I read much less than I used to do; I think much more. Yet what is the
use of thought which can no longer serve to direct life? Better,
perhaps, to read and read incessantly, losing one's futile self in the
activity of other minds.
This summer I have taken up no new book, but have renewed my acquaintance
with several old ones which I had not opened for many a year. One or two
have been books such as mature men rarely read at all--books which it is
one's habit to "take as read"; to presume sufficiently known to speak of,
but never to open. Thus, one day my hand fell upon the _Anabasis_, the
little Oxford edition which I used at school, with its boyish sign-manual
on the fly-leaf, its blots and underlinings and marginal scrawls. To my
shame I possess no other edition; yet this is a book one would like to
have in beautiful form. I opened it, I began to read--a ghost of boyhood
stirring in my heart--and from chapter to chapter was led on, until after
a few days I had read the whole.
I am glad this happened in the summer-time, I like to link childhood with
these latter days, and no better way could I have found than this return
to a school-book, which, even as a school-book, was my great delight.
By some trick of memory I always associate school-boy work on the
classics with a sense of warm and sunny days; rain and gloom and a chilly
atmosphere must have been far the more frequent conditions, but these
things are forgotten. My old Liddell and Scott still serves me, and if,
in opening it, I bend close enough to catch the _scent_ of the leaves, I
am back again at that day of boyhood (noted on the fly-leaf by the hand
of one long dead) when the book was new and I used it for the first time.
It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page,
viewed with childish tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellow
sunshine, which was to linger for ever in my mind.
But I am thinking of the _Anabasis_. Were this the sole book existing in
Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order
to read it. The _Anabasis_ is an admirable work of art, unique in its
combination of concise and rapid narrative with colour and
picturesqueness. Herodotus wrote a prose epic, in which the author's
personality is ever before us. Xenophon, with curiosity and love of
adventure which mark him of the same race, but self-forgetful in the
pursuit of a new artistic virtue, created the historical romance. What a
world of wonders in this little book, all aglow with ambitions and
conflicts, with marvels of strange lands; full of perils and rescues,
fresh with the air of mountain and of sea! Think of it for a moment by
the side of Caesar's Commentaries; not to compare things incomparable,
but in order to appreciate the perfect art which shines through
Xenophon's mastery of language, his brevity achieving a result so
different from that of the like characteristic in the Roman writer.
Caesar's conciseness comes of strength and pride; Xenophon's, of a vivid
imagination. Many a single line of the _Anabasis_ presents a picture
which deeply stirs the emotions. A good instance occurs in the fourth
book, where a delightful passage of unsurpassable narrative tells how the
Greeks rewarded and dismissed a guide who had led them through dangerous
country. The man himself was in peril of his life; laden with valuable
things which the soldiers had given him in their gratitude, he turned to
make his way through the hostile region. [Greek text]. "When evening
came he took leave of us, and went his way by night." To my mind, words
of wonderful suggestiveness. You see the wild, eastern landscape, upon
which the sun has set. There are the Hellenes, safe for the moment on
their long march, and there the mountain tribesman, the serviceable
barbarian, going away, alone, with his tempting guerdon, into the hazards
of the darkness.
Also in the fourth book, another picture moves one in another way. Among
the Carduchian Hills two men were seized, and information was sought from
them about the track to be followed. "One of them would say nothing, and
kept silence in spite of every threat; so, in the presence of his
companion, he was slain. Thereupon that other made known the man's
reason for refusing to point out the way; in the direction the Greeks
must take there dwelt a daughter of his, who was married."
It would not be easy to express more pathos than is conveyed in these few
words. Xenophon himself, one may be sure, did not feel it quite as we
do, but he preserved the incident for its own sake, and there, in a line
or two, shines something of human love and sacrifice, significant for all
time.