'What does it all matter?' she would murmur. 'What if they drink and steal and sin and die? or love and lose and win and die too? And what of me? What of me?—We are all in Eternity. God Himself is in Eternity.'
But she kept the peril close. None of the neighbors, who hailed her on the street or gossiped on the vine-hung porch, ever noticed that often, as she talked, she would clasp her hands with a sudden fierce little gesture, as if she were holding tight to some strong arm, and that in her heart she was whispering, even while the swift crooked smile danced across her lips, 'O God, make me remember! make me remember! We're in Time, now: not in Eternity yet: not in Eternity yet!'
The Greek Genius
By John Jay Chapman
THE teasing perfection of Greek Literature will perhaps excite the world long after modern literature is forgotten. Shakespeare may come to his end and lie down among the Egyptians, but Homer will endure forever. We hate to imagine such an outcome as this, because, while we love Shakespeare, we regard the Greek classics merely with an overwhelmed astonishment. But the fact is that Homer floats in the central stream of History, Shakespeare in an eddy. There is, too, a real difference between ancient and modern art, and the enduring power may be on the side of antiquity.
The classics will always be the playthings of humanity, because they are types of perfection, like crystals. They are pure intellect, like demonstrations in geometry. Within their own limitations they are examples of miracle; and the modern world has nothing to show that resembles them in the least. As no builder has built like the Greeks, so no writer has written like the Greeks. In edge, in delicacy, in proportion, in accuracy of effect, they are as marble to our sandstone. The perfection of the Greek vehicle is what attacks the mind of the modern man and gives him dreams.
What relation these dreams bear to Greek feeling it is impossible to say—probably a very remote and grotesque relation. The scholars who devote their enormous energies to a life-and-death struggle to understand the Greeks always arrive at states of mind which are peculiarly modern. The same thing may be said of the severest types of Biblical scholar. J. B. Strauss, for instance, gave his life to the study of Christ, and, as a result, has left an admirable picture of the German mind of 1850. Goethe, who was on his guard if ever a man could be, was still a little deceived in thinking that the classic spirit could be recovered. He left imitations of Greek literature which are admirable in themselves, and rank among his most characteristic works, yet which bear small resemblance to the originals. The same may be said of Milton and of Racine. The Greeks seem to have used their material, their myths and ideas, with such supernal intellect that they leave this material untouched for the next comer. Their gods persist, their mythology is yours and mine. We accept the toys,—the whole baby-house which has come down to us: we walk in and build our own dramas with their blocks.
What a man thinks of influences him, though he chance to know little about it; and the power which the ancient world has exerted over the modern has not been shown in proportion to the knowledge or scholarship of the modern thinker, but in proportion to his natural force. The Greek tradition, the Greek idea became an element in all subsequent life; and one can no more dig it out and isolate it than one can dig out or isolate a property of the blood. We do not know exactly how much we owe to the Greeks. Keats was inspired by the very idea of them. They were an obsession to Dante, who knew not the language. Their achievements have been pressing in upon the mind of Europe, and enveloping it with an atmospheric appeal, ever since the Dark Ages.