In an old bookshop which I visit, never without making a discovery or
two--not infrequently, as in the present case, assisted in my good
fortune by the bookseller himself--I lately came upon an edition of
Long's _Marcus Aurelius_ with an admirable prefatory note that is, I
believe, peculiar to this issue--that of 1869. And since the eyes of the
present generation have never been turned towards America so often and
so seriously as latterly, when our Trans-Atlantic cousins have become
our allies, blood once more of our blood, the passage may be reprinted
with peculiar propriety. Apart, however, from its American interest, the
document is valuable for its dignity and independence, and it had the
effect of sending me to that rock of refuge, _The Dictionary of National
Biography_, to inquire further as to its author. There I found that
George Long, whose translation of the Imperial Stoic is a classic, was
born in 1800; educated at Macclesfield Grammar School and Trinity
College, Cambridge; in 1821 was bracketed Craven scholar with Macaulay
and Professor Malden, but gained a fellowship over both of them; and in
1824 went to Charlotteville, Virginia, as professor of ancient
languages. Returning in 1828 to profess Greek at University College,
London, he was thenceforward, throughout his long life, concerned with
the teaching and popularizing of the classics, finding time, however,
also to be called to the Bar, to lecture on jurisprudence and civil law,
and to help to found the Royal Geographical Society. His _Marcus
Aurelius_ is his best-known work, but his edition of Cicero's Orations,
his discourse on Roman Law, and his Epictetus also stand alone. After
many years' teaching at Brighton College, Long retired to Chichester,
where he died in 1879.
Late in life he brought out anonymously a book of essays, entitled _An
Old Man's Thoughts about Many Things_, in which I have been dipping. I
do not say it would bear reprinting now, but anyone seeing it on a
friend's shelf should borrow it, or in a bookshop should buy it,
because such kindly good sense, such simple directness and candour and
love of the humanities are rare. It has its mischief, too. The old
scholar's opinion on statue-making in general and on London's statues in
particular are expressed with a dry frankness that is refreshing. I make
no effort to resist quoting a little:
"It is in the nature of things that statues should be made.
They were made more than two thousand years ago, and I
believe the business has never stopped, for when people
could not get good statues, they were content with bad, as
we are now.
"If I might give advice to the men now living, who look
forward to the honour, if it is an honour, of being set up
in bronze in the highways, or in marble in Westminster Abbey
or St. Paul's; if I might advise, I would say, leave a
legacy in your will for your own statue. It will save much
trouble and people will think better of you when you are
gone, if you cost them nothing. As to their laughing at you
for looking after your own statue, be not afraid of that.
"It is very disagreeable nowadays to see a man standing for
ever on his legs in public, doing nothing but stand, and
seeming as if he were never going to do anything else.
"If a man shall try to persuade me that a statue should be
nothing more than the effigy of a man standing on a
pedestal, I shall never be convinced. I would rather see a
living man standing on an inverted cask, as I have seen a
slave when he was sold, not that the sale is a very pleasant
thing to see, but the man produced a much better effect than
many of our statues, for he expressed something and they
express nothing.
"As we cannot or at least ought not to make our statues
naked or blanket-dressed, and as body and legs are merely
given to a statue in order to support the head, for the legs
and body might be any legs and any body, would it not be
wise to be satisfied with the head only? This would be a
great saving, and though the sculptor would get less for a
head than for a head with body and legs to it, he would have
more heads to make. This is a hint, which I throw out by the
way, for the consideration of committees who sit on
statues, by which I mean men who sit together to talk about
a thing of which most of them know nothing.
"When the negroes of Africa have been brought to the same
state of civilization as the white man, they will make
statues and set them up in public; and as we who are white
make black statues, they who are black will of course make
white statues.
"Can anybody say what sin Dr. Jenner committed for which he
does perpetual penance, not in white, but in black, his face
black and his hands too, seated in the most public part of
London, fixed to his chair, with no hope of rising from it?
"This seated figure might be anybody. I see nothing by which
I recognize Dr. Jenner; to say nothing of a cow, there is
not even a calf by his side, with the benevolent physician's
hand on the animal.
"I cannot approve of a seated black statue in the open
air--a black man sitting, and no more.
"I sincerely pity our seated gentlemen in London, poor
Cartwright, who looks like an old cobbler on his stool, and
Fox, worse treated still, blanket-dressed, fat and black. No
wonder some shortsighted man from the new Confederate States
once took Fox for a negro woman, the emblem of British
philanthropy and a memorial of the abolition of the slave
trade.
"The only beasts on which we can now place our heroes are
horses. I may be wrong in my opinion, but I see no beauty in
a horse standing still and a man's legs dangling down from
the beast's back; nor do I think that the matter is mended
by the horse and rider being of colossal size, though they
ought to be larger than life. Perhaps we shall not have any
more of these statues; but is it impossible to remove those
that we have?
"As we are a fighting people, we have been great makers of
statues of fighting men. We put them even in churches. This
reminds that when the time shall come for finishing and
adorning the inside of St. Paul's, there will be an enormous
quantity of old stone to dispose of, which is now in the
shape of generals, captains, admirals, lions and other
animals.
"It is singular, or it is not singular, I can't say which,
that we who box, wrestle, run and in many ways work our
bodies, more than any other nation, have not employed our
sculptors to immortalize our athletic heroes. Some of them
would make good subjects for the artist. He might strip the
boxer or runner naked, if he liked, and exhibit his art in
the representation of strength and beauty of form. I have
some misgivings about the faces of boxers, which are not
remarkable for beauty, but the artist may improve them a
little without destroying the likeness; and besides, in a
naked figure we look less at the face than at the body and
limbs. The champion of England would certainly have had a
statue by Lysippus or some artist as good, if he had been
lucky enough to live in ancient times.... We shall, of
course, want a place to put these statues in, for we may be
sure they will not get into the churches, which are only
made for statues of fighting men who have killed somebody or
ordered somebody to kill somebody.
"I could go on much longer, but I don't choose. I write to
amuse myself, and also to instruct, and when I am tired, I
stop. I see no reason why I should exhaust the subject. I
should only be giving my ideas to people who have none, who
make a reputation out of other folks' brains, who pounce on
anything that they find ready to their hand, and flood us
with books made only to sell."
It is already, I imagine, abundantly clear that Long would not have much
liked many things that we do to-day. Writing of "Place and Power," he
says: "At that very distant time when all members of Parliament shall be
Andrew Marvells and will live on two hundred a year, poor men may do our
business for us; but for the present I prefer men who are rich enough to
live without the profits of place. I wish somebody would move for a
return of all the visible and invisible means of support which every
member of the Commons has. I want to know how much every man in the
House receives of public money, whether he is soldier, sailor,
place-holder, sinecurist, or anything else; and also how much he has by
the year of his own." Elsewhere he says: "There is no occasion to print
any more sermons.... I have always wondered why so much is written on
the doctrines and principles of Christianity and on good living, when we
have it done long ago in a few books which we all refer to as our
authority." And this is good: "I wish Euclid could have secured a
perpetual copyright. It might have helped the finances of the Greeks."
But I am not proposing to dissect Long's essays; it is the fine rebuke
to an American publisher that I want to bring to your notice, for there
Long's habitual serenity takes an edge. His protest runs thus:
"I have been informed that an American publisher has printed
the first edition of this translation of M. Antoninus. I do
not grudge him his profit, if he has made any. There may be
many men and women in the United States who will be glad to
read the thoughts of the Roman Emperor. If the American
politicians, as they are called, would read them also, I
should be much pleased, but I do not think the emperor's
morality would suit their taste.
"I have also been informed that the American publisher has
dedicated this translation to an American. I have no
objection to the book being dedicated to an American, but in
doing this without my consent the publisher has transgressed
the bounds of decency. I have never dedicated a book to any
man, and if I dedicated this, I should choose the man whose
name seemed to me most worthy to be joined to that of the
Roman soldier and philosopher. I might dedicate the book to
the successful general who is now the President of the
United States, with the hope that his integrity and justice
will restore peace and happiness, so far as he can, to those
unhappy States which have suffered so much from war and the
unrelenting hostility of wicked men.
"But, as the Roman poet said,
Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni;
and if I dedicated this little book to any man, I would
dedicate it to him who led the Confederate armies against
the powerful invader, and retired from an unequal contest
defeated, but not dishonoured; to the noble Virginian
soldier, whose talents and virtues place him by the side of
the best and wisest man who sat on the throne of the
Imperial Cæsars.--GEORGE LONG."
That is excellent prose, is it not? The general to whom Long would
dedicate the edition was Robert Edward Lee, who had then become head of
the Washington College and survived only until 1870. The President at
the time that Long wrote was General Grant, to whom Lee surrendered.
One or two anecdotes of Long which have recently come my way would alone
convince me, apart from the evidence of his record and his writings,
that here was a very sterling and very independent "character" of whom
much more should be known. Some day I hope to know more. Meanwhile I
relate one of the stories. An appeal for cast-off clothing for the poor
clergy being made, some one took the line that such an appeal was _infra
dig_. Long smoked, pondered, and thus delivered himself: "But is it not
paramount that these gentlemen should have trousers?"