The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8, Edited by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of the Lives of More Than 200 of the Most Prominent Personages in History Editor: Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne Release Date: May 30, 2009 [eBook #28997] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN, VOL. 7 OF 8*** E-text prepared by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/greatmenfamouswo07hornuoft Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Hyphenation and accentuation have been made consistent. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been retained. Page 185, the date of the death of Rev. Tennyson is 1831, not 1811 as written in the book. THE FIRST MEETING OF DANTE AND BEATRICE. GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY. VOL. VII. Copyright, 1894, by SELMAR HESS EDITED BY CHARLES F. HORNE New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess. CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII. SUBJECT ROBERT BROWNING, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, JOHN BUNYAN, ROBERT BURNS, THOMAS CARLYLE, Letter from Carlyle on the "Choice of a Profession," CERVANTES, THOMAS CHATTERTON, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, DANTE, DANIEL DE FOE, AUTHOR PAGE 191 Richard Henry Stoddard, 148 John Greenleaf Whittier, 66 Will Carleton, 112 W. Wallace, 154 161 Joseph Forster, 39 Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston, 107 Alice King, 29 President Charles F. Thwing, 144 Archdeacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., 19 Clark Russell, 72 CHARLES DICKENS, RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Letter from Emerson to his child on the subject of "Health," GOETHE, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, HOMER, HORACE, VICTOR HUGO, WASHINGTON IRVING, SAMUEL JOHNSON, HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, JOHN MILTON, MOLIÉRE, PETRARCH, PLATO, ALEXANDER POPE, SCHILLER, SIR WALTER SCOTT, Letter of advice from Scott to his son, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, DEAN SWIFT, TORQUATO TASSO, ALFRED TENNYSON, VIRGIL, VOLTAIRE, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VII. PHOTOGRAVURES ILLUSTRATION ARTIST To face page THE FIRST MEETING OF DANTE AND BEATRICE, Henry Holiday Frontispiece PETRARCH AND LAURA INTRODUCED TO THE EMPEROR AT AVIGNON, Vacslav Brozik 28 A DINNER AT THE HOUSE OF MOLIÈRE AT AUTEUIL, Georges-Gaston Mélingue 58 THE ARREST OF VOLTAIRE AND HIS NIECE BY FREDERICK'S ORDER, Jules Girardet 96 VICTOR HUGO, From life 162 LONGFELLOW'S STUDY, From photograph 178 WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES HOMER RECITING THE ILIAD. J. Coomans 6 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS, Raphael 10 OCTAVIA OVERCOME BY VIRGIL'S VERSES, Jean Ingres 14 VIRGIL, HORACE, AND VARIUS AT THE HOUSE OF MÆCENAS, Ch. F. Jalabert 18 CHAUCER AND THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS, Corbould 32 TASSO AND THE TWO ELEANORS, F. Barth 36 Walter Besant, 186 Moncure D. Conway, 166 173 Rev. Edward Everett Hale, 122 Francis H. Underwood, 196 William Ewart Gladstone, 1 J. W. Mackail, 16 Margaret O. W. Oliphant, 161 140 Lord Macaulay, 99 Hezekiah Butterworth, 174 60 Sir Walter Scott, 50 Alice King, 25 George Grote, F.R.S., 7 Austin Dobson, 82 B. L. Farjeon, 116 W. C. Taylor, LL.D., 130 135 Senator John J. Ingalls, 44 Samuel Archer, 77 34 Clarence Cook, 182 12 M. C. Lockwood, D.D., 92 136 Homer. SHAKESPEARE ARRESTED FOR DEER-STEALING, J. Schrader 46 OLIVER CROMWELL VISITS JOHN MILTON, David Neal 62 DE FOE IN THE PILLORY, Eyre Crowe 74 DR. JOHNSON'S PENANCE, Adrian Stokes 100 THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON, THE YOUNG POET H. Wallis 110 BURNS AND HIGHLAND MARY, 114 SCHILLER PRESENTED TO THE PRINCESS OF SAXE-WEIMAR, Mes 120 GOETHE AND FREDERIKE, Hermann Kaulbach 124 SIR WALTER SCOTT AT ABBOTSFORD, Sir William Allan 134 CARLYLE AT CHELSEA, Mrs. Allingham 158 TENNYSON IN HIS LIBRARY, Roberts 184 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS Art is the child of nature; yes, Her darling child in whom we trace The features of the mother's face, Her aspect and her attitude. —LONGFELLOW HOMER By William Ewart Gladstone (ABOUT 1000 B.C.) The poems of Homer differ from all other known poetry in this, that they constitute in themselves an encyclopædia of life and knowledge at a time when knowledge, indeed, such as lies beyond the bounds of actual experience, was extremely limited, but when life was singularly fresh, vivid, and expansive. The only poems of Homer we possess are the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for the Homeric hymns and other productions lose all title to stand in line with these wonderful works, by reason of conflict in a multitude of particulars with the witness of the text, as well as of their poetical inferiority. They evidently belong to the period that follows the great migration into Asia Minor, brought about by the Dorian conquest. The dictum of Herodotus, which places the date of Homer four hundred years before his own, therefore in the ninth century B.C., was little better than mere conjecture. Common opinion has certainly presumed him to be posterior to the Dorian conquest. The "Hymn to Apollo," however, which was the main prop of this opinion, is assuredly not his. In a work which attempts to turn recent discovery to account, I have contended that the fall of Troy cannot properly be brought lower than about 1250 B.C., and that Homer may probably have lived within fifty years of it. The entire presentation of life and character in the two poems is distinct from, and manifestly anterior to, anything made known to us in Greece under and after that conquest. The study of Homer has been darkened and enfeebled by thrusting backward into it a vast mass of matter belonging to these later periods, and even to the Roman civilization, which was different in spirit and which entirely lost sight of the true position of Greeks and Trojans and inverted their moral as well as their martial relations. The name of Greeks is a Roman name; the people to whom Homer has given immortal fame are Achaians, both in designation and in manners. The poet paints them at a time when the spirit of national life was rising within their borders. Its first efforts had been seen in the expeditions of Achaian natives to conquer the Asiatic or Egyptian immigrants who had, under the name of Cadmeians (etymologically, "foreigners"), founded Thebes in Bœotia, and in the voyage of the ship Argo to Colchis, which was probably the seat of a colony sprung from the Egyptian empire, and was therefore regarded as hostile in memory of the antecedent aggressions of that empire. The expedition against Troy was the beginning of the long chain of conflicts between Europe and Asia, which end with the Turkish conquests and with the reaction of the last three hundred years, and especially of the nineteenth century, against them. It represents an effort truly enormous toward attaining nationality in idea and in practice. Clearing away obstructions, of which the cause has been partially indicated, we must next observe that the text of Homer was never studied by the moderns as a whole in a searching manner until within the last two generations. From the time of Wolf there was infinite controversy about the works and the authorship, with little positive result, except the establishment of the fact that they were not written but handed down by memory, an operation aided and methodized by the high position of bards as such in Greece (more properly Achaia, and afterward Hellas), by the formation of a separate school to hand down these particular songs, and by the great institution of the Games at a variety of points in the country. At these centres there were public recitations even before the poems were composed, and the uncertainties of individual memory were limited and corrected by competition carried on in a presence of a people eminently endowed with the literary faculty, and by the vast national importance of handing down faithfully a record which was the chief authority touching the religion, history, political divisions, and manners of the country. Many diversities of text arose, but there was thus a continual operation, a corrective as well as a disintegrating process. The Germans, who had long been occupied in framing careful monographs which contracted the contents of the Homeric text on many particulars, such as the Ship, the House, and so forth, have at length supplied, in the work of Dr. E. Buchholz, a full and methodical account of the contents of the text. This work would fill in English not less than six octavo volumes. The Greeks called the poet poietes, the "maker," and never was there such a maker as Homer. The work, not exclusively, but yet pre-eminently his, was the making of a language, a religion, and a nation. The last named of these was his dominant idea, and to it all his methods may be referred. Of the first he may have been little conscious while he wrought in his office as a bard, which was to give delight. Careful observation of the text exhibits three powerful factors which contribute to the composition of the nation. First, the Pelasgic name is associated with the mass of the people, cultivators of the soil in the Greek peninsula and elsewhere, though not as their uniform designation, for in Crete (for example) they appear in conjunction with Achaians and Dorians, representatives of a higher stock, and with Eteocretans, who were probably anterior occupants. This Pelasgian name commands the sympathy of the poet and his laudatory epithets; but is nowhere used for the higher class or for the entire nation. The other factors take the command. The Achaians are properly the ruling class, and justify their station by their capacity. But there is a third factor also of great power. We know from the Egyptian monuments that Greece had been within the sway of that primitive empire, and that the Phœnicians were its maritime arm, as they were also the universal and apparently exclusive navigators of the Mediterranean. Whatever came over sea to the Achaian land came in connection with the Phœnician name, which was used by Homer in a manner analogous to the use of the word Frank in the Levant during modern times. But as Egyptian and Assyrian knowledge is gradually opened up to us we learn by degrees that Phœnicia conveyed to Greece Egyptian and Assyrian elements together with her own. The rich materials of the Greek civilization can almost all be traced to this medium of conveyance from the East and South. Great families which stand in this association were founded in Greece and left their mark upon the country. It is probable that they may have exercised in the first instance a power delegated from Egypt, which they retained after her influence had passed away. Building, metal- working, navigation, ornamental arts, natural knowledge, all carry the Phœnician impress. This is the third of the great factors which were combined and evolved in the wonderful nationality of Greece, a power as vividly felt at this hour as it was three thousand years ago. But if Phœnicia conveyed the seed, the soil was Achaian, and on account of its richness that peninsula surpassed, in its developments of human nature and action, the southern and eastern growths. An Achaian civilization was the result, full of freshness and power, in which usage had a great sacredness, religion was a moral spring of no mean force, slavery though it existed was not associated with cruelty, the worst extremes of sin had no place in the life of the people, liberty had an informal but very real place in public institutions, and manners reached to much refinement; while on the other hand, fierce passion was not abated by conventional restraints, slaughter and bondage were the usual results of war, the idea of property was but very partially defined, and though there were strong indeterminate sentiments of right there is no word in Homer signifying law. Upon the whole, though a very imperfect, it was a wonderful and noble nursery of manhood. It seems clear that this first civilization of the peninsula was sadly devastated by the rude hands of the Dorian conquest. Institutions like those of Lycurgus could not have been grafted upon the Homeric manners; and centuries elapsed before there emerged from the political ruin a state of things favorable to refinement and to progress in the Greece of history; which though in so many respects of an unequalled splendor, yet had a less firm hold than the Achaian time upon some of the highest social and moral ideas. For example, the position of women had greatly declined, liberty was perhaps less largely conceived, and the tie between religion and morality was more evidently sundered. After this sketch of the national existence which Homer described, and to the consolidation of which he powerfully ministered, let us revert to the state in which he found and left the elements of a national religion. A close observation of the poems pretty clearly shows us that the three races which combined to form the nation had each of them their distinct religious traditions. It is also plain enough that with this diversity there had been antagonism. As sources illustrative of these propositions which lie at the base of all true comprehension of the religion—which may be called Olympian from its central seat—I will point to the numerous signs of a system of nature-worship as prevailing among the Pelasgian masses; to the alliance in the war between the nature-powers and the Trojans as against the loftier Hellenic mythology; to the legend in Iliad, i., 396-412, of the great war in heaven, which symbolically describes the collision on earth between the ideas which were locally older and those beginning to surmount them; and, finally, to the traditions extraneous to the poems of competitions between different deities for the local allegiance of the people at different spots, such as Corinth, to which Phoenician influence had brought the Poseidon-worship before Homer's time, and Athens, which somewhat later became peculiarly the seat of mixed races. I have spoken of nature-worship as the Pelasgian contribution to the composite Olympian religion. In the Phœnician share we find, as might be expected, both Assyrian and Egyptian elements. The best indication we possess of the Hellenic function is that given by the remarkable prayer of Achilles to Zeus in Iliad, xvi., 233-248. This prayer on the sending forth of Patroclus is the hinge of the whole action of the poem, and is preceded by a long introduction (220-232) such as we nowhere else find. The tone is monotheistic; no partnership of gods appears in it; and the immediate servants of Zeus are described as interpreters, not as priests. From several indications it may be gathered that the Hellenic system was less priestly than the Troic. It seems to have been an especial office of Homer to harmonize and combine these diverse elements, and his Thearchy is as remarkable a work of art as the terrestrial machinery of the poem. He has profoundly impressed upon it the human likeness often called anthropomorphic, and which supplied the basis of Greek art. He has repelled on all sides from his classical and central system the cult of nature and of animals, but it is probable that they kept their place in the local worships of the country. His Zeus is to a considerable extent a monarch, while Poseidon and several other deities bear evident marks of having had no superior at earlier epochs or in the countries of their origin. He arranges them partly as a family, partly as a commonwealth. The gods properly Olympian correspond with the Boulê or council upon earth, while the orders of less exalted spirits are only summoned on great occasions. He indicates twenty as the number of Olympian gods proper, following in this the Assyrian idea. But they were far from holding an equal place in his estimation. For a deity such as Aphrodite brought from the East, and intensely tainted with sensual passions, he indicates aversion and contempt. But for Apollo, whose cardinal idea is that of obedience to Zeus, and for Athene, who represents a profound working wisdom that never fails of its end, he has a deep reverence. He assorts and distributes religious traditions with reference to the great ends he had to pursue; carefully, for example, separating Apollo from the sun, with which he bears marks of having been in other systems identified. Of his other greater gods it may be said that the dominant idea is in Zeus policy, in Here nationality, and in Poseidon physical force. His Trinity, which is conventional, and his Under-world appear to be borrowed from Assyria, and in some degree from Egypt. One licentious legend appears in Olympus, but this belongs to the Odyssey, and to a Phœnician, not a Hellenic, circle of ideas. His Olympian assembly is, indeed, largely representative of human appetites, tastes, and passions; but in the government of the world it works as a body on behalf of justice, and the suppliant and the stranger are peculiarly objects of the care of Zeus. Accordingly, we find that the cause which is to triumph in the Trojan war is the just cause; that in the Odyssey the hero is led through suffering to peace and prosperity, and that the terrible retribution he inflicts has been merited by crime. At various points of the system we trace the higher traditions of religion, and on passing down to the classical period we find that the course of the mythology has been a downward course. The Troic as compared with the Achaian manners are to a great extent what we should now call Asiatic as distinguished from European. Of the great chieftains, Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Menelaos, and Patroclus appear chiefly to exhibit the Achaian ideal of humanity; Achilles, especially, and on a colossal scale. Odysseus, the many-sided man, has a strong Phœnician tinge, though the dominant color continues to be Greek. And in his house we find exhibited one of the noblest among the characteristics of the poems in the sanctity and perpetuity of marriage. Indeed, the purity and loyalty of Penelope are, like the humility approaching to penitence of Helen, quite unmatched in antiquity. The plot of the Iliad has been the subject of much criticism, on account of the long absence of Achilles, the hero, from the action of the poem. But Homer had to bring out Achaian character in its various forms, and while the vastness of Achilles is on the stage, every other Achaian hero must be eclipsed. Further, Homer was an itinerant minstrel, who had to adapt himself to the sympathies and traditions of the different portions of the country. Peloponnesus was the seat of power, and its chiefs acquired a prominent position in the Iliad by what on the grounds we may deem a skilful arrangement. But most skilful of all is the fine adjustment of the balance as between Greek and Trojan warriors. It will be found on close inspection of details that the Achaian chieftains have in truth a vast military superiority; yet by the use of infinite art, Homer has contrived that the Trojans shall play the part of serious and considerable antagonists, so far that with divine aid and connivance they reduce the foe to the point at which the intervention of Achilles becomes necessary for their deliverance, and his supremacy as an exhibition of colossal manhood is thoroughly maintained. The plot of the Odyssey is admitted to be consecutive and regular in structure. There are certain differences in the mythology which have been made a ground for supposing a separate authorship. But, in the first place, this would do nothing to explain them; in the second, they find their natural explanation in observing that the scene of the wanderings is laid in other lands, beyond the circle of Achaian knowledge and tradition, and that Homer modifies his scheme to meet the ethnical variations as he gathered them from the trading navigators of Phœnicia, who alone could have supplied him with the information required for his purpose. That information was probably colored more or less by ignorance and by fraud. But we can trace in it the sketch of an imaginary voyage to the northern regions of Europe, and it has some remarkable features of internal evidence, supported by the facts, and thus pointing to its genuineness. In latitudes not described as separate we have reports of the solar day apparently contradictory. In one case there is hardly any night, so that the shepherd might earn double wages. In the other, cloud and darkness almost shut out the day. But we now know both of these statements to have a basis of solid truth on the Norwegian coast to the northward, at the different seasons of the midnight sun in summer, and of Christmas, when it is not easy to read at noon. HOMER RECITING THE ILIAD. The value of Homer as a recorder of antiquity, as opening a large and distinct chapter of primitive knowledge, is only now coming by degrees into view, as the text is more carefully examined and its parts compared, and as other branches of ancient study are developed, especially as in Assyria and Egypt, and by the remarkable discoveries of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik and in Greece. But the appreciation of him as a poet has never failed, though it is disappointing to find that a man so great as Aristophanes should describe him simply as the bard of battles, and sad to think that in many of the Christian centuries his works should have slumbered without notice in hidden repositories. His place among the greatest poets of the world, whom no one supposes to be more than three or four in number, has never been questioned. Considering him as anterior to all literary aids and training, he is the most remarkable phenomenon among them all. It may be well to specify some of the points that are peculiarly his own. One of them is the great simplicity of the structure of his mind. With an incomparable eye for the world around him in all things, great and small, he is abhorrent of everything speculative and abstract, and what may be called philosophies have no place in his works, almost the solitary exception being that he employs thought as an illustration of the rapidity of the journey of a deity. He is, accordingly, of all poets the most simple and direct. He is also the most free and genial in the movement of his verse; grateful nature seems to give to him spontaneously the perfection to which great men like Virgil and Milton had to attain only by effort intense and sustained. In the high office of drawing human character in its multitude of forms and colors he seems to have no serious rival except Shakespeare. We call him an epic poet, but he is instinct from beginning to end with the spirit of the drama, while we find in him the seeds and rudiments even of its form. His function as a reciting minstrel greatly aided him herein. Again, he had in his language an instrument unrivalled for its facility, suppleness, and versatility, for the large range of what would in music be called its register, so that it embraced every form and degree of human thought, feeling, and emotion, and clothed them all, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the slightest to the most intense and concentrated, in the dress of exactly appropriate style and language. His metre also is a perfect vehicle of the language. If we think the range of his knowledge limited, yet it was all that his country and his age possessed, and it was very greatly more than has been supposed by readers that dwelt only on the surface. So long as the lamp of civilization shall not have ceased to burn, the Iliad and the Odyssey must hold their forward place among the brightest treasures of our race.[Back to Contents] PLATO Extracts from "Plato," by George Grote, F.R.S. (427-347 B.C.) Plato. Of Plato's biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato's life composed by his companion and disciple, Xenocrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proclus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity, and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him, yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a considerable proportion is poorly attested. Plato was born at Ægina (in which island his father enjoyed an estate as clêrouch or out-settled citizen) in the month Thargelion (May), of the year B.C. 427. His family, belonging to the Dême Collytus, was both ancient and noble, in the sense attached to that word at Athens. He was son of Ariston (or, according to some admirers, of the God Apollo) and Perictionê; his maternal ancestors had been intimate friends or relatives of the law-giver Solon, while his father belonged to a gens tracing its descent from Codrus, and even from the God Poseidon. He was also nearly related to Charmides and to Critias—this last the well-known and violent leader among the oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants. Plato was first called Aristoclês, after his grandfather, but received when he grew up the name of Plato, on account of the breadth (we are told) either of his forehead or of his shoulders. Endowed with a robust physical frame, and exercised in gymnastics, not merely in one of the palæstræ of Athens (which he describes graphically in the Charmides), but also under an Argeian trainer, he attained such force and skill as to contend (if we may credit Dicæarchus) for the prize of wrestling among boys at the Isthmian festival. His literary training was commenced under a schoolmaster named Dionysius, and pursued under Draco, a celebrated teacher of music in the large sense then attached to that word. He is said to have displayed both diligence and remarkable quickness of apprehension, combined too with the utmost gravity and modesty. He not only acquired great familiarity with the poets, but composed poetry of his own—dithyrambic, lyric, and tragic; and he is even reported to have prepared a tragic tetralogy, with the view of competing for victory at the Dionysian festival. We are told that he burned these poems, when he attached himself to the society of Socrates. No compositions in verse remain under his name, except a few epigrams—amatory, affectionate, and of great poetical beauty. But there is ample proof in his dialogues that the cast of his mind was essentially poetical. Many of his philosophical speculations are nearly allied to poetry and acquire their hold upon the mind rather through imagination and sentiment than through reason or evidence. According to Diogenes (who on this point does not cite his authority), it was about the twentieth year of Plato's age (407 B.C.) that his acquaintance with Socrates began. It may possibly have begun earlier, but certainly not later, since at the time of the conversation (related by Xenophon) between Socrates and Plato's younger brother Glaucon, there was already a friendship established between Socrates and Plato; and that time can hardly be later than 406 B.C., or the beginning of 405 B.C. From 406 B.C. down to 399 B.C., when Socrates was tried and condemned, Plato seems to have remained in friendly relation and society with him, a relation perhaps interrupted during the severe political struggles between 405 B.C. and 403 B.C., but revived and strengthened after the restoration of the democracy in the last-mentioned year. Whether Plato ever spoke with success in the public assembly we do not know; he is said to have been shy by nature, and his voice was thin and feeble, ill adapted for the Pnyx. However, when the oligarchy of Thirty was established, after the capture and subjugation of Athens, Plato was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising into political influence, through Critias (his near relative) and Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato affirms that he had always disapproved the antecedent democracy, and that he entered on the new scheme of government with full hope of seeing justice and wisdom predominant He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, filling him with disappointment and disgust. He was especially revolted by their treatment of Socrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing his habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to implicate in nefarious murders, by ordering him along with others to arrest Leon the Salaminian, one of their intended victims; an order which Socrates, at the peril of his life, disobeyed. Thus mortified and disappointed, Plato withdrew from public functions. What part he took in the struggle between the oligarchy and its democratical assailants under Thrasybulus we are not informed. But when the democracy was re-established his political ambition revived and he again sought to acquire some active influence on public affairs. Now, however, the circumstances had become highly unfavorable to him. The name of his deceased relative, Critias, was generally abhorred, and he had no powerful partisans among the popular leaders. With such disadvantages, with anti-democratical sentiments, and with a thin voice, we cannot wonder that Plato soon found public life repulsive, though he admits the remarkable moderation displayed by the restored Demos. His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Socrates (399 B.C.) four years after the renewal of the democracy. At that moment doubtless the Socratic men or companions were unpopular in a body. Plato, after having yielded his best sympathy and aid at the trial of Socrates, retired along with several others of them to Megara. He made up his mind that for a man of his views and opinions it was not only unprofitable, but also unsafe, to embark in active public life, either at Athens or in any other Grecian city. He resolved to devote himself to philosophical speculation and to abstain from practical politics, unless fortune should present to him some exceptional case of a city prepared to welcome and obey a renovator upon exalted principles. At Megara Plato passed some time with the Megarian Eucleides, his fellow-disciple in the society of Socrates and the founder of what is termed the Megaric school of philosophers. He next visited Cyrênê, where he is said to have become acquainted with the geometrician Theodôrus and to have studied geometry under him. From Cyrênê he proceeded to Egypt, interesting himself much in the antiquities of the country as well as in the conversation of the priests. In or about 394 B.C., if we may trust the statement of Aristoxenus about the military service of Plato at Corinth, he was again at Athens. He afterward went to Italy and Sicily, seeking the society of the Pythagorean philosophers, Archytas, Echecrates, Timæus, etc., at Tarentum and Locri, and visiting the volcanic manifestations of Ætna. It appears that his first visit to Sicily was made when he was about forty years of age, which would be 387 B.C. Here he made acquaintance with the youthful Dion, over whom he acquired great intellectual ascendancy. By Dion Plato was prevailed upon to visit the elder Dionysius at Syracuse; but that despot, offended by the free spirit of his conversation and admonitions, dismissed him with displeasure, and even caused him to be sold into slavery at Ægina on his voyage home. Though really sold, however, Plato was speedily ransomed by friends. After farther incurring some risk of his life as an Athenian citizen, in consequence of the hostile feelings of the Æginetans, he was conveyed away safely to Athens, about 386 B.C. It was at this period, about 386 B.C., that the continuous and formal public teaching of Plato, constituting as it does so great an epoch in philosophy, commenced. But I see no ground for believing, as many authors assume, that he was absent from Athens during the entire interval between 399-386 B.C. The spot selected by Plato for his lectures or teaching was a garden adjoining the precinct sacred to the hero Hecadêmus or Acedêmus, distant from the gate of Athens called Dipylon somewhat less than a mile, on the road to Eleusis, toward the north. In this precinct there were both walks, shaded by trees, and a gymnasium for bodily exercise; close adjoining, Plato either inherited or acquired a small dwelling-house and garden, his own private property. Here, under the name of the Academy, was founded the earliest of those schools of philosophy, which continued for centuries forward to guide and stimulate the speculative minds of Greece and Rome. We have scarce any particulars respecting the growth of the School of Athens from this time to the death of Plato, in 347 B.C. We only know generally that his fame as a lecturer became eminent and widely diffused; that among his numerous pupils were included Speusippus, Xenocrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Lycurgus, etc.; that he was admired and consulted by Perdiccas in Macedonia, and Dionysius at Syracuse; that he was also visited by listeners and pupils from all parts of Greece. It was in the year 367-366 that Plato was induced, by the earnest entreaties of Dion, to go from Athens to Syracuse, on a visit to the younger Dionysius, who had just become despot, succeeding to his father of the same name. Dionysius II., then very young, had manifested some disposition toward philosophy and prodigious admiration for Plato, who was encouraged by Dion to hope that he would have influence enough to bring about an amendment or thorough reform of the government at Syracuse. This ill-starred visit, with its momentous sequel, has been described in my "History of Greece." It not only failed completely, but made matters worse rather than better; Dionysius became violently alienated from Dion and sent him into exile. Though turning a deaf ear to Plato's recommendations, he nevertheless liked his conversation, treated him with great respect, detained him for some time at Syracuse, and was prevailed upon, only by the philosopher's earnest entreaties, to send him home. Yet in spite of such uncomfortable experience, Plato was induced, after a certain interval, again to leave Athens and pay a second visit to Dionysius, mainly in hopes of procuring the restoration of Dion. In this hope, too, he was disappointed, and was glad to return, after a longer stay than he wished, to Athens. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. The visits of Plato to Dionysius were much censured and his motives misrepresented by unfriendly critics, and these reproaches were still further embittered by the entire failure of his hopes. The closing years of his long life were saddened by the disastrous turn of events at Syracuse, aggravated by the discreditable abuse of power and violent death of his intimate friend, Dion, which brought dishonor both upon himself and upon the Academy. Nevertheless, he lived to the age of eighty, and died in 348-347 B.C., leaving a competent property, which he bequeathed by a will still extant. But his foundation, the Academy, did not die with him. It passed to his nephew Speusippus, who succeeded him as teacher, conductor of the school, or scholarch, and was himself succeeded after eight years by Xenocrates of Chalcêdon; while another pupil of the Academy, Aristotle, after an absence of some years from Athens, returned thither and established a school of his own at the Lyceum, at another extremity of the city. Virgil. The latter half of Plato's life in his native city must have been one of dignity and consideration, though not of any political activity. He is said to have addressed the Dicastery as an advocate for the accused general Chabrias; and we are told that he discharged the expensive and showy functions of Chôregus with funds supplied by Dion. Out of Athens also his reputation was very great. When he went to the Olympic festival of B.C. 360 he was an object of conspicuous attention and respect; he was visited by hearers, young men of rank and ambition, from the most distant Hellenic cities. Such is the sum of our information respecting Plato. Scanty as it is we have not even the advantage of contemporary authority for any portion of it. We have no description of Plato from any contemporary author, friendly or adverse. It will be seen that after the death of Socrates we know nothing about Plato as a man and a citizen, except the little which can be learned from his few epistles, all written when he was very old and relating almost entirely to his peculiar relations with Dion and Dionysius. His dialogues, when we try to interpret them collectively, and gather from them general results as to the character and purposes of the author, suggest valuable arguments and perplexing doubts, but yield few solutions. In no one of the dialogues does Plato address us in his own person. In the Apology alone (which is not a dialogue) is he alluded to even as present; in the Phædon he is mentioned as absent from illness. Each of the dialogues, direct or indirect, is conducted from beginning to end by the persons whom he introduces. Not one of the dialogues affords any positive internal evidence showing the date of its composition. In a few there are allusions to prove that they must have been composed at a period later than others, or later than some given event of known date; but nothing more can be positively established. Nor is there any good extraneous testimony to determine the date of any one among them; for the remark ascribed to Socrates about the dialogue called Lysis (which remark, if authentic, would prove the dialogue to have been composed during the lifetime of Socrates) appears altogether untrustworthy. And the statement of some critics, that the Phædrus was Plato's earliest composition, is clearly nothing more than an inference (doubtful at best, and in my judgment erroneous) from its dithyrambic style and erotic subject.[Back to Contents] VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.) Next to Homer on the roll of the world's epic poets stands the name of Virgil. Acknowledged by all as the greatest of Roman poets, he entered, as no other Roman writer did, into Christian history and mediæval legend. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, professed to have been converted by the perusal of one of Virgil's "Eclogues," and Dante owned him as his master and model, and his guide through all the circles of the other world, while Italian tradition still regards him a great necromancer, a prophet, and a worker of miracles. From the date of his death till to-day, in every country, his works have been among the commonest of school-books, and editions, commentaries and translations are countless. Publius Vergilius Maro—for the manuscripts and inscriptions of antiquity spell his name Vergilius, not Virgilius, as is customary—was born near the present city of Mantua, in Upper Italy, in the year 70 B.C., at a little village called Andes, which has been identified with the modern Italian hamlet of Pietola. At the time of his birth this region was not included in the term "Italy," but was a part of Cisalpine Gaul, where the inhabitants did not obtain Roman citizenship till the year B.C. 49. Thus the writer whose greatest work is devoted to immortalizing the glories of Rome and the deeds of its founder, was not a Roman by birth, and was over twenty before he became a citizen. His father seems to have been in possession of a small property at Andes which he cultivated himself, and where the poet acquired his love for nature, and the intimate practical acquaintance with farm labors and farm management, which he used so effectively in his most carefully polished work, his "Georgics." His first education was received at the town of Cremona, and the larger city of Milan, and he was at the former place in his sixteenth year on the day when the poet Lucretius died. Greek in those days was not only the language of poetry and philosophy, but the language of polite society and commercial usage. It was the common medium of communication throughout the Roman world, and a knowledge of it was indispensable. Hence, after studying his native language in Northern Italy, Virgil was sent to Naples, a city founded by Greeks, and possessing a large Greek population. Here he studied under Parthenius for some time, and then proceeded to Rome, where he had as his instructor, Syron, a member of the Epicurean school, of whose doctrines Virgil's poems bear some traces. Rome, however, offered no career to a youth who was not yet a citizen, and Virgil seems to have returned to his paternal farm, and there probably he composed some of his smaller pieces, which bear marks of juvenile taste. Among those that have been assigned to this early part of his life, is one of considerable interest to Americans, for in it occurs our national motto, "E pluribus unum." The short poem—it consists of only one hundred and twenty-three lines—describes how a negro serving-woman makes a dish called Moretum, a kind of salad, in which various herbs are blended with oil and vinegar, till "out of many one united whole" is produced. To the same period critics have assigned his poem on a "Mosquito," and some epigrams in various metres. The home in the country had, however, soon to experience, like thousands of others, a sad change. The battle of Philippi took place, and Marc Antony and Octavius Cæsar, the future emperor, known to later ages as Augustus, were masters of the world. We have no hints that Virgil had been, like Horace, engaged in the civil war in a military or any other capacity, or that his father had taken any part in the struggle, but the country in which his property lay was marked out for confiscation. The city of Cremona had strongly sympathized with the cause of Brutus and the republic, and in consequence, the doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils," having a very practical application in those days, its territory was seized and divided among the victorious soldiers, and with it was taken part of the territory of its neighbor, Mantua, including Virgil's little farm. According to report the new occupier was an old soldier, named Claudius, and it was added that by the advice of Asinius Pollio, the governor of the province, Virgil applied to the young Octavius for restitution of the property. The request was granted, and Virgil, in gratitude, wrote his first "Eclogue," to commemorate the generosity of the emperor. These facts, if at all true, indicate that the young poet had already become favorably known to men of high position and great influence. Pollio was eminent not only as a soldier and statesman who played an important part in politics, but as an orator, a poet, and an historian, and above all as an encourager of literature. It was a fortunate day when a governor of such power to aid, and such taste to recognize talent, discovered the young poet of Andes, and saved him from a life of struggling poverty. Virgil's health was always feeble, and his temper seems to have been rather melancholy; he had had little experience of life except in his remote country town, and would, we may plausibly conjecture, have succumbed in a contest from which the more worldly-wise Horace emerged in triumph. Pollio remained a steadfast friend, and Augustus and Mæcenas took him under their protection. He was on terms of close intimacy with the latter, and introduced Horace to that great minister and patron of letters. The two poets were close friends, and Horace mentions Virgil as being in the party which accompanied Mæcenas from Rome to Brundisium about the year 41 B.C. Between 41 B.C. and 37 B.C., he composed, as already stated, his "Eclogues" or "Bucolics." In these idylls we find many simple and natural touches, great beauty of metre and language, and numerous allusions to the persons and circumstances of the time. The fourth of these ten short poems is dedicated to Pollio, and is to be noted as the one quoted by Constantine as leading to his conversion to Christianity. "It is bucolic only in name, it is allegorical," writes George Long, "mystical, half historical, and prophetical, enigmatical, anything in fact but bucolic." The best-known imitation of his idyll is Pope's "Messiah." Pleasing as all these poems are, they do not represent rural life in Italy, they are in most part but echoes of Theocritus. It is to the suggestion of Mæcenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect poem, his "Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the "Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils, fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have time or inclination to read so elaborate a work. It is probable that Mæcenas, while recognizing the talent of the "Bucolics," saw likewise the unreality of their pictures of life, and gave him the subject of the "Georgics" as being in the same line as that the poet seemed to have chosen for himself, and yet as less liable to lead to imitations and pilferings from Greek originals. In fact there was no work that he could follow. In this work we find great improvement in both taste and versification, and the rather uninviting subject is treated and embellished in a way that makes his fame rest in great part on the poem. The fourth book, especially, with its episode of Orpheus and Eurydice will live forever for its plaintive tenderness. The work was completed at Naples, after the battle of Actium, 31 B.C., while Augustus was in the East. OCTAVIA OVERCOME BY VIRGIL'S VERSES. In B.C. 27 the emperor was in Spain, and thence he addressed a request to let him have some monument of his poetical talent, to celebrate the emperor's name as he had done that of Mæcenas. Virgil replied in a brief letter, saying, "As regards my 'Æneas,' if it were worth your listening to, I would willingly send it. But so vast is the undertaking that I almost appear to myself to have commenced it from some defect in understanding; especially since, as you know, other and far more important studies are needed for such a work." In the year B.C. 24, we learn from the poet Propertius, that Virgil was then busy at the task, and in all probability the former may have heard it read by its author. The old Latin commentators preserve several striking notices of Virgil's habit of reading or reciting his poems, both while he was composing them and after they were completed, and especially of the remarkable beauty and charm of the poet's rendering of his own words and its powerful effect upon his hearers. "He read," says Suetonius, "at once with sweetness and with a wonderful fascination;" and Seneca had a story of the poet Julius Montanus saying that he himself would attempt to steal something from Virgil if he could first borrow his voice, his elocution, and his dramatic power in reading; for the very same lines, said he, which when the author himself read them sounded well, without him were empty and dumb. He read to Augustus the whole of his "Georgics," and on another occasion three books of the "Æneid," the second, the fourth, and the sixth, the last with an effect upon Octavia not to be forgotten, for she was present at the reading, and at those great lines about her own son and his premature death, which begin "Tu Marcellus cris," it is said that she fainted away and was with difficulty recovered. She rewarded the poet munificently for this tribute to her son's memory. For three years longer he worked steadily on the poem, and in B.C. 19 he resolved to go to Greece and devote three entire years to polishing and finishing the work. He got as far as Athens, where he met Augustus returning from the East, and determined to go back to Italy in his company. He fell ill, however, during a visit to Megara, the voyage between Greece and Italy did not improve his health and he died a few days after landing at Brundisium, in the year B.C. 19. His body was transferred to Naples, and he was buried near the city at Puteoli. By his will he left some property to his friends Varius and Nicca, with the injunction that they should burn the unfinished epic. The injunction was never carried out, by the express command of the emperor, who directed Varius to publish the poem without any additions of any kind. An order carefully executed, for as the "Æneid" stands there are numerous imperfect lines. This epic poem on the foundation of Rome by a colony from Troy is based on an old Latin tradition, and is modelled on the form of the poems of Homer. The first six books remind the student of the adventures of Ulysses in the "Odyssey," while the last six books, recounting the contest of the Trojan settlers under Æneas with the native inhabitants under their King Latinus, follow the style of the battle-pieces of the "Iliad." The most striking and original part of the plan of the poem is the introduction of Carthage and the Carthaginian queen, on whose coasts Æneas, in defiance of all chronology, is described as suffering shipwreck. The historic conflict between Rome and Carthage, when Hannibal and his cavalry rode from one end of Italy to another, and...