Grecian and English literature--viz. the chapter on Homer, by this
tight dilemma. You do or you do not use the Longinian word [Greek:
hypsos] in the modern sense of the sublime. If you do not, then of
course you translate it in the Grecian sense, as explained above; and
in that sense, we engage to produce many scores of passages from
Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to 80 lines, which contain more of
picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, more
felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more truth of
character, than can be matched in all the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_. On
the other hand, if by [Greek: hypsos] you choose absurdly to mean
sublimity in the modern sense, then it will suffice for us that we
challenge _you_ to the production of one instance which truly and
incontestably embodies that quality.[11] The burthen of proof rests
upon you who affirm, not upon us who deny. Meantime, as a kind of
choke-pear, we leave with the Homeric adorer this one brace of
portraits, or hints for such a brace, which we commend to his
comparison, as Hamlet did the portraits of the two brothers to his
besotted mother. We are talking of the sublime: that is our thesis.
Now observe: there is a catalogue in the _Iliad_--there is a catalogue
in the _Paradise Lost_. And, like a river of Macedon and of Monmouth,
the two catalogues agree in that one fact--viz. that they _are_ such.
But as to the rest, we are willing to abide by the issue of that one
comparison, left to the very dullest sensibility, for the decision of
the total question at issue. And what is that? Not, Heaven preserve
us! as to the comparative claims of Milton and Homer in this point of
sublimity--for surely it would be absurd to compare him who has most
with him whom we affirm to have none at all--but whether Homer has the
very smallest pretensions in that point. The result, as we state it,
is this:--The catalogue of the ruined angels in Milton, is, in itself
taken separately, a perfect poem, with the beauty, and the felicity,
and the glory of a dream. The Homeric catalogue of ships is exactly on
a level with the muster-roll of a regiment, the register of a
tax-gatherer, the catalogue of an auctioneer. Nay, some catalogues are
far more interesting, and more alive with meaning. 'But him followed
fifty black ships!'--'But him follow seventy black ships!' Faugh! We
could make a more readable poem out of an Insolvent's Balance Sheet.
[Footnote 11: The description of Apollo in wrath as [Greek: nukti
eoikô], like night, is a doubtful case. With respect to the shield of
Achilles, it cannot be denied that the general conception has, in
common with all abstractions (as _e. g._ the abstractions of dreams,
of prophetic visions, such as that in the 6th Æneid, that to Macbeth,
that shown by the angel Michael to Adam), something fine and, in its
own nature, let the execution be what it may, sublime. But this part
of the _Iliad_, we firmly believe to be an interpolation of times long
posterior to that of Homer.]
One other little suggestion we could wish to offer. Those who would
contend against the vast superiority of Chaucer (and him we mention
chiefly because he really has in excess those very qualities of life,
motion, and picturesque simplicity, to which the Homeric
characteristics chiefly tend), ought to bear in mind one startling
fact evidently at war with the _degree_ of what is claimed for Homer.
It is this: Chaucer is carried naturally by the very course of his
tales into the heart of domestic life, and of the scenery most
favourable to the movements of human sensibility. Homer, on the other
hand, is kept out of that sphere, and is imprisoned in the monotonies
of a camp or a battle-field, equally by the necessities of his story,
and by the proprieties of Grecian life (which in fact are pretty
nearly those of Turkish life at this day). Men and women meet only
under rare, hurried, and exclusive circumstances. Hence it is, that
throughout the entire _Iliad_, we have but one scene in which the
finest affections of the human heart can find an opening for display;
of course, everybody knows at once that we are speaking of the scene
between Hector, Andromache, and the young Astyanax. No need for
question here; it is Hobson's choice in Greek literature, when you are
seeking for the poetry of human sensibilities. One such scene there
is, and no more; which, of itself, is some reason for suspecting its
authenticity. And, by the way, at this point, it is worth while
remarking, that a late excellent critic always pronounced the words
applied to Andromache [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa] (_tearfully smiling_,
or, _smiling through_ _her tears_), a mere Alexandrian interpolation.
And why? Now mark the reason. Was it because the circumstance is in
itself vicious, or out of nature? Not at all: nothing more probable or
more interesting under the general situation of peril combined with
the little incident of the infant's alarm at the plumed helmet. But
any just taste feels it to be out of the Homeric key; the barbarism of
the age, not mitigated (as in Chaucer's far less barbarous age) by the
tenderness of Christian sentiment, turned a deaf ear and a repulsive
aspect to such beautiful traits of domestic feeling; to Homer himself
the whole circumstance would have been one of pure effeminacy. Now, we
recommend it to the reader's reflection--and let him weigh well the
condition under which that poetry moves that cannot indulge a tender
sentiment without being justly suspected of adulterous commerce with
some after age. This remark, however, is by the by; having grown out
of the [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa], itself a digression. But, returning
from that to our previous theme, we desire every candid reader to ask
himself what must be the character, what the circumscription, of that
poetry which is limited, by its very subject,[12] to a scene of such
intense uniformity as a battle or a camp; and by the prevailing spirit
of manners to the exclusive society of men. To make bricks without
straw, was the excess even of Egyptian bondage; Homer could not fight
up against the necessities of his age, and the defects of its
manners. And the very apologies which will be urged for him, drawn as
they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are
reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of
poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective
sensibility, or by the mere self-interest of pedantry.
[Footnote 12: But the _Odyssey_, at least, it will be said, is not
thus limited: no, not by its subject; because it carries us amongst
cities and princes in a state of peace; but it is equally limited by
the spirit of manners; we are never admitted amongst women, except by
accident (Nausicaa)--by necessity (Penelope)--or by romance (Circe).]
From Homer, the route stretches thus:--The Grecian drama lies about
six hundred years nearer to the Christian era, and Pindar lies in the
interval. These--_i. e._ the Dramatic and Lyric--are the important
chapters of the Greek poetry; for as to Pastoral poetry, having only
Theocritus surviving, and a very little of Bion and Moschus, and of
these one only being of the least separate importance--we cannot hold
that department entitled to any notice in so cursory a review of the
literature, else we have much to say on this also. Besides that,
Theocritus was not a natural poet, indigenous to Sicily, but an
artificial blue-stocking; as was Callimachus in a different class.
The drama we may place loosely in the generation next before that of
Alexander the Great. And his era may be best remembered by noting it
as 333 years B. C. Add thirty years to this era--that will be the era
of the Drama. Add a little more than a century, and that will be the
era of Pindar. Him, therefore, we will notice first.
Now, the chief thing to say as to Pindar is--to show cause, good and
reasonable, why no man of sense should trouble his head about him.
There was in the seventeenth century a notion prevalent about Pindar,
the very contradiction to the truth. It was imagined that he 'had a
demon'; that he was under a burthen of prophetic inspiration; that he
was possessed, like a Hebrew prophet or a Delphic priestess, with
divine fury. Why was this thought?--simply because no mortal read him.
Laughable it is to mention, that Pope, when a very young man, and
writing his _Temple of Fame_ (partly on the model of Chaucer's), when
he came to the great columns and their bas-reliefs in that temple,
each of which is sacred to one honoured name, having but room in all
for six, chose Pindar for one[13] of the six. And the first bas-relief
on Pindar's column is so pretty, that we shall quote it; especially as
it suggested Gray's car for Dryden's 'less presumptuous flight!'
'Four swans sustain a car of silver bright,
With heads advanc'd, and pinions stretch'd for flight:
Here, _like some furious prophet_, Pindar rode,
And seem'd to _labour with th' inspiring god_.'
[Footnote 13: The other five were Homer, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle,
Cicero.]
Then follow eight lines describing other bas-reliefs, containing 'the
figured games of Greece' (Olympic, Nemean, &c.). But what we spoke of
as laughable in the whole affair is, that Master Pope neither had then
read one line of Pindar, nor ever read one line of Pindar: and reason
good; for at that time he could not read the simple Homeric Greek;
while the Greek of Pindar exceeds all other Greek in difficulty,
excepting, perhaps, a few amongst the tragic choruses, which are
difficult for the very same reason--lyric abruptness, lyric
involution, and lyric obscurity of transition. Not having read Homer,
no wonder that Pope should place, amongst the bas-reliefs illustrating
the _Iliad_, an incident which does not exist in the _Iliad_.[14] Not
having read Pindar, no wonder that Pope should ascribe to Pindar
qualities which are not only imaginary, but in absolute contradiction
to his true ones. A more sober old gentleman does not exist: his
demoniac possession is a mere fable. But there are two sufficient
arguments for not reading him, so long as innumerable books of greater
interest remain unread. First, he writes upon subjects that, to us,
are mean and extinct--race-horses that have been defunct for
twenty-five centuries, chariots that were crazy in his own day, and
contests with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. Then his
digressions about old genealogies are no whit better than his main
theme, nor more amusing than a Welshman's pedigree. The best
translator of any age, Mr. Carey, who translated Dante, has done what
human skill could effect to make the old Theban readable; but, after
all, the man is yet to come who _has_ read Pindar, _will_ read Pindar,
or _can_ read Pindar, except, indeed, a translator in the way of duty.
And the son of Philip himself, though he bade 'spare the house of
Pindarus,' we vehemently suspect, never read the works of Pindarus;
that labour he left to some future Hercules. So much for his subjects:
but a second objection is--his metre: The hexameter, or heroic metre
of the ancient Greeks, is delightful to our modern ears; so is the
Iambic metre fortunately of the stage: but the Lyric metres generally,
and those of Pindar without one exception, are as utterly without
meaning to us, as merely chaotic labyrinths of sound, as Chinese music
or Dutch concertos. Need we say more?
[Footnote 14: Viz. the supposed dragging of Hector three times round
Troy by Achilles--a mere post-Homeric fable. But it is ludicrous to
add, that, in after years--nay, when nearly at the end of his
translation of the _Iliad_, in 1718--Pope took part in a discussion
upon Homer's reasons for ascribing such conduct to his hero, seriously
arguing the _pro_ and _con_ upon a pure fiction.]
Next comes the drama. But this is too weighty a theme to be discussed
slightly; and the more so because here only we willingly concede a
strong motive for learning Greek; here, only, we hold the want of a
ready introduction to be a serious misfortune. Our general argument,
therefore, which had for its drift to depreciate Greek, dispenses, in
this case, with our saying anything; since every word we _could_ say
would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this
field of the Greek literature, deliver one oracular sentence, tending
neither to praise nor dispraise it, but simply to state its relations
to the modern, or, at least, the English drama. In the ancient drama,
to represent it justly, the unlearned reader must imagine grand
situations, impressive groups; in the modern tumultuous movement, a
grand stream of action. In the Greek drama, he must conceive the
presiding power to be _Death_; in the English, _Life_. What
Death?--What Life? That sort of death or of life locked up and frozen
into everlasting slumber, which we see in sculpture; that sort of
life, of tumult, of agitation, of tendency to something beyond, which
we see in painting. The picturesque, in short, domineers over English
tragedy; the sculpturesque, or the statuesque, over the Grecian.
The moralists, such as Theogins, the miscellaneous or didactic poets,
such as Hesiod, are all alike below any notice in a sketch like this.
The Epigrammatists, or writers of monumental inscriptions, &c.,
remain; and they, next after the dramatic poets, present the most
interesting field by far in the Greek literature; but these are too
various to be treated otherwise than _viritim_ and in detail.
There remains the prose literature; and, with the exception of those
critical writers who have written on rhetoric (such as Hermogenes,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius Phalerius, &c. &c., some of whom
are the best writers extant, on the mere art of constructing
sentences, but could not interest the general reader), the prose
writers may be thus distributed: 1st, the orators; 2nd, the
historians; 3rd, the philosophers; 4th, the literateurs (such as
Plutarch, Lucian, &c.).
As to the philosophers, of course there are only two who can present
any general interest--Plato and Aristotle; for Xenophon is no more a
philosophic writer than our own Addison. Now, in this department, it
is evident that the matter altogether transcends the manner. No man
will wish to study a profound philosopher, but for some previous
interest in his doctrines; and, if by any means a man has obtained
this, he may pursue this study sufficiently through translations. It
is true that neither Sydenham nor Taylor has done justice to Plato,
for example, as respects the colloquial graces of his style; but, when
the object is purely to pursue a certain course of principles and
inferences, the student cannot complain much that he has lost the
dramatic beauties of the dialogue, or the luxuriance of the style.
These he was not then seeking, by the supposition--what he _did_ seek,
is still left; whereas in poetry, if the golden apparel is lost, if
the music has melted away from the thoughts, all, in fact, is lost.
Old Hobbes, or Ogilbie, is no more Homer than the score of Mozart's
_Don Giovanni_ is Mozart's _Don Giovanni_.
If, however, Grecian philosophy presents no absolute temptations to
the attainment of Greek, far less does Grecian history. If you except
later historians--such as Diodorus, Plutarch, and those (like Appian,
Dionysius, Dion Cassius) who wrote of Roman things and Roman persons
in Greek, and Polybius, who comes under the same class, at a much
earlier period--and none of whom have any interest of style, excepting
only Plutarch: these dismissed, there are but three who can rank as
classical Greek historians; _three who can lose by translation_. Of
these the eldest, Herodotus, is perhaps of real value. Some call him
the father of history; some call him the father of lies. Time and
Major Rennel have done him ample justice. Yet here, again, see how
little need of Greek for the amplest use of a Greek author. Twenty-two
centuries and more have passed since the fine old man read his history
at the Grecian games of Olympia. One man only has done him right, and
put his enemies under his footstool; _and yet this man had no Greek_.
Major Rennel read Herodotus only in the translation of Beloe. He has
told us so himself. Here, then, is a little fact, my Grecian boys,
that you won't easily get over. The father of history, the eldest of
prose writers, has been first explained, illustrated, justified,
liberated from scandal and disgrace, first had his geography set to
rights, first translated from the region of fabulous romance, and
installed in his cathedral chair, as Dean (or eldest) of historians,
by a military man, who had no more Greek than Shakspeare, or than we
(perhaps you, reader) of the Kalmuck.
Next comes Thucydides. He is the second in order of time amongst the
Grecian historians who survive, and the first of those (a class which
Mr. Southey, the laureate, always speaks of as the corruptors of
genuine history) who affect to treat it philosophically. If the
philosophic historians are not always so faithless as Mr. Southey
alleges, they are, however, always guilty of dulness. Commend us to
one picturesque, garrulous old fellow, like Froissart, or Philip de
Comines, or Bishop Burnet, before all the philosophic prosers that
ever prosed. These picturesque men will lie a little now and then, for
the sake of effect--but so will the philosophers. Even Bishop Burnet,
who, by the way, was hardly so much a picturesque as an anecdotal
historian, was famous for his gift of lying; so diligently had he
cultivated it. And the Duchess of Portsmouth told a noble lord, when
inquiring into the truth of a particular fact stated by the very
reverend historian, that he was notorious in Charles the Second's
court, and that no man believed a word he said. But now Thucydides,
though writing about his own time, and doubtless embellishing by
fictions not less than his more amusing brethren, is as dull as if he
prided himself on veracity. Nay, he tells us no secret anecdotes of
the times--surely there must have been many; and this proves to us,
that he was a low fellow without political connections, and that he
never had been behind the curtain. Now, what business had such a man
to set himself up for a writer of history and a speculator on
politics? Besides, his history is imperfect; and, suppose it were
not, what is its subject? Why simply one single war; a war which
lasted twenty-seven years; but which, after all, through its whole
course was enlivened by only two events worthy to enter into general
history--viz. the plague of Athens, and the miserable licking which
the Athenian invaders received in Sicily. This dire overthrow dished
Athens out and out; for one generation to come, there was an end of
Athenian domination; and that arrogant state, under the yoke of their
still baser enemies of Sparta, learned experimentally what were the
evils of a foreign conquest. There was therefore, in the domination of
the Thirty Tyrants, something to 'point a moral' in the Peloponnesian
war: it was the judicial reaction of martial tyranny and foreign
oppression, such as we of this generation have beheld in the double
conquest of Paris by insulted and outraged Christendom. But nothing of
all this will be found in Thucydides--he is as cool as a cucumber upon
every act of atrocity; whether it be the bloody abuse of power, or the
bloody retribution from the worm that, being trampled on too long,
turns at last to sting and to exterminate--all alike he enters in his
daybook and his ledger, posts them up to the account of brutal Spartan
or polished Athenian, with no more expression of his feelings (if he
had any) than a merchant making out an invoice of puncheons that are
to steal away men's wits, or of frankincense and myrrh that are to
ascend in devotion to the saints. Herodotus is a fine, old, genial
boy, that, like Froissart or some of the crusading historians, kept
himself in health and jovial spirits by travelling about; nor did he
confine himself to Greece or the Grecian islands; but he went to
Egypt, got bousy in the Pyramid of Cheops, ate a beef-steak in the
hanging-gardens of Babylon, and listened to no sailors' yarns at the
Piræus, which doubtless, before his time, had been the sole authority
for Grecian legends concerning foreign lands. But, as to Thucydides,
our own belief is, that he lived like a monk shut up in his _museum_
or study; and that, at the very utmost, he may have gone in the
steamboat[15] to Corfu (_i. e._ Corcyra), because _that_ was the
island which occasioned the row of the Peloponnesian war.
[Footnote 15: 'In the steamboat!' Yes, reader, the steamboat. It is
clear that there _was_ one in Homer's time. See the art. _Phæacian_ in
the _Odyssey_: if it paid then, _à fortiori_ six hundred years after.
The only point unknown about it, is the captain's name and the
state-cabin fares.]
Xenophon now is quite another sort of man; he could use his pen; but
also he could use his sword; and (when need was) his heels, in running
away. His Grecian history of course is a mere fraction of the general
history; and, moreover, our own belief, founded upon the differences
of the style, is, that the work now received for his must be spurious.
But in this place the question is not worth discussing. Two works
remain, professedly historical, which, beyond a doubt, _are_ his; and
one of them the most interesting prose work by much which Athens has
bequeathed us; though, by the way, Xenophon was living in a sort of
elegant exile at a chateau in Thessaly, and not under Athenian
protection, when he wrote it. Both of his great works relate to a
Persian Cyrus, but to a Cyrus of different centuries. The _Cyropædia_
is a romance, pretty much on the plan of Fenelon's _Telemaque_, only
(Heaven be praised!) not so furiously apoplectic. It pursues the
great Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire, the Cyrus of the
Jewish prophets, from his infancy to his death-bed; and describes
evidently not any real prince, according to any authentic record of
his life, but, upon some basis of hints and vague traditions, improves
the actual Cyrus into an ideal fiction of a sovereign and a military
conqueror, as he _ought_ to be. One thing only we shall say of this
work, though no admirers ourselves of the twaddle which Xenophon
elsewhere gives us as philosophic memorabilia, that the episode of
Abradates and Panthea (especially the behaviour of Panthea after the
death of her beloved hero, and the incident of the dead man's hand
coming away on Cyrus grasping it) exceeds for pathos everything in
Grecian literature, always excepting the Greek drama, and comes
nearest of anything, throughout Pagan literature, to the impassioned
simplicity of Scripture, in its tale of Joseph and his brethren. The
other historical work of Xenophon is the _Anabasis_. The meaning of
the title is _the going-up_ or _ascent_--viz. of Cyrus the younger.
This prince was the younger brother of the reigning king Artaxerxes,
nearly two centuries from Cyrus the Great; and, from opportunity
rather than a better title, and because his mother and his vast
provincial government furnished him with royal treasures able to hire
an army, most of all, because he was richly endowed by nature with
personal gifts--took it into his head that he would dethrone his
brother; and the more so, because he was only his half-brother. His
chance was a good one: he had a Grecian army, and one from the very
_élite_ of Greece; whilst the Persian king had but a small corps of
Grecian auxiliaries, long enfeebled by Persian effeminacy and Persian
intermarriages. Xenophon was personally present in this expedition.
And the catastrophe was most singular, such as does not occur once in
a thousand years. The cavalry of the great King retreated before the
Greeks continually, no doubt from policy and secret orders; so that,
when a pitched battle became inevitable, the foreign invaders found
themselves in the very heart of the land, and close upon the
Euphrates. The battle was fought: the foreigners were victorious: they
were actually singing _Te Deum_ or _Io Pæan_ for their victory, when
it was discovered that their leader, the native prince in whose behalf
they had conquered, was missing; and soon after, that he was dead.
What was to be done? The man who should have improved their victory,
and placed them at his own right hand when on the throne of Persia,
was no more; key they had none to unlock the great fortresses of the
empire, none to unloose the enthusiasm of the native population. Yet
such was the desperation of their circumstances, that a _coup-de-main_
on the capital seemed their best chance. The whole army was and felt
itself a forlorn hope. To go forward was desperate, but to go back
much more so; for they had a thousand rivers without bridges in their
rear; and, if they set their faces in that direction, they would have
300,000 light cavalry upon their flanks, besides nations innumerable--
'Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath'd';