And what had he learnt?--learnt heartily to admire, and (we may say) learnt to practise also? A sketch of his first book will show us. What he had gained from his immediate parents we have seen already, and we will make a brief abstract of his other obligations.
From "his governor"--to which of his teachers this name applies we are not sure--he had learnt to avoid factions at the races, to work hard, and to avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise frivolous superstitions, and to practise self-denial; from Apollonius, undeviating steadiness of purpose, endurance of misfortune, and the reception of favours without being humbled by them; from Sextus of Chaeronea (a grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), tolerance of the ignorant, gravity without affectation, and benevolence of heart; from Alexander, delicacy in correcting others; from Severus, "a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hope, and, to believe that I am beloved of my friends;" from Maximus, "sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining;" from Alexander the Platonic, "not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations."
To one or two others his obligations were still more characteristic and important. From Rusticus, for instance, an excellent and able man, whose advice for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt to despise sophistry and display, to write with simplicity, to be easily pacified, to be accurate, and--an inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged the colour of his whole life--to become acquainted with the Discourses of Epictetus. And from his adoptive father, the great Antoninus Pius, he had derived advantages still more considerable. In him he saw the example of a sovereign and statesman firm, self-controlled, modest, faithful, and even tempered; a man who despised flattery and hated meanness; who honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious; who was indifferent to contemptable trifles, and indefatigable in earnest business; one, in short, "who had a perfect and invincible soul," who, like Socrates, "was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without excess." [67] Piety, serenity, sweetness, disregard of empty fame, calmness, simplicity, patience, are virtues which he attributes to him in another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he concludes with the words, "Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience when thy last hour comes as he had."
[67] My quotations from Marcus Aurelius will be made (by permission) from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr. Long. In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted with the purest-and noblest book of antiquity.
He concludes these reminiscenses of thankfulness with a summary of what he owed to the gods. And for what does he thanks the gods? for being wealthy, and noble, and an emperor? Nay, for no vulgar or dubious blessings such as these, but for the guidance which trained him in philosophy, and for the grace which kept him from sin. And here it is that his genuine modesty comes out. As the excellent divine used to say when he saw a criminal led past for execution, "There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford," so, after thanking the gods for the goodness of all his family and relatives, Aurelius says, "Further, I owe it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of them, though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered, might have led me to do something of this kind; but through their favour there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the trial. Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and father who took away all pride from me, and taught me that it was possible to live in a palace without guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues, and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion of a private person, without being either mean in thought or remiss in action; that after having fallen into amatory passions I was cured; that though it was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to help any man, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it;--that I had abundance of good masters for my children: for all these thing require the help of the gods and fortune."
The whole of the Emperor's Meditations deserve the profound study of this age. The self-denial which they display is a rebuke to our ever-growing luxury; their generosity contrasts favourably with the increasing bitterness of our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in God's will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant elevation shames that multitude of little vices, and little meannesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life. But this earlier chapter has also a special value for the young. It offers a picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they could be induced to study. If even under
"That fierce light that beats upon the throne,"
the life of Marcus Aurelius shows no moral stain, it is still more remarkable that the free and beautiful boyhood of this Roman prince had early learnt to recognise only the excellences of his teachers, their patience and firmness, their benevolence and sweetness, their integrity and virtue. Amid the frightful universality of moral corruption he preserved a stainless conscience and a most pure soul; he thanked God in language which breathes the most crystalline delicacy of sentiment and language, that he had preserved uninjured the flower of his early life, and that under the calm influences of his home in the country, and the studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value chastity as the sacred girdle of youth, to be retained and honoured to his latest years. "Surely," says Mr. Carlyle, "a day is coming when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the blush of young human cheeks; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable is the duty laid on every creature in regard to these particulars. Well, if such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye; noble pious valour to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquers, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies, and mendacities will have to run its course till the pit swallow it."