Brantwood, October 24th, 1872.
My Friends,
At breakfast this morning, which I was eating sulkily, because I had
final press-corrections to do on 'Fors,' (and the last are always worst
to do, being without repentance,) I took up the 'Pall Mall Gazette'
for the 21st, and chanced on two things, of which one much interested,
the other much pleased me, and both are to our present purpose.
What interested me was the statement in the column of "This Evening's
News," made by a gentleman much acquainted with naval business, that
"Mr. Goschen is the one man to whom, and to whom alone, we can as a
nation look even for permission to retain our power at sea."
Whether entirely, or, as I apprehend, but partially, true, this
statement is a remarkable one to appear in the journals of a nation
which has occupied its mind lately chiefly on the subject of its
liberties; and I cannot but wonder what Sir Francis Drake would have
thought of such a piece of Evening's News, communicated in form to him!
What he would have thought--if you can fancy it--would be very
proper for you also to think, and much to our eventual purpose. But
the part of the contents of the 'Pall Mall' which I found to bear on
the subject of this letter, was the address by a mangled convict to
a benevolent gentleman. The Third Fors must assuredly have determined
that this letter should be pleasing to the Touchstone mind,--the gods
will have it poetical; it ends already with rhyme, and must begin in
like manner, for these first twelve verses of the address are much
too precious to be lost among "news," whether of morning or evening.
"Mr. P. Taylor, honnered Sir,
Accept these verses I indict,
Thanks to a gentle mother dear
Whitch taught these infant hands to rite.
"And thanks unto the Chaplin here,
A heminent relidjous man,
As kind a one as ever dipt
A beke into the flowing can.
"He pointes out to me most clear
How sad and sinfull is my ways,
And numerous is the briney tear
Which for that man I nigtly prays.
"'Cohen,' he ses, in sech a voice!
'Your lot is hard, your stripes is sore;
But Cohen,' he ses, 'rejoice! rejoice!
And never never steale no more!'
"His langwidge is so kind and good,
It works so strong on me inside,
I woold not do it if I could,
I coold not do it if I tryed.
"Ah, wence this moisteur in my eye?
Whot make me turn agin my food?
O, Mister Taylor, arsk not why,
Ime so cut up with gratitood.
"Fansy a gentleman like you,
No paultry Beak, but a M.P.,
A riggling in your heasy chair
The riggles they put onto me.
"I see thee shudderin ore thy wine,--
You hardly know what you are at,
Whenere you think of Us emplyin
The bloody and unhenglish Cat.
"Well may your indigernation rise!
I call it Manley what you feeled
At seein Briton's n-k-d b-cks
By brutial jalors acked and weald.
"Habolish these yere torchiers!
Dont have no horgies any more
Of arf a dozen orficers
All wallerin in a fellers goar.
"Inprisonment alone is not
A thing of whitch we would complane;
Add ill-conwenience to our lot,
But do not give the convick pain.
"And well you know that's not the wust,
Not if you went and biled us whole;
The Lash's degeradation!--that's
What cuts us to the wery soul!"
The questions respecting punishment and reformation, which these
verses incidentally propose, are precisely the same which had to be
determined three thousand years ago in the city of Athens--(the only
difference of any importance being that the instrument of execution
discussed was club instead of cat); and their determination gave rise
to the peculiar form in which the history of the great Athenian Squire,
Theseus,--our to-day's subject--was presented to mankind.
The story is a difficult one to tell, and a more difficult one still to
understand. The likeness, or imagined likeness, of the hero himself,
as the Greeks fancied him, you may see, when you care to do so,
at the British Museum, in simple guise enough.
Miss Edgeworth, in her noble last novel, 'Helen,' makes her hero fly
into a passion at even being suspected of wishing to quote the too
trite proverb that "No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre." But
Mr. Beauclerk disclaims it for its triteness only, when he ought
rather to have disclaimed it for its untruth. Every truly great man
that ever I heard of, was a principal hero to his servants, and most
heroic to those most intimate with him. At all events, the Greeks meant
all the world to be to their hero as valets-de-chambre, for he sits
mother-naked. Under which primitive aspect, indeed, I would fain show
you, mentally as well as bodily, every hero I give you account of. It
is the modern method, in order to give you more inviting pictures of
people, to dress them--often very correctly--in the costume of the
time, with such old clothes as the masquerade shops keep. But my own
steady aim is to strip them for you, that you may see if they are of
flesh, indeed, or dust. Similarly, I shall try to strip theories bare,
and facts, such as you need to know.
Mother-naked sits Theseus: and round about him, not much more
veiled, ride his Athenians, in Pan-Athenaic procession, honouring
their Queen-Goddess. Admired, beyond all other marble shapes in
the world; for which reason, the gentlemen of my literary club here
in London, professing devotion to the same goddess, decorate their
very comfortable corner house in Pall Mall with a copy of this Attic
sculpture.
Being therein, themselves, Attic in no wise, but essentially barbarous,
pilfering what they cannot imitate: for a truly Attic mind would
have induced them to pourtray themselves, as they appear in their own
Pan-Christian procession, whenever and wherever it may be:--presumably,
to Epsom downs on the Derby day.
You may see, I said, the statue of Theseus whenever you care to do
so. I do not in the least know why you should care. But for years back,
you, or your foolish friends, have been making a mighty fuss to get
yourselves into the British Museum on Sundays: so I suppose you want
to see the Theseus, or the stuffed birds, or the crabs and spiders,
or the skeleton of the gorilla, or the parched alligator-skins; and
you imagine these contemplations likely to improve, and sanctify,
that is to say, recreate, your minds.
But are you quite sure you have got any minds yet to be
recreated? Before you expect edification from that long gallery
full of long-legged inconceivable spiders, and colossal blotchy
crabs, did you ever think of looking with any mind, or mindfulness,
at the only too easily conceivable short-legged spider of your
own English acquaintance? or did you ever so much as consider why
the crabs on Margate sands were minded to go sideways instead of
straightforward? Have you so much as watched a spider making his
cobweb, or, if you have not yet had leisure to do that, in the toil
of your own cobweb-making, did you ever think how he threw his first
thread across the corner?
No need for you to go to the British Museum yet, my friends, either
on Sundays or any other day.
"Well, but the Greek sculpture? We can't see that at home in our
room corners."
And what is Greek sculpture, or any sculpture, to you? Are your own
legs and arms not handsome enough for you to look at, but you must go
and stare at chipped and smashed bits of stone in the likenesses of
legs and arms that ended their walks and work two thousand years ago?
"Your own legs and arms are not as handsome as--you suppose they
ought to be," say you?
No; I fancy not: and you will not make them handsomer by sauntering
with your hands in your pockets through the British Museum. I suppose
you will have an agitation, next, for leave to smoke in it. Go and
walk in the fields on Sunday, making sure, first, therefore, that you
have fields to walk in: look at living birds, not at stuffed ones;
and make your own breasts and shoulders better worth seeing than the
Elgin Marbles.
Which to effect, remember, there are several matters to be thought
of. The shoulders will get strong by exercise. So indeed will the
breast. But the breast chiefly needs exercise inside of it--of the
lungs, namely, and of the heart; and this last exercise is very
curiously inconsistent with many of the athletic exercises of the
present day. And the reason I do want you, for once, to go to the
British Museum, and to look at that broad chest of Theseus, is that
the Greeks imagined it to have something better than a Lion's Heart
beneath its breadth--a hero's heart, duly trained in every pulse.
They imagined it so. Your modern extremely wise and liberal historians
will tell you it never was so:--that no real Theseus ever existed
then; and that none can exist now, or, rather, that everybody is
himself a Theseus and a little more.
All the more strange then, all the more instructive, as the disembodied
Cincinnatus of the Roman, so this disembodied Theseus of the Ionian;
though certainly Mr. Stuart Mill could not consider him, even in that
ponderous block of marble imagery, a "utility fixed and embodied
in a material object." Not even a disembodied utility--not even a
ghost--if he never lived. An idea only; yet one that has ruled all
minds of men to this hour, from the hour of its first being born,
a dream, into this practical and solid world.
Ruled, and still rules, in a thousand ways, which you know no more than
the paths by which the winds have come that blow in your face. But
you never pass a day without being brought, somehow, under the power
of Theseus.
You cannot pass a china-shop, for instance, nor an upholsterer's,
without seeing, on some mug or plate, or curtain, or chair, the
pattern known as the "Greek fret," simple or complex. I once held it
in especial dislike, as the chief means by which bad architects tried
to make their buildings look classical; and as ugly in itself. Which
it is: and it has an ugly meaning also; but a deep one, which I
did not then know; having been obliged to write too young, when
I knew only half truths, and was eager to set them forth by what
I thought fine words. People used to call me a good writer then;
now they say I can't write at all; because, for instance, if I think
anybody's house is on fire, I only say, "Sir, your house is on fire;"
whereas formerly I used to say, "Sir, the abode in which you probably
passed the delightful days of youth is in a state of inflammation,"
and everybody used to like the effect of the two p's in "probably
passed," and of the two d's in "delightful days."
Well, that Greek fret, ugly in itself, has yet definite and noble
service in decorative work, as black has among colours; much more,
has it a significance, very precious, though very solemn, when you
can read it.
There is so much in it, indeed, that I don't well know where to
begin. Perhaps it will be best to go back to our cathedral door
at Lucca, where we have been already. For as, after examining the
sculpture on the bell, with the help of the sympathetic ringer, I
was going in to look at the golden lamp, my eyes fell on a slightly
traced piece of sculpture and legend on the southern wall of the porch,
which, partly feeling it out with my finger, it being worn away by
the friction of many passing shoulders, broad and narrow, these six
hundred years and more, I drew for you, and Mr. Burgess has engraved.
The straggling letters at the side, read straight, and with separating
of the words, run thus:--
HIC QVEM CRETICVS EDIT DEDALVS EST LABERINTHVS.
DE QVO NVLLVS VADERE QVIVIT QVI FVIT INTVS
NI THESEVS GRATIS ADRIANE STAMINE JVTVS.
which is in English:--
This is the labyrinth which the Cretan Dedalus built,
Out of which nobody could get who was inside,
Except Theseus; nor could he have done it, unless he had been
helped with a thread by Adriane, all for love.
Upon which you are to note, first, that the grave announcement,
"This is the labyrinth which the Cretan Dedalus built," may possibly
be made interesting even to some of your children, if reduced from
mediæval sublimity, into your more popular legend--"This is the house
that Jack built." The cow with the crumpled horn will then remind
them of the creature who, in the midst of this labyrinth, lived as a
spider in the centre of his web; and the "maiden all forlorn" may stand
for Ariadne, or Adriane--(either name is given her by Chaucer, as he
chooses to have three syllables or two)--while the gradual involution
of the ballad, and necessity of clear-mindedness as well as clear
utterance on the part of its singer, is a pretty vocal imitation of
the deepening labyrinth. Theseus, being a pious hero, and the first
Athenian knight who cut his hair short in front, may not inaptly be
represented by the priest all shaven and shorn; the cock that crew in
the morn is the proper Athenian symbol of a pugnacious mind; and the
malt that lay in the house fortunately indicates the connection of
Theseus and the Athenian power with the mysteries of Eleusis, where
corn first, it is said, grew in Greece. And by the way, I am more and
more struck every day, by the singular Grecism in Shakespeare's mind,
contrary in many respects to the rest of his nature; yet compelling
him to associate English fairyland with the great Duke of Athens,
and to use the most familiar of all English words for land, "acre,"
in the Greek or Eleusinian sense, not the English one!
"Between the acres of the rye,
These pretty country-folks do lie--"
and again--"search every acre in the high grown field," meaning
"ridge," or "crest," not "ager," the root of "agriculture." Lastly, in
our nursery rhyme, observe that the name of Jack, the builder, stands
excellently for Dædalus, retaining the idea of him down to the phrase,
"Jack-of-all-Trades." Of this Greek builder you will find some account
at the end of my 'Aratra Pentelici:' to-day I can only tell you he
is distinctively the power of finest human, as opposed to Divine,
workmanship or craftsmanship. Whatever good there is, and whatever
evil, in the labour of the hands, separated from that of the soul,
is exemplified by his history and performance. In the deepest sense,
he was to the Greeks, Jack of all trades, yet Master of none; the
real Master of every trade being always a God. His own special work or
craft was inlaying or dove-tailing, and especially of black in white.
And this house which he built was his finest piece of involution,
or cunning workmanship; and the memory of it is kept by the Greeks
for ever afterwards, in that running border of theirs, involved in
and repeating itself, called the Greek fret, of which you will at
once recognise the character in these two pictures of the labyrinth of
Dædalus itself, on the coins of the place where it was built, Cnossus,
in the island of Crete; and which you see, in the frontispiece,
surrounding the head of Theseus, himself, on a coin of the same city.
Of course frets and returning lines were used in ornamentation
when there were no labyrinths--probably long before labyrinths. A
symbol is scarcely ever invented just when it is needed. Some
already recognised and accepted form or thing becomes symbolic at
a particular time. Horses had tails, and the moon quarters, long
before there were Turks; but the horse-tail and crescent are not less
definitely symbolic to the Ottoman. So, the early forms of ornament
are nearly alike, among all nations of any capacity for design: they
put meaning into them afterwards, if they ever come themselves to have
any meaning. Vibrate but the point of a tool against an unbaked vase,
as it revolves, set on the wheel,--you have a wavy or zigzag line. The
vase revolves once; the ends of the wavy line do not exactly tally
when they meet; you get over the blunder by turning one into a head,
the other into a tail,--and have a symbol of eternity--if, first,
which is wholly needful, you have an idea of eternity!
Again, the free sweep of a pen at the finish of a large letter has
a tendency to throw itself into a spiral. There is no particular
intelligence, or spiritual emotion, in the production of this line. A
worm draws it with his coil, a fern with its bud, and a periwinkle
with his shell. Yet, completed in the Ionic capital, and arrested
in the bending point of the acanthus leaf in the Corinthian one,
it has become the primal element of beautiful architecture and
ornament in all the ages; and is eloquent with endless symbolism,
representing the power of the winds and waves in Athenian work, and
of the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, in Gothic work:
or, indeed, often enough, of both, the Devil being held prince of
the power of the air--as in the story of Job, and the lovely story of
Buonconte of Montefeltro, in Dante: nay, in this very tale of Theseus,
as Chaucer tells it,--having got hold, by ill luck, only of the later
and calumnious notion that Theseus deserted his saviour-mistress, he
wishes him Devil-speed instead of God-speed, and that energetically--
"A twenty-divel way the wind him drive."
For which, indeed, Chaucer somewhat deserved (for he ought not to
have believed such things of Theseus,) the God of Love's anger at his
drawing too near the daisy. I will write the pretty lines partly in
modern spelling for you, that you may get the sense better:--
I, kneeling by this flower, in good intent,
Abode, to know what all the people meant,
As still as any stone; till at the last
The God of Love on me his eyen cast
And said, "Who kneeleth there?" And I answered
Unto his asking,
And said, "Sir, it am I," and came him near
And salued him.--Quoth he, "What dost thou here
So nigh mine own flower, so boldly?
It were better worthy, truly,
A worm to nighen near my flower than thou."
"And why, Sir," quoth I, "an it like you?"
"For thou," quoth he, "art nothing thereto able,
It is my relike, digne, and delitable.
And thou my foe, and all my folk worriest. [33]
And of mine old servants thou missayest."
But it is only for evil speaking of ladies that Chaucer felt his
conscience thus pricked,--chiefly of Cressida; whereas, I have written
the lines for you because it is the very curse of this age that we
speak evil alike of ladies and knights, and all that made them noble
in past days;--nay, of saints also; and I have, for first business,
next January, to say what I can for our own St. George, against the
enlightened modern American view of him, that he was nothing better
than a swindling bacon-seller (good enough, indeed, so, for us, now!)
But to come back to the house that Jack built. You will want to know,
next, whether Jack ever did build it. I believe, in veritable bricks
and mortar--no; in veritable limestone and cave-catacomb, perhaps,
yes; it is no matter how; somehow, you see, Jack must have built it,
for there is the picture of it on the coin of the town. He built it,
just as St. George killed the dragon; so that you put a picture of
him also on the coin of your town.
Not but that the real and artful labyrinth might have been, for
all we know. A very real one, indeed, was built by twelve brotherly
kings in Egypt, in two stories, one for men to live in, the other
for crocodiles;--and the upper story was visible and wonderful to
all eyes, in authentic times: whereas, we know of no one who ever
saw Jack's labyrinth: and yet, curiously enough, the real labyrinth
set the pattern of nothing; while Jack's ghostly labyrinth has set
the pattern of almost everything linear and complex, since; and the
pretty spectre of it blooms at this hour, in vital hawthorn for you,
every spring, at Hampton Court.
Now, in the pictures of this imaginary maze, you are to note that
both the Cretan and Lucchese designs agree in being composed of a
single path or track, coiled, and recoiled, on itself. Take a piece
of flexible chain and lay it down, considering the chain itself as
the path: and, without an interruption, it will trace any of the
three figures. (The two Cretan ones are indeed the same in design,
except in being, one square, and the other round.) And recollect,
upon this, that the word "Labyrinth" properly means "rope-walk," or
"coil-of-rope-walk," its first syllable being probably also the same as
our English name "Laura," 'the path,' and its method perfectly given
by Chaucer in the single line--"And, for the house is crenkled to and
fro." And on this, note farther, first, that had the walls been real,
instead of ghostly, there would have been no difficulty whatever in
getting either out or in, for you could go no other way. But if the
walls were spectral, and yet the transgression of them made your
final entrance or return impossible, Ariadne's clue was needful indeed.
Note, secondly, that the question seems not at all to have been about
getting in; but getting out again. The clue, at all events, could be
helpful only after you had carried it in; and if the spider, or other
monster in midweb, ate you, the help in your clue, for return, would
be insignificant. So that this thread of Ariadne's implied that even
victory over the monster would be vain, unless you could disentangle
yourself from his web also.
So much you may gather from coin or carving: next, we try
tradition. Theseus, as I said before, is the great settler or law-giver
of the Athenian state; but he is so eminently as the Peace-maker,
causing men to live in fellowship who before lived separate, and making
roads passable that were infested by robbers or wild beasts. He is
the exterminator of every bestial and savage element, and the type
of human, or humane power, which power you will find in this, and
all my other books on policy, summed in the terms, "Gentleness and
Justice." The Greeks dwelt chiefly in their thoughts on the last,
and Theseus, representing the first, has therefore most difficulty
in dealing with questions of punishment, and criminal justice.
Now the justice of the Greeks was enforced by three great judges,
who lived in three islands. Æacus, who lived in the island of Ægina,
is the administrator of distributive, or 'dividing' justice; which
relates chiefly to property, and his subjects, as being people of
industrious temper, were once ants; afterwards called Ant-people, or
'Myrmidons.'
Secondly, Minos, who lived in the island of Crete, was the judge
who punished crime, of whom presently; finally, Rhadamanthus, called
always by Homer "golden," or "glowing" Rhadamanthus, was the judge
who rewarded virtue; and he lived in a blessed island covered with
flowers, but which eye of man hath not yet seen, nor has any living
ear heard lisp of wave on that shore.
For the very essence and primal condition of virtue is that it shall
not know of, nor believe in, any blessed islands, till it find them,
it may be, in due time.
And of these three judges, two were architects, but the third only
a gardener. Æacus helped the gods to build the walls of Troy. Minos
appointed the labyrinth in coils round the Minotaur; but Rhadamanthus
only set trees, with golden fruit on them, beside waters of comfort,
and overlaid the calm waves with lilies.
They did these things, I tell you, in very truth, cloud-hidden indeed;
but the things themselves are with us to this day. No town on earth is
more real than that town of Troy. Her prince, long ago, was dragged
dead round the walls that Æacus built; but her princedom did not die
with him. Only a few weeks since, I was actually standing, as I told
you, with my good friend Mr. Parker, watching the lizards play among
the chinks in the walls built by Æacus, for his wandering Trojans,
by Tiber side. And, perhaps within memory of man, some of you may have
walked up or down Tower Street, little thinking that its tower was also
built by Æacus, for his wandering Trojans and their Cæsar, by Thames
side: and on Tower Hill itself--where I had my pocket picked only
the other day by some of the modern Æacidæ--stands the English Mint,
"dividing" gold and silver which Æacus, first of all Greeks, divided
in his island of Ægina, and struck into intelligible money-stamp and
form, that men might render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.
But the Minos labyrinth is more real yet; at all events, more real
for us. And what it was, and is, as you have seen at Lucca, you shall
hear at Florence, where you are to learn Dante's opinion upon it,
and Sandro Botticelli shall draw it for us.
That Hell, which so many people think the only place Dante gives any
account of, (yet seldom know his account even of that,) was, he tells
you, divided into upper, midmost, and nether pits. You usually lose
sight of this main division of it, in the more complex one of the nine
circles; but remember, these are divided in diminishing proportion:
six of them are the upper hell; two, the midmost; one, the lowest. [34]
You will find this a very pretty and curious proportion. Here it is in
labyrinthine form, putting the three dimensions at right angles to each
other, and drawing a spiral round them. I show you it in a spiral line,
because the idea of descent is in Dante's mind, spiral (as of a worm's
or serpent's coil) throughout; even to the mode of Geryon's flight,
"ruota e discende;" and Minos accordingly indicates which circle any
sinner is to be sent to, in a most graphically labyrinthine manner,
by twisting his tail round himself so many times, necessarily thus
marking the level.
The uppermost and least dreadful hell, divided into six circles, is
the hell of those who cannot rightly govern themselves, but have no
mind to do mischief to any one else. In the lowest circle of this, and
within the same walls with the more terrible mid-hell, whose stench
even comes up and reaches to them, are people who have not rightly
governed their thoughts: and these are buried for ever in fiery tombs,
and their thoughts thus governed to purpose; which you, my friends,
who are so fond of freedom of thought, and freedom of the press,
may wisely meditate on.
Then the two lower hells are for those who have wilfully done mischief
to other people. And of these, some do open injury, and some, deceitful
injury, and of these the rogues are put the lower; but there is a
greater distinction in the manner of sin, than its simplicity or
roguery:--namely, whether it be done in hot blood or cold blood. The
injurious sins, done in hot blood--that is to say, under the influence
of passion--are in the midmost hell; but the sins done in cold blood,
without passion, or, more accurately, contrary to passion, far down
below the freezing point, are put in the lowest hell: the ninth circle.
Now, little as you may think it, or as the friend thought it, who
tried to cure me of jesting the other day, I should not have taken
upon me to write this 'Fors,' if I had not, in some degree, been cured
of jesting long ago; and in the same way that Dante was,--for in my
poor and faltering path I have myself been taken far enough down
among the diminished circles to see this nether hell--the hell of
Traitors; and to know, what people do not usually know of treachery,
that it is not the fraud, but the cold-heartedness, which is chiefly
dreadful in it. Therefore, this nether Hell is of ice, not fire;
and of ice that nothing can break.
"Oh, ill-starred folk,
Beyond all others wretched, who abide
In such a mansion as scarce thought finds words
To speak of, better had ye here on earth
Been flocks or mountain goats.
I saw, before, and underneath my feet,
A lake, whose frozen surface liker seemed
To glass than water. Not so thick a veil
In winter e'er hath Austrian Danube spread
O'er his still course, nor Tanais, far remote
Under the chilling sky. Rolled o'er that mass
Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fallen
Not even its rim had creaked.
As peeps the frog,
Croaking above the wave,--what time in dreams
The village gleaner oft pursues her toil,--
Blue-pinched, and shrined in ice, the spirits stood,
Moving their teeth in shrill note, like the stork."
No more wandering of the feet in labyrinth like this, and the eyes,
once cruelly tearless, now blind with frozen tears. But the midmost
hell, for hot-blooded sinners, has other sort of lakes,--as, for
instance, you saw a little while ago, of hot pitch, in which one
bathes otherwise than in Serchio--(the Serchio is the river at Lucca,
and Pietrapana a Lucchese mountain). But observe,--for here we get
to our main work again,--the great boiling lake on the Phlegethon of
this upper hell country is red, not black; and its source, as well
as that of the river which freezes beneath, is in this island of
Crete! in the Mount Ida, "joyous once with leaves and streams." You
must look to the passage yourselves--'Inferno,' XIV. (line 120 in
Carey)--for I have not room for it now. The first sight of it, to
Dante, is as "a little brook, whose crimsoned wave Yet lifts my hair
with horror." Virgil makes him look at this spring as the notablest
thing seen by him in hell, since he entered its gate; but the great
lake of it is under a ruinous mountain, like the fallen Alp through
which the Adige foams down to Verona;--and on the crest of this ruin
lies couched the enemy of Theseus--the Minotaur:
"And there,
At point of the disparted ridge, lay stretched
The infamy of Crete--at sight of us
It gnawed itself, as one with rage distract.
To him my guide exclaimed, 'Perchance thou deem'st
The King of Athens here.'"
Of whom and of his enemy, I have time to tell you no more
to-day--except only that this Minotaur is the type or embodiment
of the two essentially bestial sins of Anger and Lust;--that both
these are in the human nature, interwoven inextricably with its
chief virtue, Love, so that Dante makes this very ruin of the Rocks
of hell, on which the Minotaur is couched, to be wrought on them at
the instant when "the Universe was thrilled with love,"--(the last
moment of the Crucifixion)--and that the labyrinth of these passions
is one not fabulous, nor only pictured on coins of Crete. And the
right interweaving of Anger with Love, in criminal justice, is the
main question in earthly law, which the Athenian lawgiver had to
deal with. Look, if you can, at my introductory Lectures at Oxford,
p. 83; and so I must leave Theseus for this time;--in next letter,
which will be chiefly on Christmas cheer, I must really try to get
as far as his vegetable soup.
As for Æacus, and his coining business, we must even let them alone
now, till next year; only I have to thank some readers who have written
to me on the subject of interest of money, (one or two complaining
that I had dismissed it too summarily, when, alas! I am only at the
threshold of it!), and, especially, my reader for the press, who
has referred me to a delightful Italian book, 'Teoremi di Politica
Cristiana,' (Naples, 1830,) and copied out ever so much of it for me;
and Mr. Sillar, for farther most useful letters, of which to-day I
can only quote this postscript:--
"Please note that your next number of 'Fors Clavigera' ought to be in
the hands of your readers on Friday, the 1st, or Saturday, the 2nd,
of November. The following day being Sunday, the 3rd, there will be
read in every church in England, or in the world, where the Church
Service is used, the 15th Psalm, which distinctly declares the man who
shall ascend to God's holy hill to be him who, amongst other things,
has not put forth his money upon usury; a verse impiously ignored in
most of the metrical versions of the Psalms; those adapted to popular
tunes or popular prejudices."
I think, accordingly, that some of my readers may be glad to have
a sounder version of that Psalm; and as the 14th is much connected
with it, and will be variously useful to us afterwards, here they
both are, done into verse by an English squire,--or his sister,
for they alike could rhyme; and the last finished singing what her
brother left unsung, the Third Fors having early put seal on his lips.