Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
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Thomas de Quincey >> Theological Essays and Other Papers v2
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'Spectatum venit, venit spectentur it ipsae;'
and yet, between them, the two parties reciprocated the functions.
Each to the other was a true spectacle. A long Scotchman,
'Qui sicca solus secum spatiatur arena,'
and holding in his dexter mauley a red herring, whilst a white
table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious
rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up
from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation
from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of
Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being
performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual,
Mr. Mure notices it as a question of embarrassment to the men of
Plutarch's age, why the Phoeacian princess in the Odyssey did _not_
wash in the sea, but mysteriously preferred the river, (_Sympos, I.
qu._ 9;) but as to beauty, says Mr. Mure, 'I looked in vain for a
figure, which either as to face or form could claim even a remote
resemblance to Nausicaa. The modern Greek woman indeed appeared to me,
upon the whole, about the most ill-favored I have met with in any
country.' And it attests the sef-consistency of Mr. Mure, that in
Aracova, the only place where he notices the women as having any
pretensions to beauty, he and others agree that their countenances are
not true to the national type; they are generally reputed to offer
something much nearer to the bloom and the _embonpoint_ of female
rustics in Germany; and accordingly, it is by the Bavarian officers
of King Otho's army that these fair Aracovites have been chiefly raised
into celebrity. We cannot immediately find the passage in Mr. Mure's
book relating to Aracova; but we remember that, although admitting the
men to be a tolerably handsome race, he was disappointed in the females.
Tall they are, and stout, but not, he thinks, beautiful.
Yet, in dismissing this subject of personal appearance, as the most
plausible test now surviving for the claim of a pure Greek descent,
we must not forget to explain--that it is far from our design to
countenance the hypothesis of any _abrupt_ supercession, at any period
or by any means, to the old Grecian blood. The very phrase of 'national
type,' which we used in the last paragraph, and the diffusion of a
language essentially Greek, argue at once a slow and gradational
transition of the population into its present physical condition. Mr.
Mure somewhere describes, as amongst the characteristics of the present
race, swarth-iness and leanness. These we suspect to have been also
characteristics of the old original _ton d'apameibomenoi_ Greeks. If
so, the fact would seem to argue, that the changes, after all, had not
been on a scale sufficient to obliterate the primitive type of Hellenic
nature; whilst the existence of any _diffused_ type marks a tendency
to national unity, and shows that some one element has so much
predominated as to fuse the rest into a homogeneous whole. Indeed, it
is pretty certain that a powerful cross in any human breed, whatever
effects it may have in other respects, leaves the intellect improved--if
not in the very highest qualities, yet in mobility, activity, and
pertinacity of attention. The Greek nation has also shown itself morally
improved; their revolutionary war evoked and tried, as in a furnace,
the very finest qualities of courage, both adventurous and enduring;
and we heartily agree in the sentiment delivered so ably by Mr. Mure,
that the struggles of these poor shepherds and herdsmen, driven into
caves and thickets, and having no great rallying principle but the
banner of the Cross against the Crescent, were as much more truly
sublime in suffering and in daring, than the classical struggles against
the Persians, as they are and will be more obscure in the page of
general history. We do not at all question great stamina and noble
elements in the modern Greek character--generations of independence
will carry this character to excellence; but still we affirm, that he
who looks for direct descendants from the race of Miliades, Pericles,
or Epaminondas, is likely to be disappointed; and most disappointed
in that Athens, which for all of us alike (as appealing to our
imaginative feelings) still continues to be what it was for Cicero--true
and very Greece; in which, therefore, of all cities locally recalling
the classical times, we can least brook a disappointment.
If not the people of Greece, is it then the NATURAL SCENERY of Greece
which can justify the tourist in this preference? Upon this subject
it is difficult to dispute. What a man is likely to relish in
scenery--what style or mode of the natural picturesque; and secondly,
what weight or value he will allow to his own preferences--are questions
exceedingly variable. And the latter of these questions is the more
important; for the objection is far less likely to arise against this
mode of scenery or that, since every _characteristic_ mode is relished
as a change, than universally against all modes alike as adequate
indemnifications for the toils of travelling. Female travellers are
apt to talk of 'scenery' as all in all, but men require a social
interest superadded. Mere scenery palls upon the mind, where it is the
sole and ever-present attraction relied on. It should come unbidden
and unthought of, like the warbling of birds, to sustain itself in
power. And at feeding-time we observe that men of all nations and
languages, _Tros Tyriusve,_ grow savage, if, by a fine scene, you
endeavor to make amends for a bad beef-steak. The scenery of the
Himalaya will not 'draw houses' till it finds itself on a line of good
hotels.
This difference, noted above, between the knowledge and the power of
a scenery hunter may be often seen illustrated in the fields of art.
How common is the old sapless connoisseur in pictures, who retains his
learned eye and his distinguished skill, but whose sensibilities are
as dry as summer dust to the interests of the art. On the other hand,
daily you see young people whose hearts and souls are in the forests
and the hills, but for whom the eye is perfectly untutored. If, now,
to the differences in this respect you add the extensive differences
which prevail as to the kinds of scenery, it is easy to understand how
rich in the materials for schism must be every party that starts up
on the excitement of mere scenery. Some laud the Caucasus; some the
northern and eastern valleys of Spain; some the Alpine scenery; some
the Pyrenean. All these are different; and from all alike differs again
what Mr. Mure classes as the classical character of scenery. For this,
he thinks a regular education of the eye requisite. Such an education
he himself had obtained from a residence in Italy. And, subject to
that condition, he supposes the scenery on the Eurotas (to the eastern
side of the Peloponnesus) the most delightful in Europe. We know not.
It may be so. For ourselves, the obscure sense of being or moving under
a vast superincumbency of some great natural power, as of a mighty
forest, or a trackless succession of mountainous labyrinths, has a
charm of secret force far better than any distinct scenes to which we
are introduced. Such things ought not to be. But still so it is--that
tours in search of the picturesque are peculiarly apt to break up in
quarrels. Perhaps on the same principle which has caused a fact
generally noticed, viz. that conchologists, butterfly-fanciers, &c.,
are unusually prone to commit felonies, because too little of a human
interest circulates through their arid pursuits. The morbid irritation
accumulates until the amateur rushes, out with a knife, lets blood in
some quarter, and so restores his own connection with the vitalities
of human nature. In any case, we advise the Greek tourist to have at
least two strings to his bow besides scenery.
III.--Is it, then, the monuments of the antique, the memorials of
Pericles and Phidias, which a man should seek in Greece? If so, no
great use in going beyond Athens. Because, though more solemn images
survive in other places, associated with powers more mysterious and
ages more remote, as the gate of Lions at Mycense, or the relics yet
standing (and perhaps to stand for ever) of Cyclopian cities, forms
of art that for thousands of years have been dying away through dimness
of outlines and vegetable overgrowth into forms of nature--yet in
Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian
buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old
enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling
aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too
youthful character, admits that they are 'superior in number, variety,
and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show.'
Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern
aftergrowths, as in the case of the Propylyoea, of which multitudes
doubt [Mr. Mure in particular] whether they can now be detached from
the connection with effect. For more reasons than one, it will, perhaps,
be advisable to leave them in their present condition, and that is as
hybrid as the population. But, with respect to Athenian buildings, it
strikes our feelings--that finish and harmony are essential conditions
to their effect. Ruins are becoming to Gothic buildings--decay is there
seen in a graceful form; but to an Attic building decay is more
expressive of disease--it is scrofula; it is phagedoenic ulcer. And
unless the Bavarian government can do more than is now held out or
hoped, towards the restoration and _disengagement_ of the public
buildings surmounting the city, we doubt whether there will not be as
much of pain as of an artist's pleasure in a visit to the Athenian
capital, though now raised to the rank of metropolis for universal
Greece.
IV.--There are, however, mixed monuments, not artificial in their
origin, but which gradually came to act upon the feelings as such from
their use, and habitual connection with human purposes. Such for
instance is the Acro-Corinthus, of which Mr. Mure says--that it 'is
by far the most striking object that I have ever seen, either abroad
or at home. Neither the Acropolis of Athens, nor the Larissa of Argos,
nor even Gibraltar, can enter into the remotest competition with this
gigantic citadel.' Indeed, when a man is aware of the impression
produced by a perpendicular rock over six hundred feet high, he may
judge of the stupendous effect from a citadel rising almost insulated
in the centre of a plain, sloping to the sea, and ascending to the
height of nineteen hundred feet.
Objects of this class, together with the mournful Pelasgic remains,
the ruins or ruined plans which point back to Egypt, and to Phoenicia,
these may serve as a further bribe to the tourist in Greece. If a
collection of all the objects in every class, according to the best
order of succession for the traveller, were arranged skilfully, we
believe that a maritime circuit of Greece, with a few landings and
short excursions, would bring the whole of what is first-rate within
a brief period of weeks and an easy effort. As to the people, they
will become more or less entitled to a separate interest, according
to the improvement and improved popularity of their government. And
upon that will depend much of the comfort, much even of the safety,
to be looked for by tourists. The prospects at present are not
brilliant. A government and a court, drawn from a needy aristocracy
like the Bavarian, are not suited to a needy people, struggling with
the difficulties of a new colony. However, we will hope for the best.
And for the tourist in _Greece as it is_, perhaps Mr. Mure's work is
the best fitted for popularity. He touches all things sufficiently,
but exhausts none. And we add, very sincerely, this antithesis, as due
to him, that of what may be called personal guides, or those who
maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the
selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst
of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly
personal.
NOTES.
NOTE 1.
Chief Justice squinted probably at the Versailles affair, where parties
were incinerated; for which, in Yorkshire, there is a local
word--_crozelled,_ applied to those who lie down upon a treacherous
lime-pit, whose crust gives way to their weight. But if he meant
security in the sense of public funds, Chief-Justice was still more
in error, as he will soon learn. For the British Railways now yield
a regular income of three millions per annum--one tenth of the interest
of the national debt; offer as steady an investment as the 3 per cent
consols; and will soon be quoted in other securities.
NOTE 2.
As respects the _elegance_ of this translation, there is good reason
to warn the reader--that much of the Odyssey was let off by-contract,
like any poor-house proposal for 'clods' and 'stickings' of beef, to
low undertakers, such as Broome and Fenton. Considering the ample
fortune which Pope drew from the whole work, we have often been struck
by the inexplicable indulgence with which this scandalous partition
is treated by Pope's biographers. It is simply the lowest act of self-
degradation ever connected with literature.
NOTE 3.
Some will urge the intolerance of the Greeks for Christians of the
Latin Church. But that did not hinder alliances, and ambitious attempts
at such alliances, with their Venetian masters in the most distinguished
of the Greek houses. Witness the infernal atrocities by which the
Venetian government avenged at times what they viewed as unpardonable
presumption. See their own records.
NOTE 4.
It may be remarked, as a general prevailing tendency amongst the great
Italian masters of painting, that there is the same conspicuous leaning
to regard the gigantic as a vulgar straining after effect. Witness St.
Paul before Agrippa, and St. Paul at Athens; Alexander the Great, or
the Archangel Michael. Nowhere throughout the whole world is the
opposite defect carried to a more intolerable excess than amongst the
low (but we regret to add--and in all but the very highest) of London
artists. Many things, which the wretched Von Raumer said of English
art, were abominable and malicious falsehooods; circulated not for
London, but for Berlin, and Dresden, where English engravers and
landscape-painters are too justly prized by the wealthy purchasers nor
to be hated by the needy sellers. Indeed to hear Von Raumer's account
of our water-color exhibitions, you would suppose that such men as
Turner, Dewint, Prout, and many others, had no merit whatever, and no
name except in London. Raumer is not an honest man. But had he fixed
his charges on the book-decorators amongst us, what an unlimited field
for ridicule the most reasonable! In most sentimental poems, the musing
young gentlemen and ladies usually run to seven and eight feet high.
And in a late popular novel connected with the Tower of London, by Mr.
Ainsworth, [which really pushes its falsifications of history to an
unpardonable length, as e.g. in the case of the gentle victim lady
Jane Grey,] the Spanish ambassador seems to us at least fourteen feet
high; and his legs meant for some ambassador who happened to be
twenty-seven feet high.
LORD CARLISLE ON POPE.
[1851.]
Lord Carlisle's recent lecture upon Pope, addressed to an audience of
artisans, drew the public attention first of all upon himself--_that_
was inevitable. No man can depart conspicuously from the usages or the
apparent sympathies of his own class, under whatsoever motive, but
that of necessity he will awaken for the _immediate_ and the first
result of his act an emotion of curiosity. But all curiosity is allied
to the comic, and is not an ennobling emotion, either for him who feels
it or for him who is its object. A second, however, and more thoughtful
consideration of such an act may redeem it from this vulgarizing taint
of oddity. Reflection may satisfy us, as in the present case it _did_
satisfy those persons who were best acquainted with Lord Carlisle's
public character, that this eccentric step had been adopted, not in
ostentation, with any view to its eccentricity, but _in spite_ of its
eccentricity, and from impulses of large prospective benignity that
would not suffer itself to be defeated by the chances of immediate
misconstruction.
Whether advantageous, therefore, to Lord Carlisle, or disadvantageous
(and in that case, I believe, most unjust), the first impressions
derived from this remarkable lecture pointed themselves exclusively
to the person of the lecturer--to his general qualifications for such
a task, and to his possible motives for undertaking it. Nobody inquired
_what_ it was that the noble lord had been discussing, so great was
every man's astonishment that before such an audience any noble lord
should have condescended to discuss anything at all. But gradually all
wonder subsides--_de jure_, in nine days; and, after this collapse of
the primary interest, there was leisure for a secondary interest to
gather about the _subject_ of the patrician lecture. Had it any
cryptical meaning? Coming from a man so closely connected with the
government, could it be open to any hieroglyphic or ulterior
interpretations, intelligible to Whigs, and significant to ministerial
partisans? Finally, this secondary interest has usurped upon what
originally had been a purely personal interest. POPE! What novelty was
there, still open to even literary gleaners, about _him_, a man that
had been in his grave for one hundred and six years? What _could_ there
remain to say on such a theme? And what was it, in fact, that Lord
Carlisle _had_ said to his Yorkshire audience?
There was, therefore, a double aspect in the public interest--one
looking to the rank of the lecturer, one to the singularity of his
theme. There was the curiosity that connected itself with the assumption
of a troublesome duty in the service of the lowest ranks by a volunteer
from the highest; and, secondly, there was another curiosity connecting
itself with the choice of a subject that had no special reference to
this particular generation, and seemed to have no special adaptation
to the intellectual capacities of a working audience.
This double aspect of the public surprise suggests a double question.
The volunteer assumption by a nobleman of this particular office in
this particular service may, in the eyes of some people, bear a
philosophic value, as though it indicated some changes going on beneath
the surface of society in the relations of our English aristocracy to
our English laboring body. On the other hand, it will be regarded by
multitudes as the casual caprice of an individual--a caprice of vanity
by those who do not know Lord Carlisle's personal qualities, a caprice
of patriotic benevolence by those who do. According to the construction
of the case as thus indicated, oscillating between a question of
profound revolution moving subterraneously amongst us, and a purely
personal question, such a discussion would ascend to the philosophic
level, or sink to the level of gossip. The other direction of the
public surprise points to a question that will interest a far greater
body of thinkers. Whatever judgment may be formed on the general fact
that a nobleman of ancient descent has thought fit to come forward as
a lecturer to the humblest of his countrymen upon subjects detached
from politics, there will yet remain a call for a second judgment upon
the fitness of the particular subject selected for a lecture under
such remarkable circumstances. The two questions are entirely
disconnected. It is on the latter, viz., the character and pretensions
of Pope, as selected by Lord Carlisle for such an inaugural experiment,
that I myself feel much interest. Universally it must have been felt
as an objection, that such a selection had no special adaptation to
the age or to the audience. I say this with no wish to undervalue the
lecture, which I understand to have been ably composed, nor the services
of the lecturer, whose motives and public character, in common with
most of his countrymen, I admire. I speak of it at all only as a public
opportunity suddenly laid open for drawing attention to the true
pretensions of Pope, as the most brilliant writer of his own class in
European literature; or, at least, of drawing attention to some
characteristics in the most popular section of Pope's works which
hitherto have lurked unnoticed.
This is my object, and none that can be supposed personal to Lord
Carlisle. Pope, as the subject of the lecture, and not the earlier
question as to the propriety of any lecture at all, under the
circumstances recited, furnishes my _thesis_--that thesis on which the
reader will understand me to speak with decision, not with the decision
of arrogance, but with that which rightfully belongs to a faithful
study of the author. The editors of Pope are not all equally careless,
but all are careless; and, under the shelter of this carelessness, the
most deep-seated vices of Pope's moral and satirical sketches have
escaped detection, or at least have escaped exposure. These, and the
other errors traditionally connected with the rank and valuation of
Pope as a classic, are what I profess to speak of deliberately and
firmly. Meantime, to the extent of a few sentences, I will take the
liberty of suggesting, rather than delivering, an opinion upon the
other question, viz., the prudence in a man holding Lord Carlisle's
rank of lecturing at all to any public audience. But on this part of
the subject I beg to be understood as speaking doubtfully,
conjecturally, and without a sufficient basis of facts.
The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, notoriously a man of great ingenuity,
possessing also prodigious fertility of thought, and armed with the
rare advantage of being almost demoniacally in earnest, was, however
(in some sort of balance to these splendid gifts), tainted to excess
with the scrofula of impracticable crotchets. That was the opinion
secretly held about him by most of his nearest friends; and it is
notorious that he scarcely ever published a pamphlet or contribution
to a journal in which he did not contrive to offend all parties, both
friendly and hostile, by some ebullition of this capricious character.
He hated, for instance, the High Church with a hatred more than
theological; and _that_ would have recommended him to the favorable
consideration of many thousands of persons in this realm, the same who
have been secretly foremost in the recent outbreak of fanaticism against
the Roman Catholics; but unfortunately it happened that, although not
hating the Low Church (the self-styled Evangelicals), he despised
them so profoundly as to make all alliance between them impossible.
He hated also many individuals; but, not to do him any injustice, most
(or perhaps all) of these were people that had been long dead; and
amongst them, by the way, was Livy, the historian; whom I distinguish
by name, as furnishing, perhaps, the liveliest illustration of the
whimsical and all but lunatic excess to which these personal hatreds
were sometimes pushed; for it is a fact that, when the course of an
Italian tour had brought him unavoidably to the birthplace of Livy,
Dr. Arnold felicitated himself upon having borne the air of that
city--in fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local
remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr.
Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish'
on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta:
he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how
had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak
powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned in the
archaeologies of his own country; where all men had gone astray, _he_
went astray. And in geography, as regarded the Italian movements of
Hannibal, he erred with his eyes open. But these were no objects of
Livy's ambition: what he aspired to do was, to tell the story, 'the
tale divine,' of Roman energy and perseverance; and _he so_ told it
that no man, as regards the mere artifices of narration, would ever
have presumed to tell it after him. I cite this particular case as
illustrating the furnace-heat of Dr. Arnold's antipathies, unless where
some consideration of kindness and Christian charity interposed to
temper his fury. This check naturally offered itself only with regard
to individuals: and therefore, in dealing with institutions, he
acknowledged no check at all, but gave full swing to the license of
his wrath. Amongst our own institutions, that one which he seems most
profoundly to have hated was our nobility; or, speaking more generally,
our aristocracy. Some deadly aboriginal schism he seems to have imagined
between this order and the democratic orders; some predestined feud
as between the head of the serpent and the heel of man.
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