If the exhortation of these verses be somewhat too high and
stoical for you, let me return to Longinus and read you, from his
concluding chapter, a passage you may find not inapposite to
these times, nor without a moral:
'It remains' [he says] 'to clear up, my dear Terentianus, a
question which a certain philosopher has recently mooted. I
wonder,' he says, 'as no doubt do many others, how it happens
that in our time there are men who have the gift of persuasion
to the utmost extent, and are well fitted for public life, and
are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of
language, yet there no longer arise really lofty and
transcendent natures unless it be quite peradventure. So great
and world-wide a dearth of high utterance attends our age.
Can it be,' he continued, 'we are to accept the common cant
that democracy is the nursing mother of genius, and that great
men of letters flourish and die with it? For freedom, they say,
has the power to cherish and encourage magnanimous minds, and
with it is disseminated eager mutual rivalry and the emulous
thirst to excel. Moreover, by the prizes open under a popular
government, the mental faculties of orators are perpetually
practised and whetted, and as it were, rubbed bright, so that
they shine free as the state itself. Whereas to-day,' he went
on, 'we seem to have learnt as an infant-lesson that servitude
is the law of life; being all wrapped, while our thoughts are
yet young and tender, in observances and customs as in
swaddling clothes, bound without access to that fairest and
most fertile source of man's speech (I mean Freedom) so that we
are turned out in no other guise than that of servile
flatterers. And servitude (it has been well said) though
it be even righteous, is the cage of the soul and a public
prison-house.'
But I answered him thus.--'It is easy, my good sir, and
characteristic of human nature, to gird at the age in which
one lives. Yet consider whether it may not be true that it is
less the world's peace that ruins noble nature than this war
illimitable which holds our aspirations in its fist, and
occupies our age with passions as with troops that utterly
plunder and harry it. The love of money and the love of
pleasure enslave us, or rather, as one may say, drown us
body and soul in their depths. For vast and unchecked
wealth marches with lust of pleasure for comrade, and when
one opens the gate of house or city, the other at once enters
and abides. And in time these two build nests in the hearts
of men, and quickly rear a progeny only too legitimate: and
the ruin within the man is gradually consummated as the
sublimities of his soul wither away and fade, and in ecstatic
contemplation of our mortal parts we omit to exalt, and
come to neglect in nonchalance, that within us which is
immortal.'
I had a friend once who, being in doubt with what picture to
decorate the chimney-piece in his library, cast away choice and
wrote up two Greek words--[Greek: PSYCHES 'IATREION]; that is,
the hospital--the healing-place--of the soul.
[Footnote 1: 'Well! ... my education is at last finished: indeed
it would be strange, if, after five years' hard application,
anything were left incomplete. Happily that is all over now; and
I have nothing to do, but to exercise my various accomplishments.
'Let me see!--as to French, I am mistress of that, and speak it,
if possible, with more fluency than English. Italian I can read
with ease, and pronounce very well: as well at least, and better,
than any of my friends; and that is all one need wish for in
Italian. Music I have learned till I am perfectly sick of it. But
... it will be delightful to play when we have company. I must
still continue to practise a little;--the only thing, I think,
that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my
Italian songs! which everybody allows I sing with taste, and as
it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly glad
that I can.
'My drawings are universally admired; especially the shells and
flowers; which are beautiful, certainly; besides this, I have a
decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments.
'And then my dancing and waltzing! in which our master himself
owned that he could take me no further! just the figure for it
certainly; it would be unpardonable if I did not excel.
'As to common things, geography, and history, and poetry, and
philosophy, thank my stars, I have got through them all! so that
I may consider myself not only perfectly accomplished, but also
thoroughly well-informed.
'Well, to be sure, how much have I fagged through--; the only
wonder is that one head can contain it all.'
I found this in a little book "Thoughts of Divines and
Philosophers," selected by Basil Montagu. The quotation is
signed 'J. T.' I cannot trace it, but suspect Jane Taylor.]
[Footnote 2: Samuel Daniel, "Epistle to the Lady Margaret,
Countess of Cumberland."]