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far more solicitous to trace his death to politi- | and useless minutenes but improvement cal causes, and to deduce from it consequences the most essential to the comforts of human unfavourable to Athens and to popular go-life extend themselves over the world, and invernment, than to throw light on the character troduce themselves into every cottage, before and doctrines of the wonderful man,

"From whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools
Of Academics, old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."

He does not seem to be aware that Demos-
thenes was a great orator; he represents him
sometimes as an aspiring demagogue, some-
times as an adroit negotiator, and always as a
great rogue. But that in which the Athenian
excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible
eloquence, which, at the distance of more than
two thousand years, stirs our blood and brings
tears into our eyes, he passed by with a few
phrases of commonplace commendation. The
origin of the drama, the doctrines of the so-
phists, the course of Athenian education, the
state of the arts and sciences, the whole do-
mestic system of the Greeks, he has almost
completely neglected. Yet these things will
appear, to a reflecting man, scarcely less
worthy of attention than the taking of Sphac-
teria, or the discipline of the targeteers of
Iphicrates.

any annalist can condescend from the dignity of writing about generals and ambassadors, to take the least notice of them. Thus the pro gress of the most salutary inventions and dis coveries is buried in impenetrable mystery, mankind are deprived of a most useful species of knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame. In the mean time every child knows by heart the dates and adventures of a long line of barbarian kings. The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical. Thucydides, as far as he goes, is an excellent writer, yet he affords us far less knowledge of the most important particulars relating to Athens, than Plato or Aristophanes. The little treatise of Xenophon in Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all the seven books of his Hellanics. The same may be said of the Satires of Horace, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel. Many others might be mentioned, but these suffi ciently illustrate my meaning.

I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise the present narrow limits, and assert the rights of history over every part of her natural domain. Should such a writer engage in that enterprise, ir which I cannot but consider Mr. Mitford as having failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting and important in military and political transactions; but he will not think any thing too trivial for the gravity of history, which is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man. He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the man

This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr. Mitford. Most people, seem to imagine that a detail of public occurencesthe operation of sieges-the changes of administrations-the treaties-the conspiracies--the rebellions-is a complete history. Differences of definition are logically unimportant, but practically they sometimes produce the most momentous effects: thus it has been in the present case; historians have, almost without exception, confined themselves to the public transactions of states, and have left to the negligent administration of writers of fictionners, the amusements, the conversation of the a province at least equally extensive and valuable.

All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the component parts. It is therefore strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings, should omit, as too mean for the dignity of history, circumstances which exert the most extensive influence on the state of society. In general, the under current of human life flows steadily on, unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface. The happiness of the many commonly depends on causes independent of victories or defeats, of revolutions or restorations, causes which can be regulated by no laws, and which are recorded in no archives. These causes are the things which it is of main importance to us to know, not how the Lacedæmonian phalanx was broken at Leuctra-not whether Alexander died of poison or by disease. History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and such is almost all the history which is extant in the world. Paltry skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd

Greeks. He will not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life. The progress of painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will form an important part of his plan. But above all, his attention will be given to the history of that splendid literature from which has sprung all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the glory of the western world.

Of the indifference which Mr. Mitford shows on this subject, I will not speak, for I cannot speak with fairness. It is a subject in which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child. If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrin sically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering fire of Juvena!; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universa

excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs | the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is

of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling; by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty,--liberty in bondage, health in sickness,-society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the pri meval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate: when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple: and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts,-her influence and her glory will still survive,-fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exer

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he re tained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to behold at one glance all | cise their control.

END OF VOL. IIL

ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS.

To the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and thundered over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

MILTON.

THE celebrity of the great classical writers | all that could be done by the resolving and is confined within no limits, except those combining powers of the understanding, seems which separate civilized from savage man. not to have possessed much of sensibility or Their works are the common property of every imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed polished nation. They have furnished sub-to the deficiency of materials. The great works jects for the painter, and models for the poet. of genius which then existed were not either In the minds of the educated classes through- sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to out Europe, their names are indissolubly asso- enable any man to form a perfect code of literaciated with the endearing recollections of ture. To require that a critic should conceive childhood, the old school-room,-the dog-classes of composition which had never exeared grammar,-the first prize,-the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and commentators, who perform the lowest menial offices to their memory, are considered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary prece-quity. dence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

isted, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream, and then to interpret it.

With all his deficiencies Aristotle was the most enlightened and profound critic of antiDionysius was far from possessing the same exquisite subtlety, or the same vast comprehension. But he had access to a much greater number of specimens, and he had devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His particular judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. When they particularize, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalize, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aris- Quintilian applied to general literature the totle. Both in analysis and in combination, same principles by which he had been accusthat great man was without a rival. No phi- tomed to judge of the declamations of his pulosopher has ever possessed, in an equal de- pils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and gree, the talent either of separating established rhetoric not of the highest order. He speaks systems into their primary elements, or of con- coldly of the incomparable works of Eschylus. necting detached phenomena in harmonious He admires, beyond expression, those inexsystems. He was the great fashioner of the haustible mines of commonplaces, the plays of intellectual chaos: he changed its darkness Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on into light, and its discord into order. He the poetical character of Homer. He then brought to literary researches the same vigour proceeds to consider him merely as an oraand amplitude of mind, to which both physical tor. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a and metaphysical science are so greatly in- great orator. But surely nothing is more redebted. His fundamental principles of criti-markable, in his admirable works, than an art cism are excellent. To cite only a single instance; the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though qualified to do VOL. IV.--55

with which his oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry. Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour which the soil of despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Eioquence was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate in a des pot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amuse ment for the travelled nobles and the blue stocking matrons of Rome. It is, therefore, with him, rather a sport than a war: it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of

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the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must be acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which Cicero has too often given the sanction, both of his precept and his example.

French Anas a ludicrous instance of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning, recommends the study of some long Latin treatise, of which I now forget the name, on the reli gion, manners, government, and language of the early Greeks. "For there," says he, "you will learn every thing of importance that is contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two such tedious books." Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman that all the knowledge to which he had attached so much value was useful only as it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be as worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria or the voin-cabulary of Otaheite.

Longinus seems to have had great sensibility but little discrimination. He gives us eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was happily said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from L'esprit des Lois to L'esprit sur les Lois. In the same manner the philosopher of Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not "Longinus on the Sublime," but "The Sublimities of Longinus." The origin of the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects of quiry that can occupy the attention of a critic. In our own country it has been discussed with great ability, and, I think, with very little success, by Burke and Dugald Stewart. Longinus dispenses himself from all investigations of this nature, by telling his friend Terentianus that he already knows every thing that can be said upon the question. It is to be regretted that Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to his instructor, for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means height -or elevation. This name, so commodiously vague, is applied indifferently to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a passage of Plato about the human body, as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Having no fixed standard, Longinus is right only by accident. He is rather a fancier than a critic.

Of those scholars who have disdained tc confine themselves to verbal criticism, few have been successful. The ancient languages have, generally, a magical influence on their faculties. They were "fools called into a circle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and Æneid were to them not books, but curiosities, or rather relics. They no more admired those works for their merits, than a good Catholic venerates the house of the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture. Whatever was classical was good. Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus. The epistles of Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with respect to questions of evidence, they fell into the same error. The authority of all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same with them. It never crossed their minds that the Modern writers have been prevented by many lapse of five hundred years, or the distance of causes from supplying the deficiencies of their five hundred leagues, could affect the accuracy classical predecessors. At the time of the re- of a narration,-that Livy could be a less veravival of literature no man could, without great cious historian than Polybius, or that Pluand painful labour, acquire an accurate and tarch could know less about the friends of Xeelegant knowledge of the ancient languages. nophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived by And, unfortunately, those grammatical and the distance of time, they seem to consider all philological studies, without which it was im- the classics as contemporaries; just as I have possible to understand the great works of known people in England, deceived by the disAthenian and Roman genius, have a tendency tance of place, take it for granted that all perto contract the views and deaden the sensibili- sons who live in India are neighbours, and ask ty of those who follow them with extreme as- an inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an siduity. A powerful mind which has been long acquaintance at Calcutta. It is to be hoped employed in such studies, may be compared that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who over Europe. But should such a calamity hapwas persuaded to contract himself to small pen, it seems not improbable that some future dimensions in order to enter within the en-Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of Engchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced his stature. When the means have long been the objects of application, they are naturally substituted for the end. It was said by Eugene of Savoy, that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of war without being employed in the petty calculations and manoeuvres which employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables and particles.

I remember to have observed among the

• Ακροτης και εξοχη τις λογων εστι τα ύψη.

land from Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's Memoirs.

It is surely time that ancient literature should be examined in a different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a just allowance, at the same time, for the difference of circumstances and manners. I am far from pretending to the knowledge or ability which such a task would require. All that I mean to offer is a collection of desultory remarks upon a most interesting portion of Greek literature.

It may be doubted whether any compositions which have ever been produced in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the great Athenian orations. Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses. The supply adjusts itself to the demand. The quantity may be dimi

nished by restrictions and multiplied by boun- | have improved our condition as much in reality ties. The singular excellence to which elo- as in appearance. Rumford, it is said, proquence attained at Athens is to be mainly at- posed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for tributed to the influence which it exerted there. feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate In turbulent times, under a constitution purely than formerly. His plan was simply to comdemocratic, among a people educated exactly pel them to masticate their food thoroughly. to that point at which men are most suscepti-A small quantity thus eaten would, according ble of strong and sudden impressions, acute, to that famous projector, afford more sustebut not sound reasoners, warm in their feel-nance than a large meal hastily devoured. I ings, unfixed in their principles, and passionate do not know how Rumford's proposition was admirers of fine composition, oratory received received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be such encouragement as it has never since ob- found more nutritious to digest a page than to tained. devour a volume.

Books, however, were the least part of the

The taste and knowledge of the Athenian people was a favourite object of the contemptu-education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for ous derision of Samuel Johnson; a man who knew nothing of Greek literature beyond the common school-books, and who seems to have brought to what he had read scarcely more than the discernment of a common schoolboy. He used to assert, with that arrogant absurdity which, in spite of his great abilities and virtues, renders him perhaps the most ridiculous character in literary history, that Demosthenes spoke to a people of brutes,-to a barbarous people,-that there could have been no civilization before the invention of printing. Johnson was a keen but a very narrow-minded ob server of mankind. He perpetually confounded their general nature with their particular circumstances. He knew London intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on its society is perfectly astonishing. But Fleet Street was the world to him. He saw that Londoners who did not read were profoundly ignorant, and he inferred that a Greek who had few or no books must have been as uninformed as one of Mr. Thrale's draymen.

a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to that glorious city. Let us imagine that we are entering its gates, in the time of its power and glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico. All are gazing with delight at the entablature, for Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there; men, women, children, are thronging round him; the tears are running down their cheeks; their eyes are fixed; their very breath is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands,-the terrible,-the murderous,-which had slain so many of his sons.* We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Socrates is pitted against the famous Atheist, from Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradiction in terms. But we are interrupted. The herald is crying-" Room for the Prytanes." The general assembly is to meet. The people are swarming in on every side. Proclamation is made-"Who wishes to speak." There is a shout, and a clapping of hands: Pericles is mounting the stand. Then for a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of education.

Knowledge thus acquired, and opinions thus formed, were, indeed, likely to be, in some respects, defective. Propositions, which are advanced in discourse, generally result from a

There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe that in general intelligence the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower orders of any commnnity that has ever existed. It must be considered that to be a citizen was to be a legislator-a soldier-a judge-one upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, both of agriculture and of trade, were in common per-partial view of the question, and cannot be formed by slaves. The commonwealth supplied its meanest members with the support of life, the opportunity of leisure, and the means of amusement. Books were, indeed, few, but they were excellent, and they were accurately known. It is not by turning over libraries, but by repeatedly perusing and intently contemplating a few great models, that the mind is best disciplined. A man of letters must now read much that he soon forgets, and much from which he learns nothing worthy to be remembered. The best works employ, in general, but a small portion of his time. Demosthenes is said to have transcribed, six times, the History of Thucydides. If he had been a young politician of the present age, he might in the same space of time have skimmed innumerable newspapers and pamphlets. I do not condemn that desultory mode of study which the state of things in our day renders a matter of necessity. But I may be allowed to doubt whether the changes on which the admirers of modern institutions delight to dwell

kept under examination long enough to be corrected. Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives, for the moment, both themselves and their auditors. Thus we see doctrines, which cannot bear a close inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in debating societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. To the conversational education of the Athenians, I am inclined to attribute the great looseness of reasoning, which is remarkable in most of their scientific writings. Even the most illogical of modern writers would stand perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which seem to have deluded some of the greatest men of antiquity. Sir Thomas Lethbridge would stare at the political economy of Xenophon and the author of Soirées de Petersbourg would be ashamed of some of the metaphysical argu.

* και κυσε χειρας, δεινας, ανδροφόνους, αι οι πολεας κτανόν μιας

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