[Footnote 1: A review of the English translation edited by William W.
Goodwin with an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson.]
Plutarch is perhaps the most eminent example of how strong a hold simple
good humor and good sense lay upon the affections of mankind. Not a man
of genius or heroism himself, his many points of sympathy with both make
him an admirable conductor of them in that less condensed form which is
more wholesome and acceptable to the average mind. Of no man can it be
more truly said that, if not a rose himself, he had lived all his days
in the rose's neighborhood. Such is the delightful equableness of his
temperament and his singular talent for reminiscence, so far is he
always from undue heat while still susceptible of so much enthusiasm as
shall not disturb digestion, that he might seem to have been born
middle-aged. Few men have so amicably combined the love of a good dinner
and of the higher morality. He seems to have comfortably solved the
problem of having your cake and eating it, at which the ascetic
interpreters of Christianity teach us to despair. He serves us up his
worldly wisdom in a sauce of Plato, and gives a kind of sensuous relish
to the disembodied satisfactions of immortality. He is a better
Christian than many an orthodox divine. If he do not, like Sir Thomas
Browne, love to lose himself in an _O, altitudo!_ yet the sky-piercing
peaks and snowy solitudes of ethical speculation loom always on the
horizon about the sheltered dwelling of his mind, and he continually
gets up from his books to rest and refresh his eyes upon them. He seldom
invites us to alpine-climbing, and when he does, it is to some warm nook
like the Jardin on Mont Blanc, a parenthesis of homely summer nestled
amid the sublime nakedness of snow. If he glance upward at becoming
intervals to the "primal duties," he turns back with a settled
predilection to the "sympathies that are nestled at the feet like
flowers." But it is within his villa that we love to be admitted to him
and to enjoy that garrulity which we forgive more readily in the mother
of the muses than in any of her daughters, unless it be Clio, who is
most like her. If we are in the library, he is reminded of this or that
passage in a favorite author, and, going to the shelves, takes down the
volume to read it aloud with decorous emphasis. If we are in the
_atrium_ (where we like him best) he has an anecdote to tell of all the
great Greeks and Romans whose busts or statues are ranged about us, and
who for the first time soften from their marble alienation and become
human. It is this that makes him so amiable a moralist and brings his
lessons home to us. He does not preach up any remote and inaccessible
virtue, but makes all his lessons of magnanimity, self-devotion,
patriotism seem neighborly and practicable to us by an example which
associates them with our common humanity. His higher teaching is
theosophy with no taint of theology. He is a pagan Tillotson
disencumbered of the archiepiscopal robes, a practical Christian
unbewildered with doctrinal punctilios. This is evidently what commended
him as a philosopher to Montaigne, as may be inferred from some hints
which follow immediately upon the comparison between Seneca and Plutarch
in the essay on "Physiognomy." After speaking of some "escripts encores
plus révérez," he asks, in his idiomatic way, "à, quoy faire nous allons
nous gendarmant par ces efforts de la science?" More than this, however,
Montaigne liked him because he was _good talk_, as it is called, a
better companion than writer. Yet he is not without passages which are
noble in point of mere style. Landor remarks this in the conversation
between Johnson and Tooke, where he makes Tooke say: "Although his style
is not valued by the critics, I could inform them that there are in
Plutarch many passages of exquisite beauty, in regard to style, derived
perhaps from authors much more ancient." But if they are borrowed, they
have none of the discordant effect of the _purpureus pannus_, for the
warm sympathy of his nature assimilates them thoroughly and makes them
his own. Oddly enough, it is through his memory that Plutarch is truly
original. Who ever remembered so much and yet so well? It is this
selectness (without being overfastidious) that gauges the natural
elevation of his mind. He is a gossip, but he has supped with Plato or
sat with Alexander in his tent to bring away only memorable things. We
are speaking of him, of course, at his best. Many of his essays are
trivial, but there is hardly one whose sands do not glitter here and
there with the proof that the stream of his thought and experience has
flowed down through auriferous soil. "We sail on his memory into the
ports of every nation," says Mr. Emerson admirably in his Introduction
to Goodwin's Plutarch's "Morals." No doubt we are becalmed pretty often,
and yet our old skipper almost reconciles us with our dreary isolation,
so well can he beguile the time, when he chooses, with anecdote and
quotation.
It would hardly be extravagant to say that this delightful old proser,
in whom his native Boeotia is only too apparent at times, and whose
mind, in some respects, was strictly provincial, had been more operative
(if we take the "Lives" and the "Morals" together) in the thought and
action of men than any other single author, ancient or modern. And on
the whole it must be allowed that his influence has been altogether
good, has insensibly enlarged and humanized his readers, winning them
over to benevolence, moderation, and magnanimity. And so wide was his
own curiosity that they must be few who shall not find somewhat to their
purpose in his discursive pages. For he was equally at home among men
and ideas, open-eared to the one and open-minded to the other. His
influence, too, it must be remembered, begins earlier than that of any
other ancient author except Aesop. To boys he has always been the
Robinson Crusoe of classic antiquity, making what had hitherto seemed a
remote island sequestered from them by a trackless flood of years,
living and real. Those obscure solitudes which their imagination had
peopled with spectral equestrian statues, are rescued by the sound of
his cheery voice as part of the familiar and daylight world. We suspect
that Agesilaus on his hobby-horse first humanized antiquity for most of
us. Here was the human footprint which persuaded us that the past was
inhabited by creatures like ourselves.
A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH
AND FIGURES OF SPEECH-MAKERS
A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH
AND FIGURES OF SPEECH-MAKERS
I must beg allowance to use the first person singular. I cannot, like
old Weller, spell myself with a We. Ours is, I believe, the only
language that has shown so much sense of the worth of the individual (to
himself) as to erect the first personal pronoun into a kind of votive
column to the dignity of human nature. Other tongues have, or pretend, a
greater modesty.
I
What a noble letter it is! In it every reader sees himself as in a
glass. As for me, without my I's, I should be as poorly off as the great
mole of Hadrian, which, being the biggest, must be also, by parity of
reason, the blindest in the world. When I was in college, I confess I
always liked those passages best in the choruses of the Greek drama
which were well sprinkled with _ai ai_, they were so grandly simple. The
force of great men is generally to be found in their intense
individuality,--in other words, it is all in their I. The merit of this
essay will be similar.
What I was going to say is this.
My mind has been much exercised of late on the subject of two epidemics,
which, showing themselves formerly in a few sporadic cases, have begun
to set in with the violence of the cattle-disease: I mean Eloquence and
Statuary. They threaten to render the country unfit for human
habitation, except by the Deaf and Blind. We had hitherto got on very
well in Chesumpscot, having caught a trick of silence, perhaps from the
fish which we cured, _more medicorum_, by laying them out. But this
summer some misguided young men among us got up a lecture-association.
Of course it led to a general quarrel; for every pastor in the town
wished to have the censorship of the list of lecturers. A certain number
of the original projectors, however, took the matter wholly into their
own hands, raised a subscription to pay expenses, and resolved to call
their lectures "The Universal Brotherhood Course,"--for no other reason,
that I can divine, but that they had set the whole village by the ears.
They invited that distinguished young apostle of Reform, Mr. Philip
Vandal, to deliver the opening lecture. He has just done so, and, from
what I have heard about his discourse, it would have been fitter as the
introductory to a nunnery of Kilkenny cats than to anything like
universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster,
without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the
world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular.
Even the babe unborn did not escape some unsavory epithets in the way of
vaticination. I sat down, meaning to write you an essay on "The Right of
Private Judgment as distinguished from the Right of Public
Vituperation"; but I forbear. It may be that I do not understand the
nature of philanthropy.
Why, here is Philip Vandal, for example. He loves his kind so much that
he has not a word softer than a brickbat for a single mother's son of
them. He goes about to save them by proving that not one of them is
worth damning. And he does it all from the point of view of an early (a
_knurly_) Christian. Let me illustrate. I was sauntering along Broadway
once, and was attracted by a bird-fancier's shop. I like dealers in
out-of-the-way things,--traders in bigotry and virtue are too
common,--and so I went in. The gem of the collection was a terrier,--a
perfect beauty, uglier than philanthropy itself, and hairier, as a
Cockney would say, than the 'ole British hairystocracy. "A'n't he a
stunner?" said my disrespectable friend, the master of the shop. "Ah,
you should see him worry a rat! He does it like a puffic Christian!"
Since then, the world has been divided for me into Christians and
_perfect_ Christians; and I find so many of the latter species in
proportion to the former, that I begin to pity the rats. They (the rats)
have at least one virtue,--they are not eloquent.
It is, I think, a universally recognized truth of natural history, that
a young lady is sure to fall in love with a young man for whom she feels
at first an unconquerable aversion; and it must be on the same principle
that the first symptoms of love for our neighbor almost always manifest
themselves in a violent disgust at the world in general, on the part of
the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their
neighbors consumedly; _argal_, they are going to be madly enamored of
them. Or, perhaps, this is the manner in which Universal Brotherhood
shows itself in people who wilfully subject themselves to infection as a
prophylactic. In the natural way we might find the disease inconvenient
and even expensive; but thus vaccinated with virus from the udders
(whatever they may be) that yield the (butter-)milk of human kindness,
the inconvenience is slight, and we are able still to go about our
ordinary business of detesting our brethren as usual. It only shows that
the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will
thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener. Before long
we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the
"Weekly Brandreth's Pill" somewhat on this wise:--"I have a very marked
and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners. Miss Hepzibah Tarbell,
daughter of that archenemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only
one of my lectures. In a day or two the symptoms of eruption were most
encouraging. She has already quarrelled with all her family,--accusing
her father of bigamy, her uncle Benoni of polytheism, her brother Zeno
C. of aneurism, and her sister Eudoxy Trithemia of the variation of the
magnetic needle. If ever hopes of seeing a perfect case of Primitive
Christian were well-founded, I think we may entertain them now."
What I chiefly object to in the general-denunciation sort of reformers
is that they make no allowance for character and temperament. They wish
to repeal universal laws, and to patch our natural skins for us, as if
they always wanted mending. That while they talk so much of the godlike
nature of man, they should so forget the human natures of men! The
Flathead Indian squeezes the child's skull between two boards till it
shapes itself into a kind of gambrel roof against the rain,--the
readiest way, perhaps, of uniforming a tribe that wear no clothes. But
does he alter the inside of the head? Not a hair's-breadth. You remember
the striking old gnomic poem that tells how Aaron, in a moment of
fanatical zeal against that member by which mankind are so readily led
into mischief, proposes a rhinotomic sacrifice to Moses? What is the
answer of the experienced law-giver?
Says Moses to Aaron,
"'T is the fashion to wear 'em!'"
Shall we advise the Tadpole to get his tail cut off, as a badge of the
reptile nature in him, and to achieve the higher sphere of the Croakers
at a single hop? Why, it is all he steers by; without it, he would be as
helpless as a compass under the flare of Northern Lights; and he no
doubt regards it as a mark of blood, the proof of his kinship with the
preadamite family of the Saurians. Shall we send missionaries to the
Bear to warn him against raw chestnuts, because they are sometimes so
discomforting to our human intestines, which are so like his own? One
sermon from the colic were worth the whole American Board.
Moreover, as an author, I protest in the name of universal Grub Street
against a unanimity in goodness. Not to mention that a Quaker world, all
faded out to an autumnal drab, would be a little tedious,--what should
we do for the villain of our tragedy or novel? No rascals, no
literature. You have your choice. Were we weak enough to consent to a
sudden homogeneousness in virtue, many industrious persons would be
thrown out of employment. The wife and mother, for example, with as
indeterminate a number of children as the Martyr Rogers, who visits me
monthly,--what claim would she have upon me, were not her husband
forever taking to drink, or the penitentiary, or Spiritualism? The
pusillanimous lapse of her lord into morality would not only take the
very ground of her invention from under her feet, but would rob her and
him of an income that sustains them both in blissful independence of the
curse of Adam. But do not let us be disheartened. Nature is strong; she
is persistent; she completes her syllogism after we have long been
feeding the roots of her grasses, and has her own way in spite of us.
Some ancestral Cromwellian trooper leaps to life again in Nathaniel
Greene, and makes a general of him, to confute five generations of
Broadbrims. The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them
highly as a preterite phenomenon; but they were _not_ good at cakes and
ale, and that is one reason why they are a preterite phenomenon.
I suppose we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck
whenever he likes,--so it be not down our street. I confess to a good
deal of tolerance in this respect, and, when I live in No. 21, have
plenty of stoicism to spare for the griefs of the dwellers in No. 23.
Indeed, I agreed with our young Cato heartily in what he said about
Statues. We must have an Act for the Suppression, either of Great Men,
or else of Sculptors. I have not quite made up my mind which are the
greater nuisances; but I am sure of this, that there are too many of
both. They used to be _rare_ (to use a Yankeeism omitted by Bartlett),
but nowadays they are overdone. I am half inclined to think that the
sculptors club together to write folks up during their lives in the
newspapers, quieting their consciences with the hope of some day making
them look so mean in bronze or marble as to make all square again. Or do
we really have so many? Can't they help growing twelve feet high in this
new soil, any more than our maize? I suspect that Posterity will not
thank us for the hereditary disease of Carrara we are entailing on him,
and will try some heroic remedy, perhaps lithotripsy.
Nor was I troubled by what Mr. Vandal said about the late Benjamin
Webster. I am not a Boston man, and have, therefore, the privilege of
thinking for myself. Nor do I object to his claiming for women the right
to make books and pictures and (shall I say it?) statues,--only this
last becomes a grave matter, if we are to have statues of all the great
women, too! To be sure, there will not be the trousers-difficulty,--at
least, not at present; what we may come to is none of my affair. I even
go beyond him in my opinions on what is called the Woman Question. In
the gift of speech, they have always had the advantage of us; and though
the jealousy of the other sex have deprived us of the orations of
Xantippe, yet even Demosthenes does not seem to have produced greater
effects, if we may take the word of Socrates for it,--as I, for one,
very gladly do.
No,--what I complain of is not the lecturer's opinions, but the
eloquence with which he expressed them. He does not like statues better
than I do; but is it possible that he fails to see that the one nuisance
leads directly to the other, and that we set up three images of Talkers
for one to any kind of man who was useful in his generation? Let him
beware, or he will himself be petrified after death. Boston seems to be
specially unfortunate. She has more statues and more speakers than any
other city on this continent. I have with my own eyes seen a book called
"The Hundred Boston Orators." This would seem to give her a fairer title
to be called the _tire_ than the _hub_ of creation. What with the
speeches of her great men while they are alive, and those of her
surviving great men about those aforesaid after they are dead, and those
we look forward to from her _ditto ditto_ yet to be upon her _ditto
ditto_ now in being, and those of her paulopost _ditto ditto_ upon her
_ditto ditto_ yet to be, and those--But I am getting into the house that
Jack built.
And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts State House and being
struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in the Representatives'
Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as would seem, to be
observed except on Sundays. Eloquent Philip Vandal, I appeal to you as a
man and a brother, let us two form (not an Antediluvian, for there are
plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against the flood of milk-and-water
that threatens the land. Let us adopt as our creed these two
propositions:--