accord,
Submit and hail the drama's lord.
Be still! and let distraction cease,
Nor thus prophane the Muse's peace;
By sacred fiat I preside
The minstrel's master and his guide;
He, whilst the chorus-strains proceed,
Shall follow with responsive reed;
To measur'd notes whilst they advance,
He in wild maze shall lead the dance:
So generals in the front appear,
Whilst music echoes from the rear.
Now silence each discordant sound!
For see, with ivy chaplet crown'd,
Bacchus appears! He speaks in me—
Hear, and obey the god's decree!
(EX ATHENAEO.)
Phrynichus,
the tragic poet, was the son of Melanthus and the disciple of Thespis: Suidas thinks there was another of the name, son of Chorocles, who also wrote tragedies, but there is reason to think he is an error. This Phrynichus first introduced the measure of tetrametres; this he did because the trochaic foot is most proper for dancing, and the drama of this age was accompanied with dances characteristic and explanatory of the fable. There were masters professedly for the purpose of composing and teaching these dances, and in some instances the author performed in person; hence it was that the early dramatists were called
, or
Dancers.
When tragedy was in a more improved state, and the business was no longer conducted by dance and spectacle, but committed to dialogue, they changed the tetrametres to iambics, which Aristotle observes were fit for declamation rather than singing with the accompaniment of the dance.
This author was the first who produced the female mask upon the scene; he took upon himself the task of instructing the dancers and performed in person; accordingly we find him burlesqued by Aristophanes in his last scene of
The Wasps,
on account of his extravagant gesticulations—
He strikes and flutters,
says the old humourist Philocleon,
like a cock; he capers into the air, and kicks up his heels to the stars:
Whilst Philocleon is capering on the stage after this fashion, the son, who is on the scene, observes—
This is not agility, it is insanity. It is either the plot of a tragedy,
replies the servant,
or the caprice of a madman; give him hellebore; the man's beside himself.
Dancing was so essential a part of the first scenic spectacle, and the people were so attached to their old Bacchanalian customs, that the early reformers of the tragic drama found it no easy task to make the dance accord to the subject of the scene and weave it into the fable. This was generally understood to be done under the direction of the poet, and in many cases he was principal performer in person; but where an author was not competent to this part of his duty, he called in the assistance of a profest ballet-master, who formed dances upon the incidents of the drama, and instructed the chorus how to perform them. There is a very eminent professor of this art upon record, named
Telestes,
who had the honour of a statue decreed to him, which was conspicuously placed within the theatre, whilst those of the most celebrated poets were not admitted to a nearer approach than the steps or portico. These dances prevailed till after the time of Aeschylus, when they were finally laughed out of fashion by the parody of the satyrical comedy.
Though the fate of Phrynichus's tragedy on the
Siege of Milctus
has been frequently mentioned, I cannot here omit the story. This beautiful city had been lately sacked by the Persian troops; it was the capital and pride of Ionia, a very antient colony of the Athenians, settled by Neleus, son of Codrus, the last and most beloved of their kings: Of its riches and renown Strabo tells us the account would exceed belief; it had given birth to men illustrious for science and for military fame: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes in succession had been natives of Miletus; Hecataeus the historian was born there, as were his contemporaries Histiaeus and Aristogaras, celebrated men, who took so great a lead in the affairs of the Ionians introductory to the invasion of the Persians, and to whose conspicuous talents even Darius himself, when exulting at their death, gave the honourable tribute of his applause.
Such was the city, upon whose deplorable fate Phrynichus founded his tragedy; the spectacle dissolved his audience into tears; the national and affecting scene operated on the sensibility of the Athenians in so serious a manner, that the magistracy thought it a case fit for their interference, and by public edict prohibited any author in future to touch upon that melancholy subject: Nor was this all, they put a heavy fine upon the poet. His judgment certainly wanted correction; but it should have been the correction of an indiscretion rather than of a crime: As the trag
dy, like its subject, is long since perished, we cannot properly decide upon the severity of the edict; it must be owned the event was too recent and domestic; the idea of such a city in flames, the destruction of its temples and the massacre of its inhabitants, many of whom perhaps had friends and relations present at the spectacle, was not to be supported. It is not the province of the drama to attack the human heart with such realities; the whole region of invention is open to its choice, free to work its moral purposes by pity or by terror; but if a plot is to be constructed upon truth, the tragic history is to be taken from time far distant, or from scenes out of the spectator's knowledge.
Plectere non frangere
is the poet's motto; if he terrifies, let him not rend the heart; if he softens, let him not seduce it: The man, who is melted with pity, becomes as a child, but he is the child of his poet, and has a claim upon him for the protection of a parent.
This author exhibited a famous tragedy, intitled
Pyrrhicistae,
or
the Dance of armed Soldiers:
The Athenians were charmed with the martial manner, in which he conducted this spectacle, and Aelian says they made him their general, and put him at the head of their army for his skill and address in the performance: If it were so, it would seem to have been the fate of Phrynichus to be punished without mercy, and rewarded without merit; but the anecdote does not obtain with good critics, and it is clear that the poet lived in a more early period than Phrynichus the general, for the lowest date we have of him, whom we are speaking of, is the circumstance given by Plutarch in his Themistocles, viz. That in Olymp. lxxv.4. Phrynichus bore away the prize with his tragedy (probably
The Phaenissae
) in compliment to Themistocles, who was at the charge of the representation, and who in commemoration thereof set up the following inscription—
Themistocles of the parish of Phreari was at the charge; Phrynichus made the tragedy, and Adimantus was archon.
From this play of
The Phaenissae
Aeschylus took the design of his famous tragedy of
The Persae.
No LII.
Post hunc personae pallaeque repertor honestae
Aeschylus et modicis instravit pulpita tignis;
Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno.
(HORAT.)
WE now are to speak of a poet, some of whose inestimable remains are in our hands. Aeschylus was born in the last year of Olymp. lxiii. the son of Euphorion an Athenian; he was in the flower of manhood at the battle of Marathon, and served with distinguished reputation; his three brothers, Aminias, Euphorion and Cynaegirus, were in the same action, and signalized themselves on that glorious day. In the sea-fight off Salamis Aminias lost an arm, and bore away the first prize for valour in that well-fought action: It so happened at the representation of one of Aeschylus's plays, that the people rose against him on account of some attack he had made upon their superstitions, and were proceeding to stone him to death, when this Aminias, putting aside his mantle, exhibited his amputated arm, and turned their fury aside from the devoted poet; an anecdote, which at once demonstrates their ferocity and their magnanimity.
Aeschylus, though he had just reason to value himself highly on his poetical talents, yet, like Alcaeus and Archilochus, continued through life to hold his military character more at heart than his literary one, and directed to be engraved on his tomb-stone a distich in long and short verse, in which he appeals
to the field of Marathon and the long-haired Mede
to witness to his valour; by the Mede he probably means the general Datis. The personal gallantry, for which Aeschylus and his brethren were so conspicuous, gives a strong and manly colouring to his compositions; it is the characteristic of his genius, and his pen, like his sword, is a weapon of terror: The spectacle, which his drama exhibits, is that of one sublime, simple scene of awful magnificence; his sentiment and stile are in unison with his subject, and though he is charged with having written his tragedies in a state of ebriety, to which he was in general addicted, still they do not betray the traces of a confused imagination, as Sophocles insinuated, though occasionally they may of an inslated one; and it was a weakness in Sophocles (to give his motive no worse a name) to pronounce of Aeschylus,
that he did not know what he did,
although he did things well
; as if he had written in a state of absolute intoxication and mental disability; an imputation, which convicts itself.
Aeschylus's excess was the vice of his time and nation, I might add of his profession also as a soldier; and one should almost suspect that he considered it as a becoming quality in a hero, seeing that he had the hardiness to exhibit Jason drunk upon the scene, an attempt which stands recorded as the first of the sort, though afterwards he was followed in it by Epicharmus and Crates, comic poets, and in later times even by the sententious Euripides himself: In short the literary annals of Greece are deeply stained with this excess, and the stage at one period was far from discouraging it.
Aeschylus not only instructed his chorus in the dances incidental to the piece, but superintended also and arranged the dresses of the performers with the most correct precision; and this he did in a taste so dignified and characteristic, that the priests and sacrificing ministers of the temples did not scruple to copy and adopt his fashions in their habiliments: He did not indeed perform on the stage as Phrynichus did, but he never permitted the intervention of a master, as many others did: The dances, which he composed for his tragedy of
The Seven Chiefs,
were particularly apposite to the scene, and were performed with extraordinary success and applause: He brought fifty furies at once on the stage in the chorus of his
Eumenides,
and displayed them with such accompaniments and force of effect, that the whole theatre was petrified with horror, pregnant women miscarried on the spot, and the magistracy interposed for the prevention of such spectacles in future, and limited the number of the dancers, annexing a penalty to the breach of the restriction. Aristophanes has an allusion to the Eumenides of Aeschyius in his comedy of the
Plutus,
(Act ii. Scene 4.) where Chremylus and Blepsidemus being on the scene are suddenly accosted by
Poverty
in the person of a squalid old woman, and whilst they are questioning who she may be, Blepsidemus cries out—
Some fury from the scenes of Aeschylus,
Some stage Erinnys; look! her very face
Is tragedy itself.
But where's her firebrand?
Oh! there's a penalty for that.
That the poet Aeschylus was of a candid mind appears from his well-known declaration, viz.
That his tragedies were but scraps from the magnificent repasts of Homer
; that he was of a lofty mind is from nothing more evident, than from his celebrated appeal upon a certain occasion, when the prize was voted to his competitor evidently against justice—
I appeal to posterity,
says Aeschylus,
to posterity I consecrate my works, in the assurance that they will meet that reward from time, which the partiality of my contemporaries refuses to bestow.
Though the candour of Aeschylus called his tragedies fragments or scraps from Homer, and seemed to think it sufficient honour to be able to wield with tolerable grace one weapon out of the armoury of this gigantic spirit, yet I would submit to the reader's judgment, whether the tragic poem does not demand a stronger exertion of the mental faculties within the compass of its composition than the epic poem. In a drama, where every thing must be in action, where characters must be strongly marked and closely compressed, the passions all in arms, and the heart alternately seized by terror and subdued by pity, where the diction must never sleep in detail, nor languish in description, but be lofty yet not dilated, eloquent but not loquacious, I have no conception how the human genius can be strained to greater energy: At the same time it must be admitted that the continuation of exertion, which the epic requires, inferior though it may be in force, falls heaviest on the poet of that department; the scope of his work is much more diffused, and history perhaps presents so few fit subjects to his choice, that we cannot wonder at the general predilection of the literary world for dramatic composition; least of all can we want a reason why the Greeks, an animated and ingenious race of writers, addicted to spectacle and devoted to music and dancing, should fall with such avidity upon the flowery province of the drama.
But when they made it a contest as well as a study, when they hung up wreaths and crowns as the reward of victory, and turned dramatic spectacles into a kind of Olympic games, they brought a crowd of competitors to the lists. The magistrate generally, and private citizens in particular cases, furnished the exhibition at an immense expence, and with a degree of splendor we have little conception of. The happy poet crowned with the wreath of triumph, presenting himself to the acclamations of a crowded theatre, felt such a flood of triumph, as in some instances to sink under the ecstacy and expire on the spot; whilst on the other hand disappointment operating upon susceptible and sanguine minds, has been more than once productive of effects as fatal: Such minds, though they claim our pity, do not merit our respect, and it is a consolation to reflect, that where there is a genius like that of Aeschylus, there is generally found a concomitant magnanimity, which can disregard with conscious dignity the false misjudging decrees of the vulgar.
The appeal, which Aeschylus made to posterity, was soon verified, for after his death the Athenians held his name in the highest veneration, and made a decree for furnishing the expence of representing his tragedies out of the public purse; he carried away many prizes during his life, and many more were decreed to his tragedies after his death: A statue was erected in memory of him at Athens, and a picture was painted descriptive of his valour in the fight at Marathon.
Amongst other reasons suggested for his leaving Athens, some assert that he retired in disgust at being superseded in a prize by Sophocles, who was a very young competitor; but a vague assertion of this invidious sort is readily confuted by the character of Aeschylus, to which it is not reconcileable upon any other than the strongest authority. It is agreed that he removed to Sicily to the court of king Hiero, where he was very honourably received, and after three years residence died and was buried in a sumptuous and public manner: The fable of the eagle dropping a tortoise on his head, and his being killed by the blow, was probably allegorical, and emblematical of his genius, age and decay. Valerius Maximus however gives the story for truth, and refers to the authorities of Aristophanes, Pliny, and Suidas, concluding his account with the following expression—
Eoque ictu origo et principium fortioris tragoediae extinctum est.
He died at the age of sixty-nine years, after a life spent alternately in great labour and great excess. This event took place in the first year of Olymp. lxxxi. In Olymp. lxx. when he was between twenty and thirty years old, he contested the prize with Pratinas and Chaerilus, when Myrus was archon;
Chaerilus
was an Athenian, and wrote tragedies to the amount of one hundred and fifty, of all which not even a fragment survives. At the battle of Marathon Aeschylus was thirty-seven years old; twelve years after this celebrated action Xerxes passed into Greece at the head of his armies, burnt Athens, and carried off the library collected by Pisistratus and his sons. When Aeschylus was turned of fifty he carried away the prizes with his tragedies of
Phineus, The Persae, Glaucus Potniensis,
and
The Prometheus.
Three years before his death he performed his
Agamemnon
and bore away the prize with that, with
The Choephoris, The Eumenides
and
The Proteus,
a satyric drama, the charges of the theatre being defrayed by Xenocles Aphidneus. If he passed into Sicily therefore he must have left Athens immediately after this success, and this is another circumstance, which makes against the story of his disgust.
At the death of Aeschylus, Sophocles was in his twenty-seventh year, and Euripides in his twenty-first: Chionides and Dinolochus, writers of the old comedy, flourished in his time; as did the philosophers Zeno Eleates, Anaxagoras and Parmenides: Socrates was in his twenty-second year, when Aeschylus died, and Pindar died two years before him.
No LIII.
IN the
Frogs
of Aristophanes three entire acts are occupied by a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic chair amongst the departed spirits. The matter is put to reference before Bacchus and others, who proceed to a solemn hearing of the parties. The author evidently leans to Aeschylus throughout the controversy, and in the end makes Bacchus give a full decision in his favour: The irascible proud spirit of Aeschylus and the litigious talkative character of Euripides are well marked, and in a peculiar vein of comic humour: The contending poets alternately repeat passages in their respective prologues and chorusses, which the other party as constantly criticizes and turns to ridicule: Amongst the many defects, which Euripides pretends to discover in Aeschylus's dramas, he urges the taciturnity of his principal character.
First then, he'd muffle up his characters,
Some Niobe, for instance, or Achilles,
And bring them on the stage, their faces hid,
As mutes; for not a single word they utter'd.
Not they, by Jupiter!
Meantime the chorus
Sang regularly four successive strains;
But they kept silence.
And that silence truly
Pleas'd me as much as all our modern speeches.
—But tell me to what purpose
This fellow did it?
From impertinence,
To keep the audience during the performance
Waiting to hear when Niobe should speak.
—Having play'd these tricks,
Just as the piece was above half concluded,
They'd speak perhaps some dozen bellowing words,
Of such high-crested and terrific form,
The audience truly could not comprehend them.
(DUNSTER's Translation.)
The decree, which Aristophanes makes Bacchus pronounce in favour of Aeschylus, is by implication as decisive against Sophocles as against Euripides, for Sophocles declares his acquiescence under the judgment, if it shall be given for Aeschylus, but if otherwise he avows himself ready to contest the palm with Euripides: A circumstance which sufficiently discriminates the modest complacency of his character from the peevish disputatious temper of Euripides: It is at the same time an implied confirmation of the pre-eminence of these three tragic poets over all other competitors in that department of the drama, and puts Aeschylus at the head of the triumvirate. How they ranked in the judgment of Aristophanes is further manifest by what he puts in the mouth of Aeschylus after judgment is given for him: He says to Pluto—
Do thou to Sophocles
Consign my seat, to keep possession of it,
In case I should again return; for he
Doubtless comes nearest me in tragic powers.
(DUNSTER.)
It appears therefore, that, although we have few remains of the Greek tragedy, yet they are remains of the best masters. There are authorities which say that Aeschylus wrote above one hundred tragedies, and the titles of all these have been collected and published by Meursius; seven only survive; the like number of Sophocles and a few more of Euripides comprize all the remains of the Greek tragedy now in our possession: But although these are highly valuable as being specimens of the best masters, it does not follow that they are the best, or amongst the best, performances of their respective authors: At all events we can judge but in part from so small a proportion, and as these authors were in the habit of forming their dramas upon plots that were a continuation of the same story, it must be to the disadvantage of any one piece, that happens to come down to us disjunctively, as in the instance of the
Prometheus
of Aeschylus, and more which might be named amongst the remains of the two other surviving poets.
We have now English translations of all the Greek tragedies, and without carrying my remarks any farther than appertains to the poet of whom I am speaking, I should feel it as an injustice to the merit of a very able and ingenious contemporary, if I could mention Aeschylus and overlook his translator: A work so arduous as that, which Mr. Potter has executed, might claim much more indulgence, than his performance will ever stand in need of; but these translations, could they be executed up to the full spirit of their originals, can never interest an English reader like his native drama: To the poet they afford a great subject for display in odes and chorusses, and relieve him at the same time from the heaviest part of his work, the labour of the plot; but with the reader, who cannot judge of their orchestral accompaniments, they will never stand in competition with the activity of the English drama, its warm and rapid incident, transition of scene, variety of character, brevity of dialogue, busy plot and domestic fable. A man of genius, who writes for the closet, may have a curiosity to build a drama upon Greek construction, but he will hardly succeed in an attempt to naturalize it on our stage.
No translator can engage with a more difficult original than Aeschylus: Time has thrown some sublimities out of our sight, and many difficulties in our way by the injuries of the text: The stile of his tragedy bespeaks a fiery and inflated imagination; the time in which he wrote and his own martial habits doubtless give a colour and character to his diction; perhaps the intemperance in which he indulged may sometimes give a heat to his fancy more than natural, and there are some passages, of so figurative and metaphorical a sort, that I have been often tempted to suppose that his campaigns against the Persians might have tinctured his language with something of the Oriental tone of expression.
Sophocles in times more pacific has a softer versification, and a stile more sweet and feeble; of habits and education more effeminate, of a fair and comely person, we hear of him dancing naked round a trophy, erected for the victory of Salamis, his lyre in his hand, and his limbs anointed with oil to encrease their activity: He studied music and the dance under Lampsus, and in both arts was an adept; he danced at the performance of his own
Nausicaa,
and he accompanied the chorusses of his
Thamyris
with his voice and harp: Devoted to the fair sex in the extreme, the softness of his natural character is conspicuous in his writings; his pictures of women are flatteringly drawn, and his stile is compared to the honey of the bee for sweetness: The sensibility of his mind was extreme; though he lived near a hundred years, old age did not deaden his feelings, for whilst judgment was passing on his
Oedipus Coloneus,
the last play he exhibited, his spirit was so agitated by the anxious suspense, that when the prize was at length decreed in his favour, the tumult of passion was too violent for his exhausted frame, and the aged poet expired with joy.
Euripides on the other hand was of mean birth, the son of a poor woman, who sold herbs, at which circumstance Aeschylus points when he says in the
Frogs
—
O thou from rural goddess sprung!
He was educated by his father to engage as an athletic in the Eleusynian and Thesean games; he was also a student in natural philosophy under Anaxagoras, in rhetoric under Prodicus, and a pupil of Socrates in moral philosophy. When he began to study tragedy he shut himself in a cave, wild and horrid and sequestered from the world, in the island of Salamis: He is charged with having a profest antipathy to women, and every feature both of nature and education, as now described, is discoverable in his writings; his sentiments breathe the air of the schools, his images are frequently vulgar, and his female characters of an unfavourable cast; he is carping, sour and disputatious, and, though he carried away only five prizes out of seventy-five plays, he is still indignant, proud and self-assuming; his life was full of contention and his death of horror, for he was set upon by mastiffs and killed. He was the friend of Socrates and grossly addicted to unnatural passion.
No LIV.
IN a scene between Xanthias the slave of Bacchus, and Aeacus, in the comedy of the
Frogs
before mentioned, the latter upon being asked why Sophocles did not put in his claim for the tragic chair, replies—
Not he, by Jove!
When hither he came down, he instantly
Embrac'd Aeschylus, shook him by the hand,
And in his favour gave up all pretensions:
And now, as by Clidemides I'm told,
He will attend the trial as third man,
Content if Aeschylus victorious prove;
But otherwise, has said he'll try his skill
In contest with Euripides.
(DUNSTER's Translation.)
The tragedies of Aeschylus have all the marks of an original genius; his scene is cast with an awful and majestic grandeur, and he designs in the boldest stile; in some situations his principal figures are painted with such terrible effect, that I can only liken them to a composition, where Spagnolet had drawn the persons of the damned in tortures, and Salvator Rosa had filled up the scenery of Hell in his strongest manner. No poet introduces his character on the scene with more dignity and stage-effect: He is in the practice of holding the spectator in suspense by a preparatory silence in his chief person, which is amongst the most refined arts of the dramatic poet: This was well understood by our Shakespear and some others of the old school; on the French stage I conceive it is very little in use.
In the introductory scene of the
Prometheus
the principal character preserves a dignified silence for a considerable space of time, during which all the tremendous machinery incidental to his tortures is going forward under the superintendance of imaginary beings, and the vengeance of almighty Jupiter in chaining him to a rock, there to languish for innumerable ages, is in actual execution. This is a prelude infinitely more dramatic, sublime and affecting, than if the scene had been interwoven with lamentations, cries and complaints, though ever so well expressed; the picture tells its own tale and the spectacle speaks to the heart without the vehicle of words: It is well observed by Mr. Potter the translator of Aeschylus, that
"there is a dignity and even sublimity in this silence of Prometheus beyond the expression of words; but as soon as the instruments of tyranny have left him, he bursts into a strain of pathetic lamentation, and invokes all nature to attest to his undeserved sufferings."
Aethereal air, and ye swift-winged winds,
Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves,
That o'er th' interminable ocean wreath
Your crisped smiles, thou all-producing earth,
And thee, bright sun, I call, whose flaming orb
Views the wide world beneath.—
(POTTER.)
The scenery and spectacle of the
Prometheus
must have been the finest that poet ever devised; all the characters are supernatural beings, and their language is not unworthy of Olympus.
The
Agamemnon
is a wonderful production, and though no other tragedy but this had come down to us from the pen of the author, it would be matter of astonishment to me that any critic should be found of such proof against its beauties, as to lower its author to a comparison with Sophocles or Euripides; yet some there have been, who have reversed the decree of Bacchus, and given their preference to Sophocles, nay even to Euripides. The same management is observable in this tragedy upon the introduction of Cassandra, as we have just now remarked in the case of
Prometheus:
Agamemnon recommends his captive to the protection of Clytemnestra; they are left upon the scene together; the Queen of Argos solicits her to descend from her car and enter the palace; the chorus second the invitation; she makes no reply; Clytemnestra doubts if she speaks the language of Greece, and calls upon her to make some acknowledgment by signs; when this draws nothing from her, she grows exasperated and exclaims—
'Tis frenzy this, the impulse of a mind
Disorder'd; from a city lately taken
She comes, and knows not how to bear the curb,
Till she has spent her rage in bloody foam:
But I no more waste words to be disdain'd.
(POTTER.)
Cassandra still is silent; when upon the departure of the queen, this gloomy cloud that hung upon the foreground of the prospect at once disperses, and a scene of such dazzling splendour and sublimity bursts forth upon the instant, as must have thrown the theatre into astonishment; seized with the prophetic fury she breaks out into such gusts and agonies of divination, as can no otherwise be described, but with silent wonder how any human imagination could furnish such ideas, or find words to give them utterance. The chorus I confess stand the shock with wonderful presence of mind, but the phlegm and apathy of a Greek chorus is proof against every thing; though the prophetess plainly denounces the impending murder of the king by Clytemnestra, and points out the bath as the scene of his assassination, the chorus tamely answers—
To unfold the obscure oracles of heav'n
Is not my boast.—
(POTTER.)
I need not be reminded that incredulity was annexed by Apollo to the predictions of Cassandra, and that the plot and catastrophe would not admit of precipitation; for I must still contend that incredulity itself is a good dramatic engine, and if the chorus had not stood in his way, would have been otherwise managed by the author; but I take the character of a true Greek chorus to be such, that if Apollo himself had come in person to tell them, that the earth would open and swallow them up, if they did not instantly remove from the spot on which they stood, they would have stopt to moralize, or hymn an ode, in strophe and antistrophe, to Jupiter, or Venus, or the gods below to whom they were descending, though the ground was cleaving under their feet—provided, as I before premised, that they had the true spirit of a Greek chorus in them. To have a genius like this of Aeschylus encumbered with a chorus, is as if a millstone was tied round the pinions of an eagle.
The
Agamemnon
was the last tragedy he wrote for the Athenian stage; the poet was then turned of sixty years: The Athenians decreed the prize to him for this inestimable performance, which has been the admiration of all ages, and will be to all posterity.
The tragedy of the
Persians,
and that also of the
Furies,
are a study for poets and painters; the imagery in both these pieces is of a wonderful and surpassing sublimity. In the former of these every reader must be struck with the introduction of the ghost of Darius, and the awful rites and incantations that are preparatory to its appearance: The sudden interruption of the unfinished hymn by the royal spectre, the attitudes of the prostrate Satraps, the situation of Atossa, and the whole disposition of the scene, are a combination in point of effect which no dramatic spectacle ever exceeded.
In the
Furies
the scene presents to the spectator the temple of the Pythian Apollo; the priestess opens the tragedy with a speech from the vestibule; the gates are drawn back and the interior of the fane is discovered, the god appears on the scene in person, Orestes is at his feet in a supplicating posture, and the furies to the number of fifty are dispersed in different attitudes, but all buried in profound sleep: Apollo addresses himself to his suppliant and points to the sleeping furies—
—See this griesly troop!
Sleep has oppress'd them, and their baffled rage
Shall fail, grim-visag'd hags, grown old
In loath'd virginity: Nor god, nor man
Approach'd their bed, nor savage of the wilds;
For they were born for mischiefs, and their haunts
In dreary darkness 'midst the yawning gulfs
Of Tartarus beneath, by men abhorr'd
And by th' Olympian gods.
(POTTER.)
Can there be a finer, a more tremendous picture? There can: But it is the genius of Aeschylus must heighten it: The ghost of Clytemnestra rises on the scene and completes the horror; stained with the blood of her husband, and gashed with wounds inflicted by the parricidal hand of her own son, she calls out to the avenging deities—
What, can you sleep? Is this a time t' indulge
Your indolent repose?—
Hear me, oh hearl 'tis for my soul's repose
I plead: rouse your keen sense, infernal powers!
'Tis Clytemnestra calls you in your dreams.
(POTTER.)
The furies scream out in their sleep, the spectre again urges them to rouse—
—And is this all? Awake,
Arise.—
—With fiery breath
That snuffs the scent of blood, pursue this son,
Follow him, blast him!
(POTTER.)
What art! what aggravation in this horrid prelude! what preparation for effect! with what a burst must they have sprung from their dream!—Well may we give credit to the account of the terrors which they imprest upon the spectators: Their numbers, their attire, their temples wreathed with snakes, and their hands armed with flames, the clangor of the orchestra, the violence of their motions, their yelling screams, seem to empty the whole infernal regions on the stage. We must take into our recollection also, that this spectacle was exhibited to a people, who considered these beings as deities, at whose shrines they paid divine worship, and to whose eyes and imaginations this snaky attire was wholly new; for it was the bold fancy of the poet, which first dressed them in this manner, and they have kept the fashion from that moment to the present.
I cannot dismiss this tragedy without observing that there is a shift of the scene from Delphi to Athens, which I take to be a single instance of the sort on the Greek stage.
The number of the chorus being limited by public edict after the exhibition of this tragedy, it is clear that the tragedy of the
Supplicants
must have been subsequent to it, inasmuch as the chorus of Danaides consisted of fifty persons; and as the whole tenor of this soft and pathetic drama bears an air of atonement to the superstition of the vulgar, and is full of pious submission to the will of Jupiter and religious veneration for the gods, it seems to me very probable that the poet had a view in this tragedy of the
Supplicants,
of reconciling the people after the offence he had given them on a former occasion by making too free with the deities, and for which he narrowly escaped their resentment.
As to the tragedy of
The Seven Chiefs against Thebes,
it is said to have been the favourite of its author, and we know it has the testimony of the critic Longinus. The scenery is beautiful; the dialogue characteristic and of a martial glow; the armorial bearings charged on the shields of the armed chiefs are most fancifully devised; and the tender contrast of the persons of the chorus, composed of the daughters of Cadmus, associate every pleasing and animating contemplation that can meet within the compass of one simple drama.
I believe there is no antient poet, that bears so close a resemblance in point of genius to any of the moderns, as Aeschylus bears to Shakespear: The comparison might afford a pleasing subject to a man of learning and leisure: If I was further to compare the relation, in which Aeschylus stands to Sophocles and Euripides, with that of Shakespear to any of our later dramatists, I should be inclined to put Sophocles in the line with Rowe, and Euripides with Lillo.
No LV.
Nil intentatum nostri liquere poetae:
Nec minimum meruere decus, vestigia Graeca
Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta.
(HORAT.)
THERE are two very striking characters delineated by our great dramatic poet, which I am desirous of bringing together under one review, and these are
Macbeth
and
Richard the Third.
The parts, which these two persons sustain in their respective dramas, have a remarkable coincidence: Both are actuated by the same guilty ambition in the opening of the story; both murder their lawful sovereign in the course of it; and both are defeated and slain in battle at the conclusion of it: Yet these two characters, under circumstances so similar, are as strongly distinguished in every passage of their dramatic life by the art of the poet, as any two men ever were by the hand of nature.
Let us contemplate them in the three following periods; viz. The premeditation of their crime; the perpetration of it; and the catastrophe of their death.
Duncan the reigning king of Scotland has two sons: Edward the fourth of England has also two sons; but these kings and their respective heirs do not affect the usurpers Macbeth and Richard in the same degree, for the latter is a prince of the blood royal, brother to the king and next in consanguinity to the throne after the death of his elder brother the duke of Clarence: Macbeth on the contrary is not in the succession—
And to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief.
His views therefore being further removed and more out of hope, a greater weight of circumstances should be thrown together to tempt and encourage him to an undertaking so much beyond
the prospect of his belief.
The art of the poet furnishes these circumstances, and the engine, which his invention employs, is of a preternatural and prodigious sort. He introduces in the very opening of his scene a troop of sybills or witches, who salute Macbeth with their divinations, and in three solemn prophetic gratulations hail him
Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor,
and
King hereafter!
By Sinel's death I know I'm thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor?
One part of the prophecy therefore is true; the remaining promises become more deserving of belief. This is one step in the ladder of his ambition, and mark how artfully the poet has laid it in his way: No time is lost; the wonderful machinery is not suffered to stand still, for behold a verification of the second prediction, and a courtier thus addresses him from the king—
And for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me from him call thee
Thane of Cawdor.
The magic now works to his heart, and he cannot wait the departure of the royal messenger before his admiration vents itself aside—
Glamis, and thane of Cawdor!
The greatest is behind.
A second time he turns aside, and unable to repress the emotions, which this second confirmation of the predictions has excited, repeats the same secret observation—
Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.
A soliloquy then ensues, in which the poet judiciously opens enough of his character to shew the spectator that these praeternatural agents are not superfluously set to work upon a disposition prone to evil, but one that will have to combat many compunctious struggles before it can be brought to yield even to oracular influence. This alone would demonstrate (if we needed demonstration) that Shakespear, without resorting to the antients, had the judgment of ages as it were instinctively. From this instant we are apprised that Macbeth meditates an attack upon our pity as well as upon our horror, when he puts the following question to his conscience—
Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature?
Now let us turn to
Richard,
in whose cruel heart no such remorse finds place; he needs no tempter: There is here no
dignus vindice nodus,
nor indeed any
knot
at all, for he is already practised in murder: Ambition is his ruling passion, and a crown is in view, and he tells you at his very first entrance on the scene—
I am determined to be a villain.
We are now presented with a character full formed and compleat for all the savage purposes of the drama:—
Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.
The barriers of conscience are broken down, and the soul, hardened against shame, avows its own depravity—
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other.
He observes no gradations in guilt, expresses no hesitation, practises no refinements, but plunges into blood with the familiarity of long custom, and gives orders to his assassins to dispatch his brother Clarence with all the unfeeling tranquillity of a Nero or Caligula. Richard, having no longer any scruples to manage with his own conscience, is exactly in the predicament, which the dramatic poet
Diphilus
has described with such beautiful simplicity of expression—
The wretch who knows his own vile deeds, and yet fears not himself, how should he fear another, who knows them not?
It is manifest therefore that there is an essential difference in the development of these characters, and that in favour of Macbeth: In his soul cruelty seems to dawn, it breaks out with faint glimmerings, like a winter morning, and gathers strength by slow degrees: In Richard it flames forth at once, mounting like the sun between the tropics, and enters boldly on its career without a herald. As the character of Macbeth h
s a moral advantage in this distinct
n, so has the drama of t
t name a much more interesting and affecting cast: The struggles of a soul, naturally virtuous, whilst it holds the guilty impulse of ambition at bay, affords the noblest theme for the drama, and puts the creative fancy of our poet upon a resource, in which he has been rivalled only by the great father of tragedy Aeschylus in the prophetic effusions of Cassandra, the incantations of the Persian Magi for raising the ghost of Darius, and the imaginary terrific forms of his furies; with all which our countryman probably had no acquaintance, or at most a very obscure one.
When I see the names of these two great luminaries of the dramatic sphere, so distant in time but so nearly allied in genius, casually brought in contact by the nature of my subject, I cannot help pausing for a while in this place to indulge so interesting a contemplation, in which I find my mind balanced between two objects, that seem to have equal claims upon me for my admiration. Aeschylus is justly stiled the father of tragedy, but this is not to be interpreted as if he was the inventor of it: Shakespear with equal justice claims the same title, and his originality is qualified with the same exception: The Greek tragedy was not more rude and undigested when Aeschylus brought it into shape, than the English tragedy was when Shakespear began to write: If therefore it be granted that he had no aids from the Greek theatre (and I think this is not likely to be disputed) so far these great masters are upon equal ground. Aeschylus was a warrior of high repute, of a lofty generous spirit, and deep as it should seem in the erudition of his times: In all these particulars he has great advantage over our countryman, who was humbly born, of the most menial occupation, and, as it is generally thought, unlearned. Aeschylus had the whole epic of Homer in his hands, the Iliad, Odyssey, and that prolific source of dramatic fable, the Ilias Minor; he had also a great fabulous creation to resort to amongst his own divinities, characters ready defined, and an audience, whose superstition was prepared for every thing he could offer; he had therefore a firmer and broader stage, (if I may be allowed the expression) under his feet, than Shakespear had: His fables in general are Homeric, and yet it does not follow that we can pronounce for Shakespear that he is more original in his plots, for I understand that late researches have traced him in all, or nearly all: Both poets added so much machinery and invention of their own in the conduct of their fables, that whatever might have been the source, still their streams had little or no taste of the spring they flowed from. In point of character we have better grounds to decide, and yet it is but justice to observe that it is not fair to bring a mangled poet in comparison with one who is entire: In his divine personages Aeschylus has the field of heaven, and indeed of hell also, to himself; in his heroic and military characters he has never been excelled; he had too good a model within his own bosom to fail of making those delineations natural: In his imaginary beings also he will be found a respectable, though not an equal, rival of our poet; but in the variety of character, in all the nicer touches of nature, in all the extravagancies of caprice and humour, from the boldest feature down to the minutest foible, Shakespear stands alone; such persons as he delineates never came into the contemplation of Aeschylus as a poet; his tragedy has no dealing with them; the simplicity of the Greek fable, and the great portion of the drama filled up by the chorus, allow of little variety of character, and the most which can be said of Aeschylus in this particular is, that he never offends against nature or propriety, whether his cast is in the terrible or pathetic, the elevated or the simple. His versification with the intermixture of lyric composition is more various than that of Shakespear; both are lofty and sublime in the extreme, abundantly metaphorical and sometimes extravagant:—
—Nubes et inania captat.
This may be said of each poet in his turn; in each the critic, if he is in search for defects, will readily enough discover—
In scenam missus magno cum pondere versus.
Both were subject to be hurried on by an uncontroulable impulse, nor could nature alone suffice for either: Aeschylus had an apt creation of imaginary beings at command—
He could call spirits from the vasty deep,
and they
would come
—Shakespear, having no such creation in resource, boldly made one of his own; if Aeschylus therefore was invincible, he owed it to his armour, and that, like the armour of Aeneas, was the work of the gods; but the unassisted invention of Shakespear seized all and more than superstition supplied to Aeschylus.
No LVI.
ILLE profecto
Reddere personae scit convenientia cuique.
(HORAT.)
WE are now to attend
Macbeth
to the perpetration of the murder, which puts him in possession of the crown of Scotland; and this introduces a new personage on the scene, his accomplice and wife: She thus developes her own character—
Come, all you spirits,
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murth'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief: Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!
Terrible invocation! Tragedy can speak no stronger language, nor could any genius less than Shakespear's support a character of so lofty a pitch, so sublimely terrible at the very opening.
The part which Lady Macbeth fills in the drama has a relative as well as positive importance, and serves to place the repugnance of Macbeth in the strongest point of view; she is in fact the auxiliary of the witches, and the natural influence, which so high and predominant a spirit asserts over the tamer qualities of her husband, makes those witches but secondary agents for bringing about the main action of the drama. This is well worth a remark; for if they, which are only artificial and fantastic instruments, had been made the sole or even principal movers of the great incident of the murder, nature would have been excluded from her share in the drama, and Macbeth would have become the mere machine of an uncontroulable necessity, and his character, being robbed of its free agency, would have left no moral behind: I must take leave therefore to anticipate a remark, which I shall hereafter repeat, that when Lady Macbeth is urging her Lord to the murder, not a word is dropt by either of the witches or their predictions. It is in these instances of his conduct that Shakespear is so wonderful a study for the dramatic poet. But I proceed—
Lady Macbeth in her first scene, from which I have already extracted a passage, prepares for an attempt upon the conscience of her husband, whose nature she thus describes—
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
He arrives before she quits the scene, and she receives him with consummate address—
Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both by the All-hail hereafter!
These are the very gratulations of the witches; she welcomes him with confirmed predictions, with the tempting salutations of ambition, not with the softening caresses of a wife—
Duncan comes here to-night.
And when goes hence?
To-morrow, as he purposes.
Oh never
Shall sun that morrow see!
The rapidity of her passion hurries her into immediate explanation, and he, consistently with the character she had described, evades her precipitate solicitations with a short indecisive answer—
We will speak further—
His reflections upon this interview and the dreadful subject of it are soon after given in soliloquy, in which the poet has mixt the most touching strokes of compunction with his meditations: He reasons against the villany of the act, and honour jointly with nature assails him with an argument of double force—
He's here in double trust;
First as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then as his host,
Who shou'd against the murtherer shut the door,
Not bear the knife himself.
This appeal to nature, hospitality and allegiance, was not without its impression; he again meets his lady, and immediately declares—
We will proceed no further in this business.
This draws a retort upon him, in which his tergiversation and cowardice are satirized with so keen an edge, and interrogatory reproaches are pressed so fast upon him, that catching hold in his retreat of one small but precious fragment in the wreck of innocence and honour, he demands a truce from her attack, and with the spirit of a combatant, who has not yet yielded up his weapons, cries out—
Pr'ythee, peace!
The words are no expletives; they do not fill up a sentence, but they form one: They stand in a most important pass; they defend the breach her ambition has made in his heart; a breach in the very citadel of humanity; they mark the last dignified struggle of virtue, and they have a double reflecting power, which in the first place shews that nothing but the voice of authority could stem the torrent of her invective, and in the next place announces that something, worthy of the solemn audience he had demanded, was on the point to follow—and worthy it is to be a standard sentiment of moral truth expressed with proverbial simplicity, sinking into every heart that hears it—
I dare do all, that may become a man,
Who dares do more is none.
How must every feeling spectator lament that a man should fall from virtue with such an appeal upon his lips!
(PHILONIDES.)
A man is not a coward because he fears to be unjust,
is the sentiment of an old dramatic poet.
Macbeth's principle is honour; cruelty is natural to his wife; ambition is common to both; one passion favourable to her purpose has taken place in his heart; another still hangs about it, which being adverse to her plot, is first to be expelled, before she can instil her cruelty into his nature. The sentiment above quoted had been firmly delivered, and was ushered in with an apostrophe suitable to its importance; she feels its weight; she perceives it is not to be turned aside with contempt, or laughed down by ridicule, as she had already done where weaker scruples had stood in the way; but, taking sophistry in aid, by a ready turn of argument she gives him credit for his sentiment, erects a more glittering though fallacious logic upon it, and by admitting his objection cunningly confutes it—
What beast was 't then,
That made you break this enterprize to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man,
And to be more than what you were, you wou'd
Be so much more than man.
Having thus parried his objection by a sophistry calculated to blind his reason and enflame his ambition, she breaks forth into such a vaunting display of hardened intrepidity, as presents one of the most terrific pictures that was ever imagined—
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;
I wou'd, whilst it was smiling in my face,
Have pluckt my nipple from its boneless gums,
And dasht its brains out, had I but so sworn
As you have done to this.
This is a note of horror, screwed to a pitch that bursts the very sinews of nature; she no longer combats with human weapon, but seizing the flash of the lightning extinguishes her opponent with the stroke: Here the controversy must end, for he must either adopt her spirit, or take her life: He sinks under the attack, and offering nothing in delay of execution but a feeble hesitation, founded in fear—
If we should fail
—he concludes with an assumed ferocity, caught from her and not springing from himself—
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
The strong and sublime strokes of a master impressed upon this scene make it a model of dramatic composition, and I must in this place remind the reader of the observation I have before hinted at, that no reference whatever is had to the auguries of the witches: It would be injustice to suppose that this was other than a purposed omission by the poet; a weaker genius would have resorted back to these instruments; Shakespear had used and laid them aside for a time; he had a stronger engine at work, and he could proudly exclaim—
We defy auguries!—
Nature was sufficient for that work, and to shew the mastery he had over nature, he took his human agent from the weaker sex.
This having passed in the first act, the murder is perpetrated in the succeeding one. The introductory soliloquy of Macbeth, the chimaera of the dagger, and the signal on the bell, are awful preludes to the deed. In this dreadful interim Lady Macbeth the great superintending spirit enters to support the dreadful work. It is done; and he returns appalled with sounds; he surveys his bloody hands with horror; he starts from her proposal of going back to besmear the guards of Duncan's chamber, and she snatches the reeking daggers from his trembling hands to finish the imperfect work—
Infirm of purpose,
Give me the daggers!
She returns on the scene, the deed which he revolted from is performed, and with the same unshaken ferocity she vauntingly displays her bloody trophies, and exclaims—
My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
Fancied noises, the throbbings of his own quailing heart, had shaken the constancy of Macbeth; real sounds, the certain signals of approaching visiters, to whom the situation of Duncan must be revealed, do not intimidate her; she is prepared for all trials, and coolly tells him—
I hear a knocking
At the south entry: Retire we to our chamber;
A little water clears us of this deed.
How easy is it then!
The several incidents thrown together in this scene of the murder of Duncan are of so striking a sort as to need no elucidation; they are better felt than described, and my attempts point at passages of more obscurity, where the touches are thrown into shade, and the art of the author lies more out of sight.
Lady Macbeth being now retired from the scene, we may in this interval, as we did in the conclusion of the former paper, permit the genius of Aeschylus to introduce a rival murderess on the stage.
Clytemnestra has received her husband Agamemnon, on his return from the capture of Troy, with studied rather than cordial congratulations. He opposes the pompous ceremonies she had devised for the display of his entry, with a magnanimous contempt of such adulation—
Sooth me not with strains
Of adulation, as a girl; nor raise
As to some proud barbaric king, that loves
Loud acclamations echoed from the mouths
Of prostrate worshippers, a clamorous welcome:
Spread not the streets with tapestry; 'tis invidious;
These are the honours we shou'd pay the gods;
For mortal men to tread on ornaments
Of rich embroidery—no; I dare not do it:
Respect me as a man, not as a god.
(POTTER's AESCHYLUS.)
These are heroic sentiments, but in conclusion the persuasions of the wife overcome the modest scruples of the hero, and he enters his palace in the pomp of triumph; when soon his dying groans are echoed from the interior scene, and the adultress comes forth besprinkled with the blood of her husband to avow the murder—
I struck him twice, and twice
He groan'd; then died: A third time as he lay
I gor'd him with a wound; a grateful present
To the stern god, that in the realms below
Reigns o'er the dead: There let him take his seat.
He lay; and spouting from his wounds a stream
Of blood, bedew'd me with these crimson drops.
I glory in them, like the genial earth,
When the warm showers of heav'n descend, and wake
The flowrets to unfold their vermeil leaves.
Come then, ye reverend senators of Argos,
Joy with me, if your hearts be turn'd to joy,
And such I wish them.
(POTTER.)
No LVII.
Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur
Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit,
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,
Ut magus; et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis.
(HORAT.)
RICHARD
perpetrates several murders, but as the poet has not marked them with any distinguishing circumstances, they need not be enumerated on this occasion. Some of these he commits in his passage to power, others after he has seated himself on the throne. Ferociousness and hypocrisy are the prevailing features of his character, and as he has no one honourable or humane principle to combat, there is no opening for the poet to develope those secret workings of conscience, which he has so naturally done in the case of Macbeth.
The murder of Clarence, those of the queen's kinsmen and of the young princes in the Tower are all perpetrated in the same stile of hardened cruelty. He takes the ordinary method of hiring ruffians to perform his bloody commissions, and there is nothing which particularly marks the scenes, wherein he imparts his purposes and instructions to them; a very little management serves even for Tirrel, who is not a professional murderer, but is reported to be—
—a discontented gentleman,
Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit.
With such a spirit Richard does not hold it necessary to use much circumlocution, and seems more in dread of delay than disappointment o
discovery—
Is thy name Tirrel?
James Tirrel, and your most obedient subject.
Art thou indeed?
Prove me, my gracious lord.
Dar'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?
Please you, I had rather kill two enemies.
Why then thou hast it; two deep enemies,
Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers,
Are they that I would have thee deal upon:
Tirrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.
If the reader calls to mind by what circumspect and slow degrees King John opens himself to Hubert under a similar situation with this of Richard, he will be convinced that Shakespear considered preservation of character too important to sacrifice on any occasion to the vanity of fine writing; for the scene he has given to John, a timorous and wary prince, would ill suit the character of Richard. A close observance of nature is the first excellence of a dramatic poet, and the peculiar property of him we are reviewing.
In these two stages of our comparison, Macbeth appears with far more dramatic effect than Richard, whose first scenes present us with little else than traits of perfidiousness, one striking incident of successful hypocrisy practised on the Lady Anne, and an open unreserved display of remorseless cruelty. Impatient of any pause or interruption in his measures, a dangerous friend and a determined foe:—
Effera torquebant avidae praecordia curae
Effugeret ne quis gladios
Crescebat scelerata sitis; praedaeque recentis
Incaestus flagrabat amor, nullusque petendi
Cogendive pudor: crebris perjuria nectit
Blanditiis; sociat perituro foedere dextras:
Si semele tantis poscenti quisque negasset,
Effera praetumido quatiebat corda furore.
(CLAUDIAN.)
The sole remorse his greedy heart can feel
Is if one life escapes his murdering steel:
That, which should quench, inflames his craving thirst,
The second draught still deepens on the first;
Shameless by force or fraud to work his way,
And no less prompt to flatter than betray:
This hour makes friendships which he breaks the next,
And every breach supplies a vile pretext
Basely to cancel all concessions past,
If in a thousand you deny the last.
Macbeth
has now touched the goal of his ambition—
Thou hast it now; King, Cawdor, Glamis, all
The weyward sisters promis'd—
The auguries of the witches, to which no reference had been made in the heat of the main action, are now called to mind with many circumstances of galling aggravation, not only as to the prophecy, which gave the crown to the posterity of Banquo, but also of his own safety from the gallant and noble nature of that general—
Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that, which wou'd be fear'd.
Assassins are provided to murder Banquo and his son, but this is not decided upon without much previous meditation, and he seems prompted to the act more by desperation and dread, than by any settled resolution or natural cruelty. He convenes the assassins, and in a conference of some length works round to his point, by insinuations calculated to persuade them to dispatch Banquo for injuries done to them, rather than from motives which respect himself; in which scene we discover a remarkable preservation of character in Macbeth, who by this artifice strives to blind his own conscience and throw the guilt upon theirs: In this as in the former action there is nothing kingly in his cruelty; in one he acted under the controuling spirit of his wife, here he plays the sycophant with hired assassins, and confesses himself under awe of the superior genius of Banquo—
—Under him
My genius is rebuk'd, as it is said
Antony's was by Caesar.
There is not a circumstance ever so minute in the conduct of this character, which does not point out to a diligent observer how closely the poet has adhered to nature in every part of his delineation: Accordingly we observe a peculiarity in the language of Macbeth, which is highly characteristic; I mean the figurative turn of his expressions, whenever his imagination strikes upon any gloomy subject—
Oh! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
And in this state of self-torment every object of solemnity, though ever so familiar, becomes an object of terror; night, for instance, is not mentioned by him without an accompaniment of every melancholy attribute, which a frighted fancy can annex—
Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight, ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-born beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung
Night's
yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.
It is the darkness of his soul that makes the night so dreadful, the
scorpions in his mind
convoke these images—but he has not yet done with it—
Come, sealing
Night!
Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond,
Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whilst
Night's
black agents to their prey do rouse.
The critic of language will observe that here is a redundancy and crowd of metaphors, but the critic of nature will acknowledge that it is the very truth of character, and join me in the remark which points it out.
In a tragedy so replete with murder, and in the display of a character so tortured by
the scorpions of the mind,
as this of Macbeth, it is naturally to be expected that a genius like Shakespear's will call in the dead for their share in the horror of the scene. This he has done in two several ways; first, by the apparition of Banquo, which is invisible to all but Macbeth; secondly, by the spells and incantations of the witches, who raise spirits, which in certain aenigmatical predictions shadow out his fate; and these are followed by a train of unborn revelations, drawn by the power of magic from the womb of futurity before their time.
It appears that Lady Macbeth was not a party in the assassination of Banquo, and the ghost, though twice visible to the murderer, is not seen by her. This is another incident highly worthy a particular remark; for by keeping her free from any participation in the horror of the sight, the poet is enabled to make a scene aside between Macbeth and her, which contains some of the finest speakings in the play. The ghost in Hamlet, and the ghost of Darius in Aeschylus are introduced by preparation and prelude, this of Banquo is an object of surprize as well as terror, and there is scarce an incident to be named of more striking and dramatic effect: it is one amongst various proofs, that must convince every man, who looks critically into Shakespear, that he was as great a master in art as in nature: How it strikes me in this point of view I shall take the liberty of explaining more at length.
The murder of Duncan is the main incident of this tragedy; that of Banquo is subordinate: Duncan's blood was not only the first so shed by Macbeth, but the dignity of the person murdered, and the aggravating circumstances attending it, constitute a crime of the very first magnitude: For these reasons it might be expected that the spectre most likely to haunt his imagination, would be that of Duncan; and the rather because his terror and compunction were so much more strongly excited by this first murder, perpe
ated with his own hands, than by the subsequent one of Banquo, palliated by evasion and committed to others. But when we recollect that Lady Macbeth was not only his accomplice, but in fact the first mover in the murder of the king, we see good reason why Duncan's ghost could not be called up, unless she, who so deeply partook of the guilt, had also shared in the horror of the appearance; and as visitations of a peculiar sort were reserved for her in a later period of the drama, it was a point of consummate art and judgment to exclude her from the affair of Banquo's murder, and make the more susceptible conscience of Macbeth figure this apparition in his mind's eye without any other witness to the vision.
I persuade myself these will appear very natural reasons, why the poet did not raise the ghost of the king in preference, though it is reasonable to think it would have been a much more noble incident in his hands, than this of Banquo. It now remains to examine whether this is more fully justified by the peculiar situation reserved for Lady Macbeth, to which I have before adverted.
The intrepidity of her character is so marked, that we may well suppose no waking terrors could shake it, and in this light it must be acknowledged a very natural expedient to make her vent the agonies of her conscience in sleep. Dreams have been a dramatic expedient ever since there has been a drama; Aeschylus recites the dream of Clytemnestra immediately before her son Orestes kills her; she fancies she has given birth to a dragon—
This new-born dragon, like an infant child,
Laid in the cradle seem'd in want of food;
And in her dream she held it to her breast:
The milk he drew was mixt with clotted blood.
(POTTER.)
This which is done by Aeschylus, has been done by hundreds after him; but to introduce upon the scene the very person, walking in sleep, and giving vent to the horrid fancies, that haunt her dream, in broken speeches expressive of her guilt, uttered before witnesses, and accompanied with that natural and expressive action of washing the blood from her defiled hands, was reserved for the original and bold genius of Shakespear only. It is an incident so full of tragic horror, so daring and at the same time so truly characteristic, that it stands out as a prominent feature in the most sublime drama in the world, and fully compensates for any sacrifices the poet might have made in the previous arrangement of his incidents.
No LVIII.
Servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.
(HORAT.)
MACBETH
now approaches towards his catastrophe: The heir of the crown is in arms, and he must defend valiantly what he has usurped villainously. His natural valour does not suffice for this trial; he resorts to the witches; he conjures them to give answer to what he shall ask, and he again runs into all those pleonasms of speech, which I before remarked: The predictions he extorts from the apparitions are so couched as to seem favourable to him, at the same time that they correspond with events, which afterwards prove fatal. The management of this incident has so close a resemblance to what the poet Claudian has done in the instance of Ruffinus's vision the night before his massacre, that I am tempted to insert the passage—
Ecce videt diras alludere protinus umbras,
Quas dedit ipse neci; quarum quae clarior una
Visa loqui—Proh! sarge toro; quid plurima volvis
Anxius? haec requiem rebus, finemque labori
Allatura dies: Omni jam plebe redibis
Altior, et laeti manibus portabere vulgi—
Has canit ambages. Occulto fallitur ille
Omine, nec capitis fixi praesagia sensit.
A ghastly vision in the dead of night
Of mangled, murder'd ghosts appall his sight;
When hark! a voice from forth the shadowy train
Cries out—Awake! what thoughts perplex thy brain?
Awake, arise! behold the day appears,
That ends thy labours, and dispels thy fears:
To loftier heights thy tow'ring head shall rise,
And the glad crowd shall lift thee to the skies—
Thus spake the voice: He triumphs, nor beneath
Th' ambiguous omen sees the doom of death.
Confiding in his auguries Macbeth now prepares for battle: by the first of these he is assured—
That none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.
By the second prediction he is told—
Macbeth shall never vanquisht be, until
Great Birnam-wood to Dunsinane's high hill
Shall come against him.
These he calls
sweet boadments!
and concludes—
To sleep in spite of thunder.
This play is so replete with excellencies, that it would exceed all bounds, if I were to notice every one; I pass over therefore that incomparable scene between Macbeth, the physician and Seyton, in which the agitations of his mind are so wonderfully expressed, and, without pausing for the death of Lady Macbeth, I conduct the reader to that crisis, when the messenger has announced the ominous approach of Birnamwood—A burst of fury, an exclamation seconded by a blow is the first natural explosion of a soul so stung with
scorpions
as Macbeth's: The sudden gust is no sooner discharged, than nature speaks her own language, and the still voice of conscience, like reason in the midst of madness, murmurs forth these mournful words—
I pall in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth.
With what an exquisite feeling has this darling son of nature here thrown in this touching, this pathetic sentence, amidst the very whirl and eddy of conflicting passions! Here is a study for dramatic poets; this is a string for an actor's skill to touch; this will discourse sweet music to the human heart, with which it is finely unisoned, when struck with the hand of a master.
The next step brings us to the last scene of Macbeth's dramatic existence: Flusht with the blood of Siward he is encountered by Macduff, who crosses him like his evil genius—Macbeth cries out—
Of all men else I have avoided thee.
To the last moment of character the faithful poet supports him: He breaks off from single combat, and in the tremendous pause, so beautifully contrived to hang suspense and terror on the moral scene of his exit, the tyrant driven to bay, and panting with the heat and struggle of the fight, vauntingly exclaims—
As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests,
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.
Despair thy charm!
And let the Angel, whom thou still hast serv'd,
Tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.
Accursed be that tongue that tells me so!
For it hath cow'd my better part of man.
There sinks the spirit of Macbeth—
Behold! where stands
Th' usurper's cursed head!
How completely does this coincide with the passage already quoted!
Occullo fallitur ille
Omine, nec
CAPITIS FIXI
praesagia sentit.
Let us now approach the tent of
Richard:
It is matter of admiration to observe how many incidents the poet has collected in a small compass, to set the military character of his chief personage in a brilliant point of view. A succession of scouts and messengers report a variety of intelligence, all which, though generally of the most alarming nature, he meets not only with his natural gallantry, but sometimes with pleasantry and a certain archness and repartee, which is peculiar to him throughout the drama.
It is not only a curious, but delightful task to examine by what subtle and almost imperceptible touches Shakespear contrives to set such marks upon his characters, as give them the most living likenesses that can be conceived. In this, above all other poets that ever existed, he is a study and a model of perfection: The great distinguishing passions every poet may describe; but Shakespear gives you their humours, their minutest foibles, those little starts and caprices, which nothing but the most intimate familiarity brings to light: Other authors write characters like historians; he like the bosom friend of the person he describes. The following extracts will furnish an example of what I have been saying.
Ratcliff informs Richard that a fleet is discovered on the western coast, supposed to be the party of Richmond—
Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Norfolk;
Ratcliff, thyself; or Catesby—Where is he?
Here, my good lord.
Catesby, fly to the Duke.
I will, my lord, with all convenient haste.
Ratcliff, come hither; post to Salisbury;
When thou com'st thither—
Dull, unmindful villain!
(To Catesby.)
Why stay'st thou here, and go'st not to the Duke?
First, mighty liege, tell me your highness' pleasure,
What from your grace I shall deliver to him.
Oh, true, good Catesby!
I am persuaded I need not point out to the reader's sensibility the fine turn in this expression,
Good Catesby!
How can we be surprized if such a poet makes us in love even with his villains?—Ratcliff proceeds—
What may it please you shall I do at Salisbury?
Why, what wou'dst thou do there before I go?
Your highness told me I shou'd post before.
My mind is chang'd.
These fine touches can escape no man, who has an eye for nature. Lord Stanley reports to Richard—
Richmond is on the seas.
There let him sink, and be the seas on him!
White-liver'd runagate, what doth he there?
This reply is pointed with irony and invective: There are two causes in nature and character for this; first, Richard was before informed of the news; his passion was not taken by surprize, and he was enough at ease to make a play upon Stanley's words—
on the seas
—and retort—
be the seas on him!
—Secondly, Stanley was a suspected subject, Richard was therefore interested to shew a contempt of his competitor before a man of such doubtful allegiance. In the spirit of this impression he urges Stanley to give an explicit answer to the question—
What doth he there?
Stanley endeavours to evade by answering that he
knows not but by guess:
The evasion only strengthens Richard's suspicions, and he again pushes him to disclose what he only guesses—
Well, as you guess
—Stanley replies—
He makes for England, here to claim the crown.
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unsway'd?
Is the king dead? the empire unpossess'd?
What heir of York is there alive but we?
And who is England's king but great York's heir?
Then tell me what makes he upon the sea?
What a cluster of characteristic excellencies are here before us? All these interrogatories are
ad hominem
; they fit no man but Stanley, they can be uttered by no man but Richard, and they can flow from the conceptions of no poet but the poet of nature.
Stanley's whole scene ought to be investigated, for it is full of beauties, but I confess myself exhausted with the task, and language does not suffice to furnish fresh terms of admiration, which a closer scrutiny would call forth.
Other messengers succeed Lord Stanley, Richard's fiery impatience does not wait the telling, but taking the outset of the account to be ominous, he strikes the courier, who proceeding with his report concludes with the good tidings of Buckingham's dispersion—Richard instantly retracts and says—
Oh! I cry thee mercy.
There is my purse to cure that blow of thine.
This is another trait of the same cast with that of
Good Catesby.
Battles are of the growth of modern tragedy; I am not learned enough in the old stage to know if Shakespear is the inventor of this bold and bustling innovation; but I am sure he is unrivalled in his execution of it, and this of Bosworth-field is a master-piece. I shall be less particular in my present description of it, because I may probably bring it under general review with other scenes of the like sort.
It will be sufficient to observe, that in the catastrophe of Richard nothing can be more glowing than the scene, nothing more brilliant than the conduct of the chief character: He exhibits the character of a perfect general, in whom however ardent courage seems the ruling feature; he performs every part of his office with minute attention, he enquires if certain alterations are made in his armour and even orders what particular horse he intends to charge with: He is gay with his chief officers, and even gracious to some he confides in: His gallantry is of so dazzling a quality, that we begin to feel the pride of Englishmen, and, overlooking his crimes, glory in our courageous king: Richmond is one of those civil, conscientious gentlemen, who are not very apt to captivate a spectator, and Richard, loaded as he is with enormities, rises in the comparison, and I suspect carries the good wishes of many of his audience into action, and dies with their regret.
As soon as he retires to his tent the poet begins to put in motion his great moral machinery of the ghosts. Trifles are not made for Shakespear; difficulties, that would have plunged the spirit of any other poet, and turned his scenery into inevitable ridicule, are nothing in his way; he brings forward a long string of ghosts, and puts a speech into each of their mouths without any fear of consequences. Richard starts from his couch, and before he has shaken off the terrors of his dream, cries out—
Give me another horse!—Bind up my wounds!—
Have mercy, Jesu!—Soft, I did but dream—
O coward conscience—&c.
But I may conclude my subject; every reader can go on with the soliloquy, and no words of mine can be wanted to excite their admiration.
No LIX.
AMONGST the various orders and ranks of men in civilized society, some are entitled to our respect for the dignity and utility of their profession; but as there are many more than merely natural wants to be provided for in a state of high refinement, other arts and occupations will occur, which though not so highly to be respected for their utility, will yet be valued and caressed for the pleasures they bestow. In this light there is perhaps no one order of men, who contribute more largely to the pleasing and moral amusements of the age, than our actors. As I mean to devote this paper to their use and service, I shall begin it with a short passage extracted from Mr. Dow's History of Hindostan.
During all these transactions the gates of Delhi were kept shut. Famine began to rage every day more and more; but the Shaw was deaf to the miseries of mankind. The public spirit of
Tucki, a famous actor,
deserves to be recorded upon this occasion. He exhibited a play before Nadir Shaw, with which that monarch was so well pleased, that he commanded Tucki to ask, and what he wished should be done for him. Tucki fell upon his face, and said,
O King, command the gates to be opened, that the poor may not perish!
His request was granted, and half the city poured into the country; and the place was supplied in a few days with plenty of provisions.
Though it is not every actor's lot to save a city, yet it is his province to drive an enemy out of it, almost as formidable as famine.
There is such a combination of natural gifts requisite to the formation of a compleat actor, that it is more a case of wonder how so many good ones are to be found, than why so few instances of excellence can be produced. Every thing, that results from nature alone, lies out of the province of instruction, and no rules that I know of will serve to give a fine form, a fine voice, or even those fine feelings, which are amongst the first properties of an actor. These in fact are the tools and materials of his trade, and these neither his own industry, nor any man's assistance can bestow. But the right use and application of them is another question, and there he must look for his directions from education, industry and judgment.
A classical education, if it be not insisted on as indispensable to a great actor, is yet so advantageous to him in every branch of his art, that it is a most happy circumstance in their lot, who can avail themselves of it.
Be this as it may, it behoves him in the very first place to be thoroughly versed in all the chief dramatic writers of his own country. Of all these Shakespear is so out of sight the principal, that for distinction sake I will confine myself to him only. This author therefore must be studied in the most critical and scrutinizing manner; not by parts, but in whole; for it is the veriest folly in any young student for the stage to read by
character,
or attach himself to any one predominant part, in which he aims at a display, until he has possest himself in the compleatest manner of the whole drama, in which he is to stand. Every movement of the author's mind should be unravelled, all those small but delicate incidents, which serve to announce or discriminate a leading character, every thing said to him, or of him, as well as by him, are to be carefully gathered up; for Shakespear in particular paints so very close to nature, and with such marking touches, that he gives the very look an actor ought to wear, when he is on his scene.
When an actor has done this, he will find his understanding so enlightened by the task, and his mind possest with such a passion for what is natural, that he will scorn the sorry practice of tricks, and that vain study of setting himself off by this or that preconcerted attitude, in which some handicraft-men, who were more like tumblers than tragedians, have in times past disgraced their profession: In short, if he studies his author he will have no need to study his looking-glass: Let him feel and he will be sure to express; Nature, that gave him limbs and organs of speech, will be sure to give him action, and he need not measure the board he is to fall upon, as if he was to make his exit down a trap.
There is one thing in particular I would wish him to avoid, which is a repugnance against appearing in characters of an unamiable sort; (the ladies will observe I address myself to both sexes throughout:) It is a narrow notion to suppose that there can be any adhesion either of vice or virtue to the real character; or that revenge, cruelty, perfidiousness or cowardice can be transposed into a man's nature, because he professionally represents these evil qualities. If I had not determined against particularizing any person in this paper, I should here quote the example of an actor, whose untimely death every friend of the drama must deplore, and whose good sense I might appeal to in confirmation of my advice.
Of this above all things every actor may assure himself, that there is no calling or profession in life, that can less endure the distractions of intemperance and dissipation. A knowledge of the world no doubt is necessary to him, and he must therefore take his share in society, but there is no other introduction into the best company, but by meriting a place in it; and as for vulgar fellowships and connections, where a man is to act the
pleasant fellow
and set the table in a roar, if he has not the spirit and discretion to decline them, he will soon find his professional talents sacrificed to his convivial ones; if he does not reserve all his exertions for his art, nature must sink under double duty, and the most that he can obtain in return will be pity.
An eminent actor should resolve to fortify himself against the many personal attacks, which in the present times he is to expect from friends as well as foes: by the former I mean those friends, whose ill-judged applauses are as dangerous to his repose as calumny itself. That proper sense of himself, which holds a middle place between diffidence and arrogance, is what he must oppose to these attacks of extravagant applause or illiberal defamation; for gentlemen of wit and pleasantry find so much amusement in sporting with the feelings of actors, that they will write; and there is a figure called
hyperbole
much in fashion amongst them, the excellent property of which figure is that it cuts both ways—
virtus ejus ex diverso par augendi atque minuendi
—Now although the
hyperbole
is a figure of freedom, and has certain privileges, that go beyond credibility, yet I have the authority of
Quintilian
to say that it has bounds; on the outside of truth, I confess, but still within reason—
Quam vis enim est omnis hyperbole ultra fidem; non tamen esse debet ultra modum.
—An actor therefore will do wisely to put no faith in such a double-tongued figure, nor form any acquaintance with those who are in the daily use of it.
If he would have better authority for the advice I give him, let him turn to his books, and he will not find a writer of eminence, either antient or modern, that will not tell him slander is a tax on merit. I shall instance only one of each, because I will not burthen him with quotations. The first of these is
Tacitus,
a writer of unquestionable authority, and one who has left as good receipts for wholesome judgment in all worldly affairs as any man whatever: His maxim indeed is short, for he makes no waste of words on any occasion; speaking of certain libellous publications, he observes—
Spreta exolescunt; si irascare, agnita videntur:
—Which may be thus rendered—
Contempt disarms abuse; resent, and you adopt it.
—The other which I shall adduce, is the judicious and amiable Mr.
Addison,
who is rather more diffusive on the subject, but concludes his opinion with this recommendation of the prescription above mentioned—
That it is a piece of fortitude, which every man owes to his own innocence, and without which it is impossible for a man of any merit or figure to live at peace with himself, in a country that abounds with wit and liberty.
(
Spect.
No 355.)
When I have said this, I am free to own, that it is an act of aggravated cruelty to attack a man, whose profession lays him so continually at mercy, and who has fewer defences than other men to resort to. An actor has a claim upon the public for their protection, whose servant he is; and he ought to be dear to every man in particular, whose heart he has dilated with benevolence, or lightened with festivity; if we are grateful to the surgeon who assuages the pain of a festering sore, or draws even a thorn from our flesh, should we not remember him with kindness, who heals our heart of its inquietude, and chears those hours with gaiety and innocence, which we might else have devoted to gloominess or guilt?
If an actor has these claims upon the world at large, what ought he not to expect from the poet in particular? The poet's arms should be his natural asylum, a shield from the arrows of envy and detraction. An actor is in the capacity of a steward to every living muse, and of an executor to every departed one: The poet digs up the ore; he sifts it from the dross, refines and purifies it for the mint; the actor sets the stamp upon it, and makes it current in the world.
No LX.
THERE is no period of antient history would afford a more useful study to a young prince, than an accurate delineation of the whole life of Tiberius: This ought to be done with great care and ability, for it is a character extremely difficult to develope, and one that by a continued chain of incidents furnishes a lesson in every link of its connexion highly interesting to all pupils, but most to those who are on the road to empire. To trace the conduct of Tiberius from his first appearance in history to his death, is as if we should begin with the last acts of Augustus and read his story backwards to its commencement in the civil wars; each narration would then begin with honour and conclude with infamy. If Augustus had never attained to empire, he would have had a most disgraceful page in history; on the other hand, had Tiberius died with Germanicus, he would have merited a very glorious one: It should seem therefore that he was by nature a better man than his predecessor. The cautious timid character of Augustus kept him under constant awe of those he governed, and he was diligent to secure to himself the opinions of mankind; but there are rents and fissures enough in the veil, which adulation has thrown over him, through which to spy out the impurities and meannesses of his natural disposition. Tiberius seems on his part also to have had a jealous holding and respect towards Germanicus, which had an influence over the early part of his reign; but it was a self-restraint, founded in emulation, not in fear. It is hinted that Augustus had in mind to restore the commonwealth, and give back her liberties to Rome; and these may very possibly have been his meditations; but they never arose in his mind till he found his life in the last stage of decay, when, having no heir of his own body, he would willingly have had the empire cease with him, and left posterity to draw the conclusion, that no successor could be found fit to take it after him; this I can readily believe he would have done in his last moments, if he could, and even before his last moments if he dared; but the shock, which such a resolution might possibly have occasioned, alarmed his fears, and he was too tenacious of power to quit it upon any other motives than those of absolute conviction that he could hold it no longer. This is so much in character, that I think it very probable he might have tried it upon Tiberius in his long death-bed conversation with him at Nola—
Revocatum ex itinere Tiberium diu secret
sermone detinuit, neque post ulli majori negotio animum accommodavit.
(
Suetonius.
) This passage is very curious, and some important conjectures may fairly be grounded upon it. Suetonius says that the conference was
long,
and also that it was
private
; and he adds that Augustus, after his conversation with his successor, never turned his thoughts to any important business, or in other words, any matter of state whatever. The
secrecy
of this conference very much favours my conjecture, that he made an attempt to dissuade Tiberius from holding on the empire, and the
length
of time it took up corroborates the probability of that conjecture; and I further incline to think it likely that it might make serious impressions on Tiberius's mind, as to the measure proposed; for I can never believe that the repugnance, with which Tiberius took the charge of the government upon him, was wholly feigned, though historians agree in giving it that turn; his long and voluntary exile in the island of Rhodes, where he seemed for a time to have renounced all desire of succeeding to the empire, might be a reason with Augustus for making this experiment upon a man of his cold and sequestered habits. At all events I think it highly natural to suppose that Augustus would not have closetted him in this manner, if it were only for the purpose of giving him lessons and instructions in the arts of government; for in that case his vanity, which made him act a part for applause even in his expiring moments, would have opened his doors to his family and attendants, that they might have been present to record his sayings; and we should have had as many fine maxims in his dying speech, as Socrates uttered in his prison, or Seneca in his bath: Add to this, that he certainly bore no good-will to Tiberius, who was not a successor to his mind, nor could he wish to elevate the Claudian family to the throne: It is not likely however that he altogether succeeded with Tiberius, or brought him to make any absolute promise of abdication; for in that case he would not have failed to have taken credit with the people about him, for having been the means of restoring the liberties of his country, and he would have made as great a parade of patriotism, as would have become a Cato or a Solon; but the author above quoted says he took no further account of public business, and therefore we may conclude the conference, if it took that turn, did not come to any satisfactory conclusion on the point.
Tiberius on his accession found the empire in a critical situation, for besides the movements which Clemens on one part and Scribonius Libo on another were making, the Pannonian and German armies were in absolute revolt. This was no time for making any change in the constitution of the imperial power, had he been so disposed; as he was a man of deep measures, he held himself on the reserve with the senate, and sueffred them to solicit his acceptance of the sovereign power upon their knees: He wished to have assessors in the government; he would take his share, and whatever department in the state they should recommend to his charge, he would readily undertake. Had he persisted in refusing the empire, or had he attempted to throw the constitution back to its first principles of freedom, the mutinous legions would have forced the sovereignty upon Germanicus; but by this suggestion of a partition he artfully sounded the temper of the senate, where there were some leading men of very doubtful characters, whom Augustus had marked out in his last illness; from two of these, Asinius Gallus and L. Aruntius, Tiberius's proposal drew an answer, in which they demanded of him to declare what particular department of the state he would chuse to have committed to him. This was opening enough for one of his penetration, and he drew his conclusions upon the spot, evading for the time the snare that was laid for him.
The servile and excessive adulation of the senate soon convinced him, that the Roman spirit had suffered a total change under the reign of Augustus, and that the state might indeed be thrown into convulsions by any attempt at a change in favour of freedom, but that slavery and submission under a despotic master was their determined choice, and if the alternative was to lie between himself and any other there was little room for hesitation: Who more fit than the adopted heir of Augustus, and a descendant of the Claudian house, which ranked so high in the Patrician nobility, and so superior in pretensions of ancestry and merit to the Julian and Octavian gentry, from whom his predecessors were ignobly descended?
When the German and Pannonian mutinies were appeased, there seems to have been a period of repose, when he might have new-modelled the constitution, had he been so disposed; but this I take to be appearance only, for those mutinies had been quelled by Germanicus and Drusus, and both these princes were in the adoption; and the latter of a very turbulent and ambitious spirit.
For the space of two compleat years Tiberius never stirred out of the doors of his palace, devoting his whole time to the affairs of government. In this period he certainly did many excellent things, and though his manners were not calculated for popularity, yet his reputation through the empire was universal; he regulated all domestic matters with consummate prudence, and on some occasions with a liberal and courteous spirit: In the distant provinces, where wars and disturbances were more frequent, public measures were more indebted for their success to the good policy of his instructions, than to the courage and activity of his generals, though Germanicus was of the number.
The death of that most amiable and excellent prince, which was imputed to the machinations of Cneius Piso, involved Tiberius in some degree in the same suspicion; but as Tacitus in his account of the event gives admission to an idle story of sorceries and incantations practised by Piso for compassing the death of Germanicus, and states no circumstance that can give any reasonable ground for belief that he actually poisoned him, I am not inclined to give credit to the transaction, even in respect to Piso's being guilty of the murder, much less with regard to Tiberius. Tacitus indeed hints at secret orders supposed by some to have been given by the emperor to Piso; but this, which at best is mere matter of report, does not go to the affair of the poisoning, but only to some private intimations, in which the empress was chief mover, for mortifying the pride of Agrippina. It is not to be supposed, when Piso openly returned to Rome, and stood a public trial, that these orders, had any such existed, could have been so totally suppressed, that neither the guilty person should avail himself of them, nor any one member of so great and numerous a family produce them in vindication of him when yet living, or of his memory after death; and this in no period of time, not even when the Claudian family were superseded in the empire, and anecdotes were industriously collected to blacken the character of Tiberius.
The death of Drusus followed that of Germanicus, and the same groundless suspicions were levelled at the emperor; but these are rejected by Tacitus with contempt, and the words he uses, which are very strong, are a proper answer to both imputations—
Neque quisquam scriptor tam infensus exstitit, ut Tiberio objectaret, cum omniae conquirerent, intenderentque.
It would have been most happy for the memory of Tiberius had his life been terminated at this fatal period; henceforward he seems to have been surrendered to desperation and disgust; he retired to the Campania, and devolved the government upon his minister Sejanus; there were times, in which some marks of his former spirit appeared, but they were short and transient emanations; the basest of mankind had possession of his soul, and whether he was drugged by Sejanus and his agents, or that his brain was affected by a revulsion of that scrophulous humour, which broke out with such violence in his face and body, it seems highly natural to conjecture, that he was never in his sound mind during his secession in the island of Caprea. A number of circumstances might be adduced in support of this conjecture; it is sufficient to instance his extraordinary letter to the senate; can words be found more expressive of a distracted and desperate state of mind than the following?—
Quid scribam vobis, Patres Conscripti, aut quomodo scribam, aut qui
omnino non scribam hoc tempore, Dii me deaeque pejus perdant, quam perire quotidie sentio, si scio.
I beg leave now to repeat what I advanced in the outset of this paper, and which alone led me to the subject of it, that a detail comprizing all the great and interesting events within the life of Tiberius, with reasonings and remarks judiciously interspersed, as these occurrences arise in the course of the narration, would compound such a body of useful precepts and instructions, as would apply to every species of example, which a prince should be taught either to imitate or avoid; and these lessons would carry the greater force and recommendation with them, and have an advantage over all fabulous morals, by being incorporated with a real history of the most interesting sort.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.