they have known little through the past, save vicissitudes of extreme evils, alternately producing and produced. moreover, that, though it may work some little damage, it will soon cover the fields over which it hath passed with rich vineyards and sweet flowers. But, when the flames are pent up in the mountain, then it is that they have reason to fear; then it is that the earth sinks and the sea swells; then cities are swallowed up; and their place knoweth them no more. So it is in politics: where the people is most closely restrained, there it gives the greatest shocks to peace and order; therefore would I say to all kings, let your demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead armies; let them bluster, lest they massacre; a little turbulence is, as it were, the rainbow of the state; it shows indeed that there is a passing shower; but it is a pledge that there shall be no deluge." "When will rulers learn that, where liberty is not, security and order can never be? We talk of absolute power; but all power hath limits, which, if not fixed by the moderation of the governors, will be fixed by the force of the governed. Sovereigns may send their opposers to dungeons; they may clear out a senate-house with soldiers; they may enlist armies of spies; they may hang scores of the disaffected in chains at every cross road; but what power shall stand in that frightful time when rebellion hath become a less evil than endurance? Who shall dissolve that terrible tribunal, which, in the hearts of the oppressed, denounces against the oppressor the doom of its wild justice? Who shall repeal the law of self-defence? What arms or discipline shall resist the strength of famine and despair? How often were the ancient Cæsars dragged from their golden palaces, stripped of their purple robes, mangled, stoned, defiled with filth, pierced with hooks, hurled into Tiber? How often have the Eastern Sultans perished by the sabres of their own janissaries, or the bow-strings of their own mutes! For no power which is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. Small, therefore, is the wisdom of those who would fly to servitude as if it were a refuge from commotion; for anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny. That govern-wise man laugh, if it were not also somements may be safe, nations must be free. Their passions must have an outlet provided, lest they make one. "When I was at Naples, I went with Signor Manso, a gentleman of excellent parts and breeding, who had been the familiar friend of that famous poet Torquato Tasso, to see the burning mountain Vesuvius. I wondered how the peasants could venture to dwell so fearlessly and cheerfully on its sides, when the lava was flowing from its summit; but Manso smiled, and told me that when the fire descends freely they retreat before it without haste or fear. They can tell how fast it will move, and how far; and they know, 66 "This is true," said Mr. Cowley; "yet these admonitions are not less needful to subjects than to sovereigns." 'Surely," said Mr. Milton; "and, that I may end this long debate with a few words in which we shall both agree, I hold that, as freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom. Even the vainest opinions of men are not to be outraged by those who propose to themselves the happiness of men for their end, and who must work with the passions of men for their means. blind reverence for things ancient is indeed so foolish that it might make a The times so mischievous that it would rather make a good man weep. Yet, since it may not be wholly cured, it must be discreetly indulged; and therefore those who would amend evil laws should consider rather how much it may be safe to spare, than how much it may be possible to change. Have you not heard that men who have been shut up for many years in dungeons shrink if they see the light, and fall down if their irons be struck off? And so, when nations have long been in the house of bondage, the chains which have crippled them are necessary to support them, the darkness which hath weakened their sight is necessary to preserve it. not too rashly, lest they curse their freedom and pine for their prison. Therefore release them | 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 precedence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism. "I think indeed that the renowned Parliament, of which we have talked so much, did show, until it became subject to the soldiers, a singular and admirable moderation, in such times scarcely to be hoped, and most worthy to be an example to all that shall come after. But on this argument I have said enough and I will therefore only pray to Almighty God that those who shall, in future times, stand forth in defence of our liberties, as well civil as religious, may adorn the good cause by mercy, prudence, and soberness, to the glory of his name and the happiness and honour of the English people." The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. When they particularise, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalise, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combination, that great man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought to literary And so ended that discourse; and not long after we were set on shore again at the Temple-gardens, and there parted company and the same evening I took notes of what had been said, which I have here more fully set down, from regard both to the fame of the men, and the importance of the subject-researches the same vigour and ampli matter. ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS. (AUGUST 1824.) "To the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne." MILTON. THE celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no limits, except those which separate civilised from savage man. Their works are the common property of every polished nation. They have furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the poet. In the minds of the educated classes throughout Europe, their names are indissolubly associated with the endearing recollections of childhood, the old school room,-the dog-eared 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 tude of mind to which both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His fundamental principles of criticism 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. is a discovery which changes a caprice into a science. It 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 all that could be done by the resolving and combining powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of sensibility or imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed were not either sufficiently him, rather a sport than a war; it is a numerous or sufficiently varied to contest of foils, not of swords. He enable any man to form a perfect appears to think more of the grace of code of literature. To require that a the attitude than of the direction and critic should conceive classes of com- vigour of the thrust. It must be acposition which had never existed, and knowledged, in justice to Quintilian, then investigate their principles, would that this is an error to which Cicero be as unreasonable as the demand of has too often given the sanction, both Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his ma- of his precept and of his example. gicians first to tell him his dream and then to interpret it. With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and profound critic of antiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the same exquisite subtilty, 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 peculiar judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher. Quintilian applied to general literature the same principles by which he had been accustomed to judge of the declamations of his pupils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of the highest order. He speaks coldly of the incomparable works of Æschylus. He admires, beyond expression, those inexhaustible mines of common-places, the plays of Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on the poetical character of Homer. He then proceeds to consider him merely as an orator. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But surely nothing is more remarkable, in his admirable works, than the art 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. Eloquence was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate in a despot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amusement for the travelled nobles and the blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is, therefore, with 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 inquiry 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 Stuart. Longinus dispenses himself from all investigations of this nature, by telling his friend Terentianus that he already knows everything 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. * 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. This Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying the deficiencies of their classical predecessors. At the time of the revival of literature, no man could, without great and painful labour, acquire an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And, unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which it was impossible * ̓Ακρότης καὶ ἐξοχή τις λόγων ἐστὶ τὰ ὕψη. to understand the great works of Athe- I were "fools called into a circle by Greek nian and Roman genius, have a ten-invocations." The Iliad and Æneid dency to contract the views and deaden were to them not books, but curiosities, the sensibility of those who follow them or rather reliques. They no more adwith extreme assiduity. A powerful mired those works for their merits than mind, which has been long employed a good Catholic venerates the house of in such studies, may be compared to the Virgin at Loretto for its architecthe gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, ture. Whatever was classical was good. who was persuaded to contract himself Homer was a great poet, and so was to small dimensions in order to enter Callimachus. The epistles of Cicero within the enchanted vessel, and, when were fine, and so were those of Phalaris. his prison had been closed upon him, Even with respect to questions of evifound himself unable to escape from dence they fell into the same error. the narrow boundaries to the measure The authority of all narrations, written of which he had reduced his stature. in Greek or Latin, was the same with When the means have long been the them. It never crossed their minds objects of application, they are natu- that the lapse of five hundred years, rally substituted for the end. It was or the distance of five hundred leagues, said, by Eugene of Savoy, that the could affect the accuracy of a narration; greatest generals have commonly been that Livy could be a less veracious those who have been at once raised to historian than Polybius;-or that Plucommand, and introduced to the great tarch could know less about the friends operations of war, without being em- of Xenophon than Xenophon himself. ployed in the petty calculations and Deceived by the distance of time, they manœuvres which employ the time of seem to consider all the Classics as 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 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 religion, 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 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 vocabulary of Ota heite. contemporaries; just as I have known people in England, deceived by the distance of place, take it for granted that all persons who live in India are neighbours, and ask an inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta. It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass over Europe. But, should such a calamity happen, it seems not improbable that some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of England 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. Of those scholars who have disdained It may be doubted whether any comto confine themselves to verbal criti-positions which have ever been produced cism few have been successful. The in the world are equally perfect in their ancient languages have, generally, a ma-kind with the great Athenian orations. gical influence on their faculties. They Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton | depend the fate of the wealthiest tribuand molasses. The supply adjusts it-tary state, of the most eminent public self to the demand. The quantity may man. The lowest offices, both of agribe diminished by restrictions, and mul- culture and of trade, were, in common, tiplied by bounties. The singular ex-performed by slaves. The commoncellence to which eloquence attained at wealth supplied its meanest members Athens is to be mainly attributed to with the support of life, the opportunity the influence which it exerted there. of leisure, and the means of amuseIn turbulent times, under a constitution ment. Books were indeed few: but purely democratic, among a people edu- they were excellent; and they were cated exactly to that point at which accurately known. It is not by turnmen are most susceptible of strong and ing over libraries, but by repeatedly sudden impressions, acute, but not sound perusing and intently contemplating a reasoners, warm in their feelings, un- few great models, that the mind is fixed in their principles, and passionate best disciplined. A man of letters must admirers of fine composition, oratory now read much that he soon forgets, received such encouragement as it has and much from which he learns nothing never since obtained. worthy to be remembered. The best The taste and knowledge of the works employ, in general, but a small Athenian people was a favourite object portion of his time. Demosthenes is of the contemptuous derision of Samuel said to have transcribed six times the Johnson; a man who knew nothing of history of Thucydides. If he had been Greek literature beyond the common a young politician of the present age, school-books, and who seems to have he might in the same space of time brought to what he had read scarcely have skimmed innumerable newspamore than the discernment of a com- pers and pamphlets. I do not condemn mon school-boy. He used to assert, that desultory mode of study which the with that arrogant absurdity which, in state of things, in our day, renders a spite of his great abilities and virtues, matter of necessity. renders him, perhaps the most ridicu- allowed to doubt whether the changes lous character in literary history, that on which the admirers of modern inDemosthenes spoke to a people of stitutions delight to dwell have imbrutes;-to a barbarous people; that proved our condition so much in reality there could have been no civilisation as in appearance. Rumford, it is said, before the invention of printing. John- proposed to the elector of Bavaria a son was a keen but a very narrow-scheme for feeding his soldiers at a minded observer of mankind. He per- much cheaper rate than formerly. His petually confounded their general na-plan was simply to compel them to ture 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. But I may be masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity, thus eaten, would, according to that famous projector, afford more sustenance than a large meal hastily devoured. I do not know how Rumford's proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be found more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume. Books, however, were the least part There seems to be, on the contrary, of the education of an Athenian citizen. every reason to believe, that, in general Let us, for a moment, transport ourintelligence, the Athenian populace selves in thought, to that glorious city. far surpassed the lower orders of any Let us imagine that we are entering its community that has ever existed. It gates, in the time of its power and must be considered, that to be a citizen glory. A crowd is assembled round a was to be a legislator,-a soldier,-a portico. All are gazing with delight judge,-one upon whose voice might at the entablature; for Phidias is put |