Varia

by Agnes Repplier

In the head of old Silenus!”

This was the verse which New England, and Mother England too, stood ready to applaud. Every era has its cherished virtues, and when the order changes, the wise do well to change with it as speedily as they can. Once there was a jolly old playwright named Cratinus, who died of a broken heart on seeing some Lacedæmonian soldiers fracture a cask of wine, and let it run to waste. He is mentioned kindly by ancient writers, but Peacock is the last man to fling him a word of sympathy. Once there was a time when Chaucer received from England’s king the grant of a pitcher of wine daily in the port of London. What poet or public servant now has, or hopes to have, such mark of royal favor? Once Charles I. gave to Ben Jonson, as poet laureate, one hundred pounds a year, and a tierce of Spanish Canary. No such generous drink comes now from Queen Victoria to lend sparkle and vivacity to Mr. Austin’s verse. Once Dr. Johnson, “the real primate, the soul’s teacher of all England,” says Carlyle, declared roundly and without shocking anybody, “Brandy, sir, is the drink for heroes.” It is not thus that primates and teachers of any land now hearten their wavering disciples. Once the generous publishers of “Marmion” sent Scott a hogshead of fine claret to mark their appreciation of his verse. It is not in this graceful fashion that authors now receive their tokens of good will. The jovial past is dead, quite dead, we keep repeating sternly; yet its merry ghost smiles at us broadly, in no way abashed by our frowns and disapprobation. A friendly ghost it is, haunting the secret chambers of our hearts with laughter instead of groans, and echoes of old songs in place of clanking chains,—a companionable ghost, with brave tales to tell, and jests to ease our pain, a word of wisdom when we have wit to listen, a word of comfort when we have time to heed.

“Troll the bowl, the nut-brown bowl,

And here, kind mate, to thee!

Let’s sing a dirge for Saint Hugh’s soul.

And drown it merrily.”

OLD WINE AND NEW.

Readers of “Old Mortality” will perhaps remember that when Graham of Claverhouse escorts Henry Morton as a prisoner to Edinburgh, he asks that estimable and unfortunate young non-conformist if he has ever read Froissart. Morton, who was probably the last man in Scotland to derive any gratification from the Chronicles, answers that he has not. “I have half a mind to contrive you should have six months’ imprisonment,” says the undaunted Claverhouse, “in order to procure you that pleasure. His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love! Ah, benedicite! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favor or on the other! But truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvelous little sympathy.”

I should like, out of my affection for the Chronicles, to feel that Sir Walter overstated the case when he put these cheerful words into the mouth of Dundee; but it is vain to deny that Froissart, living in a darkened age, was as indifferent to the fate of the rank and file as if he had been a great nineteenth-century general. To be sure, the rank and file were then counted by the hundreds rather than by the thousands, and it took years of continuous warfare to kill as many soldiers as perished in one of our modern battles. Moreover, the illuminating truth that Jack is as good as his master—by help of which we all live now in such striking brotherhood and amity—had not then dawned upon a proud and prejudiced world. Fighting was the grand business of life, and that Jack did not fight as well as his master was a fact equally apparent to those who made history and to those who wrote it. If the English archers, the French men-at-arms, and the Breton lances could be trusted to stand the shock of battle, the “lusty varlets,” who formed the bulk of every army, were sure to run away; and the “commonalty” were always ready to open their gates and deliver up their towns to every fresh new-comer. When Philip of Navarre was entreated to visit Paris, then in a state of tumult and rebellion, and was assured that the merchants and the mob held him in equal affection, he resolutely declined their importunities, concluding that to put his faith in princes was, on the whole, less dangerous than to confide it in the people. “In commonalities,” observed this astute veteran, “there is neither dependence nor union, save in the destruction of all things good.” “What can a base-born man know of honor?” asks Froissart coldly. “His sole wish is to enrich himself. He is like the otter, which, entering a pond, devours all the fish therein.”

Now, if history, as Professor Seeley teaches us, should begin with a maxim and end with a moral, here are maxims and morals in abundance, albeit they may have lost their flavor for an altruistic age. For no one of the sister Muses has lent herself so unreservedly to the demands of an exacting generation as Clio, who, shorn of her splendor, sits spectacled before a dusty table strewn with Acts of Parliament and Acts of Congress, and forgets the glories of the past in the absorbing study of constitutions. She traces painfully the successive steps by which the sovereign power has passed from the king to the nobles, from the nobles to the nation, and from the nation to the mob, and asks herself interesting but fruitless questions as to what is coming next. She has been divorced from literature,—“mere literature,” as Professor Seeley contemptuously phrases it,—and wedded to science, that grim but amorous lord whose harem is tolerably full already, but who lusts perpetually for another bride. If, like Briseis, she looks backward wistfully, she is at once reminded that it is no part of her present duty to furnish recreation to grateful and happy readers, but that her business lies in drawing conclusions from facts already established, and providing a saddened world with wise speculations on political science, based upon historic certainties. Her safest lessons, Professor Seeley tells her warningly, are conveyed in “Blue Books and other statistics,” with which, indeed, no living man can hope to recreate himself; and her essential outgrowths are “political philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political economy, and international law,” a witches’ brew with which few living men would care to meddle. It is even part of his severe discipline to strip her of the fair words and glittering sentences with which her suitors have sought for centuries to enhance her charms, and “for the beauty of drapery to substitute the beauty of the nude figure.” Poor shivering Muse, with whom Shakespeare once dallied, and of whom great Homer sang! Never again shall she be permitted to inspire the genius that enthralls the world. Never again shall “mere literature” carry her name and fame into the remotest corners of the globe. She who once told us in sonorous sentences “how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted,” is now sent into studious retirement, denied the adornments of style, forbidden the companionship of heroes, and requested to occupy herself industriously with Blue Books and the growth of constitutions. I know nothing more significant than Professor Seeley’s warning to modern historians not to resemble Tacitus,—of which there seems but little danger,—unless, indeed, it be the complacency with which a patriotic and very popular American critic congratulates himself and us on the felicity of having plenty of young poets of our own, who do not in the least resemble Wordsworth, or Shelley, or Keats.