Читать книгу: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843», страница 4

The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other. It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy—nominally, to be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost wholly exempt from its operation—to be more clearly and more fearfully represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to attain. Yet this effect was transient—the progress of corruption was checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues, and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of historical evidence—a subject on which it is not our present intention to offer any commentary.

To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth, though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no less certainly than the harvest of the present year springs from the grain which is the produce of former harvests. When by a severe and diligent analysis we have ascertained all the ingredients of any phenomenon, and have separated it from all that is foreign and adventitious, we know its true nature, and may deduce a general law from our experiment; for a general law is nothing more than an expression of the effect produced by the same cause operating under the same circumstances. In the reign of Louis XV., a Montmorency was convicted of an atrocious murder. He was punished by a short imprisonment in the Bastile. His servant and accomplice was, for the same offence at the same time, broken alive upon the wheel. Is the proposition, that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, more certain than the ruin of a system under which such a state of things was tolerated? How, then, does it come to pass, that the same people who cling to one set of truths reject the other with obstinate incredulity? Cicero shall account for it:—"Sensus nostros non parens, non nutrix, non poeta, non scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiæ." The discoveries of physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative, agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread—another vote that sixteen shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public credit—proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two and two make four, or using gunpowder instead of water to stop a conflagration. Again, in physical science, the chain which binds the cause to its effect is short, simple, and passes through no region of vapour and obscurity; in moral phenomena, it is long hidden and intertwined with the links of ten thousand other chains, which ramify and cross each other in a confusion which it requires no common patience and sagacity to unravel. Therefore it is that the lessons of history, dearly as they have been purchased, are forgotten and thrown away—therefore it is that nations sow in folly and reap in affliction—that thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed, and commerce fettered by vexatious restrictions, by those who live in one century, without enabling their descendants to become wiser or richer in the next. The death of Charles I. did not prevent the exile of James II., and, in spite of the disasters of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted fortune too often and too long. It is not, then, by the mere knowledge of separate facts that history can contribute to our improvement or our happiness; it would then exchange the character of philosophy treated by examples, for that of sophistry misleading by empiricism. The more systematic the view of human events which it enables us to gain, the more nearly does it approach its real office, and entitle itself to the splendid panegyric of the Roman statesman—"Historia, testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuntia vetustatis."

But while we insist upon the certainty of those truths which a calm examination of history confirms, and the sure operation of those general laws by which Providence in its wisdom has ordained that the affairs of this lower world shall be controlled—let it not be supposed that we for a moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes took such pains to inculcate upon his countrymen, that fortune in human affairs is for a time omnipotent. That fortune, which "erring men call chance," is the name which finite beings must apply to those secret and unknown causes which no human sagacity can penetrate or comprehend. What depends upon a few persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain—had the youthful son of Monsieur De Bouillé not fallen asleep when Louis XVI. entered Varennes—had Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, been stopped by an English cruizer—how different would have been the face of Europe. The poco di piu and poco di meno has, in such contingencies, an unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the wind may chance to blow?

Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a "Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even monstrous—that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual observations, detached hints—from the principles concealed in the intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany—from the manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering Tartar—from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined society—a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.—a work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline—is a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough deplore.

The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable; that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate. What is universally true is alone necessarily true—the knowledge that rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains experience—the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of the "Cierge."

 
"Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie;
Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné
Par sa pure et propre folie,
Il se lança dédans—ce fût mal raisonné,
Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."
 

The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars, while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the realms of practice and experience.

History teems with instances that—although the general course of the human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it exhibits itself appears inevitable—the human race cannot be considered, as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same consequences and subject to the same destiny—no certain laws establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail.

Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions—

 
——"A tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
 

But on the contrary, it is in history that the lessons of morality are delivered with most effect. The priest may provoke our suspicion—the moralist may fail to work in us any practical conviction; but the lessons of history are not such as vanish in the fumes of unprofitable speculation, or which it is possible for us to mistrust, or to deride. Obscure as the dispensations of Providence often are, it sometimes, to use Lord Bacon's language—"pleases God, for the confutation of such as are without God in the world, to write them in such text and capital letters that he who runneth by may read it—that is, mere sensual persons which hasten by God's judgments, and never tend or fix their cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged to discern it." In all historical writers, philosophical or trivial, sacred or profane, from the meagre accounts of the monkish chronicler, no less than from the pages stamped with all the indignant energy of Tacitus, gleams forth the light which, amid surrounding gloom and injustice, amid the apparent triumph of evil, discovers the influence of that power which the heathens personified as Nemesis. Her tread, indeed, is often noiseless—her form may be long invisible—but the moment at length arrives when the measure of forbearance is complete; the echoes of her step vibrate upon the ear, her form bursts upon the eye, and her victim—be it a savage tyrant, or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical church, or a corrupt nation—perishes.

 
"Come quei che va di notte,
Che porta il lume dietro, e a se non giova,
Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte."
 

And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end, and proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated nature, with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed to us in history of that eternal law, by which the affairs of the universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity, does not stop at the threshold of national life—that the moral world is not fatherless, and that man, formed to look before and after, is not abandoned to confusion and insecurity?

Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction—all the various shapes into which man has been cast—all the different scenes in which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price—a vast repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before us—a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious, tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history, that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart, enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor, Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge—"The advancement of God's glory, and the relief of man's estate."

POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER

No. V.
THE VICTORY FEAST

[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender philosophy which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the heroes introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where reminded of Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, there is an under current of sentiment which betrays the thoughtful Northern minstrel. This detracts from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation, but constitutes its very charm as an original composition. Its inspiration rises from a source purely Hellenic, but the streamlets it receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to change the metaphor) it has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the toning down of the colours betrays the German.]

 
The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;
The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,
Richly laden with the spoil,
Are on their lofty barks reclin'd
Along the Hellespontine strand;
A gleesome freight the favouring wind
Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;
And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,
As towards the household altars, now,
Each bark inclines the painted prow—
For Home shall smile again!
 
 
And there the Trojan women, weeping,
Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;
Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping
Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.
No festive sounds that peal along,
Their mournful dirge can overwhelm;
Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song
Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.
"Farewell, beloved shores!" it said,
"From home afar behold us torn,
By foreign lords as captives borne—
Ah, happy are the Dead!"
 
 
And Calchas, while the altars blaze,
Invokes the high gods to their feast!
On Pallas, mighty or to raise
Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest—
And Him, who wreathes around the land
The girdle of his watery world,
And Zeus, from whose almighty hand
The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.
Success at last awards the crown—
The long and weary war is past;
Time's destined circle ends at last—
And fall'n the Mighty Town!
 
 
The Son of Atreus, king of men,
The muster of the hosts survey'd,
How dwindled from the thousands, when
Along Scamander first array'd!
With sorrow and the cloudy thought,
The Great King's stately look grew dim—
Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,
How few to Greece return with him!
Still let the song to gladness call,
For those who yet their home shall greet!—
For them the blooming life is sweet:
Return is not for all!
 
 
Nor all who reach their native land
May long the joy of welcome feel—
Beside the household gods may stand
Grim Murther with awaiting steel;
And they who 'scape the foe, may die
Beneath the foul familiar glaive.
Thus He² to whose prophetic eye
Her light the wise Minerva gave:—
"Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,
The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure—
For woman's guile is deep and sure,
And Falsehood loves the New!"
 
 
The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,
By the best blood of Greece recaptured;
Round that fair form his glowing arms—
(A second bridal)—wreathe enraptured.
"Woe waits the work of evil birth—
Revenge to deeds unblest is given!
For watchful o'er the things of earth,
The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.
Yes, ill shall ever ill repay—
Jove to the impious hands that stain
The Altar of Man's Hearth, again
The doomer's doom shall weigh!"
 
 
"Well they, reserved for joy to day,"
Cried out Oïleus' valiant son,
"May laud the favouring gods who sway
Our earth, their easy thrones upon;
Without a choice they mete our doom,
Our woe or welfare Hazard gives—
Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,
And all unharm'd Thersites lives.
While luck and life to every one
Blind Fate dispenses, well may they
Enjoy the life and luck to day
By whom the prize is won!
 
 
"Yes, war will still devour the best!—
Brother, remember'd in this hour!
His shade should be in feasts a guest,
Whose form was in the strife a tower!
What time our ships the Trojan fired,
Thine arm to Greece the safety gave—
The prize to which thy soul aspired,
The crafty wrested from the brave.³
Peace to thine ever-holy rest—
Not thine to fall before the foe!
Ajax alone laid Ajax low:
Ah—wrath destroys the best!"
 
 
To his dead sire—(the Dorian king)—
The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus⁴ pours the wine:—
"Of every lot that life can bring,
My soul, great Father, prizes thine.
Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,
The highest and the holiest—FAME!
For when the Form in dust shall fall,
O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!
Brave Man, thy light of glory never
Shall fade, while song to man shall last;
The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,
'THE DEAD—ENDURE FOR EVER!'"
 
 
"While silent in their grief and shame,
The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,"
Quoth Tydeus' son, "let Hector's fame,
In me, his foe, its witness raise!
Who, battling for the altar-hearth,
A brave defender, bravely fell—
It takes not from the victor's worth,
If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.
Who falleth for the altar-hearth,
A rock and a defence laid low,
Shall leave behind him, in the foe,
The lips that speak his worth!"
 
 
Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age
Through threefold lives of mortals lives!—
The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage
To Hector's tearful mother gives.
"Drink—in the draught new strength is glowing,
The grief it bathes forgets the smart!
O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,
Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!
Drink—in the draught new vigour gloweth,
The grief it bathes forgets the smart—
And balsam to the breaking heart,
The healing god bestoweth.
 
 
"As Niobe, when weeping mute,
To angry gods the scorn and prey,
But tasted of the charmed fruit,
And cast despair itself away;
So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
This stream of life enchanted flows,
Remember'd grief, that stung before,
Sinks down to Lethè's calm repose.
So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
The stream of life enchanted flows—
Drown'd deep in Lethè's calm repose,
The grief that stung before!"
 
 
Seized by the god—behold the dark
And dreaming Prophetess⁵ arise!
She gazes from the lofty bark,
Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies—
"A vapour, all of human birth!
As mists ascending, seen and gone,
So fade earth's great ones from the earth,
And leave the changeless gods alone!
Behind the steed that skirs away,
Or on the galley's deck—sits Care!
To-morrow comes—and Life is where?
At least—we'll live to-day!"