to the rank of a science. His Geographica were an organic collection,
the first the world had ever seen, of all the travels and books of
earth-description heaped together in the Great Library, of which he was
for many years the keeper. He began with a geognostic book, touched on
the traces of Cataclysms and Change visible on the earth’s surface;
followed by two books, one a mathematical book, the other on political
geography, and completed by a map—which one would like to see: but—not a
trace of all remains, save a few quoted fragments—
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of.
But if Eratosthenes had hold of eternal fact and law on one point, there
was a contemporary who had hold of it in more than one. I mean
Archimedes; of whom, as I have said, we must speak as of an Alexandrian.
It was as a mechanician, rather than as an astronomer, that he gained his
reputation. The stories of his Hydraulic Screw, the Great Ship which he
built for Hiero, and launched by means of machinery, his crane, his
war-engines, above all his somewhat mythical arrangement of mirrors, by
which he set fire to ships in the harbour—all these, like the story of
his detecting the alloy in Hiero’s crown, while he himself was in the
bath, and running home undressed shouting εὕρηκα—all these are
schoolboys’ tales. To the thoughtful person it is the method of the man
which constitutes his real greatness, that power of insight by which he
solved the two great problems of the nature of the lever and of
hydrostatic pressure, which form the basis of all static and hydrostatic
science to this day. And yet on that very question of the lever the
great mind of Aristotle babbles—neither sees the thing itself, nor the
way towards seeing it. But since Archimedes spoke, the thing seems
self-evident to every schoolboy. There is something to me very solemn in
such a fact as this. It brings us down to some of the very deepest
questions of metaphysic. This mental insight of which we boast so much,
what is it? Is it altogether a process of our own brain and will? If it
be, why have so few the power, even among men of power, and they so
seldom? If brain alone were what was wanted, what could not Aristotle
have discovered? Or is it that no man can see a thing unless God shows
it him? Is it that in each separate act of induction, that mysterious
and transcendental process which cannot, let logicians try as they will,
be expressed by any merely logical formula, Aristotelian or other—is it I
say, that in each separate act of induction we do not find the law, but
the law is shown to us, by Him who made the law? Bacon thought so. Of
that you may find clear proof in his writings. May not Bacon be right?
May it not be true that God does in science, as well as in ethics, hide
things from the wise and prudent, from the proud, complete,
self-contained systematiser like Aristotle, who must needs explain all
things in heaven and earth by his own formulæ, and his entelechies and
energies, and the rest of the notions which he has made for himself out
of his own brain, and then pack each thing away in its proper niche in
his great cloud-universe of conceptions? Is it that God hides things
from such men many a time, and reveals them to babes, to gentle,
affectionate, simple-hearted men, such as we know Archimedes to have
been, who do not try to give an explanation for a fact, but feel how
awful and divine it is, and wrestle reverently and stedfastly with it, as
Jacob with the Angel, and will not let it go, until it bless them? Sure
I am, from what I have seen of scientific men, that there is an intimate
connection between the health of the moral faculties and the health of
the inductive ones; and that the proud, self-conceited, and passionate
man will see nothing: perhaps because nothing will be shown him.
But we must leave Archimedes for a man not perhaps so well known, but to
whom we owe as much as to the great Syracusan—Hipparchus the astronomer.
To his case much which I have just said applies. In him astronomic
science seemed to awaken suddenly to a true inductive method, and after
him to fall into its old slumber for 300 years. In the meantime
Timocharis, Aristyllus, and Conon had each added their mites to the
discoveries of Eratosthenes: but to Hipparchus we owe that theory of the
heavens, commonly called the Ptolemaic system, which, starting from the
assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe, attempted to
explain the motions of the heavenly bodies by a complex system of
supposed eccentrics and epicycles. This has of course now vanished
before modern discoveries. But its value as a scientific attempt lies in
this: that the method being a correct one, correct results were obtained,
though starting from a false assumption; and Hipparchus and his
successors were enabled by it to calculate and predict the changes of the
heavens, in spite of their clumsy instruments, with almost as much
accuracy as we do now.
For the purpose of working out this theory he required a science of
trigonometry, plane and spherical: and this he accordingly seems to have
invented. To him also we owe the discovery of that vast gradual change
in the position of the fixed stars, in fact, of the whole celestial
system, now known by the name of the precession of the equinoxes; the
first great catalogue of fixed stars, to the number of 1080; attempts to
ascertain whether the length of years and days were constant; with which,
with his characteristic love of truth, he seems to have been hardly
satisfied. He too invented the planisphere, or mode of representing the
starry heavens upon a plane, and is the father of true geography, having
formed the happy notion of mapping out the earth, as well as the heavens,
by degrees of latitude and longitude.
Strange it is, and somewhat sad, that we should know nothing of this
great man, should be hardly able to distinguish him from others of the
same name, but through the works of a commentator, who wrote and observed
in Alexandria 300 years after, during the age of the Antonines. I mean,
of course, the famous Ptolemy, whose name so long bore the honour of that
system which really belonged to Hipparchus.
This single fact speaks volumes for the real weakness of the great
artificial school of literature and science founded by the kings of
Egypt. From the father of Astronomy, as Delambre calls him, to Ptolemy,
the first man who seems really to have appreciated him, we have not a
discovery, hardly an observation or a name, to fill the gap. Physical
sages there were; but they were geometers and mathematicians, rather than
astronomic observers and inquirers. And in spite of all the huge
appliances and advantages of that great Museum, its inhabitants were
content, in physical science, as in all other branches of thought, to
comment, to expound, to do everything but open their eyes and observe
facts, and learn from them, as the predecessors whom they pretended to
honour had done. But so it is always. A genius, an original man
appears. He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what
they mean, and writes down their answer for the world’s use. And then
his disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that they
do honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by making
his book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical
infallibility; declaring the very lie which he disproved by his whole
existence, that discovery is henceforth impossible, and the sum of
knowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered
before them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not
in the letter, but in spirit and in truth.
For this, if you will consider, is the true meaning of that great
command, “Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the
land.” On reverence for the authority of bygone generations depends the
permanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social,
national, and family life: but on reverence of the spirit, not merely of
the letter; of the methods of our ancestors, not merely of their
conclusions. Ay, and we shall not be able to preserve their conclusions,
not even to understand them; they will die away on our lips into skeleton
notions, and soulless phrases, unless we see that the greatness of the
mighty dead has always consisted in this, that they were seekers,
improvers, inventors, endued with that divine power and right of
discovery which has been bestowed on us, even as on them; unless we
become such men as they were, and go on to cultivate and develop the
precious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead of hiding
their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making their
greatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our
laziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths,
while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and not
stand still, and try in vain to stop the way.
It may be said, certainly, as an excuse for these Alexandrian Greeks,
that they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they
only exhibited the common and natural faults of old age. For as with
individuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought—youth
is the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong
induction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,
and content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of
their earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and anathematising
all conclusions which have been arrived at since their own meridian. It
is sad: but it is patent and common. It is sad to think that the day may
come to each of us, when we shall have ceased to hope for discovery and
for progress; when a thing will seem _à priori_ false to us, simply
because it is new; and we shall be saying querulously to the Divine Light
which lightens every man who comes into the world: “Hitherto shalt thou
come, and no further. Thou hast taught men enough; yea rather, thou hast
exhausted thine own infinitude, and hast no more to teach them.” Surely
such a temper is to be fought against, prayed against, both in ourselves,
and in the generation in which we live. Surely there is no reason why
such a temper should overtake old age. There may be reason enough, “in
the nature of things.” For that which is of nature is born only to decay
and die. But in man there is more than dying nature; there is spirit,
and a capability of spiritual and everlasting life, which renews its
youth like the eagle’s, and goes on from strength to strength, and which,
if it have its autumns and its winters, has no less its ever-recurring
springs and summers; if it has its Sabbaths, finds in them only rest and
refreshment for coming labour. And why not in nations, societies,
scientific schools? These too are not merely natural: they are
spiritual, and are only living and healthy in as far as they are in
harmony with spiritual, unseen, and everlasting laws of God. May not
they, too, have a capability of everlasting life, as long as they obey
those laws in faith, and patience, and humility? We cannot deny the
analogy between the individual man and these societies of men. We
cannot, at least, deny the analogy between them in growth, decay, and
death. May we not have hope that it holds good also for that which can
never die; and that if they do die, as this old Greek society did, it is
by no brute natural necessity, but by their own unfaithfulness to that
which they knew, to that which they ought to have known? It is always
more hopeful, always, as I think, more philosophic, to throw the blame of
failure on man, on our own selves, rather than on God, and the perfect
law of His universe. At least let us be sure for ourselves, that such an
old age as befell this Greek society, as befalls many a man nowadays,
need not be our lot. Let us be sure that earth shows no fairer sight
than the old man, whose worn-out brain and nerves make it painful, and
perhaps impossible, to produce fresh thought himself: but who can yet
welcome smilingly and joyfully the fresh thoughts of others; who keeps
unwearied his faith in God’s government of the universe, in God’s
continual education of the human race; who draws around him the young and
the sanguine, not merely to check their rashness by his wise cautions,
but to inspirit their sloth by the memories of his own past victories;
who hands over, without envy or repining, the lamp of truth to younger
runners than himself, and sits contented by, bidding the new generation
God speed along the paths untrodden by him, but seen afar off by faith.
A few such old persons have I seen, both men and women; in whom the young
heart beat pure and fresh, beneath the cautious and practised brain of
age, and gray hairs which were indeed a crown of glory. A few such have
I seen; and from them I seemed to learn what was the likeness of our
Father who is in heaven. To such an old age may He bring you and me, and
all for whom we are bound to pray.
LECTURE II.
THE PTOLEMAIC ERA.
(_Continued_.)
I SAID in my first Lecture, that even if royal influence be profitable
for the prosecution of physical science, it cannot be profitable for art.
It can only produce a literary age, as it did in the Ptolemaic era; a
generation of innumerable court-poets, artificial epigrammatists,
artificial idyllists, artificial dramatists and epicists; above all, a
generation of critics. Or rather shall we say, that the dynasty was not
the cause of a literary age, but only its correlative? That when the old
Greeks lost the power of being free, of being anything but the slaves of
oriental despots, as the Ptolemies in reality were, they lost also the
power of producing true works of art; because they had lost that youthful
vigour of mind from which both art and freedom sprang? Let the case be as
it will, Alexandrian literature need not detain us long—though, alas! it
has detained every boy who ever trembled over his Greek grammar, for many
a weary year; and, I cannot help suspecting, has been the main cause that
so many young men who have spent seven years in learning Greek, know
nothing about it at the end of the seven. For I must say, that as far as
we can see, these Alexandrian pedants were thorough pedants; very
polished and learned gentlemen, no doubt, and, like Callimachus, the pets
of princes: but after all, men who thought that they could make up for
not writing great works themselves, by showing, with careful analysis and
commentation, how men used to write them of old, or rather how they
fancied men used to write them; for, consider, if they had really known
how the thing was done, they must needs have been able to do it
themselves. Thus Callimachus, the favourite of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and
librarian of his Museum, is the most distinguished grammarian, critic,
and poet of his day, and has for pupils Eratosthenes, Apollonius Rhodius,
Aristophanes of Byzantium, and a goodly list more. He is an encyclopædia
in himself. There is nothing the man does not know, or probably, if we
spoke more correctly, nothing he does not know about. He writes on
history, on the Museum, on barbarous names, on the wonders of the world,
on public games, on colonisation, on winds, on birds, on the rivers of
the world, and—ominous subject—a sort of comprehensive history of Greek
literature, with a careful classification of all authors, each under his
own heading. Greek literature was rather in the sere and yellow leaf, be
sure, when men thought of writing that sort of thing about it. But
still, he is an encyclopædic man, and, moreover, a poet. He writes an
epic, “Aitia,” in four books, on the causes of the myths, religious
ceremonies, and so forth—an ominous sign for the myths also, and the
belief in them; also a Hecate, Galatæa, Glaucus—four epics, besides
comedies, tragedies, iambics, choriambics, elegies, hymns, epigrams
seventy-three—and of these last alone can we say that they are in any
degree readable; and they are courtly, far-fetched, neat, and that is
all. Six hymns remain, and a few fragments of the elegies: but the most
famous elegy, on Berenice’s hair, is preserved to us only in a Latin
paraphrase of Catullus. It is curious, as the earliest instance we have
of genuinely ungenuine Court poetry, and of the complimentary lie which
does not even pretend to be true; the flattery which will not take the
trouble to prevent your seeing that it is laughing in your face.
Berenice the queen, on Ptolemy’s departure to the wars, vows her
beautiful tresses to her favourite goddess, as the price of her husband’s
safe return; and duly pays her vow. The hair is hung up in the temple:
in a day or two after it has vanished. Dire is the wrath of Ptolemy, the
consternation of the priests, the scandal to religion; when Conon, the
court-astronomer, luckily searching the heavens, finds the missing
tresses in an utterly unexpected place—as a new constellation of stars,
which to this day bears the title of Coma Berenices. It is so convenient
to believe the fact, that everybody believes it accordingly; and
Callimachus writes an elegy thereon, in which the constellified, or
indeed deified tresses, address in most melodious and highly-finished
Greek, bedizened with concetto on concetto, that fair and sacred head
whereon they grew, to be shorn from which is so dire a sorrow, that
apotheosis itself can hardly reconcile them to the parting.
Worthy, was not all this, of the descendants of the men who fought at
Marathon and Thermopylæ? The old Greek civilisation was rotting swiftly
down; while a fire of God was preparing, slowly and dimly, in that
unnoticed Italian town of Rome, which was destined to burn up that dead
world, and all its works.
Callimachus’s hymns, those may read who list. They are highly finished
enough; the work of a man who knew thoroughly what sort of article he
intended to make, and what were the most approved methods of making it.
Curious and cumbrous mythological lore comes out in every other line.
The smartness, the fine epithets, the recondite conceits, the bits of
effect, are beyond all praise; but as for one spark of life, of poetry,
of real belief, you will find none; not even in that famous Lavacrum
Palladis which Angelo Poliziano thought worth translating into Latin
elegiacs, about the same time that the learned Florentine, Antonio Maria
Salviano, found Berenice’s Hair worthy to be paraphrased back from
Catullus’ Latin into Greek, to give the world some faint notion of the
inestimable and incomparable original. They must have had much time on
their hands. But at the Revival of Letters, as was to be expected, all
works of the ancients, good and bad, were devoured alike with youthful
eagerness by the Medicis and the Popes; and it was not, we shall see, for
more than one century after, that men’s taste got sufficiently matured to
distinguish between Callimachus and the Homeric hymns, or between Plato
and Proclus. Yet Callimachus and his fellows had an effect on the world.
His writings, as well as those of Philetas, were the model on which Ovid,
Propertius, Tibullus, formed themselves.
And so I leave him, with two hints. If any one wishes to see the justice
of my censure, let him read one of the Alexandrian hymns, and immediately
after it, one of those glorious old Homeric hymns to the very same
deities; let him contrast the insincere and fulsome idolatry of
Callimachus with the reverent, simple and manful anthropomorphism of the
Homerist—and let him form his own judgment.
The other hint is this. If Callimachus, the founder of Alexandrian
literature, be such as he is, what are his pupils likely to become, at
least without some infusion of healthier blood, such as in the case of
his Roman imitators produced a new and not altogether ignoble school?
Of Lycophron, the fellow-grammarian and poet of Callimachus, we have
nothing left but the Cassandra, a long iambic poem, stuffed with
traditionary learning, and so obscure, that it obtained for him the
surname of σκοτεινός, the dark one. I have tried in vain to read it:
you, if you will, may do the same.
Philetas, the remaining member of the Alexandrian Triad, seems to have
been a more simple, genial, and graceful spirit than the other two, to
whom he was accordingly esteemed inferior. Only a few fragments are
left; but he was not altogether without his influence, for he was, as I
have just said, one of the models on which Propertius and Ovid formed
themselves; and some, indeed, call him the Father of the Latin elegy,
with its terseness, grace, and clear epigrammatic form of thought, and,
therefore, in a great degree, of our modern eighteenth century poets; not
a useless excellence, seeing that it is, on the whole, good for him who
writes to see clearly what he wants to say, and to be able to make his
readers see it clearly also. And yet one natural strain is heard amid
all this artificial jingle—that of Theocritus. It is not altogether
Alexandrian. Its sweetest notes were learnt amid the chestnut groves and
orchards, the volcanic glens and sunny pastures of Sicily; but the
intercourse, between the courts of Hiero and the Ptolemies seems to have
been continual. Poets and philosophers moved freely from one to the
other, and found a like atmosphere in both; and in one of Theocritus’
idyls, two Sicilian gentlemen, crossed in love, agree to sail for
Alexandria, and volunteer into the army of the great and good king
Ptolemy, of whom a sketch is given worth reading; as a man noble,
generous, and stately, “knowing well who loves him, and still better who
loves him not.” He has another encomium on Ptolemy, more laboured,
though not less interesting: but the real value of Theocritus lies in his
power of landscape-painting.
One can well conceive the delight which his idyls must have given to
those dusty Alexandrians, pent up forever between sea and sand-hills,
drinking the tank-water, and never hearing the sound of a running
stream—whirling, too, forever, in all the bustle and intrigue of a great
commercial and literary city. Refreshing indeed it must have been to
them to hear of those simple joys and simple sorrows of the Sicilian
shepherd, in a land where toil was but exercise, and mere existence was
enjoyment. To them, and to us also. I believe Theocritus is one of the
poets who will never die. He sees men and things, in his own light way,
truly; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless
touches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that
gorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian’s pictures; with still
sunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the
sunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping
from the orchard bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the
cistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under
the dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some
Grot nymph-haunted,
Garlanded over with vine, and acanthus, and clambering roses,
Cool in the fierce still noon, where the streams glance clear in the
moss-beds;
and here and there, beyond the braes and meads, blue glimpses of the
far-off summer sea; and all this told in a language and a metre which
shapes itself almost unconsciously, wave after wave, into the most
luscious song. Doubt not that many a soul then, was the simpler, and
purer, and better, for reading the sweet singer of Syracuse. He has his
immoralities; but they are the immoralities of his age: his naturalness,
his sunny calm and cheerfulness, are all his own.