What, in the more popular acceptation, are Fame and Glory? In
considering this question we must look beyond the verses of poets, the
eulogies of orators, and the discordant voices whether of history or
philosophy. We must endeavor to observe these nimble-footed phantoms
from a nearer point of view, to follow their movements, to note their
principle of life, and to direct upon them the light of truth. Thus
we may hope to arrive at a clear perception of their character, and
perhaps do something by which to disenchant their pernicious power and
break their unhappy sorcery.
Fame was portrayed by the poets of antiquity as a monster, with
innumerable eyes to see, innumerable ears to hear, and innumerable
tongues to declare what she had seen and heard:--
"Monstrum horrendum, ingens, cui quot sunt corpore plumæ,
Tot vigiles oculi subter (mirabile dictu),
Tot linguæ, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures."[187]
[187] Æneid, IV. 181-183.
In this character her office was different from that commonly attached
to Glory. She was the grand author and circulator of reports, news,
tidings, good or bad, true or false. Glory seems to have escaped
the unpleasing personification of her sister, Fame. These two names
were often used in the same sense; but the former more exclusively
designated that splendor of renown which was so great an object of
heathen ambition. For the present purpose they may be regarded as
synonymous, denoting, with different degrees of force, the reputation
awarded on earth for human conduct.
Glory, in common acceptance, is a form or expression of public opinion.
It is the judgment uttered by fellow-mortals upon our lives or acts.
It is the product of their voices. It is the echo of their characters
and minds. Its value and significance are, therefore, measured by the
weight justly attached to this opinion. If those from whom it proceeds
are enlightened, benevolent, and just, it may be the mark of honor. If,
on the other hand, they are ignorant, heartless, or unjust, it must be
an uncertain index, varying always in accordance with the elevation,
mediocrity, or degradation of the intellectual and moral nature.
This explanation enables us to appreciate different foundations of
Fame. In early and barbarous periods homage is rendered exclusively to
achievements of physical strength, chiefly in slaying wild beasts or
human beings termed "enemies." The feats of Hercules, filling the fable
and mythology of early Greece, were triumphs of brute force. Conqueror
of the Nemean lion and the many-headed hydra, strangler of the giant
Antæus, illustrious scavenger of the Augean stables, grand abater of
contemporary nuisances, he was hailed as hero and commemorated as god.
At a later time honor was still continued to mere muscular strength
of arm. The most polite and eminent chief at the siege of Troy is
distinguished by Homer for the ease with which he hurled a stone such
as could not be lifted even by two strong men of his day:--
"A ponderous stone bold Hector heaved to throw,
Pointed above, and rough and gross below;
Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days;
Yet this, as easy as a swain could bear
The snowy fleece, he tossed and shook in air."[188]
This was Glory in an age which had not learned to regard the moral and
intellectual nature, or that which distinguishes man from the beast, as
the only source of conduct worthy of just renown.
[188] Iliad, tr. Pope, XII. 537-542.
As we enter the polished periods of antiquity, ambition gleams in
new forms, while we still discern the barbarism that slowly yields to
advancing light. The Olympic games echoed to the Isthmian in shouts
of praise. All Greece joined in competition for prizes awarded to
successful charioteers and athletes; and victory was hailed as a great
Glory. Poets did not disdain to sing these achievements; and the odes
of Pindar--the Theban eagle, whose pride of place is still undisturbed
in the Grecian firmament--are squandered in commemoration of these
petty or vulgar contests. In Sparta honor was the monopoly of the
soldier returning with his shield, or on it. The arts of peace yielded
servile precedence to the toils of war, in which were absorbed life
and education. Athens, instinct with the martial spirit, did not fail
to cherish the owl with the spear that belonged to her patron goddess;
poetry, eloquence, philosophy, history, art, held divided empire with
arms; so that this city is wreathed with a Glory other and higher than
that of Sparta. And yet this brilliant renown, admired through a long
succession of ages, must fade and grow dull by the side of triumphs
grander and holier than any achieved by force or intellect alone.
Rome slowly learned to recognize labors not employed in war. In her
stately and imperatorial tongue, _virtue_, that word of highest import,
was too often restricted to martial courage. Her much-prized crowns
of honor were all awarded to the successful soldier. The title to a
triumph, that highest object of ambition, was determined by the number
of enemies destroyed, and at least five thousand must have been slain
in battle without any considerable detriment to the Roman power. Her
most illustrious characters cherished this barbarous spirit. Cato the
Censor, that model Roman, hearing that the Athenian ambassadors had
captivated the youth of Rome by the charms of philosophy, abruptly
dismissed them, and, with the spirit of a Mohawk Indian, declared
his reprehension of such corrupting influence on a people whose
only profession was war. Even Cicero, in his work of beautiful, but
checkered morals, where heathenism blends with truth almost Christian,
commends to youth the Glory of war, while he congratulates his son
Marcus on the great praise he had obtained from Pompey and the whole
army, "by riding, hurling the javelin, and enduring every kind of
military labor."[189]
[189] De Officiis, Lib. II. c. 13.
The Roman, taught the Glory of war, was also told, as a last resort,
to balk the evils of the world by taking his own life,--falling on his
sword, like Brutus, or opening his veins, like Seneca. Suicide was
honorable, glorious. A grave historian has recorded the melancholy
end of Cato at Utica, whose philosophical suicide is so familiar to
English readers from Addison's tragedy: first, the calm perusal of
Plato's Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul; then the plunging of
the dagger into his body; the alarm of friends; the timely presence of
aid, by which the wound was closed; and when the determined patriot was
again left alone, a further ferocious persistence in his purpose till
life was extinct: yet this recital is crowned by the annunciation, that
Cato, "even by his death, gained great Glory."[190]
[190] Dion Cassius, Lib. XLIII. c. 11.
Other stages show other elements of renown. The Huns bestowed Glory
upon the successful robber; the Scandinavians, upon the triumphant
pirate; while in Wales petty larceny and grossness of conduct were
the foundations of Fame. In the Welsh tale of "The Mabinogion," where
are stories of King Arthur, so famous in song and legend, Peredur,
whose dead father had owned "the earldom of the North," is sent by his
mother to visit where lived "the best and the boldest and the most
bountiful of men." As the son is about to leave, the mother instructs
him how to secure an honorable name. "Now hear," says the ambitious
mother to her child. "If by chance thou comest by a church, there
chant thy paternoster. When thou seest victuals and drink to satisfy
thy appetite, help thyself thereto. If thou shouldest hear a cry of
distress, go and know the cause, but in particular if it is the voice
of a female. Should any precious jewel attract thy eyes, take it;
and bestow on others also. _Thus shalt thou acquire Fame._"[191] The
processes of Fame thus rudely displayed were refined by chivalry; but
the vivid page of Froissart shows, that, while courtesy became a fresh
and grateful element, petty personal encounters with spear and sword
were the honorable feats by which applause was won and a name extended
after death. And we learn from old Michael Drayton, the poet who has
pictured the Battle of Agincourt, something of the inhuman renown there
obtained:--
"Who would have Fame full dearly here it bought,
For it was sold by measure and by weight;
And at one rate the price still certain stood,--
_An ounce of honor cost a pound of blood_."[192]
[191] Southey, Chronicles of the Cid, Note 53.--In the translation
by Lady Charlotte Guest this passage is somewhat mitigated. The
Mabinogion, Vol. I. p. 300.
[192] Battle of Agincourt, st. 287.
From the early literature of Spain, where Chivalry found a favorite
haunt, it appears that brutality, assassination, and murder were
glorious, while adventure in robbery and promptitude in vengeance
were favorite acts of heroism. "The Life of the Valiant Cespedes,"
a Spanish knight of renown, by Lope de Vega, reveals exploits which
were little better than performances of a brawny porter and a bully.
Passions of a rude nature were gratified at will. Sanguinary revenge
and inhuman harshness were his honorable pursuits. A furious blow of
his clenched fist, in the very palace of the Emperor at Augsburg,
knocked out the teeth of a heretic,--an achievement hailed with honor
and congratulation by the Duke of Alva, and by his master, Charles
the Fifth. Thus did a Spanish gentleman acquire Fame in the sixteenth
century![193]
[193] Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe, Vol. IV. pp.
8-16.
Such, in other places and times, have been objects of praise. Such
is the Glory achieved. Men have extolled what, according to their
knowledge or ignorance, they could best appreciate. Nor does this
rule fail in our day. The ends of pursuit vary in different parts of
the globe and among different persons; and Fame is still awarded to
conduct which reason condemns as barbarous. The North American savage
commemorates the chief who hangs at the door of his wigwam a heavy
string of scalps, the spoils of war. The New-Zealander honors the
champion who slays and then eats his enemy. The cannibal of the Feejee
Islands, only recently explored by an expedition from our shores, is
praised for his adroitness in lying,--for the dozen men he has killed
with his own hand,--for triumphant capture, in battle, of a piece of
tapa-cloth attached to a staff, not unlike one of our flags; and when
dead, his club is placed in his hand, and extended across the breast,
to indicate in the next world that the deceased was a chief and a
warrior.[194] This is barbarous Glory! But among nations professing
Christianity, in our day, there is a powerful public opinion exulting
in conduct from which we turn with disgust, as we discern it among the
savages of our forest, or the cannibals of the Pacific. The triumphs
of animal strength and of brutal violence are hailed as famous. With
perverse insensibility to the relative value of human acts, the chances
and incidents of war are exalted above the pursuits of peace. Victors
from fields moistened with a brother's blood are greeted with grateful
salutations, justly due to those only who have triumphantly fulfilled
the grand commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets.
[194] Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, Vol.
III. pp. 76, 80, 98.
Such is controlling public opinion in our age and country. A people
that regards success rather than those objects for which alone success
is worthy of desire,--that has not yet discerned the beauty of humble
and disinterested labor in the great causes by which mankind is
advanced,--that has not yet admired the golden link of harmony by
which all efforts of usefulness are bound together,--that has not yet
recognized the peculiar Christian sentiment of Human Brotherhood,
without difference of country, color, or race,--that does not feel, in
the concerns of state, as of private life, the enkindling supremacy of
those principles of Justice and Benevolence which send their heavenly
radiance into the home of poverty, the darkness of ignorance, and the
solitude of the prison, which exhibit the degradation of the slave
and the wickedness of war, while they exalt scholarship, invigorate
eloquence, extend science and all human knowledge,--such a people,
not unnaturally, applauds conduct less in harmony with truth, virtue,
goodness, than with its own imperfect spirit. And this is what is
called Reputation, Fame, Glory,--fickle as a breeze, unsubstantial as a
shadow. Well does the master poet of Italy say,--
"Nought is this mundane Glory but a breath
Of wind, that comes now this way and now that,
And changes name because it changes side."[195]
[195] Dante, Divina Commedia: _Purgatorio_, Canto XI. 100-102.