[[5]] In illustration of this position a contrast might be drawn between the policy of Athens in Melos, as set forth by Thucydides in the singular dialogue of the fifth book, and the part assigned to Justice by a writer equally impersonal, grave, and unimpassioned—the author of the Politics—in the recurrence throughout that work of such phrases as "The State which is founded on Justice alone can stand." "Man when perfected (+teleôthén+) is the noblest thing that lives, but separated from justice (+chôristhèn nómou kaì díkês+) the basest of all." "Virtue cannot be the ruin of those who possess it, nor Justice the destruction of a City." The tragedies of Sophocles that are of a later date than 413 B.C. betray an attitude towards political life distinct from that which characterizes his earlier works. The shading-in of the life of the State into that of the individual defies analysis, and it were hazardous to affirm what traits of thought ought to be referred to the genius of the State as distinct from the individual; but it appears as difficult to imagine before Syracuse, the vehement insistence upon Justice, the impassioned idealization which characterize Plato, Socrates, and Demosthenes, as it is difficult after Syracuse to imagine the political temper of a Pericles or an Anaxagoras.
[[6]] The Greek orators and philosophers of the fourth century B.C. had before them a problem not without resemblances to that which confronted the Hebrew prophets of Judaea in the seventh. Even their most speculative writings had a practical end, a goal which they considered attainable by Hellas, or by Athens. The disappearance of Socrates from the Laws, the increased seriousness of the treatment of Sparta and of Crete, the original and paragon of Lacedaemon, may indicate a concession to the prejudices of a generation which had grown up since Aegospotami, and a last effort by Plato to bring his teaching home to the common life of Athens and of Hellas. So in the England of the seventeenth century the political writings of Bacon and Hobbes, of Milton and Harrington, though speculative in form, are most practical in their aims. Hobbes' first literary effort indeed, his version of Thucydides, is planned as a warning to England against civil discord and its ills. This was in 1628—fatal date!
[[7]] The elder Pitt may be regarded as the first great minister of the English people as distinguished from men like Thomas Cromwell, Stratford, or Clarendon, who strictly were ministers of the king. "It rains gold-boxes," Horace Walpole writes when, in April, 1757. Pitt was dismissed, and it was these tokens of his popularity with the merchants of England, not the recognition of his genius by the king, which led to his return to office in June. The events of the period of four years and ten months during which this man was dictator of the House of Commons and of England are so graven on all hearts that a mere enumeration in order of time suffices to recall moving incidents, characters, and scenes of epic grandeur:—December 17th, 1756, Pitt-Devonshire ministry formed, Highland regiments raised, national militia organized. 1757, CLIVE'S victory at Plassey, June 23rd, and conquest of Bengal. 1758, June 3rd, destruction of forts at Cherbourg, three ships of war, 150 privateers burned to the sea-line; November 25th, Fort Duquesne captured; December 29th, conquest of Goree. 1759, "year of victories"; February 16th, POCOCK relieves Madras; May 1st, capture of Guadaloupe; July 4th, R. RODNEY at Havre destroys the flat-bottomed Armada; July 31st, WOLFE'S repulse at Beaufort; August 19th, BOSCAWEN destroys French fleet in Lagos Bay; September 2nd, POCOCK defeats D'Aché; September 9th, WOLFE'S last letter to Pitt; September 13th, 10 a.m., Plains of Abraham and conquest of Canada; November 20th, HAWKE defeats Conflans in Quiberon Bay, "Lay me alongside the French Admiral." 1760, January 22nd, EYRE-COOTE defeats Lally at Wandewash, conquest of Carnatic. 1761, January 16th, English enter Pondicherry; Bellisle citadel reduced, "Quebec over again," June 7th; October 5th, PITT resigns. It is doubtful whether, since the eleventh century and Hildebrand and William the Conqueror, the European stage has been occupied simultaneously by two such men as Chatham and the king of Prussia.
[[8]] The same delight in power, the same glory in dominion, pulsate in the Lusiads and in the dramas of Marlowe, but Marlowe was by far the wider in his intellectual range. Worlds were open to his glance beyond the Indies and Cathay that were shut to Camoens. Yet Camoens is a heroic figure. He found it easy to delineate Vasco da Gama; he had but to speak with his own voice, and utter simply his own heart's desires, hates, musings, and Vasco da Gama's sister would have turned to listen, thinking she heard the accents, the trick, the very manner that betrayed the hero.
[[9]] Burnet is incredibly vain, unredeemed by Boswell's hero-worship; yet his book reflects the medley, the fervour, the vehemence, crimes, hopes of this time. In one sentence nineteen religions are named as co-existing in Scotland.