Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [great novels .txt] 📗

sweet disdain, Happy tears and mournful smiles;

Come with music floating o'er thee; Come with violets springing round: Let the Graces dance before thee, All their golden zones unbound; Now in sport their faces hiding, Now, with slender fingers fair, From their laughing eyes dividing The long curls of rose-crowned hair.

ALCIBIADES. Sweetly sung; but mournfully, Chariclea; for which I would chide you, but that I am sad myself. More wine there. I wish to all the gods that I had fairly sailed from Athens.

CHARICLEA. And from me, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES. Yes, from you, dear lady. The days which immediately precede separation are the most melancholy of our lives.

CHARICLEA. Except those which immediately follow it.

ALCIBIADES. No; when I cease to see you, other objects may compel my attention; but can I be near you without thinking how lovely you are, and how soon I must leave you?

HIPPOMACHUS. Ay; travelling soon puts such thoughts out of men's heads.

CALLICLES. A battle is the best remedy for them.

CHARICLEA. A battle, I should think, might supply their place with others as unpleasant.

CALLICLES. No. The preparations are rather disagreeable to a novice. But as soon as the fighting begins, by Jupiter, it is a noble time;- men trampling,-shields clashing,-spears breaking,-and the poean roaring louder than all.

CHARICLEA. But what if you are killed?

CALLICLES. What indeed? You must ask Speusippus that question. He is a philosopher.

ALCIBIADES. Yes, and the greatest of philosophers, if he can answer it.

SPEUSIPPUS. Pythagoras is of opinion-

HIPPOMACHUS. Pythagoras stole that and all his other opinions from Asia and Egypt. The transmigration of the soul and the vegetable diet are derived from India. I met a Brachman in Sogdiana-

CALLICLES. All nonsense!

CHARICLEA. What think you, Alcibiades?

ALCIBIADES. I think that, if the doctrine be true, your spirit will be transfused into one of the doves who carry (Homer's Odyssey, xii. 63.) ambrosia to the gods or verses to the mistresses of poets. Do you remember Anacreon's lines? How should you like such an office?

CHARICLEA. If I were to be your dove, Alcibiades, and you would treat me as Anacreon treated his, and let me nestle in your breast and drink from your cup, I would submit even to carry your love-letters to other ladies.

CALLICLES. What, in the name of Jupiter, is the use of all these speculations about death? Socrates once (See the close of Plato's Gorgias.) lectured me upon it the best part of a day. I have hated the sight of him ever since. Such things may suit an old sophist when he is fasting; but in the midst of wine and music-

HIPPOMACHUS. I differ from you. The enlightened Egyptians bring skeletons into their banquets, in order to remind their guests to make the most of their life while they have it.

CALLICLES. I want neither skeleton nor sophist to teach me that lesson. More wine, I pray you, and less wisdom. If you must believe something which you never can know, why not be contented with the long stories about the other world which are told us when we are initiated at the Eleusinian mysteries? (The scene which follows is founded upon history. Thucydides tells us, in his sixth book, that about this time Alcibiades was suspected of having assisted at a mock celebration of these famous mysteries. It was the opinion of the vulgar among the Athenians that extraordinary privileges were granted in the other world to alt who had been initiated.)

CHARICLEA. And what are those stories?

ALCIBIADES. Are not you initiated, Chariclea?

CHARICLEA. No; my mother was a Lydian, a barbarian; and therefore-

ALCIBIADES. I understand. Now the curse of Venus on the fools who made so hateful a law! Speusippus, does not your friend Euripides (The right of Euripides to this line is somewhat disputable. See Aristophanes; Plutus, 1152.) say

"The land where thou art prosperous is thy country?"

Surely we ought to say to every lady

"The land where thou art pretty is thy country."

Besides, to exclude foreign beauties from the chorus of the initiated in the Elysian fields is less cruel to them than to ourselves. Chariclea, you shall be initiated.

CHARICLEA. When?

ALCIBIADES. Now.

CHARICLEA. Where?

ALCIBIADES. Here.

CHARICLEA. Delightful!

SPEUSIPPUS. But there must be an interval of a year between the purification and the initiation.

ALCIBIADES. We will suppose all that.

SPEUSIPPUS. And nine days of rigid mortification of the senses.

ALCIBIADES. We will suppose that too. I am sure it was supposed, with as little reason, when I was initiated.

SPEUSIPPUS. But you are sworn to secrecy.

ALCIBIADES. You a sophist, and talk of oaths! You a pupil of Euripides, and forget his maxims!

"My lips have sworn it; but my mind is free." (See Euripides: Hippolytus, 608. For the jesuitical morality of this line Euripides is bitterly attacked by the comic poet.)

SPEUSIPPUS. But Alcibiades-

ALCIBIADES. What! Are you afraid of Ceres and Proserpine?

SPEUSIPPUS. No-but-but-I-that is I-but it is best to be safe-I mean- Suppose there should be something in it.

ALCIBIADES. Now, by Mercury, I shall die with laughing. O Speusippus. Speusippus! Go back to your old father. Dig vineyards, and judge causes, and be a respectable citizen. But never, while you live; again dream of being a philosopher.

SPEUSIPPUS. Nay, I was only-

ALCIBIADES. A pupil of Gorgias and Melesigenes afraid of Tartarus! In what region of the infernal world do you expect your domicile to be fixed? Shall you roll a stone like Sisyphus? Hard exercise, Speusippus!

SPEUSIPPUS. In the name of all the gods-

ALCIBIADES. Or shall you sit starved and thirsty in the midst of fruit and wine like Tantalus? Poor fellow? I think I see your face as you are springing up to the branches and missing your aim. Oh Bacchus! Oh Mercury!

SPEUSIPPUS. Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES. Or perhaps you will be food for a vulture, like the huge fellow who was rude to Latona.

SPEUSIPPUS. Alcibiades!

ALCIBIADES. Never fear. Minos will not be so cruel. Your eloquence will triumph over all accusations. The Furies will skulk away like disappointed sycophants. Only address the judges of hell in the speech which you were prevented from speaking last assembly. "When I consider"-is not that the beginning of it? Come, man, do not be angry. Why do you pace up and down with such long steps? You are not in Tartarus yet. You seem to think that you are already stalking like poor Achilles,

"With stride Majestic through the plain of Asphodel." (See Homer's Odyssey, xi. 538.)

SPEUSIPPUS. How can you talk so, when you know that I believe all that foolery as little as you do?

ALCIBIADES. Then march. You shall be the crier. Callicles, you shall carry the torch. Why do you stare? (The crier and torchbearer were important functionaries at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries.)

CALLICLES. I do not much like the frolic.

ALCIBIADES. Nay, surely you are not taken with a fit of piety. If all be true that is told of you, you have as little reason to think the gods vindictive as any man breathing. If you be not belied, a certain golden goblet which I have seen at your house was once in the temple of Juno at Corcyra. And men say that there was a priestess at Tarentum-

CALLICLES. A fig for the gods! I was thinking about the Archons. You will have an accusation laid against you to-morrow. It is not very pleasant to be tried before the king. (The name of king was given in the Athenian democracy to the magistrate who exercised those spiritual functions which in the monarchical times had belonged to the sovereign. His court took cognisance of offences against the religion of the state.)

ALCIBIADES. Never fear: there is not a sycophant in Attica who would dare to breathe a word against me, for the golden plane-tree of the great king. (See Herodotus, viii. 28.)

HIPPOMACHUS. That plane-tree-

ALCIBIADES. Never mind the plane-tree. Come, Callicles, you were not so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (A sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the greater mysteries.)

CALLICLES. And what part are you to play?

ALCIBIADES. I shall be hierophant. Herald, to your office. Torchbearer, advance with the lights. Come forward, fair novice. We will celebrate the rite within.

[Exeunt.]

...


CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.

No. I. DANTE.

(January 1824.)

"Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet." Milton.

In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to precedency. He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his country. He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited the powers of his native dialect. The Latin tongue, which, under the most favourable circumstances, and in the hands of the greatest masters, had still been poor, feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had deserved in the period of its life and vigour. It was the language of the cabinet, of the university, of the church. It was employed by all who aspired to distinction in the higher walks of poetry. In compassion to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then proclaim his passion in Tuscan or Proven‡al rhymes. The vulgar might occasionally be edified by a pious allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer had conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market-women should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and durable work. Dante adventured first. He detected the rich treasures of thought and diction which still lay latent in their ore. He refined them into purity. He burnished them into splendour. He fitted them for every purpose of use and magnificence. And he has thus acquired the glory, not only of producing the finest narrative poem of modern times but also of creating a language, distinguished by unrivalled melody, and peculiarly capable of furnishing to lofty and passionate thoughts their appropriate garb of severe and concise expression.

To many this may appear a singular panegyric on the Italian tongue. Indeed the great majority of the young gentlemen and young ladies, who, when they are asked whether they read Italian, answer "yes," never go beyond the stories at the end of their grammar,-The Pastor Fido,-or an act of Artaserse. They could as soon read a Babylonian brick as a canto of Dante. Hence it is a general opinion, among those who know little or nothing of the subject, that this admirable language is adapted only to the effeminate cant of sonnetteers, musicians,