Theological Essays and Other Papers v2

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Theological Essays and Other Papers v2

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Many years ago, we experienced the selfsame annoyance in the north of
England. Let no man talk of courage in such cases. Most justly did
Marechal Saxe ask an officer sneeringly, who protested that he had
never known the sensation of fear, and could not well imagine what it
was like, had he never snuffed a candle with his fingers? 'because in
that case,' said the veteran, 'I fancy you must have felt afraid of
burning your thumb.' A brave man, on a service of known danger, braces
up his mind by a distinct effort to the necessities of his duty. The
great sentiment that it is his duty, the sentiments of honor and of
country, reconcile him to the service while it lasts. No use, besides,
in ducking before shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the
storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping--were
that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over,
and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the
very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having,
perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength,
seeing no honor in the struggle, and sure that no duty would be hallowed
by any result, he shrinks from it in a way which surprises those who
have heard of his martial character. Brave men in extremities are many
times the most nervous, and the shyest under perils of a mean order.
We, without claiming the benefit of these particular distinctions,
happened to be specially 'soft' on this one danger from dogs. Not from
the mere terror of a bite, but from the shocking doubt besieging such
a case for four or five months that hydrophobia may supervene. Think,
excellent reader, if we should suddenly prove hydrophobous in the
middle of this paper, how would you distinguish the hydrophobous from
the non-hydrophobous parts? You would say, as Voltaire of Rousseau,
'sa plume apparemment brulera le papier.' Such being the horror ever
before our mind, images of eyeballs starting from their sockets, spasms
suffocating the throat--we could not see a dog starting off into a
yell of sudden discovery bound for the foot of our legs, but that
undoubtedly a mixed sensation of panic and fury overshadowed us; a
[Greek: Chermadion] was not always at hand; and without practice we
could have little confidence in our power of sending it home, else
many is the head we should have crushed. Sometimes, where more than
one dog happened to be accomplices in the outrage, we were not
altogether out of danger. 'Euripides,' we said, 'was really torn to
pieces by the dogs of a sovereign prince; in Hounslow, but a month
since, a little girl was all but worried by the buck-hounds of a greater
sovereign than Archelaus; and why not we by the dogs of a farmer?' The
scene lay in Westmorland and Cumberland. Oftentimes it would happen
that in summer we had turned aside from the road, or perhaps the road
itself forced us to pass a farm-house from which the family might be
absent in the hayfield. Unhappily the dogs in such a case are often
left behind. And many have been the fierce contests in which we have
embarked; for, as to retreating, be it known that there (as in Greece)
the murderous savages will pursue you--sometimes far into the high
road. That result it was which uniformly brought us back to a sense
of our own wrong, and finally of our rights. 'Come,' we used to say,
'this is too much; here at least is the king's highway, and things are
come to a pretty pass indeed, if we, who partake of a common nature
with the king, and write good Latin, whereas all the world knows what
sort of Latin is found among dogs, may not have as good a right to
standing-room as a low-bred quadruped with a tail like you.' Non usque
adeo summis permiscuit ima longa dies, &c. We remember no instance
which ever so powerfully illustrated the courage given by the
consciousness of rectitude. So long as we felt that we were trespassing
on the grounds of a stranger, we certainly sneaked, we seek not to
deny it. But once landed on the high-road, where we knew our own title
to be as good as the dog's, not all the world should have persuaded
us to budge one foot.

Our reason for going back to these old Cumbrian remembrances will be
found in what follows. Deeply incensed at the insults we had been
obliged to put up with for years, brooding oftentimes over

'Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unaveng'd,'

we asked ourselves--Is vengeance hopeless? And at length we hit upon
the following scheme of retribution. This it is which we propose as
applicable to Greece. Well acquainted with the indomitable spirit of
the bull-dog, and the fidelity of the mastiff, we determined to obtain
two such companions; to re-traverse our old ground; to make a point
of visiting every house where we had been grossly insulted by dogs;
and to commit our cause to the management of these new allies. 'Let
us see,' said we, 'if they will speak in the same bullying tone _this_
time.' 'But with what ulterior views?' the dispassionate reader asks.
The same, we answer, which Mr. Pitt professed as the objects of the
Revolutionary war--'Indemnity for the past, and security for the
future.' Years, however, passed on; Charles X. fell from his throne;
the Reform Bill passed; other things occurred, and as last this change
struck us--that the dogs, on whom our vengeance would alight, generally
speaking, must belong to a second generation, or even a third, in
descent from our personal enemies. Now, this vengeance 'by procuration'
seemed no vengeance at all. But a plan which failed, as regarded our
own past wrongs, may yet apply admirably to a wrong current and in
progress. If we Englishmen may not pistol Greek canine ruffians, at
any rate we suppose an English bulldog has a right to make a tour in
Greece, A mastiff, if he pays for his food and lodgings, possesses as
good a title, to see Athens and the Peloponnesus as a Bavarian, and
a better than a Turk; and, if he cannot be suffered to pass quietly
along the roads on his own private affairs, the more is the pity. But
assuredly the consequences will not fall on _him_; we know enough of
the sublime courage bestowed on that heroic animal, to be satisfied
that he will shake the life out of any enemy that Greece can show. The
embassy sent by Napoleon to the Schah of Persia about the year 1810,
complained much and often of the huge dogs scattered over all parts
of Western Asia, whether Turkish or Persian; and, by later travels
amongst the Himalayas, it seems that the same gigantic ruffians prevail
in Central Asia. But the noble English bull-dogs, who, being but three
in number, did not hesitate for one instant to rush upon the enormous
lion at Warwick, will face any enemy in the world, and will come off
victors, unless hyperbolically overweighted; a peril which need not
be apprehended, except perhaps in Laconia or Messenia.

Here, therefore, we should be disposed to leave the subject. But, as
it is curious for itself, is confessedly of importance to the traveller,
and has thrown light upon a passage in the Odyssey that had previously
been unintelligible--we go on to one other suggestion furnished by the
author before us. It is really a discovery; and is more worthy of a
place in annotations upon Homer than nine in ten of all that we read;--

'Among the numerous points of resemblance with which the classical
traveller cannot fail to be struck, between the habits of pastoral and
agricultural life as still exemplified in Greece, and those which
formerly prevailed in the same country, there is none more calculated
to arrest his attention than the correspondence of the shepherds'
encampments, scattered on the face of the less cultivated districts,
with the settlements of the same kind whose concerns are so frequently
brought forward in the imagery of the Iliad and Odyssey. Accordingly,
the passage of Homer to which the existing peculiarity above described,'
(viz. of pelting off dogs by large jagged stones,) 'affords the-most
appropriate commentary, is the scene where Ulysses, disguised as a
beggar, in approaching the farm of the swineherd, is fiercely assaulted
by the dogs, but delivered by the master of the establishment. Pope's
translation, with the exception of one or two expressions,' (amongst
which Mr. Mure notices _mastiff_ as "not a good term for a sheep-dog,")
'here conveys with tolerable fidelity the spirit of the original:--

'"Soon as Ulysses near the enclosure drew,
With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew;
Down sate the sage; and, cautious to withstand,
Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.
Sudden the master runs--aloud he calls;
And from his hasty hand the leather falls;
With show'rs of stones he drives them far away;
The scatter'd dogs around at distance bay."'
ODYSS. xiv. 29.

First, however, let us state the personal adventure which occasions
this reference to Homer, as it illustrates a feature in Greek scenery,
and in the composition of Greek society. In the early part of his
travels, on a day when Mr. Mure was within a few hours of the immortal
Mesolonghi, he (as better mounted) had ridden a-head of his suite.
Suddenly he came upon 'an encampment of small, low, reed wigwams,'
which in form resembled 'the pastoral capanne of the Roman plain;' but
were 'vastly inferior in size and structure.' Women and children were
sitting outside: but finally there crawled forth from the little
miserable hovels two or three male figures of such gigantic dimensions
as seemed beyond the capacity of the entire dwellings. Several others
joined them, all remarkable for size and beauty. And one, whose air
of authority bespoke his real rank of chief, Mr. Mure pronounces 'a
most magnificent-looking barbarian,' This was a nomad tribe of
Wallachian shepherds, descended (it is supposed) from the Dacian
colonies, Romans intermingled with natives, founded by the later
Caesars; the prevalent features of their faces are, it seems, Italian;
their language is powerfully veined with Latin; their dress differing
from that of all their Albanian neighbors, resembles the dress of
Dacian captives sculptured on the triumphal monuments of Rome; and
lastly, their peculiar name, _Vlack Wallachian_, indicates in the
Sclavonic language pretty much the same relation to a foreign origin,
as in German is indicated by the word _Welsh_: an affinity of which
word is said to exist in our word _Walnut_, where _wall_ (as the late
Mr. Coleridge thinks) means _alien_, _outlandish_. The evidence
therefore is as direct for their non-Grecian descent as could be
desired. But they are interesting to Greece at this time, because
annually migrating from Thessaly in the summer, and diffusing themselves
in the patriarchal style with their wives, their children, and their
flocks, over the sunny vales of Boeotia, of Peloponnesus, and in general
of southern Greece. Their men are huge, but they are the mildest of
the human race. Their dogs are huge, also; so far the parallel holds.
We regret that strict regard to truth forbids us to pursue the
comparison.

'I found myself on a sudden,' says Mr. Mure, 'surrounded by a fierce
pack of dogs, of size proportioned to that of their masters, and which
rushed forth on every side as if bent on devouring both myself and
beast: being altogether unprovided with any means of defence but the
rope-end of the same halter that supplied my stirrups, I was (I confess)
not a little disconcerted by the assault of so unexpected an enemy.'
From this he was soon delivered at the moment by some of the gentle
giants, who 'pelted off the animals with the large loose stones that
lay scattered over the rocky surface of the heath.' But upon the
character of the nuisance, and upon the particular remedy employed--both
of which are classical, and older than Troy, Mr. Mure makes the
following explanations:--

'The number and ferocity of the dogs that guard the Greek hamlets and
sheepfolds, as compared with those kept for similar purposes in other
parts of the world, is one of the peculiarities of this country which
not only first attracts the attention of the tourist, but is chiefly
calculated to excite his alarm, and call into exercise his prowess or
presence of mind. It is also amongst the features of modern Greek life
that supply the most curious illustrations of classical antiquity.
Their attacks are not confined to those who approach the premises of
which they are the appointed guardians;' they do not limit themselves
to defensive war: 'in many districts they are in the habit of rushing
from a considerable distance to torment the traveller passing along
the public track; and when the pastoral colonies, as is often the case,
occur at frequent intervals, the nuisance becomes quite intolerable.'
But in cases where the succession is less continuous, we should imagine
that the nuisance was in the same proportion more dangerous; and Mr.
Mure acknowledges--that under certain circumstances, to a solitary
stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case
of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless
are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature.
Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look
for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal
rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be
scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold
specific should travel concurrently with the evil. And because the
vegetable specific, in the shape of oaken cudgels, was liable to local
failure, (at this moment, in fact, from the wreck of her woods by means
of incendiary armies, Greece is, for a season, disafforested,) there
exists a second specific of a mineral character, which (please Heaven?)
shall never fail, so long as Greece is Greece. 'The usual weapons of
defence, employed in such cases by the natives, are the large loose
stones with which the soil is _everywhere_ strewed--a natural feature
of this region, to which also belongs its own proper share of classic
interest.' The character of the rocks prevailing in those mountain
ridges which intersect the whole of Greece is, that whilst in its
interior texture 'of iron-hard consistency,' yet at the surface it is
'broken into detached fragments of infinitely varied dimensions.'
Balls, bullets, grape, and canister shot, have all been 'parked' in
inexhaustible magazines; whilst the leading feature which strikes the
mind with amazement in this natural artillery, is its fine _retail_
distribution. Everywhere you may meet an enemy: stoop, and everywhere
there is shot piled for use. We see a Leibnitzian preestablished harmony
between the character of the stratification and the character of the
dogs. Cardinal de Retz explains why that war, in the minority of Louis
XIV., was called the _Fronde_; and it seems that in Greece, where an
immortal _fronde_ was inevitable, an immortal magazine was supplied
for it--one which has been and will continue to be, under all
revolutions, for the uncultured tracts present the missiles equally
diffused; and the first rudiments of culture show themselves in
collections of these missiles along the roads. Hence, in fact, a general
mistake of tourists. 'It is certain,' says Mr. Mure, 'that many of the
circular mounds, which are noticed in the itineraries under the rubric
of _ancient tumulus_, have been heaped up in this manner. It is to
these stones that travellers, and the population at large instinctively
have recourse, as the most effectual weapon against the assaults of
the dogs.' The small shot of pebbles, however, or even stones equal
to pigeon's eggs, would avail nothing: 'those selected are seldom
smaller than a man, exerting his whole force, can conveniently lift
and throw with one hand.' Thence, in fact, and from no other cause,
comes (as Mr. Mure observes) the Homeric designation of such stones,
viz. _chermadion_, or handful; of which he also cites the definition
given by Lucian, [Greek text: lithos cheiroplaethaes], a _hand-filling
stone_. Ninety generations have passed since the Trojan war, and each
of the ninety has used the same bountiful magazine. All readers of the
_Iliad_ must remember how often Ajax or Hector, took up _chermadia_,
'such as twice five men in our degenerate days could barely lift,'
launching them at light-armed foes, who positively would not come
nearer to take their just share of the sword or spear. 'The weapon is
the more effectual, owing to the nature of the rock itself, broken as
it is in its whole surface into angular and sharp-pointed inequalities,
which add greatly to the severity of the wound inflicted. Hence, as
most travellers will have experienced, a fall amongst the Greek rocks
is unusually painful.' It is pleasing to find Homer familiar not only
with the use of the weapon, but with its finest external 'developments.'
Not only the stone must be a bouncer, a _chermadion_, with some of the
properties (we believe) marking a good cricket-ball, but it ought to
be [Greek Text: ochxioeis]--such is the Homeric epithet of endearment,
his caressing description of a good brainer, viz. _splinting-jagged_.

This fact of the chermadic weight attached to the good war-stone
explains, as Mr. Mure ingeniously remarks, a simile of Homer's, which
ought to have been pure nonsense for Pope and Cowper; viz. that in
describing a dense mist, such as we foolishly imagine peculiar to our
own British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely
descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek
Text: tosson tis t'ep leussel oson t'epi laan iaesi]: _so far does man
see as lie hurls a stone_. Now, in the skirmish of 'bickering,' this
would argue no great limitation of eyesight. 'Why, man, how far _would_
you see? Would you see round a corner?' 'A shot of several hundred
yards,' says Mr. Mure, 'were no great feat for a country lad well
skilled in the art of stone-throwing.' But this is not Homer's
meaning--'The cloud of dust' (which went before an army advancing, and
which it is that Homer compares to a mist on the hills perplexing the
shepherd) 'was certainly much denser than to admit of the view extending
to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling
of the ponderous _chermadion, the figure is correct and expressive.'
And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer,
as one, _qui nil molitur inepte_, who never speaks vaguely, never wants
a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here,
then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported
one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs
are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices.
Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery
that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It
calls off attention from the human object, and strikes alarm into the
caitiff's mind. He thinks the stone alive. Upon this hint we thought
it possible to improve: stooping down, we 'made believe' to launch a
stone, when, in fact, we had none; and the effect generally followed.
So well is this understood in Greece that, according to a popular
opinion reported by Mr. Mure, the prevailing habit in Grecian dogs,
as well as bitches, of absenting themselves from church, grows out of
the frequent bowing and genuflexions practised in the course of the
service. The congregation, one and all, simultaneously stoop; the dog's
wickedness has made him well acquainted with the meaning of that act;
it is a symbol but too significant to his conscience; and he takes to
his heels with the belief that a whole salvo of one hundred and one
_chermadia_ are fastening on his devoted 'hurdies.'

Here, therefore, is a suggestion at once practically useful, and which
furnishes more than one important elucidation to passages in Homer
hitherto unintelligible. For the sake of one other such passage, we
shall, before dismissing the subject, pause upon a novel fact,
communicated by Mr. Mure, which is equally seasonable as a new Homeric
light, and as a serviceable hint in a situation of extremity.

In the passage already quoted under Pope's version from Odyssey, xiv.
29, what is the meaning of that singular couplet--

'Down sate the sage; and cautious to withstand,
Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.' [Footnote 2]

Mr. Mure's very singular explanation will remind the naturalist of
something resembling it in the habits of buffaloes. Dampier mentions
a case which he witnessed in some island with a Malay population, where
a herd of buffaloes continued to describe concentric circles, by
continually narrowing around a party of sailors; and at last submitted
only to the control of children _not too far beyond the state of
infancy_. The white breed of wild cattle, once so well known at Lord
Tankerville's in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west
of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their
own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been
woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would 'do business'
most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, 'I,' (says Mr. Mure,)
'am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand
the object of this manoeuvre' (the sitting down) 'on the part of the
hero. I was first led to appreciate its full value in the following
manner:--At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon,' (then
commanding-in-chief throughout the Morea, and the best historian of
the Greek revolution, but who subsequently resigned, and died in the
spring of 1841, at his seat in Aberdeenshire,) 'the conversation
happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company,
on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Grecian dogs;
when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient
for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and
being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a
pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed
out upon him; and the consequences might have been serious had he not
been rescued by an old shepherd, (the Eumeus of the fold,) who after
pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his
hut. The guest made some remark on the zeal of his dogs, and on the
danger to which he had been exposed from their attack. The old man
replied 'that it was his own fault, from not taking the customary
precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped, and
_sate down_ until some person came to protect him.' Here we have the
very act of Ulysses; with the necessary circumstance that he laid aside
his arms; after which the two parties were under a provisional treaty.
And Adam Smith's doubtful assumption that dogs are incapable of
exchange, or reciprocal understanding, seems still more doubtful. As
this expedient was new to the traveller, 'he made some further
inquiries; and was assured that, if any person in such a predicament
will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of
defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that, as long
as he remains quiet, they will follow his example; but that, as soon
as he rises and moves forward, they will renew their assault. This
story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, at once
brought home to my own mind the scene at the fold of Eumeus with the
most vivid reality. The existence of the custom was confirmed by other
persons present, from their own observation or experience.' Yet, what
if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during
winter--a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the
morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions? However, here again
we have the Homer _qui nil molitur inepte_, who addressed a people of
known habits. Yet _quare_--as a matter of some moment for Homeric
disputes--were these habits of Ionian colonies, or exclusively of
Greece Proper?

But enough of the repulsive features in Greek travelling. We, for our
part, have endeavored to meet them with remedies both good and novel.
Now let us turn to a different question. What are the positive
attractions of Greece? What motives are there to a tour so costly?
What are the _Pros_, supposing the _Cons_ dismissed? This is a more
difficult question than is imagined: so difficult that most people set
out without waiting for the answer: they travel first and leave to
providential contingencies the chance that, on a review of the tour
in its course, some adequate motive may suggest itself. Certainly it
may be said, that the word Greece already in itself contains an adequate
motive; and we do not deny that a young man, full of animal ardor and
high classical recollections, may, without blame, give way to the mere
instincts of wandering. It is a fine thing to bundle up your traps at
an hour's warning, and fixing your eye upon some bright particular
star, to say--'I will travel after thee: I will have no other mark:
I will chase thy rising or thy setting: that is, on Mr. Wordsworth's
hint derived from a Scottish lake, to move on a general object of
_stepping westwards_, or _stepping eastwards_. But there are few men
qualified to travel, who stand in this free 'unhoused' condition of
license to spend money, to lose time, or to court peril. In balancing
the pretensions of different regions to a distinction so costly as an
_effectual_ tour, money it is, simply the consideration of cost, which
furnishes the chief or sole ground of administration; having but 100
pounds sterling disposable in any one summer, a man finds his field
of choice circumscribed at once: and rare is the household that can
allow twice that sum annually. He contents himself with the Rhine, or
possibly, if more adventurous, he may explore the passes of the
Pyrenees; he may unthread the mazes of romantic Auvergne, or make a
stretch even to the Western Alps of Savoy.

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